Why did she feel like this? Why was it…why was it making her shake and get teary eyed? Why did she want to eat a pint of ice cream and hide?
For a blinding moment, during the sex, she’d thought she finally understood it. How beautiful it was. Pleasure, the wanting, the being wanted. That she’d finally cut the link between her assault and sexual desire. Really, and not just in theory.
Well, that was true, but she’d found a whole new level of complexity in this sort of thing she hadn’t anticipated at all.
But she held her tears back, and she sat and stared at her phone screen, mindlessly flicking letters into slots. None of them were words, and therefore, pointless. She was starting to wonder if the little experience with Ferro had been the same.
Except she felt changed. Burned from the inside out. Damn Ferro.
The bathroom door opened and she tried to keep herself from getting whiplash, looking to see what he was going to do. What the expression on his face was.
She managed to look up from her phone slowly. He wasn’t looking at her at all.
He had a towel slung low around his hips, and he stalked across the room to the closet, where he had hung all his clothes. He was meticulous, much more so than her. Everything he did was purposeful. Controlled.
Except for what he’d done tonight.
He dropped the towel and her heart climbed into her throat, perched there, blocking her air, pounding so hard she felt dizzy. She’d never seen a butt like that. Well, outside of pictures she’d never seen a man’s butt uncovered. Even so, she knew he was a rare specimen of extreme hotness. And even though she was irritated and hurt, she couldn’t help but look.
He tugged a pair of athletic pants out of the closet and jerked them on, covering the object of her fascination. Then he turned and started to walk toward the couch.
He still didn’t look at her, didn’t say anything.
He lifted up the blankets and lay down, turning over, facing away from her.
Her mouth fell open. Was he really going to just go to sleep across the room from her as if nothing had happened between them?
She stared at his immobile form. Well. Damn. He was.
She started to say something. Then she closed her mouth. If she said something he would know that she was melting inside. And she couldn’t take that humiliation, not again. She’d been so blithe about a guy using her for her body.
But she hadn’t known what it would really feel like. That she would feel so used.
She hadn’t known anything.
She’d been so stupid. To think that because she’d wanted the sex she’d have no emotional repercussion from it. To think that because Ferro was her business rival it wouldn’t change her feelings. To think that she wouldn’t feel rejected and hurt if he didn’t want to sleep next to her.
She forced herself to lie down. Forced herself to keep quiet. But no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t force herself to fall asleep.
CHAPTER TEN
FERRO SLUNG HIS bag over his shoulder and waited at the foot of the stairs. Waited for Julia to board the plane. She was stiff. Everything about her. Her nose was pointed straight toward the sky, her posture rigid, every step locked like a soldier’s. And she was pointedly not looking at him.
And he supposed he deserved it. Thankfully, in the cold light of day with his control firmly back in place he could deal with her in a rational manner. Except, she wasn’t being rational. Maybe he hadn’t handled the night before the way that she wanted him to handle it, but he’d more than given her pleasure. He hadn’t taken advantage in any way.
She ascended the stairs, keeping that same posture, never once looking in his direction, and he followed. He blew out a breath before entering the plane and watched it linger in the air. It was cold. Strangely he didn’t feel it so much.
He sat on the couch across from her and she pulled her computer out, typing furiously, never once glancing at him all through takeoff.
“Are we having a problem, Julia?” he asked.
Her head snapped up. “Are you speaking to me again?”
“You’re the one ignoring me,” he said, struck by the oddness of the conversation. It sounded like a fight two people in a relationship, albeit a high school relationship, might have. And he’d never had a relationship before, neither was this a relationship, so that made it all doubly odd.