“Then take me,” she said, already trying to unfasten my belt. “I’ve thought about this so many times.”
She likes you, you know?
Lila’s admission and Oliver’s words from earlier hit me like a ton of bricks. I froze, but didn’t back away as Lila continued to kiss me, moving her lips to my neck.
“Hold on,” I breathed, trying to regain control.
“What? Why?” she questioned before sucking on my earlobe and almost causing me to lose all cohesive thought.
“Just hold on a minute,” I said, more forcefully this time. I grabbed her shoulders and pushed myself away so I could look her in the eyes.
She searched my face, looking for answers.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s just...I just...” I let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “The wrong idea? What, like you don’t want to have sex with me right now? Because, sorry to tell you, if that’s not the idea you were going for, you were very much giving all the wrong signals.”
“No, it’s not that. Trust me, I do very much want to pin you up against this wall and feel your body writhe underneath me.”
She shuddered at the thought, then shook her head. “Then what is it? Why did you stop?”
“I don’t want anything more.”
Her expression dimmed, and I realized I was about to dig my own grave, but I couldn’t stop. Every fiber of my being screamed that I would regret this, but the words spilled out anyway.
“Oliver mentioned...he said something about you liking me, or something? I don’t know, he’s probably full of shit. You know Oliver. But yeah. He said you might have a crush on me, and I don’t want—” I held up my hands and gestured between the two of us. “I don’t want to lead you on right now.”
The desire had been completely extinguished from her eyes. Now her cheeks were flushed for a different reason.
“Hesaidthat?”
“Yeah,” I breathed. She shrugged away from me, and I wasn’t prepared for just how fucking empty I’d feel at her absence.
“So, just to be clear, you were hoping for a quick vacation fuck, and then we’d never speak of it again?” she questioned, striding to the other side of the room and ripping open the dresser drawer before grabbing a T-shirt and throwing it on.
“That’s not— no?—”
“You’re right, maybe I did have the wrong idea. Because I thought spending hours opening up to each other might actually mean something to you.”
“I never said I wanted a relationship,” I replied, hating the immense distance that was rapidly forming between us. I searched for something to say that would make this alright, but I came up empty.
“I didn’t either,” she said with exasperation, pacing the room. “I mean, okay, well, technically I did. But I never said—nor implied—that I wanted one withyou.”
“I just?—”
She held up a finger from across the room.
“And just because I want a relationship doesn’t mean I’m some desperate person who expects every guy she sleeps with to propose.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” My words were weak and I felt sick with remorse. This was all wrong, but I didn’t know how to make it right.
She cradled her forehead and shook her head. “No, you were right to stop. This was stupid. I mean, where could this possibly lead?”
I could think of alotof good places that what we were doing might lead to, but I thought better of saying anything and snapped my mouth closed.
“This is the trip getting to us. We’re in a romantic setting and we had a nice dinner. It tricked us into thinking we wanted to have sex with each other.”
