It wasn’t just about sex. It was about Zane.
The way that he made her feel. The way that he made her want.
He moved away from her and rested his forearm over his eyes. He didn’t say anything. His chest was pitching up anddown, rapidly, his breathing ragged. Maybe he couldn’t speak yet.
She was worried that he was angry.
She wanted him to tell her that it had been good. That he was glad they’d done it. She wanted him to hold her. She wanted him to reassure her. Wrap his arms around her.
The panicky desperation inside of her embarrassed her. But there was nothing she could do about it. It was insistent and very real.
And very virgin of her, she supposed.
So she just stayed where she was lying, and forced herself not to grab onto him, forced herself not to say anything.
He got up off the bed, he still didn’t say anything, and he went into the bathroom and closed the door. Well shit. Was she supposed to get up? Was she supposed to leave? Her car was here. Is that what he wanted her to do? Collect her clothes? Half of them were in the other room.
She wasn’t going to cry. She was not going to cry. Oh, except she was going to cry, so she bailed out of the bed as quickly as possible, hand over her mouth as the whole last… Two weeks, really, crashed in on her. Everything. It wasn’t like she hadn’t cried, but she felt like everything was coming to a head, and she was losing it.
She stood by all of her decisions. From taking the hike to begin with, to taking the classes from Zane, to sleeping with Zane, but it didn’t mean they didn’t leave her feeling bruised and wounded. She stumbled out of his bedroom and into the living room, where she picked her T-shirt up off the floor, but then couldn’t find her bra.
“Goddamnit,” she muttered as she wandered around the room looking for the bra.
“It’s up there.”
She turned and saw Zane standing in the doorway. Shefollowed where he was pointing, and saw that the bra was hanging on a light fixture in the living room.
“Oh,” she said.
“I can get it,” he said.
“I’m just trying to get out of your hair,” she said.
He met her gaze, and walked across the room, directly toward her, his movements intent and intense. Then he wrapped his hand around the back of her head and pulled her toward him. Kissing her. Deep and hard. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“You didn’t say anything,” she said, her voice sounding small.
“I know. I’m sorry. I fucked that up. I just didn’t know what to say. I don’t usually have conversations afterward.”
“Yeah. Me either,” she said.
He looked at her like she had grown a second head.
Oh, this was just terrible. Her bra was hanging off a light fixture, she was about to have a nervous breakdown, and she was going to have to admit to him that he was her first.
“I’ve never had sex before. I mean, Ihadnever had sex before.”
He didn’t say anything. He nodded. Very, very slowly.
“But I really wanted to be with you. I do understand that you’re not looking for a relationship. I understood that weeks ago. I’ve been trying… I think I felt the same way that you did. I really didn’t want to make things weird here, and this thing… It would be easier if I had slept with Walker.”
“You are not sleeping with Walker,” he said, his voice hard and feral.
“I don’t want to sleep with Walker. But it was intense. I think I’m kind of intense. And I just felt like, given the fact that this can’t be anything other than sex… It was probably going to be a bad idea.”
“Probably,” he grunted.
“But I don’t regret that it happened.”
