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Leo stiffened, which made Amelia go still.
She turned around in his arms and frowned at him. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say, wasn’t it? I didn’t mean… I just meant you rocked my world, is all.”
Forcing himself to relax, Leo pressed a kiss to Amelia’s forehead. He rolled onto his back. “It’s fine. I just…I don’t want you to see me that way.”
She lifted her head onto her elbow to look at him. It felt like she could see right through him. “What way?”
“As Pestilence.”
“You think I’m hung up on some stupid nickname?”
He snorted, then sighed. “I didn’t have sex with five girls in one night. You want to know what really happened?” He glanced at her, then had to look away. “I’d just been dumped, and I was a mess. We were at a house party, and I was drunk and emotional. Those five girls consoled me while I wept like a baby. We drank and discussed breakups, and one of them volunteered to start a rumor about how good I was in bed. It got all blown out of proportion because someone saw me come out of the room with all of them.”
Amelia was quiet for a moment. “Oh. So the whole Pestilence thing…?”
“Oh, everyone got chlamydia. That’s definitely true.” He snorted, embarrassment making his chest feel hot. “And after that night, I slept around. I guess the rumors worked. So maybe the clap outbreak was my fault. Maybe it was Gerard Hill. Maybe it was one of half a dozen girls that were sleeping around. Everyone was having sex with everyone. It was college.”
“Your college experience sounds like it was really different from my college experience,” Amelia noted.
Leo laughed. He finally met her gaze. “Sex isn’t usually like this,” he said quietly. “The way it is with you.”
She was quiet for a long moment, her expression unreadable. “Oh.”
He caught her hand—the one that wore his ring—and started toying with her fingers, touching them with his own, holding her hand, braiding their fingers then sliding them apart. “The past ten years…” He exhaled. Should he be telling Amelia all this stuff? Wouldn’t it just prove that he wasn’t worthy of her, of any relationship?
“Who was the girl who dumped you?” Amelia asked, then added, “You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Katie Rodgerson,” he answered. “My first and only relationship.” His smile was bitter, but he managed to keep going. “We met in freshman year. She was studying economics. I hadn’t chosen my major yet, because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do with myself. My grandparents had died barely two years earlier, Marlon had isolated himself after basically hamstringing himself financially so I could go to college, and I was totally fucking lost.”
She tightened her grip on his hand, and they lay in the bed, hands clasped, staring at each other.
“I don’t know if it was real love,” Leo admitted. “I was young. We both were. But I thought we cared about each other until she turned around and told me I wasn’t driven enough for her. She was going to do big things with her life, and she couldn’t hang around waiting for me to pick a career while I partied my way through college. It came as a total shock at the time. I don’t know why her dumping me hit me so hard.”
There was a long pause.
“Well,” Amelia finally said, reasonable as ever, “your parents had basically dropped the ball, then you lost your grandparents, and you…drifted from your brother?”
Leo didn’t want her to think badly of Marlon. “You have to understand, my brother took care of me for years. Growing up, he was the one who did everything for me when our mom couldn’t. School lunches. Homework. Everything. You wouldn’t think he was only two years older than me. He was my parent most days. Then we moved in with our grandparents and they weren’t in great health, so he started taking care of them too. When they died, I think he realized he was just…burned out. Done. I didn’t want to keep being a burden to him.”
“But that still left you on your own.” When Leo nodded, Amelia sighed sympathetically. “So he wasn’t there for you, even if it was understandable. Your girlfriend was probably the only meaningful connection you had left. It’s no wonder it affected you when the relationship ended.”
Leo stared at her, with her liquid mercury eyes and her pale golden hair splayed over her shoulders, and he couldn’t believe that she was here with him. It took her all of three sentences to explain a hurt that he’d never been able to rationalize. He’d always felt vaguely embarrassed to be so crushed by a relationship that had lasted barely two years and ended before he’d reached the legal drinking age. But his wounded heart had been injured by more than just Katie dumping him; it was every important person in his life leaving him to fend for himself. She was just the killing blow.
Amelia brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “I’m sorry I made that comment about the five women,” she murmured. “You know you’re worth so much more than your bedroom skills, right? So much more, Leo.”
Leo’s throat grew so tight, he couldn’t respond.
Amelia must have sensed the emotion choking him because with her lips curled in a witchy smile, she added, “Even though Ididhire you specifically for those bedroom skills, and they arequiteimpressive.”
He laughed, a wet, raspy sound, then grabbed Amelia around the waist and hauled her on top of him. He kissed his way across her chest until her nipple was between his lips. Nipping gently, he groaned. “I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of kissing you, Amelia.”
She leaned down, her naked core nudging at his stiffening cock. It was intimate and erotic, and it made him want to fuck her until they both dropped from exhaustion. Her lips pressed against his in a chaste kiss. “That’s good, because I’m a pretty big fan of kissing you too.”
A shuddering sigh rattled his chest, then Leo wrapped his arms around the woman of his dreams and tried to use his body to show her what she meant to him.
It was, after all, what he did best.
TWENTY-THREE
