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“A gentleman.”
He smiled. “Approximately. I know the forms.”
“You’re good at them.”
“Well thank you. My parents and my school will take that as a vote of confidence.”
“What about you?”
“There’s more to being a true gentleman than the forms.”
“I think you’re pretty good at that too,” she told him. “Your kindness has made me feel hopeful again.”
“Truly?” he asked as they reached her door. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“One of the hardest things about this whole situation was dealing with what everyone else thought. They never saw Phil the controlling jerk, or the terrifying stalker, so they thought I was at least partly at fault. But you believed me. I think that made more of a difference even than you stepping between us on the dance floor.”
“I’m glad,” he said again. “It’s gratifying.”
“I wanted you to know that I’ve made an appointment with Dr. Forster.”
He looked genuinely relieved. “I’m so glad, Sophia. I think it will do you the world of good. She’s so good at helping with coping mechanisms.”
Sophia nodded. “Why don’t you come in and have a nightcap?”
“I should let you get some rest.”
She looked up at him, put her hand on his shoulder, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him softly. “I’d like it if you came in,” she whispered.
Where she’d gotten the nerve from, Sophia didn’t know, but she wanted him. More than that, even, she wanted to feel free and in charge of her own life again.
“I want to make my own choices,” she told him and he looked into her eyes and nodded as if he understood.
She led him into her bedroom and undressed him, taking her time, unwrapping him as if he was the best birthday gift ever.
She gasped when she saw the scar, an ugly, jagged slash that ran from just above his left nipple to his shoulder. “What is that?”
“My disagreement with Joanie’s stalker.”
She realized then that his sister hadn’t been the only one injured in that incident. Sophia kissed the scar gently, and felt his hand caress her hair. “Lie down,” she told him, and he did as she asked, stretching out on the bed, arms behind his head, watching her undress herself.
When she stepped out of her party dress he said, “You’re beautiful, Sophia.”
Was she? It was so hard to tell now, since Phil had made her feel that she was unattractive to other men. Daniel must have seen that in her eyes because he reached out to her and pulled her into his arms.
“I have been all around the world and met thousands of women, many of them among the most beautiful in the world. I can tell you honestly that you are beautiful by any objective standard, and by my own wholly subjective one. Please don’t ever doubt it. That would break my heart.”
Their lips met. Sophia rested her hands on Daniel’s shoulders and felt the ridge of his scar under her palm. His hands cradled her hips, holding her gently but firmly, his fingers slipping under her panties, to slide them downward.
He pivoted and Sophia fell onto the bed. Daniel pushed her legs apart and licked his lips before he went down on his knees between them.
Nothing had ever prepared her for this moment of utter, mindless pleasure. Nothing. Daniel’s fingers, his tongue, lips, teeth drew her into a kind of sensory overload, and she found herself dizzy with it, with the aching throb of joy deep inside her, the sheer physical pleasure he roused in her.
No one had ever made her feel more alive, more like a woman and a desirable one, than Daniel did that night.
She woke, cradled in his arms in the early hours when the sun was still pale and milky in the sky. Daniel was still asleep, and she took the opportunity to watch him for a while, to memorize the curves, and planes, and angles of his face.
He had the face of an angel, something you’d see in a portrait by an old master. At rest, his face softened slightly, and he looked more boyish. She liked seeing sleep smooth out some of the worry lines. She wished she could do that for him.
