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He leaned forward on his arms, presenting me with his personable persona that I was beginning to think was completely impersonal. Like it was his way of evading questions he didn’t want to answer. As if he could flash a smile and it would swipe away any questions that would delve beneath the surface of Axel Thomas. “A gentleman never tells.” His words only confirmed what I’d already suspected.
I leaned over the table, too. “You said honesty was important.”
He rolled his lips together and nodded once. “You’re right.” Then he looked up at the ceiling as if he were in deep thought, trying to remember how many there were. He started counting off quietly as he thought, and I could tell it was going to be a longer list than I’d thought. Now, I wished I’d never asked.
“Never mind.” I shook my head.
“Yeah. It’s probably better that we don’t talk about this,” he agreed. “Especially while we’re having a date night.”
“You’re probably right,” I replied flippantly and glanced away, feeling like an idiot. “I’m sorry for asking. It’s really none of my business.”
“Don’t apologize, Natalie.” He wiped his hands with his napkin. “I like that about you.”
“What?”
“I like how you speak your mind.”
“You do?”
He looked down at his crossed arms on the table. “I do. You don’t try to bullshit me or play games. I like that.”
“Is that what you’re accustomed to? People playing games with you?”
He popped a shoulder. “It comes with the territory. That’s not to say I was completely innocent.”
I rubbed my palms against my napkin, knowing I should stop asking questions, but I couldn’t stop. “When did you lose your virginity?”
“At fourteen.”
“Were you nervous?”
He chuckled. “No.” He paused thoughtfully. “Okay. Maybe a little, but I was more trigger-happy than anything. You know, hormones and shit.”
“Was she a virgin?”
“No. I already told you. I don’t fuck virgins.”
“Not yet.”
His mouth quirked in a lazy smile. “Not yet.”
There were more questions I wanted to ask, but our server came back and asked if we wanted anything else.
Axel raised his eyes at me, and I shook my head. “No. Just the check, please,” he said before he leaned in. “You’re making me break my rules, Hardcore. You know that?”
My skin tingled under his gaze, aware that rules weren’t the only things that would be broken.
Afterward, we went to the movie theater down the road from the restaurant that wasn’t far from campus. We’d agreed on a mystery/horror film, since we’d both agreed those were our favorite genres. Axel bought a bucket of popcorn and some drinks, and we found the theatre showing our movie.
It was a weeknight, and there were only a few people sprinkled around.
“Do you have a preference on where to sit?” he asked.
“No.”
“Good.” He led me up the stairs until we reached the back row, which was completely empty, with no people in the few rows in front of us. We walked down the row until we were in the middle and sat down.
The movie was about a dysfunctional family from New Orleans who moved into a Greek revival home that was over two hundred years old, which had been deserted for years because the last family who’d lived there had all been mysteriously murdered.
