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Maybe in person, but nothing could scrape that memory out of my mind.
I turned but kept my gaze on the floor, then rubbed my hand over the back of my neck. I needed to clean up the shattered glass, right? That seemed a safe enough line of thought. Anything other than her lovely pale skin, than the soft pink of her cunt, than the way her nipples had been a rose color I wanted so badly to taste.
No, bad man! She’s a kid!
She wasnineteen.My brain refused to even do the gymnastics to work out how much older than her I was, to acknowledge just how inappropriate my thoughts were. She might think she was interested, but she’d get over that nonsense soon enough.
The last thing I needed was to touch her, to leave her with a memory she’d only come to regret eventually.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her tone uneasy.
Stop being an asshole.
I took a deep breath to calm myself. I needed to be the adult here, right? “You didn’t do anything wrong.” I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand, trying to keep my voice wrong. “That’s a totally natural thing to do. Kids your age—”
“Kids my age?”
Ouch, that tone of hers said I’d picked the exact wrong thing to say, didn’t it?
Then again, that was far from uncommon for me.
“I just mean, you’re young, so self-exploration, that’s totally natural. It’s normal, you know?”
The silence that filled the room was so thick I could have choked on it. Worse? I swore I could smell her, that some wonderful, feminine scent wafted through the room. I wanted to grasp her wrist and lick her finger clean, to—
No!
Kenz laughed. It sounded like the sort of laugh a person let out when they reached the end of their rope, when nothing was funny but they either laughed or lost their shit entirely.
It made me finally lift my gaze to see her, that towel wrapped loosely around her as she sat on her knees on the mattress. Her hands held the edges of the towel together, her knuckles white from how tightly she gripped it.
She wiped away a tear as she laughed with her other hand. “You really are clueless, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, well, I can’t deny that. I’ve got a lot of skills, was given plenty of blessings, but being good with women has never been one of them.”
“Oh, I can tell. I mean, I’msureyou heard what I said, right?”
I jerked my gaze to the side and nodded, unable to answer out loud. She meant when she’d calledmyname, telling me in no uncertain terms exactly what her fantasy had been about. Even if the sight of her naked and doingthatweren’t enough to burn into my memories, the sound of her voice as she’d called out to me for more?
That would never shake free.
“And yet you still start giving me some sort of ‘your body is changing’ lecture like a middle school science teacher?” She shook her head and let out a long sigh.
“Sorry,” I muttered, unsure what else to say.
“I know I’m not sexy,” she said, her voice so quiet I had to strain to hear it. “I’m not unaware of what I am and what I’m not. I’m not one of those women who is super sensual, some femme fatale that men fall over themselves to be with, but am I reallysounattractive that you see me like that and all you can think of is talking about girls my age?”
My chest ached at the tone of her voice, the doubt there. It had me sighing, because I’dneverbeen any good at standing by while others suffered. So even if this ruined my image, I couldn’t let her just think that.
“That’s not it,” I admitted. “I’m not saying you’re not attractive.”
“I don’t need pity compliments.”
“It’s not pity, Kenz. Look, you’resoyoung compared to me. Seeing you that way feels wrong, like I’m taking advantage of you, especially because of the position you’re in—at least in part because of me.”
“Last I checked, men didn’t worry too deeply about things like that, not if they actually want a girl.”
“And that’s the difference, that’s my point.Boysdon’t, but men damned well better. Even theideaof touching you, of seeing you like that, makes me feel like some old pervert lusting after someone I’ve got not business with. So when I walked in and saw that, when I heard you, I froze. I didn’t want to make you feel bad, like you’d done something wrong, and I had no idea what else to say.”
