dancing in the street. The two emotions clash, both heightening how I feel and downing it at the same time.
As the positive aftereffects begin to wane I start to side with my common sense. How could I allow Kent to touch me like that? No man has ever done to me what he just did. It happened so fast. I didn’t have time to think, only to feel, and what I felt had nothing to do with common sense. It was passion and attraction vying for attention in a body disallowing both emotions.
“Two large with rare steak.” The waitress sets down two steaming bowls of hot soup.
I feel my cheeks heat. She can’t possibly know what we did. No one could possibly know. “Thank you.” I’m paranoid. It further lessens my bliss. What if someone heard me?
What were you thinking, letting Kent touch you?
My eyes fill with tears. All of my progress, all of my self-control, has blown apart because of one man. I don’t understand why this saddens me so much. I guess it’s because I said no so many times and the one time I said yes Kent never even asked me. He touched me because he knew what I needed. He knew exactly what I wanted and he gave it to me on a sexy silver platter.
I squirm in my seat, remembering his fingers pressing against me. He’d parted me through my panties and touched the part of me that ached the most. I remember why I let him. I needed him to touch me.
Without waiting for him I grab my chopsticks and dig in. Kent sits down soundlessly and does the same. We slurp our noodles, drink our broth, and the entire time I am tender with this new kind of want. Clearly touching wasn’t enough. My body expects more. My mind, however, forbids it.
“That can’t happen again,” I speak up. I set my chopsticks down. I can’t eat another bite. I stare at what’s left of my broth, watching a cilantro leaf floating like a solitary green island. “I never lose control. I need to have control over my life, Kent.”
“We barely touched. Relax.”
I look up in shock. “We barely touched? I guess to you that was nothing. That was something to me.”
“I heard.”
I blush all over and look down. “I was kind of loud, wasn’t I?”
“When’s the last time you got laid?”
“It’s been a long, long time.” I refuse to reveal I’m a virgin. For some reason I know if I tell him his reaction won’t be positive.
“I haven’t made a girl come that way since high school.” He laughs at the memory. “You were completely clothed and I have to say that was the sexiest thing I’ve done with a woman in a long, long time,” he informs me, using my words. Except he draws them out, making my mouth dry. “But if you don’t want it to happen again, then it won’t.”
“I don’t.”
He shrugs. “Me neither.”
Him neither?
I don’t let him know how much his easy agreement to never to do it again annoys me. I don’t want to confuse him. Inside I’m enraged. That couldn’t have all been me back there. He touched me. He knew what to do. Was he taking pity on me? I slide down in my seat and attempt not to succumb to the blush heating my skin. I was practically begging him for release, humping him like a horny dog. He took pity on me and gave it to me. How pathetic was I?
I can barely meet his eyes when he tosses a twenty on the table. In the car we’re both quiet. I feel dirty all over, like some reject charity sex case. Kent took one for the team. I’m his bunt. I want to crawl into a hole. He touched me! No man had ever touched me that way. I let him, some spoiled rich daddy’s boy, touch me. And then I was all over him. I’m madder at myself than I am at him. He was being himself. I wasn’t.
When we get to the apartment I pull up near the stairs.
“You’re not coming in?”
I look out my window. “I’ve got errands to run.”
“Like what?” he demands. “Look at me. All we did was hook up in the bathroom. You weren’t even naked. I said I wouldn’t do it again. You don’t have to act like this.”
“Get out.”
He grabs for me but I smack his hand away. “Rain,” he says quietly.
I try not to cry.