“But when you came to pick me up on Thursday, I just felt this…spark.”
He flipped his hand, squeezing hers now.
“I ignored it, and was determined to keep ignoring it, but then we ended up in this tiny room –,”
“And tinier bed,” he interjected with a grin.
She nodded. “And it just felt like fate was telling me to bloody go for it for once, you know?”
His eyes sparked with amusement but his features bore a mask of contemplation. “I’m sorry that he made you feel undesirable.”
She frowned.
“You said, last night, that you wanted to feel like a desirable woman ‘for the first time’.”
“Oh.” She’d forgotten about that. In the heat of the moment she’d been completely honest and open, sharing her deepest fears with this man.
“Well, I do now,” she mumbled awkwardly.
“You were with him a long time.”
Her sigh was soft. He wasn’t going to let this go, and surprisingly, she found she didn’t actually mind as much as she might have thought.
“Four years.”
“You weren’t intimate often?”
Her cheeks stained pink. “It wasn’t like that. Our relationship was – we were – I mean, yes, we slept together.” She scrunched her face up. “This is weird. Talking about him —us— with you.”
Something sparked in the depths of his eyes but his features didn’t shift.
Strangely, his silence encouraged her to continue. “I suppose passion wasn’t a defining feature of our relationship.”
“What was?”
“Friendship.”
“Ah. An excellent basis for a romantic relationship,” he said with a hint of sarcasm.
She bit down on her lip. “It is, actually.”
“Perhaps,” he conceded. “I’m no expert in lasting relationships.”
Questions sparked inside of her. “But you’ve had girlfriends.”
His lips twisted at the term; she refused to feel embarrassed.
“Lovers,” he amended.
“I don’t mean sex. I mean actual love.”
His eyes flashed with something she could best describe as pain. “No.”
She frowned. “What about the woman you were with, the one you say you destroyed? You didn’t love her?”
He compressed his lips, tension radiating from him.
“You asked me about Ashton,” she reminded him.