“No? Why? Because you saved me? As I recall, I asked to go to a gas station.” I make a point of looking around. “This isn’t exactly a gas station, now, is it?”
“No, but that doesn’t matter.”
“How can you say that?” As much as I want to be exasperated, I’m almost intrigued to hear what he has to say.
“I’ll make sure you get gas, and if you want, I’ll even make sure that your car makes it back to campus safe and sound.”
To say he confounds me is an understatement.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“What did you really forget?” I ask, my tone growing a bit sharper because he’s stalking toward me very much like a predator chasing down prey, and I do not like feeling like prey.
“How much fun it is to tease you,” he murmurs.
I swallow hard and resist the urge to back away. “Rob…”
“Back on the cruise ship, it had been as if we were alone in the world,” he continues. “Just you and me.”
“And now that we’re on campus here, where people are very much all around us, you show your true colors.”
“No. Not exactly.”
“You really expect me to believe that how you were on the cruise ship is the real you?” I roll my eyes. “I’m not about to get bamboozled by you again.”
He chuckles and cups the side of my cheek. “Bamboozled. I love that I bamboozled you.”
“No,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not fair.”
He laughs again, the sound low and sexy, just like everything else about him. Speaking of low, his jeans could not be lower on his hips, not that I should be looking.
“Why isn’t it fair?” he whispers.
“Because I don’t affect you the same way,” I murmur, glancing away.
“Now that is not an accurate assessment at all,” he says sharply, so sharply that I meet his gaze to see his blue eyes are flashing. He’s pissed. “I wouldn’t say bamboozled, but dazzled works.”
I snort. “Yeah, as if I’m supposed to believe that. I’m not a fool, Rob. If you can’t get over yourself and realize that maybe I’m not as into you as you first thought… as I first thought…” I shrug. “We aren’t going to ever be a thing.”
“Because I said a few things I shouldn’t have?”
“You made it sound like I was your personal whore!”
He grimaces, but he can’t refute that.
“And you can’t deny that your friends have been absolutely terrible to me, and that’s all because of you. The way you’ve been to me has been because you still want to be known as a legend on campus still. You don’t want your friends and everyone else to know that you’re whipped.”
“I’m not whipped,” he protests.
“No?” I ask coyly, stepping back from him and eyeing his pants. He’s sporting an erection all right. “Maybe a little?”
“Maybe a little,” he agrees, and damn it all, if he isn’t sexy as sin.