I feel too many lovey feelings I have to keep in, but I’m sure it’s just the hit of oxytocin. I’m rational enough to know I need to keep my mouth shut and just enjoy the high.
When we’re able to move again, Dare moves off me, but I almost don’t want him to. I love the feeling of his weight pressed against me, and I want to keep cuddling.
Thankfully, he doesn’t go far. He grabs a tissue off the end table and pulls the condom off his dick, then he curls right back up in bed with me. He rolls on his side, pulling me close and settling his arm around my waist.
“You’re mine now,” he says, tone thick and deep and gravelly enough to make my heart skip a beat. “No one’s going to take you from me.”
I don’t know why his words make my heart sink. They’re nice… aren’t they?
They are, but at the same time, they’re odd.
Maybe it’s just our situation.
Maybe it’s the things I don’t want to think about, like the fact that he has a girlfriend who isn’t me.
I definitely don’t like that, and as much as I enjoyed having sex with him, my brain reminds me that’s exactly why this was a bad idea.
Crushing on him and not wanting to admit it to myself when I knew he was with Anae was one thing.
How much worse will it be now?
There are things I haven’t had to think about before, things I’ve deliberately not thought about when they popped up in my mind because I told myself there was no reason to. Yeah, he kissed me. Yes, he touched me in my bedroom. Yes, I sent him that picture, but all of those things… they weren’t quite this.
Now I’ve slept with him, and that opens up a whole new world of worries.
I don’t want the guy I’m sleeping with to sleep with anyone else.
I know I risk making big waves if I bring it up, especially right now. I know it’s quick, and we haven’t even made any concrete commitments to each other, but he did just say I’m his.
“Dare?”
“Yeah?”
I don’t know if I’m relieved or not that he’s still awake.
“Are you mine, too?” I whisper.
His arm around my waist tightens. “Of course.”
He says it easily, like it’s a given.
I don’t think it is, so maybe he doesn’t understand what I’m asking, or maybe he does, and there’s stuff he hasn’t told me yet.
He clearly came over tonight with the intent of sleeping with me, and now that he has, he’s clearly claiming me as his, so maybe he made preparations for that he just hasn’t told me about yet. He mentioned being at Anae’s house and snooping on her laptop, but he didn’t say anything else.
Surely he would have mentioned a breakup or something, right?
But he also said that thing about Anae thinking he’s too dark for me. In the moment, it seemed crazy because how would that even come up? But maybe that’s how it came up. Maybe they got in some fight or he told her he wanted to break up, and when she demanded to know why, it came out that he wanted to be with me instead. Maybe that’s when she flung back that he was too dark for me, that I wouldn’t be able to handle him.
Bite me harder next time.
I shake off the thought that there could be some weight to that argument. I’m just not used to him yet, that’s all. All of this is new to me. The sex and the intensity. For all I know, that’s how most people fuck and I just don’t know it.
Whatever the case, it’s clearly how he does it, and I didn’t dislike it, I just have to get used to it. I know we like each other, but we still have to get to know each other more, too.
I’m looking forward to it even if all of this suddenly feels a little scary.
Before this, we weren’t beholden to each other in ways that I feel we will be now, and deep down… I’m not even sure he’s having the same thoughts I am.
Has anything changed for him at all? Or does he think we’ll just keep going like we have been, but now he gets to fuck me when he feels like it?
I wasn’t ready for this level, but now we’re on it, so I guess we’ll have to figure it out.
I hope this wasn’t a mistake.
I swat the thought away.
I don’t care if it’s a rational concern. I don’t want it to be.
It’s too late now. There’s no going back.
Either this was a good thing, and our relationship will evolve in a way that won’t shatter my heart into a million pieces, or…
It won’t, and it will.
Chapter twenty-four