I'm not a child!I want to scream, but the words stick in my throat.
He's thirty, maybe thirty-two, but it doesn’t seem old to me. I've been an adult for a long time already, no matter how old I was yesterday.
He does something I wasn't expecting at all. He leans to the bedside table, takes a pack of tissues, and holds them out for me.
"I'll give you another shirt, and my driver will get you back home," he says, not even looking at me, and gets up.
I remove the remnants of tears from my cheeks and watch how this gorgeous and still naked man is walking to the wardrobe for another shirt for me.
I can't believe my birthday ended up like this. My mom offered to throw a massive party in my honor. I’d declined it, thinking that I was going to spend the night with my boyfriend in a luxurious Beverly Hills hotel, which I'd dreamt of visiting since I’d watched "Pretty Woman" when I was twelve. Yeah, I've been slightly obsessed with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere since then.
When I found my boyfriend cheating on me, I was too terrified to tell my mom about it, even though she's my best friend, and we really do share everything. She didn't like Liam from the second she saw him, and I was perfectly aware of it. That's why I didn't want to tell her. Not because she would reproach me that she was right, but because she would get upset, and I didn't want that.
I imagined I'd come to this club with my fake ID and invitation, have a couple of drinks at the bar and meet a man who was gorgeous and old enough to be attentive for my first time. I thought that man would be thrilled that I was a virgin—isn't that what men want when they meet a young woman? I imagined that we'd have incredible sex and maybe meet once or twice again afterward, just to consolidate what I’d learned.
But I definitely had never imagined that the night would go this way.
When he returned to the room, he was fully dressed, holding a hanger with a light blue shirt in his hands.
"The elevator goes straight to the underground parking. The black Rolls Royce will be waiting for you right next to the doors," he says, avoiding my gaze and holding out a shirt for me.
He turns away for me to change, and it's so silly, as if he hadn’t seen me naked just a few minutes ago.
It pisses me off that he’s treating me like a baby.
"Is that it?" I ask after changing the shirt, and I can't hide the irritation in my voice.
"What do you mean?" he asks, surprised, and finally looks at me.
"This." I point to the bed. "What has just happened. Is that it?"
"I'm not gonna sleep with you," he retorts, taking a step closer. "I'm thirty-four years old. I don't sleep with barely legal women."
He's thirty-four; I’m happy he told me that. Maybe I'll somehow be able to figure out his name now.
I googled the name of the owner of this club, but there's nothing. Nobody knows who it is, not a single photo. There's only guesswork and gossip about Hollywood celebrities who have been here and who might be the owner.
"This is my birthday," I remind him.
I don't know why I said it; it sounds so pathetic. As if I want him to pity me and have sex with me out of mercy.
And I don't want that. I want him to want me the way he did when we first kissed.
"I don't care," he chuckles, taking a step closer, and now he's inches from me, looking with his menacing gaze down on me again. "You'll walk out of this club, and I'll never see you again. Do you get it?"
I swallow. His scent, the heat of his body mixed with the smell of me all over his face...that turns me on so much that I want to start crying again—not out of fear, but out of sadness that I'll never see him again.
"What's your name?" I ask, inhaling his aroma deeply, trying to remember it to think about when I go to bed at home.
"It's better for us not to know more about each other." That’s the only thing he says before walking me to the door.
On my way down to the parking garage, I get off on the ground floor to the hotel lobby. I already texted my friend Sky to take me away from this place.
Chapter Six
Daniel
I pour a glass of ice tea and take a seat on the couch.