He looked away but not before I noticed irritation on his face.
I continued. “Please don’t tell me you treated your other fuck buddies that way.”
“You’re not a fuck buddy.”
I pulled my arm free, turned and pushed over to the edge of the infinity pool, looking out over the dark bay. The distant crash of the ocean and smell of salt rose up on the breeze. From behind me he sighed. “I’m sorry you thought I was blowing you off.”
My face flushed hot with anger. “Not an apology. Don’t bother wasting your breath with that bullshit. Do you have any idea how it makes me feel that you would just ignore me like that after we—after what happened between us? Like yesterday’s forgotten trash.”
He came up beside me, hooking his muscular arms over the edge, careful not to touch me. He looked into my face, I kept staring out over the bay. “I’m sorry,” he said after some long, tense moments. “I wasn’t ignoring you on purpose. It’s something I do when—when I’m thinking.”
I took a deep breath, the tight anger only easing a tiny increment. I looked at him then. He’d shucked his shirt and pants and it looked like he’d jumped into the water in his underwear. “Then talk to me. Tell me what you are thinking about.”
He paused. “I was thinking about how I never intended for it to go this far.”
A band tightened around my chest. “So you are feeling regretful. Guilty that it happened.”
“No,” he said, turning to me. “I’m feeling regretful and guilty that I enjoyed it so much I want to do it again.”
A new tension thickened between us. I struggled for breath, because I felt the exact same way. “But you won’t?”
He looked out over the bay. “It was never supposed to go this far,” he repeated.
Though I hated how he dealt with his inner conflict by shutting me out, I found that inner conflict utterly a reflection of his goodness. He wasn’t using me. He was afraid of using me. He wasn’t disregarding me. He was holding my feelings in such regard that he was denying his own. How could I be angry with that?
“But it did. And there’s nothing to regret in that. There was no ‘deal.’ There were no principles violated. The money—”
“To hell with the money, Emilia. I don’t give a shit about the money.”
I turned to him, clearing my throat. “Here’s the deal, Adam. You are acting like you did something wrong, like you ‘took’ something from me or somehow despoiled me. You know what? It’s our culture that leads men to think like that…that purity in a woman is the ultimate prize.”
He grimaced. “You sound like your Manifesto, now.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t just write those words for the hell of it. I believed them. My purity was worth no more than yours or anyone else’s. I just happened to be a lot older than most when I finally—”
“Gave it up?”
“Gave it away. And it means nothing more than that. You did me a favor.”
He gritted his teeth so that the muscles in his jaw bulged.
I continued. “I enjoyed myself. You said you enjoyed yourself. What is there to regret or feel guilty over?”
“What comes next,” he stated flatly. “It’s the way I think. I’m a programmer before I’m anything else. Everything in programming is cause and effect. What are the possibilities that spring from each and every line of code? What will spring from this?”
“Stop thinking fifty steps ahead of this one. Just think about the one thing that comes next. What do you think that is?”
His eyes roamed my face. “If I had my way? It would be me fucking you again.” His eyes lowered to my lips.
I stopped breathing, heart rushing with excitement. We stared at each other in silence for a long moment before I spoke. “I think that sounds like a pretty good step.”
He hooked his arm around my waist, jerked me flush against him. My body came alive with the feel of his hardness. We held each other for long moments. Then he slowly, sensuously began to kiss my neck.
“Damn it, Emilia,” he breathed. “How did you strip me bare so quickly?”
I reached up, holding his rough face in my hands and we kissed
He kissed me long, tenderly. Our tongues slowly played against each other. Desire arced through me like lightning across a mountain sky. The touch was jagged, searing. His hands were on my back, untying my bikini top, sliding to my breasts.
“How is it possible that I want you more now than I did this afternoon?” he growled against my neck.
I pulled myself up, hooking my legs around his waist and we continued to kiss. The tightly packed muscles in his back roiled under my hands.