“Honey, there’s not a day that I don’t think about it,” he said roughly, emotion filling his voice. “But the problem is that you’re a terrible liar. Every emotion, every feeling can be read on your face, you’re an open book baby and if someone asked you, you’d give everything away.”
“So what?” I asked, still confused, shaking my head. “Why would that matter?”
“Because you’re a young girl, a virgin even. If someone discovered us, it was better if you’d been used and then deserted. It was better if you knew nothing about me or where I was.”
“So you were doing it to save your own ass?” I asked slowly. “You didn’t want to be found?”
And Stone shook his head exasperatedly.
“No honey, that’s not what I’m saying at all. They can find me all they want, I don’t give two shits about that. It’s you. You can’t tell a lie, Evie, it’s impossible for you. And if someone found out about us and reported it to the police, I wanted you to be honest and say, ‘I was used and abused by Stone Phillips and I have no idea where that fucker is now.’ I didn’t want you to be pulled deeper into the web, a clean break was best.”
I nodded a little now. It was starting to make more sense.
“So if someone caught us, you wanted me to tell the truth – that you’d left me high and dry?” I said slowly.
“Exactly,” he confirmed, his blue eyes boring into mine. “I wanted you to tell the truth even though it was painful because we were swimming in dangerous waters baby. Think about what we were doing. We’d gone from fucking in a classroom to full-on dating, me cooking you dinner, making love to you, worshipping your beautiful body. This was no fling, this was no passing infatuation. Honey, we were doing couple things, acting like a couple and if people found out, everything would be ruined.”
“Does it make more sense now?” he asked gently. “It was better to cut off all contact so that if we were discovered, you could say honestly that you had no idea what happened. It was tough, but simpler this way.”
I shook my head, somewhat confused still. I couldn’t accept it because there were so many what-ifs and maybes, all these different branches on the decision tree, gnarled and loopy. So I shook my head, biting my lip, saving it for later. My brain cells were so fried at the moment that I just wanted to keep going, figure out more.
“So what’s different now?” I asked slowly. “Why are you back?”
And Stone smiled at me then, gentle, caring, blue eyes filled with emotion.
“Why do you think?” he rumbled low in his throat, a finger trailing down my cheek.
I paused for a moment, trying to ignore the shivers running down my spine.
“Well I’m clearly not a high school student anymore, and you’re not my teacher,” I said slowly. “But you’re still way older than me.”
“Eight years,” he interrupted.
“Eight years,” I repeated, nodding slowly. “Let me guess, it’s different because I’m in college now?”
And Stone shot me a wry grin.
“It’s more than that. Everything’s different baby,” he said pointedly. “You don’t live at home anymore, you’re not a little girl under the watchful eyes of your parents, you’re not a dependent anymore. You’re a single woman making your own way in the world, paying for your own life. And yeah, you’re eighteen, a college student so it’s not so freaky to be dating someone older. Especially since I’m not your teacher anymore.”
“Right, you’re not my biology teacher anymore,” I said slowly. “So what are you?”
And Stone was silent for a moment.
“What do you want me to be?” he asked softly, seriously, his eyes eating me up, swallowing me whole.
“I- I don’t know,” I said honestly, resisting the pull. “This has been so much to process in a short amount of time. You were gone, and now you’re back, and I’m just not sure,” I shrugged suddenly feeling hopeless.
“That’s true,” the big man rumbled, his eyes understanding as he trailed a finger across my jaw, the contact electric. “But what does your body tell you?”
And I shivered visibly then, pupils dilating, my breath coming fast at his closeness, drowning in the blue depths of him.
“My body says,” I panted a little, leaning in towards him, “that it wants you.”
“Then why don’t you focus on that for right now?” he murmured against my lips. “There have been a lot of changes recently, I’ll give you that. But why don’t you relax a little, let go with a man who loves you?”