Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(21)

Aside from his overwhelming confusion about how and why she’d jumped from a passionate kiss to telling him she wasn’t having sex with him—and Christ! he certainly wasn’t looking to get married and have babies at twenty-one years old!—part of him felt offended. No matter how out of control he might have felt, Erik Rexford was, first and foremost, a gentleman. Though some of his peers were aggressive assholes with willing and unwilling women, Erik was not. He certainly wasn’t going to throw her down on the sidewalk in front of the Pamlico House and have his way with her, if that’s what she was implying.

Her expression was awfully dark, though her lips, which had tasted sweeter than any he’d ever known, were slick and bee-stung from his attentions. And fuck, but she was beyond beautiful, standing there uncertainly in the brand-new moonlight. His attraction to her, from the very first second he’d seen her, was fierce, and he wanted to unravel this hiccup between them before it turned into anything significant.

“Can we, um . . . can we back up a little? Maybe sit down for a second and talk this out?” he asked, gesturing to an empty group of Adirondack chairs on a green lawn that overlooked the Sound.

She nodded curtly, preceding him with that no-nonsense march she’d used to take the coolers up to the kitchen yesterday. But this time she wasn’t wearing clunky black boots. She was wearing little white-heeled shoes that made her ass sway back and forth like something out of a fucking daydream.

His cock, which was still as hard as a rock, twitched behind his khaki shorts, and he cleared his throat, desperately trying to think of hockey—taking a puck to the nuts. It worked a little, and he’d lost some of the hardness by the time they reached the chairs.

“Let’s just . . . sit,” he said, still confused about what had just happened.

Her posture was rigid as she sat on the edge of the brightly painted chair that the inn had placed on the lawn for guests seeking a quiet moment and a beautiful view. Erik sat down beside her, staring at her profile, blown away—even in this incredibly awkward moment—by how pretty she was. Her strawberry-blonde hair curled around her shoulders and looked so fucking soft and inviting, he had to force himself not to reach out and touch it. Why hadn’t he run his fingers through her hair when he was kissing her? When he’d had the chance? He flinched, silently praying that he’d have another opportunity, because, fuck, if that was somehow their first and last kiss, he’d just as soon die.

He needed to touch her again, the absoluteness of the instinct almost blinding.

Don’t do it, he thought, staring at her stony face. Now isn’t the time.

He cleared his throat. “I got the feeling you wanted to kiss me, Freckles.”

She turned to him, her eyes wide and honest. “I did.”

“Sure about that?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light.

“Yes,” she said, her tone free of guile or uncertainty.

“Good,” he said. “Because I wanted to kiss you too.”

“But that’s all I wanted,” she quickly added, looking at him squarely.

The overwhelming spike of disappointment he felt at the prospect of never getting further with her than a kiss was tempered by the comforting notion that kissing her was pretty fucking spectacular.

“Was it a good kiss?” she asked, her voice much softer and more uncertain than it had been a second ago.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding at her. “Top ten, for sure.”

Her lips twitched and her eyebrows furrowed. “Nine better, huh?”

“No, actually,” he said, his surprised laugh tapering off as he stared at her. “I revise my answer: none better. Top one.”

Her smile was sudden and blinding. “Really? It was?”

“Yeah, really. Best kiss I’ve ever had,” he admitted with a soft chuckle, delighted by her smile, delighted that he was the one who’d made her look so happy. “How about for you?”

“Best for me too.” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, her smile hanging on, though the color in her cheeks deepened. “Only for me, actually. I never kissed anyone before you.”

Wait. Fuck! What?

“Wait. That was . . .” His voice trailed off as he processed what she was saying. “That was your first kiss?”

She looked up at him and nodded, her sea-green eyes unapologetic, no excuses issuing from her lips.

He’d been taken aback yesterday, when she said she didn’t have a cell phone, but this admission was the first real insight Erik Rexford had into exactly how sheltered she was. By eighteen, Erik had lost track of the number of women he’d kissed in his life, but Laire, at eighteen, had saved her first kiss . . . for him.

“I was your first,” he murmured.

“Uh-huh.”

“Why me?” he asked softly, surprised by the words.

“I don’t know. I just . . . I wanted it to be you.” She laughed, shaking her head as she looked away from him. “Maybe because you’re so different.”

This confession, made with zero pretense or attempt at flirtation, made him so happy, he couldn’t actually remember when he’d last felt so honored by anything. His life was full of affectation and insincerity: a birthday party attended by important people he didn’t know, ceremonies recognizing his father for whatever legislation appealed to the special interests of certain groups, invitations to galas and soirees where everyone tried to outtalk the person beside them with grand ideas and impress the person on the other side with vacation plans and name-dropping.