Finding Kyle(41)

I raise a hand, placing my palm to his cheek. He sucks in a soft breath and leans slightly into my touch even though his gaze is pinned on me as he awaits my answer.

“I’m more than alright,” I tell him with a reassuring smile. “I mean, I came twice, so yeah… I’m totally alright.”

“You’d tell me if I hurt you, right?” he presses.

I bring my other hand to his opposite cheek, pulling him down to me. I place a light kiss on his lips. “I’d absolutely tell you if you hurt me, but Kyle… I loved that. That was amazing.”

He lets out a relieved sigh and smiles back at me, and I’m glad to see that it’s genuine. “Good. I just… I’m sorry if it was too rough.”

“It wasn’t.”

Kyle’s eyes hold mine for a moment, then he gives a little nod. “Okay.”

I expect him to settle down for some post-sex cuddling, but instead, he pulls out of me slowly, which causes an embarrassing moan from me. Kyle doesn’t seem to notice as he rolls right off the bed and walks out of my room. I hear the bathroom door close a few seconds later.

Rolling to my side, I curl an arm under my head and wait for him to come back. I assume he’s coming back as I don’t think he’d walk home naked.

Less than a minute later, Kyle’s back in my bedroom. He walks straight to the bed, his face impassive. I push up to one elbow, aware and self-conscious that we’re both naked now that the heat of passion has cooled. His eyes slide to my breasts for a brief moment before returning back to me. He sits on the edge of the bed, completely unfazed by his nakedness, and says, “We need to talk.”

I let out a groan of frustration and sit up further. “Let me guess… this is the point where you tell me this was wrong, you shouldn’t have crossed that line, and then you’ll give me the let’s-be-friends line again, right?”

“Wrong,” he says quietly, and that gives me pause. His voice gets a little frostier though. “I did cross a line I didn’t mean to, but I can’t find it within me to be sorry.”

“Oh,” I say, completely confused by this. “Then what do we need to talk about?”

Kyle stares at me a long moment. I can see whatever he’s getting ready to tell me is going to take some courage on his part.

I sit up straight and look at him with panicked eyes. “Oh, God… was I bad? And that’s why you don’t want to see me again?”

“Jane—”

I flop back down to the mattress and drape my arm over my eyes to shut the sight of him out. “Oh, this is humiliating. I just—”

“Jane—”

I remove my arm from my eyes just as suddenly and plead with him. “You just need to go, Kyle. We don’t need to have that talk. I get it.”

“Jane,” Kyle snaps at me harshly, and I jerk from the tone of his voice. But then his hand reaches out and he slowly strokes my collarbone. He watches his hand draw a light pattern on my skin for a minute before looking up at me. “You were amazing. That… what we just did… was beyond amazing.”

Pure, unfiltered joy pulses through me, and I grin at him impishly. “So we’ll have sex again?”

“Maybe,” he says slowly, and I deflate.

“Maybe?”

“Hence the reason we need to talk,” he says pointedly.

“Okay,” I say hesitantly, and I feel completely vulnerable. I sit up against the pillow but reach out to the edge of the comforter, pulling it over to cover as much of my body as possible.

But Kyle covers my hand with his and stops my movement. “Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“Don’t cover yourself around me,” he says gruffly as he holds my gaze. “Just… let me look at you as much as I can, okay?”

“So,” I say slowly as I release my hold from the blanket. “You just want me to walk around naked all the time?”

“If there was a God,” he mutters as his eyes slide down to my breasts for a moment. When he looks back up at me, he says, “I just mean don’t hide yourself from me. You’re beautiful like this. When we’re together, don’t hide it.”

“When we’re together,” I repeat. “So this wasn’t a one-time only thing?”

Kyle takes a deep breath and rubs his palm over the back of his neck, his eyes scrunching a bit in what looks like guilt, but I can’t be sure. He focuses back on me and says, “Jane… I’m not going to stay here forever. In fact, I’ll probably be heading out in a few months.”

“Where will you go?” I ask softly.

“I have no clue yet,” he tells me bluntly. “But when I do, it will be alone.”

After what we just shared, after he called me beautiful, and after he said what we had was amazing… well, I’ll have to admit this is a crushing statement to hear. I mean, it’s not like I’m already planning my life with him, but his words are clear in their meaning that I am nothing more to him than a temporary measure.

A diversion, I guess, to while away his time.

“I get it,” I say softly but with acceptance. “This is just a fling, so to speak.”

“Label it how you want,” he says gently, but there is no mistaking his commitment to what he’s saying. “But you need to know I’m leaving soon and, because of that, this has an expiration date on it. If that’s not something you want to get tangled up in, I’d understand that.”