I took a breath, reminding myself that I was awesome. I was not insecure or shy. I was just a virgin. No big deal. And if I ever wanted to not be a virgin, I was going to have to have sex. Time to man, um… woman, up.
“Are you waiting for an invitation?” I asked, eyeing him standing carefully outside my door. “Is this the part where you tell me you’re a vampire?”
He chuckled. “No, I promise the paleness is only because I’m British.”
“Then what are you waiting for? What happened to the guy who made me sit to find out his name and made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want me going back to my friend?” What happened to the guy who was bold in ways I could only pretend to be?
He took one step, so that he stood in the doorframe, and leaned against the jamb. “That guy is trying to be a gentleman, because as much as he wanted you to come back to his place and as much as he wants to kiss you—you’re hurt, and I’m afraid you don’t actually want me here.”
“You mean he’s afraid.”
“Hmm?”
“You were speaking in the third person, and then switched to first…” And I was rambling.
“So I was.” He was still smiling. What did that mean? “It was nice to meet you, Bliss.”
This was the easy out if I didn’t want to go through with this. If I wanted my virginity to see the light of day… again. He was turning away. All I had to do was let him go.
“Wait!”
He smiled a small, concealed smile, and raised that one eyebrow again.
I breathed through my fear. “If he’s trying to be a gentleman, shouldn’t he stay and try to help the injured girl who knows nothing about treating motorcycle burns?”
His eyes left mine to glance at my calf, and when he looked up again, his eyes found my lips instead.
“The injured girl is right. It would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”
Then he stepped inside my apartment and closed the door.
The light from the streetlamps outside disappeared, and we stood in the darkened hallway because my overhead light had been burnt out for weeks, and I still hadn’t replaced it.
I could feel the heat radiating off of him as he stepped closer. His hand once again settled in the small of my back, and he whispered in the dark, “Lead the way, love.”
Chapter Four
I stood in my bathroom in a tank top and underwear with my pants around my knees, on the verge of hyperventilating. Garrick was outside the door, and it was like he was a magnet. My heart kept trying to leap out of my chest toward him. He had told me to take off my capris, and that I’d need to keep from wearing tight clothes over the burn for a while. He had offered to help me get the capri pants off, but that made me feel like I was going to vomit again. So instead, I began wiggling them off myself, trying and failing to keep the fabric from touching the damaged skin.
I slid the material a bit lower, and bit down on my lip to try and silence a groan.
“Bliss?” Garrick knocked lightly at the door. “You okay?”
“Just peachy!” I said back.
I pulled on the pants again and gasped.
“Bliss, just let me help. You’re worrying me.”
I closed my eyes, trying to think of a way around this. Hobbling awkwardly with my jeans around my knees, I found a skirt with an elastic waist in my hamper. I pulled it over my head, and down to cover my underwear, and then took a seat on the toilet.
I felt my cheeks, certain that they were probably a mortifying shade of red. Nothing I could do about it now. I said, “Okay. Come in.”
The door swung open slowly, and Garrick’s head peeked around the corner, followed by the rest of him. He took one look at my rumpled skirt, and the jeans bunched around my knees.
Then he laughed. Raucous laughter, actually.
“This is so humiliating.” How was I ever going to have sex with him now?
He pressed his lips together to stop the laughter, but amusement still danced in his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re in pain. You just look so…”
“Ridiculous?”
“Cute.”
I leveled him with a glare.
“Ridiculously cute.”
His grin was intoxicating, and I couldn’t help my begrudging smile.
“Alright. Now that you’ve had your laugh, help me take off my pants,” I said with the same sarcasm I’d been relying on since he entered.
Either he didn’t catch the sarcasm or he just didn’t care because his eyes fixed on me in a way that I could only describe as downright predatory. Suddenly, much more than my leg was burning up.
He stared at me for a moment before dropping his eyes, and clearing his throat. Kneeling beside me, he took my leg into his hands.
I had already started to pull the capris down, so the burn was currently covered. His hand hovered by the zipper, which was now around the middle of my thighs. He cleared his throat again, and then slipped his hand down my pant leg.
HEART. ATTACK.
I was pretty sure I was having one.
Using his other hand, he pulled the jeans down as far as he could, just over my knees. He looked up at me, cleared his throat again, and said, “Can I borrow your hand?”
I couldn’t speak, but I put my right hand forward, the palm of which was embarrassingly sweaty. He took my hand, and pulled it inside my pant leg to join his own.
“Keep your hand here, and pull the fabric as far away from your leg as you can. I’ll do the same at the bottom, and we’ll try to slip them off without touching the burn.”
I nodded, my hand ten times steadier than my heart.
He slipped his hand up and out, his light touch sending shivers through me. He did as he said, pulling the fabric away from my skin at the bottom, and then together we tried to pull the pants off.
It wasn’t the most successful mission. These jeans were indecently tight (thanks to Kelsey), and every once and a while the fabric bumped my skin, and I cringed.
“Sorry,” he apologized each time like it was his fault. I wanted to correct him, but I just loved the way he said “soo-ri” so much that I let it go.
After a minute or two of slow and careful maneuvering, my jeans hit the floor.
We both laughed—the way you see people in movies laugh after they’ve just diffused a bomb. And when I stopped laughing, I realized that his hand was still on my leg. One hand was cupped around my ankle, and the other was brushing softly against the skin around the burn.
If he kept touching me like that, I was going to melt into a puddle right here on the floor.
“Um, thanks.”
He seemed to realize then what he was doing. His eyes flicked quickly to his hands. Instead of pulling back immediately, he grinned, brushed his hand slowly down my leg, and then let go.
“No problem. Now we need to cool it off. We could run it under cool water.” I pictured my leg hiked up to the sink, or us both trying to maneuver in my bathtub. My face must have given it away, because he added, “Or just a cool damp cloth will work.”
I handed him a washcloth from a basket behind me, and he turned on the sink, waiting until the water was cool before wetting the cloth.
I sucked in a breath as he laid it across my burn, but the cool felt good, enough that I relaxed for the first time since we came into my apartment.
“Better?”
I nodded, “Much. I’ll never wear jeans that tight again.”
He quirked a smile. “Now that would be a shame.”
I was going to need a fan to keep myself cool if he kept saying things like that.
“Listen,” He began. “I’m sorry about this. I never should have pushed you to get on that bike.”
“It’s not your fault I know nothing about motorcycles, and didn’t realize it would be hot.”
“I can’t believe you’ve never been on a motorcycle.”
“Yeah, well, there are a lot of things I’ve never done.”
He quirked one eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Well…” I swear my heartbeat sounded like stu-pid, stu-pid, stu-pid as it pounded in my ears. “Um, until today I’d never met anyone who was British.”
He laughed, combing his fingers unconsciously through his hair. It made me want to comb my fingers through his hair.
He said, “That’s why you kissed me, isn’t it? All you American girls seem to love accents.”
I swallowed my smile and said, “I believe you were the one who kissed me.”
He stood, and his messy blond hair fell over his forehead, framing those devilish eyes. “So I was.”
He ran the cloth under the water again to keep it cool, but my body was too heated to really tell the difference when he placed it back on my skin. His other hand curled around my ankle again.
I kept my breath carefully steady, and said, “Your turn.”
“Hmm?”
“What’s something you’ve never done?”
“Well, I’ve never chatted up a girl in a pub before tonight.”
My jaw dropped. “Really?” How was that possible? He was gorgeous! Maybe all the girls just threw themselves at him before he even entered the bar, so he never had to bother with going inside.
He shrugged, and with the motion his thumb started brushing back and forth against the top of my foot.
“I know it goes against the English stereotype, but I’ve never been much for getting sloshed, um drunk, all the time.”
“Me neither,” I said. And I meant it, even though my head was still a bit fuzzy from all that tequila. “So what brings this non-stereotypical Brit to Texas?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been in the States for a while. I came here to go to school, and never went back. I actually just moved back to Texas though. Haven’t been here for a few years.”
“Me too. I just moved back here a few years ago.”
I’d grown up in Texas when I was little, but we moved to Minnesota when I was in 8th grade. It was always my plan to come back here for college.
He re-wetted the cloth one more time, and we sat there talking. He told me about growing up in England, and how different it had been living in the states.
“The first time some bloke told me he liked my pants, I was so shocked I thought I’d left home missing a few key things.”
“Pants? I don’t understand.”
“That’s what we call underwear, love.”
“Oh,” I laughed. “Good to know.”
“When I asked a classmate for a rubber, you call them erasers, everyone laughed so hard that I was ready to board a flight straight back to London.”
I tried to hold in my laughter, and failed. But I figured he deserved it after laughing at my pants, um… jeans, ordeal earlier.
“That must have been terrible.”
He reached for the gauze I’d pulled down from the cabinet earlier, and he carefully placed it over the burn, and taped down the edges as he spoke.
“You get used to it. I’ve been here so long now that I usually manage well enough. Occasionally when I visit London, and come back, I have some trouble adjusting, but in all, I’d say I’m fairly Americanized.”
“Except for that accent.”