This woman was all kinds of headstrong, and I walked a line between admiring the shit out of it and wanting to club her over the head and drag her back to my prehistoric cave.
"Then help me understand," I said.
Stella stared at the intersection, her gaze far away. Eventually, she glanced back at me and said, "If we go upstairs right now, if we go to your apartment, we'll have sex." She eyed me up and down, giving extra attention to my crotch. "Good sex. Like, phenomenal sex. The kind of sex where you murder my vagina and then shapeshift into a bear."
"I'm not going to shapeshift into a bear," I said.
She held out her hand. "But you will wreck my vagina."
"I—I don't even know what that means," I replied.
She folded her arms across her chest. As if I was the one being ridiculous here. "I had to sit on a pillow today," she said, "and that was just from some light—you know—whatever it was we did last night."
"God help me, Stella," I growled.
"If we go upstairs right now and have vagina-murdering, bear-shifting sex, it will be nothing more than that. Sex. It will be amazing and I'll enjoy the hell out of it and trust me, I'd really love to go upstairs right now. You don't even know how much I'd like that. But it would be sex. In and out. One and done. No lasagna, no Ikea. That's not who I am." She stared at me hard, pushing me to recognize something I was obviously missing. "Just sex. Just the one time."
"I guarantee it will be more than one," I replied.
Her lips tipped up in a coy smile. She winked at me. It zinged right into me, landing somewhere near my belly button and melting me from the inside out.
"I don't doubt that," she replied. "But—but I don't think I can do that with you. I don't think I want that with you."
Her words sent me back a step. Two. "I understand," I lied, my gaze on the sidewalk. I did not understand any of this. "But you're wrong about something."
"What's that?"
"The lasagna, the trip to Ikea. Thatiswho you are," I replied. "Those were your ideas, sweet thing. You opened the door. I just stepped through it."
She tossed both hands in the air, waving them as if she was trying to shake something off her skin. I didn't think the truth came away that easily.
"We have a good time together," she said, still ridding herself of my words. "We have chemistry. But you're a nice guy and you need to find yourself a girl in the market for that."
"And you're not? Let me guess, you're in the market for the misunderstood rebel and the golden-hearted bad boy?"
She blinked, her eyes fluttering for a second. Fine dots of mist were clinging to her lashes. Why the fuck were we outside? Why were we talking this over on the damn sidewalk? There was a dry, warm apartment no more than fifteen steps from here but yet we couldn't go there. We had to keep our private conversation public because once that door closed we both knew the clothes were coming off.
Because we knew—regardless of the ways in which we pulled back and leaned in—this was it.
And that made this fucking infuriating. We had chemistry? Yeah? Really? That was like saying Mount Everest was tall. If we had chemistry, it was volatile chemistry. We had to save ourselves from it or run headlong into it.
She brought her fingers to her temples with a harsh sigh. "Actually, no. I have no time for either of those things. I'm not trying to play the work card here or paint myself as the busy businesswoman who can't live because she's so busy with business, but my job is a lifestyle."
"Yeah." I shoved my hands into my pockets. "I know something about lifestyle careers."
"Yes," she shouted. Heh. She thought I was agreeing with her. "Of course. You get it."
"Okay, Stella." I stepped closer, edging into her space. "You don't want a relationship. Okay. I won't give you one."
Her eyebrow arched up. I moved closer.
"You don't want sex," I continued. "Okay. I won't give it to you."
She glanced down, her gaze on my coat.
"You don't want a nice guy." I shrugged. "Okay. I won't give you one."
I inched closer, all the way into her space now. She sucked in a breath, blew it out slowly.
