“I didn’t,” I state flatly, my voice so low I’m not sure she heard me.
But her eyebrows press into an emotional frown, and she swallows visibly as she wavers between confusion and disbelief. “Didn’t what?”
Sighing, I close my eyes as the last of my conviction to push her away crumbles. “I didn’t sleep with her.”
“Are youseriousright now?” she hisses, somehow sounding even more furious than before as her voice jumps an octave, and my eyes fly open to read her expression. “You’re going to nitpick my choice of words because I didn’t want to say youfuckedher?”
That flash of angry fire is back in her gaze, and I chuckle as the sight fills me with relief.
“Get away from me,” she demands, shoving at my chest with more strength than I imagined she could have. “I can’t even look at you right now.”
“Sora, stop,stop,” I insist, grabbing her wrists and trapping them against my chest when she continues her effort to escape.
Electricity crackles through me where we touch, and I’m suddenly intensely aware of the fact that I’ve pinned her back against the door with my body to stop her from running.
I can feel every quivering inch of her beneath me, and it steals the oxygen from the room. I’ve never wanted a woman so badly.
But to my horror, when Sora lifts her chin to glare at me, a single tear escapes her eye.
“I didn’t have sex with her,” I insist, pressing both of her palms against my chest with one hand so I can cup her cheek and wipe her tear away with my thumb.
“Ireallydon’t want to hear the gritty details about what you two did or did not do,” she says, her voice thick with emotion.
“We didn’t do anything,” I clarify because she doesn’t seem to be getting what I’m trying to say.
“You didn’t?”
“No, we stopped right after you kicked us out of your room.”
Silence stretches between us, heightening my awareness of how close we are, but Sora seems too stunned to notice.
“Why?” she murmurs finally, her elegant brows lifting in disbelief, and though I’ve given her no reason to trust me, her doubt still tears at my heart.
My eyes flick down to her red dress then back up to her face. “Because I want you.”
Sora’s breath catches, her lips parting, and her eyes grow impossibly darker.
Then they widen as she glances down at the lack of space between us, like she’s only just noticed how intimate this is.
When she looks up at me again, I can see the desire there.
Despite everything, she wants me too.
The need to kiss her intensifies as her pink tongue darts out to wet her ruby lips.
The pull is magnetic, the urge irresistible, and I feel myself leaning in even before I’ve made the conscious decision to do so.
Would it be the end of the world to kiss her now?
7
SORA
My heart is hammering so hard against my ribs, I’m sure it’s going to burst, and for a fraction of a second, I don’t know that I’ll have the strength to stop Leo.
Not because he won’t stop, but because I’m not sure I want him to. And that realization terrifies me more than being caught alone with a man before we’re married.
“We should get back to the party before people notice we’re gone,” I murmur, clinging to the last dregs of self-restraint, even as the heat rippling across my skin makes me lightheaded and giddy.
