I didn’t move fast enough.
The next thing I knew, he had my chin between his fingers and was forcing my face up.
“You don’t need to run away,” he said, his hand shifting to wipe the wetness from my cheek with his thumb. “This doesn’t bother me,” he added, moving to my other cheek.
There was a strange shivering sensation in my stomach at his words, at the sincerity I believed was behind them.
“It bothers me,” I admitted.
“Because it genuinely bothers you, or because you didn’t want me to see?”
That was a good question.
I didn’t have an answer to it.
“It’s stupid.”
“To cry?”
“No. Well, yes. But to cry over sex. That’s stupid.”
“Maybe it would be stupid to cry over a casual one night stand fuck,” he agreed. “But that’s not what this is.”
“Then what is this?”
“Something more.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“That’s alright. I’ve got time for you to figure it out.”
“Or you can just tell me.”
That got a little chuckle out of him, making his eyes crinkle up with his smile.
“I can’t tell you what you’re feeling, Dylan. I can just be here while you work it out.”
“Why would you want that?”
“Want what? To be there for you?”
“No. Well, yeah. I’m kind of a bitch.”
“You’re… prickly.”
“And who wants to get stabbed like that?”
“Maybe someone who knows what’s beneath the thorns.”
“An emotionally repressed loner?”
“Someone I’ve really enjoyed getting to know. Someone who I want to know even better.” He leaned down, pressing a kiss to my shoulder. “But if you need to run right now, you can. Just know I’ll be here when you’re ready to come back.”
“You just want more sex,” I said, trying to lighten the mood because his words made me feel way too vulnerable.
“I won’t deny that,” he agreed. “But more than that, baby, I want you. Go ahead and take as long as you need to wrap your head around that.”
Without another word, he was the one to pull away, to walk into the bathroom.
