“Hell no.” I half-laughed, but then another thought chilled me to the bone. “Do you?”
“No,” Ace said quickly, looking up and meeting my eyes. He reached for his own shirt, shrugging self-consciously. “I just… I wanted to make sure.”
“I do not regret it,” I told him, as clearly as I could. “In fact, if we didn’t have to go out to dinner with everyone, I would very much like to not regret it all over this damn room for the rest of the day. And night.”
Ace bit his lip in a way that made me want to make good on that idea right there and then. “Well, there’s always later,” he said.
I groaned and adjusted my aching dick. “Stop. I’m trying to get dressed and you’re not convincing me it’s the right thing to do.”
Ace chuckled, throwing his shirt over his tattoos and starting to button it up. I was way behind. I scrambled to pull my pants on, not wanting to actually miss out on dinner after all. People would wonder where we were.
“I’m just kinda surprised, I guess,” Ace said quietly. I grabbed my shirt for real this time, glancing sideways over at him.
“Surprised at what?”
“That you… uh, that you enjoyed it as much as I did,” Ace said, sounding like he wasn’t actually sure I had. “I mean. You know. You probably have more experience than I do.”
I felt my heart sinking into my stomach. I cleared my throat as I buttoned up my shirt. “Does that bother you?” I asked. I thought about Xavi and what he’d called me before. How everyone looked at me.
They all knew I’d cheated on Keaton not just once, but dozens of times. That I’d had a reputation. I’d slept with half the guys at Crowhill Cove College, including a fair few who thought they were straight. Then I’d worked my way through the town outside the college, and then I’d started traveling to the city to new bars.
I’d slept with a lot of men. It was only the fact that I was almost always sober and always in control enough to insist on wearing protection that had saved me from getting some kind of disease, like Xavi had insinuated. I’d been lucky.
But my reputation hadn’t.
“No,” Ace said slowly. “No, I don’t think it does. But you’re not…”
I saw a look of fear flash over his face, and I didn’t have to think hard to wonder why that might be. I sighed, resigned. Here it was again. The suspicion. “I’m not positiveanything, no,” I said.
“Oh.” Ace seemed to relax. “That’s good. That’s the only reason it would bother me. And even then – I know there are drugs you can take now that mean it doesn’t matter at all.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Did he really not mind? It was a different approach than I was used to. Most men treated me like dirt if they knew about my past. I hadn’t exactly managed to get many of them into bed in the last few years anyway, but I’d never heard anyone say it didn’t bother them. I cleared my throat. Part of me wanted to say more, even if only to test whether he really meant it. “None of that mattered back then, anyway. It didn’t even count. It was just… meaningless.”
“Because you were cheating on Cade?” Ace asked. He was done getting ready – with his white button-down shirt tucked into beige slacks, the sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows and buttoned with a stylish cuff, he looked… well, he looked incredible. He’d swept his hair back from his face, the first time I’d ever seen him do that, and it made me want to grab fistfuls of it and hold him while I kissed him.
I shook myself lightly to dislodge the spike of lust in my gut, walking to the mirror so I could check my own reflection. “No, because I didn’t really care about any of them,” I said. “Cade included. I didn’t love any of them.”
“So, sex doesn’t count if you don’t love the person you’re doing it with?” Ace asked. He laughed a little as if he liked the idea. “Well, damn. My body count just went way down. I don’t think I’ve ever really been in love.”
I chuckled. “Until about half an hour ago, I didn’t know if you’d, uh…”
Ace tilted his head at me. “What?”
I shook my head, wishing I hadn’t started this. It was going to be embarrassing when he realized what an idiot I was. “I thought you were asexual.”
“What?” Ace exploded, already laughing. “Why would you even think that? Didn’t you get what Xavi and I were saying? We’ve had, you know, a casual fuck buddy thing in the past.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” I said, laughing and covering my eyes. “I just… that first night, you fell asleep, and I thought we were gonna… and I just thought about your name again and I guess I just put two and two together.”
Ace laughed helplessly, putting his hand on his forehead. “Oh, man. I already give my Mom crap about the fact that she thought Ace was a normal American name to give her kid – but this… this is totally new.”
“I thought it was a nickname!” I said, chuckling, glad he was at least seeing the funny side. I walked over to grab my leather jacket and shrug it on over my shirt.
“It’s on my birth certificate,” he said, flashing me a grin. He shook his head, then grew semi-serious again, though he was trying to look casual. “So, you’ve never been in love, either?”
I gave a self-deprecating laugh. I’d blown my chance at that with Cade – a decent guy who, at the end of the day, I felt nothing for (in spite of his complete adoration of me). “I guess if we’re talking about it that way… I’m still a virgin.”
Ace said nothing back. I stopped fiddling with my cuffs and looked over at him. There was something on his face that I couldn’t place. Was it… pity? He looked away when we made eye contact, leaving me with no chance to try to guess further.
