Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Stella
I cleared the smudge of mascara from below my right eye and set about trying to avoid the same mistake on my left eye.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this way before seeing a man.
I couldn’t even quite figure out what it was I did feel.
Was it nerves? Even when I was first dating Matt, I didn’t remember a physical reaction just at the thought of a man.
The way my breath got higher in my throat when I thought about Beck, the way my skin seemed to tighten when I remembered our kiss—it was all new.
I kept replaying our kiss in my head, wondering what had brought it on—whether he’d kissed me out of necessity or desperation or if it had been, as he’d described, just about desire.
And when I saw him again, would he have had a change of heart and not want to kiss me?
And if he did want more kissing, should I resist him, reminding myself that everything between us was a lie?
Too many questions.
I popped the mascara wand back in the tube.
Beck wasn’t back from whatever it was the boys were doing today, and I didn’t want to look as if I’d been waiting for him.
Thankfully my pedicure had made it to four days without a chip, so I grabbed a pair of black sandals.
Tonight, women and men had separate dinners, again in some kind of effort to recreate hen and stag nights.
It seemed a little forced and ridiculous and although I didn’t want to admit it to myself, part of me wanted to spend the evening with Beck despite knowing this growing warmth I felt for him might be entirely in my head.
I jumped at the rattle of the door handle but managed to do up my second sandal and stand as Beck entered the room.
“Hi,” I said as if I’d just been caught doing something I shouldn’t and nerves tumbled about through my stomach like autumnal leaves in a breeze.
His gaze swept down my body. “You look . . .” His eyes grew bigger and then finally met mine. “Nice.” The way he said it reverberated in the base of my spine as if he’d pressed his tongue against my skin. How did he make the word “nice” sound so sexy?
“Thanks,” I said, hoping he couldn’t read my thoughts.
“You look as if you’re leaving,” he said as I picked up my evening bag.
“We have this separate dinner thing,” I replied, opening up my bag and checking that I had everything I needed, despite having checked it just before he came in.
I just couldn’t look at him in case he saw how much I enjoyed our kiss earlier.
I wanted to be cooler than that. Like it was no big deal that this hot, sexy guy sought me out to kiss me in front of everyone.
Like it was real. “Drinks started at six-thirty.”
He checked his watch. “I was hoping we could talk.”
The leaves landed with a thud. In my experience, whenever men wanted to “talk” it was never about anything good.
He pulled his jacket off, tossed it on the bed, and stalked toward me as if he were on a mission.
I took a step back when it looked like he was going to mow me down, but as he reached me he circled an arm around my back and slid his hand behind my neck, kissing me again.
This time it started more urgently, as if he’d been storing up his kisses all day.
My body sagged—soft against his hard, marble-like chest. He was warm and smelled so good, like a forest floor after a rainstorm.
His moan sent vibrations through my body, weakening my bones and making me gasp.
“Talk, huh?” I said as we pulled away.
He swept his thumb over my cheekbone. “Yeah. I didn’t want anything to be . . . I wanted to check I wasn’t out of line earlier.”
“When you kissed me? So you did it again?” Nothing about him seemed fake. But then again, I’d believed everything Matt had told me as well.
He shrugged. “Apparently.”
“Don’t sweat it.”
“Don’t sweat it?” he asked as he toed off his shoes and sat on the bed while he removed his watch.
“You felt the need to kiss me, so you did. No big deal.”
He chuckled as he stood and unbuttoned his shirt. I needed to get the hell out of there. The way he was going, he’d soon be naked, and I couldn’t guarantee I would be able to keep my hands to myself. “No need to have a discussion? I thought women liked to talk about these things.”
“It may have escaped your notice, but women aren’t one large homogenous group of people who all think and act the same way.”
“Ahhh,” he said as he peeled off his shirt, and I came face-to-face with his hard, bronzed chest. At least he didn’t wax.
A man as good looking as Beck had every right to be vain, but there was something distinctly un-masculine about bare chests in my book.
“That’s where I’ve been going wrong.” He began to unbuckle his belt, and I turned and headed to the door.
Someone had turned the heating up and I was trying to keep my cool.
“I’ll see you later,” he called after me as I headed out into the corridor.
I suppose I had half an answer to my wondering what was going to happen next between us—no change of heart from Beck and a follow-up kiss.
Beck and I were supposed to be pretend. But the constant flip of my stomach and the way my heart sped as if I were running the hundred-meter final in the Olympics whenever he was around were undeniably real.