“I wish I knew why I want to kiss you so much.” His voice had been rough, edged with a trace of annoyance.
The words had so clearly echoed what she was thinking that she’d wondered for a moment if he’d read her mind. While she was still thinking about that, he’d wrapped his other hand around the nape of her neck and lowered his mouth to within a breath of hers.
Her mind had emptied so quickly that she’d felt as if someone had pulled a plug. She’d known she should do something. Push him away. But he’d moved closer still until she’d felt the press of his body, firm, lean and strong against hers.
She’d risen on her toes to close the distance between them. Even then, his lips had barely brushed against hers. Still, the contact had sent a shock wave right down to her toes.
“More.”
Zoë wasn’t sure who’d spoken the word, but his mouth had moved against hers again. It wasn’t really a kiss at all, and it was certainly not the kind of kiss that she’d expected from Jed Calhoun.
“You have a habit of biting down on your lower lip,” he’d murmured. “Every time you do it, I want to do this.” He’d drawn her bottom lip into his mouth and nipped it lightly. His breath had slipped between her parted lips and this time the shock wave had set off explosions. Every one of her senses had sharpened; each nerve in her body had snapped to life. She’d curled her fingers into his T-shirt.
“More.”
His tongue had slipped between her lips and touched just the tip of hers, and she’d let out a shuddering breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding.
Then as suddenly as it had begun, the kiss was over. Jed had lifted his mouth from hers and taken a step back. Her head had been spinning so that she hadn’t even protested when he’d gripped her wrists and removed her hands from his shirt. At the abrupt loss of contact, her body had felt both icy and on fire, both weak and exhilarated. And deep inside of her she’d felt an overwhelming greed.
“Interesting,” he’d murmured.
Interesting? She’d never experienced anything like it, and Jed Calhoun had thought the kiss was interesting.
“Earth to Zoë…”
Sierra’s voice pulled Zoë abruptly back to the present.
“That must have been some kiss,” Sierra said with a grin. “You said more twice while you were in that little trance.”
Zoë frowned. “But he didn’t give me more. I mean…” she broke off as pure anger bubbled to the surface of the emotions swirling through her. She pounded her fist on the desk and Sierra quickly rescued both glasses.
“If he were here right now, I’d make him finish what he started!”
“You go, girl!” Sierra said.
Zoë blinked. “But I can’t. I won’t. I—”
Sierra reached out and took her hand. “Why can’t you, Zoë?”
“Because I have terrible judgment when it comes to men.”
“Since when?” Sierra asked. “Seems to me you’ve got Jed Calhoun’s number.”
Zoë shook her head. “I see all men through rose-colored glasses. Take the guy I dated in college my freshman year. Bradley Harper. My therapist said he was my rebellion against my parents’ plans for me. But I thought I was in love with him.”
“What were your parents’ plans?” Sierra asked.
Zoë waved a hand. “What we’re celebrating right now—my upward climb to success in academia.”
Sierra topped off their glasses again. “So what happened with Bradley Harper?”
“College was my first taste of freedom, my first chance to do things that I wanted to do. Bradley was my initial experiment with getting a sex life.”
Sierra’s eyes brightened with interest. “What exactly did you do?”
Zoë took another sip from her glass and leaned back in her chair. “I started with research. I looked like a nerd, acted like a nerd. You don’t get much of a fashion sense when you don’t get out much. So I collected information on sex from all kinds of places: scholarly journals, popular magazines. I observed other girls who were popular with men and I studied how they dressed, what kind of things they talked about. Finally, I did my best to change my appearance from nerd to sexpot.”
“Amazing! I never would have had the courage to do that. If I’d never met Ryder, I would have stayed in nerd mode forever.” Sierra passed Zoë another chocolate. “Did it work?”
“Yes.” Zoë twisted the paper off the chocolate, but she didn’t taste it. “I picked out the boy I wanted to have sex with, and I didn’t have to ask twice.”
“You actually asked him?”
Zoë nodded. “It seemed the most efficient way. I’d watched other girls flirt, but I figured it might take a while to get the knack. Of course, I was a little surprised when he said yes. Bradley was incredibly good-looking and there were always girls around him. Lots of girls. That should have warned me.”
Sierra poured more champagne. “What happened?”
Setting the chocolate aside, Zoë took a long swallow from her glass. She’d never told anyone the whole story, not even her therapist. “For a while everything was wonderful. The sex was great, so great that I suppose I fell a little in love with him. Then the semester ended, and he said he’d had a good time.” Zoë glanced away for a moment and folded her hands in front of her. “He told me that he’d recommended me to a couple of his fraternity brothers and gave me their phone numbers.”
“Did you call them?” Sierra asked carefully.
“Not right away.” Zoë could feel heat rise in her face as she met Sierra’s eyes again. “But I…missed the sex. And I wanted very much to be modern and cool. I thought that I’d been naive to think that Bradley and I would be a couple for very long. I went out with several of his fraternity brothers before I learned that I wasn’t the first girl Bradley had passed along to them. It was something he did all the time. He even had a rating system for sex.” She smiled without humor. “I’d gotten one of the highest ratings.”
Sierra shrugged. “Well, I say good for you.”
“You’re not shocked?”
“I’m impressed by your gutsiness and disgusted with Bradley and his friends.”
Zoë leaned forward a little. “Everyone in the frat house knew what I was like in bed. He’d described in detail things that we’d done together. I assumed the two young men I dated afterward had added to the data.”
Sierra took her hand and squeezed it hard. “You were young and naive, and they were all pigs!”
Zoë felt a little band of pain around her heart ease. “Yes, they were. The next year when I came back to school, I had completely reverted to a nerd, and I buried myself in my studies.”
Sierra studied her for a moment. “I can understand that. What’s a bit harder to figure out is why you’re still hiding from men and sex.”
Zoë opened her mouth and then shut it. Sierra was right. That’s exactly what she was doing, what she’d been doing for years.
“I did the same thing for a very long time. Until I met Ryder.”
“Jed Calhoun is not Ryder.”
“I’m betting he’s not Bradley the jerk either.”