That felt a lot like a terrifying mirror shoved straight in her face. And after she’d gone to the trouble of avoiding that actual, nonmetaphoric mirror upstairs.
She made herself laugh again, though she didn’t love the sound of it in the summer air. Had she always felt so forced? “I have sex when I’m having sex. I don’t put any extra, weird weight on it. I don’t understand why people do.”
“Do you not?”
The way he said that felt a lot like an accusation. Or maybe a dare.
Worse, it butted up hard against all those raw and hollow places inside her.
“I keep forgetting we’re strangers,” Indy said, and laughed again. Longer this time, because the summer air could bite her. She drew her legs up onto the chair, pulling the T-shirt down over her knees, then resting her chin on the little shelf she’d made. “Let me give you the story of Indy March. First and foremost, I’m not like other girls.”
Stefan considered her. “I have lived in many places, you understand. Not only different countries with different languages, but in many conditions. Rich, poor, and many shades between. And I have never met a person who introduced themselves to me by telling me how special they were who was, in any way, special.”
But this was where Indy sparkled. She didn’t take offense. She didn’t glare at him. She only laughed. Because where everyone else went intense about their identities, she went effortless.
It felt as if she’d been treading water since she woke up this morning, and suddenly she’d found the bottom. And could finally stand.
“I don’t attach to things the way most people do,” she told him with a shrug. A smile. “That isn’t to say that I don’t have feelings, because of course I do. But some people make feelings their whole life. To me, feelings are just experiences. I have them, I put them aside, and then I move on. Sex is supposed to be fun. Not an opportunity to dredge up the dark and let it take you over. Because where’s the fun in that?”
“You’re talking about run-of-the-mill, boring sex,” Stefan said dismissively. “Anyone can have this kind of sex. With any person they happen to meet. With their own hands, even. It is not so thrilling, this kind of sex, but it gets the job done.”
“I wouldn’t call the sex we’ve had boring or ordinary.” She wrinkled up her nose at him. “But it’s been fun.”
“Fun.” It was his turn to laugh, and Indy found she really didn’t love it when he did it. Not like that. Not at her. “Is this what you tell yourself?”
“Fun is what matters to me,” she told him. “Or I wouldn’t have come here, would I?”
“Indiana.”
He still didn’t lean forward. She didn’t understand it. This was a perfect opportunity for him to reach out and put his hands on her, so they could both feel the kick of that wildfire connection and get lost in that for a while. But he didn’t do it.
And yet, somehow, she still felt caught tight in that gaze of his. It was too blue and far too knowing. She had the shocking notion that he could see straight through her.
For once in her life, a man’s dick wasn’t getting in the way of his gaze. Indy would have sworn that wasn’t possible.
Her heart began to gallop. And his gaze only seemed to pin her to her chair.
“The first time we’ve fucked you had just had a near-death experience. The sex was many things that night, but not fun.” Stefan’s mouth did something, some near-curve, that made her feel light-headed again. “It changed you. I know, because it changed me. And now here we are, two years later, and nothing that happened last night was fun. It was intense. Provoking. It also only scratched the surface. Because this thing between you and me?” He did that thing with his chin, indicating the two of them. “This is not fun. It’s too big. Too dark. And you are terrified of it.”
She tried to make herself laugh, because she always made herself laugh, but she couldn’t quite get there. “You have me confused with someone else. I don’t get terrified.”
“You like to fuck your way across this planet,” he continued, in that same too quiet, too confronting way. “You like your little candy-coated orgasms, like sugar. But you and me? It’s blood and fire, my foolish girl. This is life or death. Do you think I didn’t notice that the more intense it got, the less experienced you seemed?”
“That’s me.” Indy’s voice was rough. She told herself it was Czech allergies, nothing more. “A born-again virgin, just for you.”
He was really smiling now, no question, and it burned through her. “What are you afraid of? Don’t you ever ask yourself what the point of it all is if you’re always too scared to truly strip naked?”
Indy’s heart was pounding at an alarming rate inside her chest and all the rest of her was in a knot. She wanted too many things, most of them at odds with each other. What if you picked one? something in her asked, but she ignored it. And switched tactics.
Anything to disrupt the steady way he looked at her.
“I know I can’t be understanding you correctly,” she said, and the light tone she used was a struggle. But she did it. “Do you really mean to tell me that this is how a man like you rolls around? Ranting about intensity to every girl he touches?”
“Not every girl I touch.” His smile made his lean, almost-cruel face a kind of portrait, painted in the light all around and her own rapid pulse. It made her think of poetry again. “This is how I know the difference. If
