Run To You

chaises and reached for something on the seat. Then he was gone, swallowed up by darkness as he moved to the house.
    She let out a breath and moved her hand to the top of her wet head. She felt a little buzzed. Like she had earlier off a couple of glasses of wine. Only now she was completely sober.
    A door to the house shut and her hand fell to the edge of the pool. Consumed. She’d felt consumed, yet he hadn’t really touched her at all. There had been something in the air. Something that had surrounded them. Something in his black thundercloud that had hit her with relentless waves. Something she’d never experienced before.
    She let go of the edge and sank down into the water. She hadn’t been thinking about kissing Beau Junger. Hadn’t been thinking about him kissing her, but once he did, she hadn’t wanted him to stop.
    The shirt billowed about her as she tipped her head back and slowly resurfaced. She ran her hand over her head, smoothing her hair back. Beau. The kiss. Her reaction. It was all so confusing. One moment she’d been kneeling by the edge of the pool on dry ground trying not to stare at his big shoulders and some sort of black cord around his thick neck, and in the next, he’d yanked her into the water. One moment, she’d been pretending that she was drowning, thinking that she would get back at him for pulling her into the water and getting the last laugh, and the next, he was kissing her brains out. One moment, he’d been kissing her brains out, and the next, he’d pushed her away like toxic waste.
    Stella swam to the ladder and hauled herself out of the pool. She gathered her hair over one shoulder and squeezed the water out. Stella had kissed a lot of men in her life. She’d kissed men she liked and loved and men who meant nothing. She’d kissed men who’d made her pulse leap with anticipation and attraction, and she’d kissed frogs, hoping for a prince. She was sort of a kissing connoisseur, but she’d never experienced anything like Beau. His kiss had been a complete shock. A jolt to the senses. A knock to the head. A surprise out of nowhere, and she got the unsettling notion that she’d just been kissed by an expert. A man for the first time in her life. Which was just crazy.
    She gathered the bottom of her shirt and squeezed. Beau was certainly the oldest man she’d kissed, but her last boyfriend had been thirty. That certainly qualified him as a man.
    Although Jeremy had been thin enough to fit into her navy Banana Republic trench coat, he’d still been a man. And yeah, he’d liked the coat so much, he’d worn it on more than one occasion. She usually wasn’t into brand names, but she’d loved that coat and it had mysteriously gone missing when she’d dumped Jeremy. Maybe Jeremy had been a little more metro than male, but he’d still been a man.
    Kind of.
    She gathered some of the shirt at her hip and squeezed. Just for the sake of curiosity, she wouldn’t have minded if the kiss had lasted a little longer. But he’d pushed her away and headed for the house like he couldn’t get away fast enough.
    A little smile twisted one corner of her lips. He’d wanted her. She’d felt it in his kiss and against her thigh. He’d been hard and ready, but instead of taking things to the next step, or trying to, he’d left. Like he was trying to be noble or decent or something. Like he’d been worried that things would go too far.
    Stella sat at the edge of a chaise in the darkness. He needn’t have worried. Things would not have gone too far. She would have stopped him.
    A slight breeze chilled her skin and cotton shirt. She should go in but she was far too awake for bed. She hooked her heels on the edge of the chair and hugged her knees. She might not have experienced anything like Beau’s kiss. She might have wanted more, but she would have stopped. She always stopped. Always. As her abuela told everyone, Estella es una buena nina. Perhaps because of the circumstances of her birth, Abuela made sure Estella was a good girl. She didn’t swear. Didn’t wear red fingernail polish, at least she hadn’t until she’d moved out, and she didn’t take her shoes off at parties.
    Stella rested her cheek on her knee. And she didn’t have sex before marriage. She was a twenty-eight-year-old virgin by choice. At first she’d remained a virgin out of fear. Fear that her grandmother would take one look at her and know she was one of “those” girls. Out of fear that she’d