His jaw locked up. He was trying not to laugh. “Okay.”
“Which brings me to now. Has it… tasted differently?”
He licked his lips and thought for a moment. “You know, I wasn’t paying attention. I might have to have another taste of you to know for sure.”
“What? No –”
But he was already there beneath the covers. He licked me and shot back up, a look of surprise in his eyes as he exclaimed, “Holy hell, the ‘sex advice people, or whatever’ were right. Tastes like strawberry yogurt.”
I giggled and shook my head. “I’ve only been eating mango.”
“They taste the same, don’t they?”
“No, they don’t actually. Not at all.”
He laughed and dipped his head, kissing me harshly, purposely invading my mouth with his tongue in a possessive kiss. “Well go on then,” he said huskily, “taste yourself on my tongue. Do you taste mango?”
“No.”
He rubbed his nose to mine. “Then you have your answer. Bullshit advice. I think I should ban the magazines from your life. Might do you good.”
“It’s not my fault for being curious.”
“Well, thank you for five minutes of incredibly interesting conversation with me. Yogurt tasting pussies was fun to talk about –”
I smacked him on the back. “Asshole.”
He laughed again, pressing his body against mine and stealing away my breath as he kissed me again. “Yeah, but your asshole, right?”
“Since the moment I kissed you on the train.”
“Absolutely. I thought about you every day after that kiss.”
My chest tightened as I searched his face. “So why did it take you so long to reach out to me?”
“First tell me why you kissed me.”
“You’ll be disappointed by the answer.”
“Try me.”
I paused for a moment. Then I said, “It was a game Emily and I played. We’d pick dare cards every other month. My dare that day in that moment was to kiss a stranger.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Really? So it wasn’t because I was irresistible after all.”
“But you were, and the kiss was the best I’d ever had in my life,” I told him truthfully.
He nodded vaguely and moved off of me. Settling on his back, he stared up at the ceiling with a faraway look on his face. Had I really disappointed him? Was he upset? I supposed I would be too if I realized I was some dare.
“I regretted not stepping off the train with you,” he suddenly said. “For a few hours I was incredibly angry at myself. I put business first when I should have followed my instincts. So when I found the wallet in my pocket, I thought I’d hit the lottery.”
He sought my hand out from beneath the covers and entwined his fingers with mine.
“I looked at your photo every day. My life was all travel and turbulent as hell. I tried my best not to get attached to a bloody photo, but I did. I remembered the way you were on that train. The fire in your green eyes, the smile on your lips, the way you screamed attention. After a while, I got too curious for my own good, and a photo wasn’t enough to appease me. I looked you up online and found your Facebook page. It was crawling with pictures and smarmy men, so at least I wasn’t the only one stalking you.”
“When was this?” I asked, stunned.
“A few weeks after.”
“You should have reached out. I was thinking about you the most around that time.”
He rubbed his face exhaustedly. “I hate what my life’s become, Claire. That’s the truth. It reached the pinnacle of shit when I was abroad. The only thing keeping me grounded was looking at your photos. Seeing you smile. I felt pathetic for being attached to a stranger, but it didn’t feel like you were one to me. I’d already decided I was going to see you again when I returned. It was just a matter of when.
“But then one night I checked in on you again, and you were gone. The page had been taken down and you’d disappeared. Either something had happened to you, or you’d just outgrown the social scene. My guess wasn’t the latter. You’d been outgoing until the very end. So I bided my time until I got back and wanted to see for myself what had gone wrong. And, well, now I know, don’t I?”
I nodded vaguely, reminiscing about the moment I deleted my page. “I only had it up for attention. After a childhood of moving around nonstop, never making any friends, and then having a father that was no longer around, I was practically begging for attention. It was only after what happened that I didn’t want it anymore. Because that attention was like a devil in disguise.
“I was one of those girls on there that would change her profile picture every single day. I’d get dolled up in some skimpy outfit. It’s hilarious now that I think about it.”
“I enjoyed those daily photos,” he replied happily. “But nothing was better than your pictures at the Royal Show. All sopping wet, your make-up running down your face, but you had the biggest smile –”
“You’re referring to the shit photos Emily tagged me in to be a little wench.”
“I’ll have to thank her then.”
“Don’t go near her. She’ll hump your leg, I’m sure.” Emily was infatuated with Ben. Every time they crossed paths she was all over him. He wasn’t interested at all, so her advances were funny to watch, and I knew she was doing it in jest.
“Don’t worry about your friend,” he said. “I only have eyes for you.”
Ben was really talented with words when he wanted to be. He could make my entire day with just one simple line like that. I savoured them because while he was affectionate with his hands and mouth, he was usually reserved about his feelings.
He trailed his thumb over my scars again, something he did when he was reflecting. I learned to stop cringing when he touched that side of my face. It helped me to overcome how conscious I was of them when he was always acknowledging their existence.
“Can I ask you a question, Claire?” he said seriously.
“Of course.”
“When I first started getting to know you, every morning you’d rush off to the bathroom. It’s been less lately, but you still do it. I don’t like that it happens, and I know by the way you hurry that it’s not coming out intentionally. Is there something I should about with you health-wise? Because I’d hate for you to be sick when I could be doing something about it.”