I wasn’t sure why, but I actually felt a bit disappointed with her answer. The possessive side of me wanted her never to have been with anyone. I was the kind of man who needed ownership, and that need had never been satisfied in my relationship with Brona. I never really felt like she was mine; she was sweet and unassuming at first, but soon she felt like an obligation, unable to take care of herself without my constant praise and reassurance. I also sensed she was always on the lookout for the next best thing.
“Follow-up question: Why did you break up with this Jamie person?”
“Follow-up? No, no, no. I fell for that once already.”
“Fine. Then tell me because you want to tell me.”
She considered me for a moment, licking the ice cream off her lips then sighed. “Fine. We weren’t in a very traditional relationship. We were exclusive, but….” She shook her head, frowning.
“What? He wouldn’t commit?”
“No. More like the other way around,” Annie muttered to her ice cream cone. “Anyway, he wanted something more substantial. I wasn’t amenable to his terms. So when I moved to New York, I saw no reason to continue our agreement.”
“Agreement?”
“Uh, relationship.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “What was his story? Not very smart?”
“Oh, no. He was in medical school at Penn State and is probably in residency by now at Harvard or someplace equally impressive.”
“Oh, so a troll? Ugly?”
She laughed a little but then caught herself before she could full-on giggle. “No, nothing like that. He was quite handsome.”
I was putting the pieces together. She’d had an emotionless relationship with some good-looking, successful doctor guy, and she’d been the one to break it off after several years. She hadn’t been lying earlier when she said she was a bit of a mess and had severe abandonment issues.
I wanted to ask her more about Jamie, but I didn’t want to push my luck or use my final question. It wasn’t even a very important one; but—maybe it was the horny caveman in me—I wanted to ask her about sex, suss out her likes and dislikes, and this was the perfect opener for that.
“Okay, so, last question. When did you lose your virginity?”
Annie shook her head and turned to stare at me. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Because I’m nosy. Talk.”
We were both finished with our ice creams now. She folded up her napkin and took the end of my cone from me before walking to the bin to dispose of them. There was something surprisingly comfortable and intimate about the gesture. She came back, sat down, and smoothed her dress over her legs. I sat close, my arm resting along the back of the bench. I imagined the paps were getting some good shots of us.
“I was sixteen; he was eighteen. We’d been going out for a week or two, and then he took me to prom. That was the night we did the deed.”
“And,” I probed, “was it good, bad, mediocre?”
She thought on this for a while, mouth drawn into a slanted line. “It wasn’t…good. Mostly it was just sore, and I wanted it to be over with.”
“So he didn’t make it romantic for you? Sounds like a right arsehole to me.”
“Show me a teenage boy who cares about romance. And yeah, he was an asshole, as it happens.”
I grinned down at her, moving my body closer so that our thighs pressed together. Annie froze for a second, so I nodded subtly toward the photographers. “Just making things look right for our audience.”
“Oh, my God! I didn’t even notice they were there.”
I gave her a wide grin. “That’s probably because you’ve been so enamored by my potent manliness.”
This elicited a cute little laugh from her and a sarcastic, “Oh, yeah, that must be why.” She paused and considered me a moment. “So, how about you? When did you lose yours?”
Her question caught me off guard. But still, I didn’t mind answering. “I was fifteen.”
“Wow, that’s young. And who was the lucky girl?”
“It was young, I suppose, but I was a horny little bastard.” I glanced down at her and winked. “Not much has changed there. The lucky girl was Trina. She was just fourteen. We’d been going out for a couple of weeks and decided to take the next step.”
Annie moved closer, curious. “And?”
I shrugged. “And it was good. Well, as good as it can be between two kids who hardly know what they’re doing. We quickly got the hang of it, though, and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. A couple months later, we had a little pregnancy scare. She freaked out while I tried to be the big man and asked her to marry me.” I paused and chuckled. “I was fifteen and ready to sign my life away, thought it was the honorable thing to do. It turned out her period was just late, and my proposal was unnecessary. She was so spooked by the whole thing that she broke up with me. I was heartbroken for a while before I really began dipping my toes into the world of sex again.”
Annie’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?”
“Yeah, I had a bit of a promiscuous phase in my late teens. Sex was a stress reliever for me. I probably over-indulged because my tastes got a little…kinky.”
Annie’s expression was a mixture of surprise and curiosity. I could tell she was about to ask me to elaborate on what I meant by “kinky,” and I wasn’t ready to go there yet; so I quickly changed topics.
“I almost forgot. We need to take a picture for my Instagram account. It’s been left lonely and disused since Gerta opened it for me.”
Annie looked up and bit her lip. “Oh, right, you want me in the picture with you?”
“Of course. We’re a couple now,” I said and pulled her close as I found the camera function on my phone.
“Yes, but there are quotation marks around ‘couple,’ remember?”
I gave her a fake scowl. “Like you’d let me forget.” Raising the camera in front of us, I quickly turned in and laid a kiss on her cheek as I was taking the shot. She squealed when I did it, but it was already taken.
“That was sneaky!”
“I’m just trying to make us seem genuine, Annie dearest.” I smirked and brought up the picture. “Wow, we look good together. And look at you,” I went on, nudging her playfully. “Absolute stunner. Those eyes. Fuck.”
“It’s a nice picture,” Annie admitted, grudgingly.
A naughty idea came into my head, and I couldn’t help but vocalize it. I ducked down and brought my mouth close to her ear, my voice low and husky. “Yeah, and imagine how good we’ll look when I’m inside you.”
Annie’s eyes met mine, and I saw her pupils dilate. A little breath escaped her, and her throat moved as she swallowed. Our gazes remained locked for a long moment before she drew away and tried to compose herself. I could practically feel her withdrawing.
“Please know this, Mr. Fitzpatrick, the only reason I’m not walking away right now is because there are photographers watching.”
“Don’t like the idea of my penetrating those walls you’ve built?”
She swallowed thickly, her hands balling into fists. “You like to make things hard, don’t you?”
“No. You make things hard, Annie.”
Her face flamed red and hot, and her breathing was uneven. “Please stop.” Annie’s eyes lifted to mine, and they held a desperate edge. “You think you’re being cute, that you can be aggressive and flirt shamelessly and that it doesn’t mean anything, that your words don’t…affect me. But they do. You need to stop pushing—you need to be respectful of my wishes.”
Shit, she was kind of sexy when she was scolding me.
With that, she stood and gestured for me to follow her. I did. But I also grabbed her hand and held it as we walked. We made our way back to my car in silence, and the return drive to the city was similarly conversation-free. I should have been pissed off at myself for ruining things, but I wasn’t.
What I’d said had more than interested her. I’d seen it in her face and the way she’d clenched her thighs together. She’d even admitted that I affected her. She’d practically been humming with arousal. Yeah, she wanted me bad, and the challenge would be respectfully encouraging her to let go of her inhibitions.
I was determined to make it happen. I could be respectful…and still aggressive.
When we reached her apartment building, Annie was all business as she organized for us to go running together in the morning. It would save us both time, she said, as it meant we could be seen together and also get our daily exercise in. She barely gave me a second glance as she exited the car. I was back at my building, parking the car, when I noticed she’d forgotten her phone. It must have fallen from her handbag because it was lying on the floor.
Picking it up, I was about to tuck it in my pocket when it buzzed.
Yeah, I could have ignored the buzz, but I didn’t. Instead I glanced at the screen and saw that it was a notification from her Twitter account. Except it wasn’t her Twitter account. And I nearly dropped the phone because the handle in the notification wasn’t @AnnieCat.
The handle was @Socialmedialite.