His fingers stopped moving.

He stiffened.

I pulled back to see what had made him pause.

I followed his gaze.

He was staring down at his lap, and it was covered in streaks of pink.

Mortification churned my gut, and I prayed a pillar would randomly fall over and crush me to death.

John slowly looked up at me. “Aran.” His dark eyes hardened as he realized what I’d given him.

All traces of a smile slipped off his face.

He looked enraged.

No. No. No. This can’t be happening. Is he mad at me? Pissed that I was a virgin?

I smacked him on the arm casually and forced myself to laugh. “Don’t make it weird, dude.”

It’s weird. I could feel him dripping out of me.

“I’m going to kill the gods,” John muttered, then took a deep breath and tucked a stray curl behind my ear.

“These things happen.” I shrugged with a casualness I didn’t feel.

John’s expression was intense. “No. They don’t. Not like this. They never should have made you do this.”

I grimaced and stared at the ground.

Great, now he definitely thought I’d been a virgin loser saving myself for marriage or something embarrassing like that.

“Seriously, it’s not a big deal.” I cleared my throat awkwardly. “I would have done it with tons of other men, but things got in the way. So, seriously, don’t make it weird.”

“Things” equaled an enchanted knife. “The way” equaled my back.

John stiffened. “Tons of other men, you say?” he asked with feigned casualness.

I grimaced. Maybe I’d laid it on a little too thick. Still, there was nothing to do but double down. “Oh, please, you don’t know what kind of seduction skills I have.”

John raised one eyebrow. “I hate to point out the obvious, but clearly not great ones, seeing as you were…” He waved at his lower half.

I smacked his chest as John grabbed my shoulders and started shaking me back and forth.

Great. John was having an episode.

He said dramatically, “I’m quaking at the sight of these seduction skills.”

Something warm and gooey exploded in my chest because he was treating me like he always did.

I laughed as he shook me and said, “Big talk coming from a guy who came in two minutes.”

“Hey, you told me to.” John’s olive cheeks flushed pink as he stopped shaking me and mumbled under his breath, “You felt insane. You have no idea how hard it was.”

“That’s what she said.”

A long moment passed as we both processed the fact that I’d repeated a ridiculous, childish joke. I blamed Sadie. There’d been a span of three weeks where that was the only joke she told.