Page 42 of First Impressions Series

“You’re so cold. Here,” he said as he shrugged out of his jacket and put it around me. Then he took my hand and held it with his other hand on the wheel as he drove us the short distance back to my apartment.

With the feeling of his warm hand in mine, his warm jacket around me, I looked up at his achingly beautiful face and searched for any sign of reciprocity I could find in those captivating eyes.

I knew he didn’t have the kind of feelings for me that I was hoping to find, but I decided it didn’t matter. He was a guy, and if there was one thing I knew about guys, it was that they were hot blooded and overrun with testosterone.

I decided that maybe I would never have his heart, but for one night I would settle for his touch.

We parked and Dylan walked me up to my apartment, still holding my hand. I wasn’t sure if that was my doing or his. Maybe it was both. Standing outside my apartment door, he began to say his goodbyes. I could tell by then that he was shivering from the cold with me wearing his jacket.

“You’re freezing. Come inside for a while and warm up before you go.” I pulled him inside by our hands that were still connected. I took it as a good sign so far that he didn’t protest.

The apartment was dark and Clara was nowhere in sight. I led him straight to my bedroom, closing the door behind us. I switched on a lamp by my bed and walked back over to Dylan still standing by the door.

“Dylan, I have a confession to make,” I started.

“Oh, no. Good things rarely follow that statement.” He smiled wryly as he turned my own words against me.

I stood silent for a moment, still searching in his eyes, still afraid of what I wouldn’t find there.

At that moment, I let all my thoughts exit my brain as I let instinct take over. Before he knew what was going on, I pressed my body against him, my hands in his hair as I pulled his lips down to mine. He stood motionless for a few seconds and I thought I felt his whole body stiffen for the briefest moment. Then his arms circled around my waist and pulled me in tighter against his body. He kissed me with fervent surrender, and immediately, every nerve in my body sprang to life.

Clara was right, I thought. He definitely had magic lips. Even in the heat of the moment, his lips worshiped mine, moving together with my lips in an intricate and seductive dance. His hands roamed my body in the most perfect of ways, setting me on fire and spurring me on.

I backed him up against my bed and then raised one knee up to the mattress top, gently compelling him to sit. As he did, I straddled his lap and lifted my arms over his shoulders, my chest pressed firmly to his, my fingers running through his hair, massaging his scalp. His hands tenderly caressed the bare skin of my waist under my shirt as he pulled me in close to him, deepening our kiss.

He gently sucked my bottom lip, and as I moved my arms down to his body, reaching around him to press my fingertips into the defined muscles of his back, he moaned seductively into my mouth.

“Zia…” he breathed my name against my lips and I could hear a faint protest in his voice.

“Shhhh, don’t think about it. Just feel it,” I said as I pressed my hands to his chest in an effort to urge him to lie down.

He didn’t lie down, but instead broke our kiss as he cupped my face tenderly, looking into my eyes in the dim light of the room.

“Baby, you’ll regret this in the morning,” he reasoned as he brushed a strand of hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear.

Again, I searched his eyes for something to indicate that he felt something for me, and when I thought I had found something in them, the same hunger that I felt inside myself for him, I was too afraid to let myself believe it.

“Dylan,” I whispered, my face just inches away from his. “I want you to hold me,” I pleaded.

“Baby, I don’t want to hurt you,” he tried to reason with me. “You only want this because you’ve had too much to drink. That isn’t how it should be. Not with us,” he tried to explain, but all I could hear was that he didn’t feel the same.

But so what? He had admitted that he’d been with so many other girls in the past that he obviously didn’t want anything serious with. Was I really that repulsive to him that he couldn’t stand the thought of touching me?

And if that was true, then how could he have kissed me like he just did? Was he really just that good, or could there have been feelings behind it?

“Why? You can do this with any random girl you meet in a bar, with strangers; with girls who have no idea that you’re the kind of person who always does what he says, or always shows up on time, or loves to just laugh and enjoy life and be in the moment, or how much your family really means to you, or how brave or how generous or how kind you are, or how genuine your heart can be. So why not me?” I tried to sound angry, but it just came out as one long, powerless, and pathetic run-on sentence.

“I can’t do this. Not with you, Zia, not like this,” he repeated.

Not with me? Not like this? What did that even mean? I didn’t ask him because I was afraid I didn’t want the answer. I just gave up and let him go.

I moved off of his lap as I crawled to the other side of my bed and lay my head on the pillow facing away from him.

“I’m sorry, Zia,” he said, but I just lay there silently, looking at the wall.

I heard him as he went to my dresser and looked through a couple of drawers until he found what he was looking for, some pajama pants and a tank top. He came over to me and wiped a tear from my face as he lifted me up to a sitting position to pull my shirt over my head and then pulled the tank top down in its place. He pulled me up to stand and finished undressing and redressing me in my pajama pants, and I realized I was exhausted.

I knew I would be humiliated for all of this tomorrow, but for now, I let him pick me up like the knight in shining armor that he was, and he laid me on my bed so that my head lay on my pillow. He pulled the blankets around me and tucked me in.

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