Page 12 of This Is Love (The Light to My Darkness 3)

"It's just. For some reason, this whole time, it's seemed like I made this all up. Like it's this fantasy and you're not real. And I'm afraid that I'm going to wake up from this amazing dream and you're going to be gone. That you're just going to disappear."

"I've told you that I'm not going anywhere. There's no reason to be upset about that. Please don't cry." He wiped away one of the tears that had fallen down my cheek.

"But what we just did. I know you said you were going to be gentle. But I expected it to be like the other times. This whole day just seemed different. More intimate. I don't know. I didn't expect to feel so...so..."

"No one's ever made love to you."

I felt embarrassed. He didn't even ask it like it was a question. He just knew. Why had I opened my mouth? "Well, I thought so. But no, not like...not like that." I was so pathetic.

"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable." He rubbed another tear off my cheek. "How many partners have you been with?"

Sexual partners? What the hell is this conversation? "One." I felt so inadequate. If I wasn't uncomfortable before, I definitely was now.

He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me down on top of him. I expected him to say something, but he just held me against his chest. I listened to his steady heartbeat.

I had a feeling that I didn't want to know the answer to my next question, but I couldn't resist asking anyway. "And how many partners have you been with?"

He sighed. "A little more than that."

"How many more?"

"Penny, I don't want to you to think poorly of me."

"More than five?"

He sighed again.

"More than ten?"

"I spent a large portion of my college years fairly drunk."

"More than fifteen?"

"We should probably stop playing this game."

"Professor Hunter, you're a slut!"

He laughed. "You seem to enjoy all my experience."

I cringed. I didn't like to picture him with other women.

"And what about your one, Penny?"

"What about him?" I didn't want to talk about Austin. Not at all, ever. But especially not here in Professor Hunter's bed. I slid off of him onto my side and rested my head in my hand.

"One is rather intimate. Is he someone I should be worried about?"

I laughed. "No."

"So you no longer speak to him?"

Did he somehow know that I had seen him this semester? "No. I doubt that I'll ever talk to him again. He's an immature asshole."

"And why is that?"

"Why do you want to know?" I didn't want to be talking about this.

"Because I don't want to make the same mistakes with you that he did."

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