Deadly Games - Cate Noble [39]
Then she felt the wet spot on her pillow.
She pushed up, glaring at the dark circle of moisture. “Eeeew. Tell me I was drooling in my sleep, not French kissing my pillow.”
Moving made her aware of moisture elsewhere. Between her legs. Great, she’d probably been humping the sheets, too. Had she talked in her sleep as well?Kiss me, Rocco.
She rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom. If there was one consolation, it was the fact she lived alone.
“Your secret’s safe with me, princess.”
She shivered. Those had been Rocco Taylor’s last words to her. Spoken over three weeks ago. Three weeks.
Hello? Time to wake up and smell the double latte. Obviously he’d lost interest.
Or found a new one.
She gripped the counter as icy arrows of despair assaulted her. “Oh my God. I’ve been dumped!”
She blinked back tears, uncertain what to do next. This—a broken heart—was one disappointment her mother had never prepared her for. And she had a feeling Millicent Armstrong’s usual prescription— “here, take a sip”—wouldn’t touch this. So Gena reacted the way her father would have. She got pissed.
She squished toothpaste onto her brush and attacked her teeth. She’d been warned not to take anything Rocco said seriously. The man was considered a walking, talking flirt machine. A player, only out for the thrill of the chase.
And he had pursued her relentlessly at first, refusing to take no for an answer. Looking sinfully handsome while barraging her with e-mails, phone calls, and flowers. He’d been so … intent. How could she not have fallen for him?
Once she’d agreed to have lunch with him, she’d promptly lost her heart. But in the end, he’d lived up to his reputed maxim: Wine ’em, dine ’em, fuck ’em, drop ’em.
Except in her case it had only been wine ’em, dine ’em, drop ’em. And therein lay the problem.
She rinsed her mouth and stared at her reflection. After she’d frozen twice when things heated up after a date, Rocco had guessed her problem. “You’re a virgin.”
Gena hadn’t wanted to admit her inexperience, not to him anyway. All her mother’s lectures about saving herself might have made her think twice in college, but the truth was, until she’d met Rocco, no man had ever made her want to have sex.
In fact, with him, she had the opposite problem. Raging desires that scared her. The things she wanted to do, she had no clue how to. Those fumbling, first-timer mistakes that her college roommates had sorted out via trial and error seemed like bottomless pits to Gena.
Maybe the friend who’d told her Rocco was out of her league was correct. At twenty-nine, he was worldly. A fair-haired James Bond on steroids. At twenty-three, she was more like Little Miss Muffet. Fairy Tale Girl.
Their last date had ended disastrously. They had been on the sofa, making out. Rocco’s fingers had skimmed the undersides of her breasts, driving her mad for more.
But when he had started to peel off her shirt, she’d panicked. During her freeze-up, his cell phone had rung. He’d taken the call, which he usually didn’t whenever they were together. He’d probably been praying the damn thing would ring!
It had been the beginning of the end. “I have to go,” he’d said. “But I promise we’ll talk about this soon.”
Right! Gena turned on the shower and climbed under the spray. That it had taken her this long to figure out there wasn’t going to be a next time infuriated her.
She’d been living in denial. First, she’d invented a textbook’s worth of excuses for him. He lived in Arlington; she was in D.C. He traveled frequently; she commuted. He was a spy. A man of mystery.
Then worry had set in: What if he’d been captured? Or injured? Was he dying in a hospital, calling out for her? She hadn’t let her cell phone out of sight; checked it hourly for messages—all while fighting the temptation to dial his number.
Nice girls don’t call boys. Another one of her mother’s rules.
Gena dried her tears, then wrapped a towel around herself and switched on the blow-dryer.