“I’m glad you e-mailed,” he says, instead of hello.
“Same here.” It was Jonah’s e-mail that changed things. I want to tell him that, but words don’t come. He doesn’t speak either, though he looks completely cool and at ease. I bet I don’t. The silence stretches between us until, embarrassed, I try to laugh. “It’s so hard to know how to begin.”
“We haven’t had much opportunity for small talk.”
I laugh again, for real, and am rewarded with a small smile. “No. We haven’t.” Okay, we’ve got to begin somewhere, so we might as well plunge in. “I’m glad you like the etching.”
“It’s extraordinary.” Jonah doesn’t say it like he’s trying to suck up to me. He sounds like he’s describing artwork in a museum. As if this were objective fact instead of his opinion. “It’s . . . precise. Complicated. I can only imagine the hours of work it took. Yet the image doesn’t feel stiff or unnatural. Instead it’s like—like you captured a moment in time.”
People have praised me more effusively, including guys trying to get into my pants. None of them made me feel as flattered as Jonah just did. “Thank you,” I say, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You really bid on it before you saw I was the artist?”
“Technically, no, because I read the label before I wrote my bid down. But I intended to bid from the first moment I saw it across the room.” Even in a more casual setting, his smile remains fierce. “I might have bid sooner, if I hadn’t seen you first. After that I was . . . distracted.”
The two of us locked together, hidden from the world by red velvet, Jonah buried inside me up to the hilt—the memories bring a flush to my cheeks. It would be easy to let myself get distracted, to start planning the next time.
But there I go again, dodging a hard truth. Better to just say it. “That night, at the benefit, I saw you with a woman I thought might’ve been your date.”
“What?” Apparently Rosalind hasn’t spoken to Jonah about our conversation. When she said she didn’t meddle in her friends’ romantic lives, she must have meant it. “No, no. I went with a friend.”
“I realize that now. Even when I first saw her, I knew she might not have been someone you were romantically involved with, or interested in. It just didn’t matter.” Saying this out loud is so hard. “Our arrangement was supposed to be sex only. You and I were supposed to remain almost strangers. So I shouldn’t have cared so much whether someone was in your life. I mean—I don’t cheat, and I don’t spend time with guys who would be cheating. But that wasn’t the part that got under my skin. I was jealous. I didn’t want another woman anywhere near you. It’s that simple.”
Jonah remains quiet for a few long moments. Then he says, “Your ex was there. Geordie, is that his name?”
“Yeah.” I’m surprised Jonah knows that. “We’re not involved anymore. We never will be again.”
“I know. But when I saw you near him, and I knew that he’d had you—that he’d slept with you more times than I ever had, that he’s gone down on you, that you’ve come for him—I wanted to put my fist through a wall.”
That shouldn’t turn me on nearly as much as it does.
“Normally I’m not the possessive type,” Jonah continues. As coolly as he speaks, I can now glimpse the uncertainty deep within those gray eyes. “With you, I’m jealous of everyone who ever touched you.”
Should that be a huge red flag? Maybe. But when I saw him with Rosalind and didn’t understand the truth about them, it made me crazy.
I can’t blame Jonah for irrational jealousy when I’m in its grip myself.
“We haven’t spoken that much outside our—games,” he says. “We both obeyed the rules. So I shouldn’t feel close to you. Not this close.”
After a long moment, I reply, “Really you only know one important thing about me. But the one thing you know is the single most intimate, private thing I’ve ever shared with anyone. That’s why I said I bared my soul to you, every time. That’s why this relationship feels like—”
Like what? I don’t have the words for it . . . or I’m afraid to say them. Maybe Jonah’s afraid too. He says nothing, but he nods. I tell myself it’s enough that he understands.
“You’re the only woman who ever fully realized what I wanted from this fantasy.” Jonah meets my eyes more evenly than I was able to meet his. “I always thought any woman who would understand that would be—”
“Frightened?” I ask.