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I wash my hands, and look in the mirror once more.

I wish Nathaniel had stayed. Talked to me. Instead he acted like my being a virgin was something bad. Why did he act that way?

Surely he’s deflowered plenty of women.

The thought makes me flinch, but I can’t stop it.

He’s Nathaniel Vexley. Beautiful, rich, dangerous. Men like him don’t reach his age without knowing exactly what they’re doing in the dark. He knew. God, he knew. He moved like a man who’s never had to guess whether he was wanted.

And maybe that’s why he assumed.

Maybe he looked at me in this dress, with my hair pinned up and my mouth painted, and assumed I was the kind of woman who knew how to meet him there.

The kind of woman who knew how to answer his hunger with her own.

I close my eyes.

I wanted him.

I wanted his mouth.

I wanted his hands.

I wanted the heat.

But did I say yes to it?

No.

Not in so many words.

Of course, if I’d asked him to stop, he would have.

I think…

I didn’t ask him to stop.

I didn’t want him to stop.

Both things sit inside me at once, tangled and uncomfortable.

I wanted him.

I still do. But now I feel like I’ve crossed a line I can never uncross.

It was amazing. Magnificent, even. And Nathaniel wasn’t cruel while it happened.

Not exactly.

But afterward?

Afterward he became a stranger.

I look down at the glass bracelet on my wrist.

I feel split open.

Not just my body.