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Juliana.

Down and down they went, rolling across the heated flesh of my upper thighs…

Juliana!

Inch by glorious inch the dropped. Until they were almost at my knees…

Awww, shit.

I stood up quickly, pulling everything back and smoothing my dress down. I grabbed the remote. Killed the music. By the time I was undimming the lights, I already felt like an asshole.

“Ummm… what just happened?”

Wayne looked like a kid on Christmas that just had his best present yanked back from him. Which he pretty much was.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

“Sorry?” He blinked. “Sorry forwhat?”

“For having to ask you to go home.”

I grabbed the wine bottle again, and poured the remainder into my glass. I might’ve just finished the rest straight from the bottle, but I wasn’t that type of girl.

“Juliana, what the actual fuck?”

And this wasn’t that kind of night.

“I’m very sorry,” I said again. “This… isn’t what I want.”

“Sure seems like you wanted it a minute or two ago,” Wayne frowned. “When you were climbing all over me.”

“Yeah, I know. And that’s why I’m apologizing. I screwed up.”

“Screwed up?”

I nodded firmly. “This whole thing was a mistake, Wayne. You really have to go.”

My ex-boyfriend stared up at me, utterly dumbfounded. His eyebrows knit together in anger.

“You’re serious?”

“Dead serious.”

He was still mostly naked, sitting there helplessly with a lump in his boxers. I grabbed his slacks and threw them onto his lap, to cover it up.

“C’mon,” I urged. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow.”

“Youalwayshave to get up early,” Wayne countered. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sleep past six o’clock.”

“Good. Then you’re making my point for me.”

“Even when we took that trip to the Maldives all those years ago,” he went on. “I’d wake up and you were already in front of your computer, already working—”

“I know.”

The words sounded bitter. Hell, theytastedbitter.

“How was the sunrise, I’d ask. But you didn’t know because you’d already missed it.”