Page 48 of Untouchable

“Sorry. It was a joke.” She scooted over and found his chest in the dark, stroking it with a soft hand. “I doubt you deal with rejection very often.”

It was true, but something about her tone just now still bothered him.

“I’m just not really in the mood right now,” she added, sounding like she was worried about his reaction. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize.” Pushing aside his distraction, he followed the line of her body until he could slip his hand under her waistband, cupping her soft, round ass. “I imagine you’re still a little sore.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” She was teasing again, evidently relieved at the shift in mood. “You’re not all that rough in bed.”

He chuckled, pulling his hand out of her pajamas before his body started getting the wrong idea, and settled her against him, trying to get more comfortable. “We’ll have to address that next time, I guess.”

“They say that practice makes perfect.”

He smiled at the wry note in her tone, enjoying how she felt pressed against his side, tucked under his arm. “That’s only true if one practices in the right way.”

After a stretch of silence, he started to wonder if she’d gone to sleep. Once she had, he would go back to his own room. He’d come down here for sex after all. Not to fall asleep with her in his arms.

“Why have you never gotten married?” she asked.

He tensed automatically before he made himself relax since he wasn’t in the habit of giving such revealing responses to questions. As close as she was, she would definitely have felt his initial reaction. “What kind of question is that?”

“I don’t know. Just wondering.” Her tone was very light as she added, “No need to worry. I’m not offering myself for the position or anything.”

“I didn’t think you were.” It was the truth. Kelly might be partly a mystery, but she wasn’t a mystery in this. He’d never once suspected her of having domestic designs on him. If anything, she kept holding part of herself back from any true intimacy.

She was like him in that. She was like him in a lot of ways. More than anyone he’d ever met.

Which might have been why he answered her question when he normally wouldn’t have done so. “I don’t know. It never crossed my mind as a good option. If I had a wife, I?—”

“You what?”

“I wouldn’t treat her right.” He wished he hadn’t said the words after they were spoken. They sounded bland, unconcerned, but they exposed too much.

Kelly was silent for a moment, shifting slightly against him, her soft hair brushing against his skin. “A lot of men don’t treat their wives well. It doesn’t stop them from marrying.”

“That’s true.”

It felt like she was going to pursue the question, but then she seemed to pull herself back. He wondered why she’d asked in the first place since she seemed to avoid any sort of personal conversation.

He was off-kilter and strangely vulnerable—having admitted more than he had to anyone for years—so he asked, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why haven’t you gotten married?”

“No one has ever asked me.”

“Don’t give me that. You’ve never given anyone the chance to ask you. Didn’t you tell me on the first day we met that you don’t do seconds?”

He remembered that day well and wondered why she’d felt more complete to him then than she did now. What about her now, even with his arm around her, felt like it was always slipping through his fingers?

“Yeah. I might have said that.”

“So why? Why just casual sex?”

She pulled away from him, rolling over on her side to face him. He could only see a vague outline of her face and body in the dark, but she seemed defensive, prickly, even though her voice was still light as she said, “Coming from a man who has lived his life with nothing but casual sex, that’s a strange question.”

Maybe it was a strange question, but he knew why he resisted any serious relationship. Wes had been right a couple of weeks ago when he’d said he always ran when things got real. He didn’t know why Kelly resisted though, and he wanted to know. “Coming from a woman who just asked me why I’ve never gotten married, that’s a strange response to a harmless question.”