Page 45 of Sparks Fly
“Are you okay?” he asked. “There was a little blood.”
She seemed to stiffen for a moment, but then she was snuggling up against him.
“I’m fine,” she said. “That was perfect.”
“Good.”
He kissed her nose and tugged the covers over them. They’d need to clean up eventually, but for right now, he was happy to stay just like that.
Twenty-Two
It took Stella and Max a while to finally get up and shower. The shower itself was longer than it needed to be because having Max scrub her down became less about getting clean and more about feeling very, very good.
By the time they were done, and Max had given Stella some of his clothes to wear, Stella was hungry again. Thankfully, they had leftovers from the restaurant, so she sat at Max’s counter, patiently waiting as he heated up their food.
Now that the deed was done, Stella wondered if maybe she should’ve told him it was her first time. She had almost said something, right there in the heat of the moment, but then she’d chickened out.
Never being in a relationship was one thing, but being a virgin on top of that felt like one step too far. What if it made things weird? What if he thought she was mentioning her virginity because it was a big deal to her and not because she justwanted to make sure they didn’t go too hard or too fast? She wasn’t lying when she said he was big.
Still, a part of her felt like she’d lied. A small white lie, but still a lie.
That said, she could barely focus on that when the most pressing matter was that she’d just had sex. S-E-X. Sex!
Stella thought she would feel different, but besides feeling like she would walk funny for the next few days, she felt the same. Maybe happier? That was probably the endorphins. And Max. The man she kind of lied to. Maybe? She really liked him. And yes, it was partially because the sex was better than she thought it would be, not that she thought he’d be bad, but she expected it to at least hurt. Instead, at most she felt a slight pinching feeling at first, but that lessened as she got more used to him. And of course there was a little blood, but she had been told to expect that and he didn’t seem bothered by it, so that was fine.
What Stella really liked about Max was simply him. He was kind and made her laugh and was always checking to make sure she was okay. He probably would’ve handled the whole “Oh, by the way, I’m a virgin” thing well, actually. Why hadn’t she just told him?
“What are you thinking about?”
Stella blinked up to find Max leaning on the counter in front of her. Without thinking, she said the first question that popped into her head.
“When did you go to Howard?”
The question felt abrupt as she said it, but she couldn’t tell him what she was really thinking about. Besides, the thoughthad been circling in her head ever since he’d handed her a long-sleeved Howard T-shirt and Howard sweatpants to wear when she got out of the shower. He was wearing a Howard hoodie and the same sweatpants. Clearly he had Bison pride. She was pretty sure that was the school’s mascot.
“Class of 2010,” he said. “Did you also go there?”
The excitement in his voice had Stella wanting to say yes, but she knew that was silly.
“Georgetown,” she said. “So close, yet so far. You were also there much earlier than me.”
Now Max squinted at her.
“How much earlier?”
“Class of 2018,” she said. “So not that bad.”
Max blew out an exaggerated breath of relief.
“You had me scared for a second there,” he said.
Stella rolled her eyes. “You know, if my age was a concern, you could’ve asked me way before we did any of this.” She waved a hand between them to indicate all the sex they’d had.
Max gave her a sidelong look. “I was never concerned about your age. If I was, I wouldn’t have approached you at Red as Sin.”
Stella guffawed at this revisionist history.
“Mm, I don’t think you approached me as much as my boobs approached your drink.”
