She raises her lips to kiss me before she reaches over and grabs her phone. “Asshole!” she suddenly blurts out.
Alarmed, I pull my brow into a furrow. “What’s wrong?”
“Did you just pay me?” she demands with her voice raised, turning to face me with a look of concentrated rage on her face.
The answer is factual: yes. Yes I did pay her, like I’ve been doing all summer. There’s truly no reason this should come as a surprise to her. Sure, I did it couple days early, but I wanted to assure her that I haven’t forgotten our contract after all the sappy things I said to her tonight.
I raise both eyebrows. “I’m very confused. Is that not…what I’m supposed to do?”
I’ve never seen her expression look so indignant. She drops the phone on the bed, almost like she’s disgusted with it, and says, “I didn’t sleep with you for money just now. I did it because I wanted to. Here, I’m sending the money back.” She grabs her phone before I can.
“Don’t,” I warn. “Keep it.”
She’s shaking her head as she swipes away on her phone. “I don’t want it—not for this.”
“Keep it,” I insist, stopping short of taking the phone from her because I know how dickheaded that would be. “Keep it or I’m doubling it.”
“Because you don’t want to sleep with me for free?” she demands suddenly, widening her eyes. “Because the thought of sleeping with me for free is that unbearable to you? Because I’m so far beneath you?”
“Because I don’t want you to think I’m pathetic,” I respond, letting half of the truth slip out.
Olivia’s face shifts from anger into a frown. Her lips part as she searches for the words until she finally blurts out, “Davis, you’re so confusing! Are you seriously trying to siphon me money because you think I’m some sort of psychopath who—”
“This is not about you or your motives. I know better than to judge people for how they make their money. But it’s bad enough that I had to admit to you that I was a virgin, and after tonight I now realize that I was clearly in-fucking-sane for holding this big ‘virgin-y’ grudge against you for almost a decade. I’m not going to back you into a corner though. I get it. We have a contract.”
As I finish speaking, she presses her lips together. “We do have a contract, yes. And there’s an honesty clause in it.”
“Yes.”
“Because of that clause, I’m telling you right now: I would have, and will, sleep with you for free anytime, Davis Ridgeway.”
I let out a slow exhale and take in the determined expression that she wears. She’s so damn beautiful and she radiates sexiness. And she’s smart and she’s determined and she’s confident and she’s witty and she’s everything that anyone should want in a partner. Somehow, she wants me. Me, of all people, in spite of how I’ve treated her over something as trivial and man-made and arbitrary as my virginity.
“You do mean that,” I say, confirming—not asking.
Olivia nods certainly. “I mean it with everything that I have.”
The thought fills my stomach with these unsteady bolts that ricochet and ping and make my whole body feel alive. “Keep the money though.”
“But—”
“You earned it. You need it. Put it towards Wharton, and don’t argue with me because this is one fight that I won’t lose.”
To my relief, she puts her phone down on the pillow. “Thank you, Davis.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m not a philanthropist. I get plenty out of this arrangement. I did just take your ass, didn’t I?”
“Crude,” she responds as she sinks under the covers, sighing as she pulls the sheets up to cover her chest.
“And you enjoy it so much.”
“You mean it? I can keep the money?”
“I want you to have it.”
It seems like the argument is over when she slides to my side of the bed. Her hands roam over my body until she finds a comfortable place to rest them, and her damp hair cascades over my shoulder. Her lips touch my cheek, my lips, and my collarbone and trail down until she plants a kiss on my pectoral. Then she settles in, breathing out contentedly, with her ear on my racing heart.