Her hands blindly ripped at my tux, pulling at my bowtie before she tore at the lapels and wrangled the jacket off me. I released my grip on her long enough to let her strip me, watching with proud amusement as she unfastened every button of my white dress shirt before sliding it over my shoulders and down the length of each arm. She left them bunched at my wrists behind me like handcuffs as her hands moved to my belt.

She was less steady then, her breaths coming harder as she struggled with the metal and leather before finally freeing the restraint. And when she pressed up onto her toes to kiss me as her fingertips pushed the button of my pants through the slit and she peeled the zipper down, it shocked me like a Taser.

I froze.

I panicked.

And I tamed the animal inside me long enough to remember all the reasons this couldn’t happen.

“Giana, wait,” I managed on a breath, struggling to get my shirt back over my shoulders so I could stop her. My hands wrapped around her wrists, and I held her there, pinned against the wall with her labored breaths meeting mine in the dark space between us.

“I’m okay. I’m ready,” she assured me, even as she shook, even as her heart beat loud enough for us both to hear.

And maybe she was telling the truth.

Maybe she was ready.

But I wasn’t.

I dropped my forehead to hers, swallowing past the fiery breath that expelled from me next. “I… I can’t,” I croaked. “Not like this.”

Giana’s breaths came harder and harder until they caught on an inhale, one she held as her eyes slowly crawled up to mine.

I didn’t know how to tell her. I didn’t know how to form the right words to explain that I didn’t want to take her virginity for the purpose of her having sex with another man, that I couldn’t bear to show her how to find pleasure, only to know it would be Shawn she really craved it from. It killed me to admit it, and I wanted so badly to push all my fucking feelings aside to give her what she needed in that moment.

But I couldn’t.

“Oh,” she finally answered.

And then she shut down.

She pulled away from my grasp, slipping under my arm that pinned her against the wall and bending for her dress. She haphazardly brought it up to cover herself as she stared at the floor. “I… um… I understand.”

I swallowed, heart breaking at the sight of her, at how I knew she felt rejected when that was the furthest thing from my mind.

Tell her. Tell her something, anything.

I begged myself, but I was frozen, standing there in her bedroom half-naked, wondering if I’d lost my damn mind.