“I, uh, haven’t done that in a while?” Huh? Axel loved giving oral. He was a goddamn oral machine. He tried to kiss me again, but I pulled back.

“How long?” I asked, and he flopped over onto his back and covered his eyes with his forearm. “Axel?”

“More than five years,” he mumbled.

Okay. Stop. Hold the phone.

“Soooo, not since…”

“You. Not since you, Blaire.” He lifted his arm a little to peer at me. “Is that weird?”

“Why?” I asked, confused as all hell.

“I just didn’t want to. It was too… personal.” I tried not to show how pleased that made me. Sure, he went around banging random women in other cities, but I was the only one he let come to his apartment here, and I was the only one he went down on. It eased the deep ache that his earlier confession about all the one-night stands had incited. I still felt a deep pang of… something—jealousy? unease?—when I thought of his “regular” girl, Milan. He had said she wasn’t a girlfriend, but the idea of her didn’t sit right with me. She was obviously different from the randos he usually picked up.

“Not even with, um, her? Milan?”

He jerked up to a sitting position, giving me his back. “No. Not even with her. Shit, Blaire. Were you not listening to a fucking thing I just said?” He pushed off the bed and stomped into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him and leaving me stunned on his bed. Obviously, talking about Milan made him extremely uncomfortable, which triggered a heavy sense of unease deep in my chest. She must mean more to him than he’s letting on.

I stood and gathered my clothes as I heard the sink running in the bathroom. I wasn’t about to stay here if he was going to be a defensive asshole. I didn’t care how fucking good his lying tongue felt between my legs.

He came out a minute later and stalked by me, holding a towel. He started scrubbing at the wet spot where he had ejaculated while his mouth was between my legs, and I started to dress. Axel tossed the towel to the floor and turned around to find me pulling my panties up. He crossed to me with a scowl on his face and asked, “What the fuck are you doing?”

I scowled right back at him. “I’m leaving. I seemed to have pissed you off,” I snapped. I reached for my shorts, but he was faster and snatched them up, tossing them behind him.

“No. You said you would stay.”