I pushed her away, immediately noting the hurt in her eyes.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” she snapped, a hand immediately reaching up into her hair to push it back from her face.  She was flushed, hot under the collar, wanting me, and I’d rejected her.  “If you trust me, what the fuck’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, reaching for my blouse to begin to button it up.  I stopped myself, though, not wanting to appear to be embarrassed of her seeing me in such a way.

“You keep pushing me away – every time we get close you do it!” She said accusingly.  I could hear the desperation and the pain and anger in her voice, and it hurt me, but not as much as it’d hurt her to know about the bet.  “Are you having second thoughts about us?”

“No way!  How could you even think that!?”

My response came quicker than I’d ever imagined it could – faster than I thought my brain could even process a decent reply.

She looked at me pointedly, her head cocked slightly to the side with fire in her eyes that would easily have singed my skin had she been only a step closer to me.

“I just want us to take our time,” I said lamely, looking down to my hands that gripped the edge of the desk.  My knuckles were turning a brilliant white, even more so than I assumed my complexion was.

“Why?” she snapped back immediately.  She began to pace in front of me as her words gushed from her lips.  “We love each other, we’re not new to all this, we’ve been together before – what’s changed?”

“Nothing,” I insisted, taking my cue to stand from my seated position and stop her from pacing a hole in the carpet.  She stopped right before me, looking so deeply into my eyes that I felt the desperate urge to look away.  But I didn’t; she needed to know I was being honest with her, and it seemed my words weren’t enough on their own.

“Please don’t lie to me,” she frowned, tears forming in her perfect eyes.  “Look how it went last time cos of us not being honest with each other!”