.enigma.

"I've never been in love before."

"Me either."

"So...how do you know this is love?"

"Because this feels right, doesn't it?"

She felt stupid for asking, and he felt stupid for lying.

Then she paused, and she looked up at her golden boy. She should never feel stupid around him, should she? Not if they were in love. Love was supposed to be a comfortable, calm, settled thing.

He saw her pause, and he smiled his sunny smile down onto her, warming her inside. He could read her like a book, and she had no idea. He wanted to tell her to leave, to run, to get away from him before he hurt her.

But then, when she leaned back and smiled up at him, he couldn't make himself tell her the truth any more. She was cute. She wasn't like his other girlfriends, the ones who were beautiful, gorgeous girls with legs that never ended, and glittering jewels shining in the pierced holes of their trim stomachs. She was short, she was pale, and she was unbelievably cute. She had such an innocent, trusting air about her, and he found that refreshing. She didn't wear a lot of make-up, and she didn't spend seventy-five dollars a month on a membership to a tanning salon, and she didn't have permanent appointments with her hairstylist and manicurist for never-ending highlights and airbrushed patterns on acrylic nails. She considered her gym membership a splurge, and pedicures were only for special occasions. She had freckles, and baby cheeks, and big blue eyes.

God, how he loved her eyes. He looked down into them, and they seemed to go on forever, deeper and deeper. She was the epitome of an adorable schoolgirl, and he felt like an animal.

Except she wasn't an innocent schoolgirl, and he knew it. She just looked like one, and maybe that was what the problem was. That she didn't look like any of those other girls. She didn't act like one, either, and that was why he loved her. And it was because she didn't look like one that he couldn't bring himself to continue the relationship.

She was the innocent schoolgirl, and she was the naughtiest little devil he'd ever seen.