As I closed the door behind me, I realized something.

My lips were still buzzing.

It had taken me almost forty minutes to get home – it was normally a twenty-minute trip, both the subway ride and the walk, but tonight it had been double.

So just over forty minutes since some big, sexy stranger with a scar slicing his left eyebrow had smacked his mouth over mine and kissed me.

It had been a quick, light kiss really, now that I think of it.

And it had been the New Year.

Maybe I shouldn’t have slapped him.

I didn’t know.

What I did know was that my mouth was buzzing.

I hadn’t kissed anybody in recent memory who’d actually had the ability to make anything buzz. That made this pretty…well…I couldn’t call it epic, except it kind of was.

And I’d slapped him.

He’d helped me, dealing with the two creeps who’d been up to no good, then midnight strikes and…okay, maybe I’d been gawking at him a little. It might have seemed like a moment, now that I think of it. Not that I’d understand what a moment really felt like.

A kiss on New Year’s Eve was a simple enough thing, wasn’t it?

Strangers kissed strangers on New Year’s Eve, right?

It wasn’t a big deal, but I’d gone and made something of it.

He hadn’t been grabbing at my ass or my boobs or anything.

“Just a kiss,” I murmured.

I might have felt exceptionally silly if I let myself think about it too much. It would be hard to do that though. Every time I tried to clear my mind, I was left thinking about the ever-fading buzz on my lips.

I licked them, fleetingly wondered if I could catch a taste of him like I had when he’d actually been kissing me. But if any taste had lingered, it was long gone now.

“You shouldn’t have slapped him,” I told myself. And it was the truth.

But hindsight was twenty-twenty.

* * *

Nearly a half an hour later, I stood under the hot spray in my minuscule shower, letting the water beat down on me. My apartment was tiny, barely big enough to be called that, and I was actually lucky to have this much space. I’d been living in an area half this size, forced to share a bathroom, but my current manager’s sister worked in real estate, and they’d helped me find this place. Friends from the store had helped decorate and improvise with the vertical space.

Sadly, there was nothing to be done about a tiny, cramped bathroom.

I fit in there just fine, if I didn’t do a lot of turning around. If I’d been anything other than what some people called fun-sized, I had no idea how I’d manage in the little shower.

As the heat billowed around me, I thought again about the guy who’d come out of the crowd to chase away my harassers and a tingle raced through my entire system. It wasn’t unpleasant.

I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about my kissing hero, and the more I thought about him, the more surreal the event seemed.

I wished I hadn’t slapped him.

I wished I had kissed him back.

If I had, what would have happened?

I must have been more tired – or more dazed – than I realized because I found myself cupping a breast in my palm as I relived that short kiss and let it play out in my mind to a better one, a longer one. One where I opened my mouth, and he slid his tongue inside to taste me.

I’d kissed a few guys who seemed like adequate kissers and a couple who were even pretty good at it. I think he would have qualified for really good. He hadn’t tried to mash his mouth to mine or choke me with his tongue.

I groaned, closing my eyes. Now I was fantasizing about opening for him and taking his tongue into my mouth, sucking on him as he cupped one of my breasts.

That tingling sensation spread, and I let my hand slide lower.

I found the folds between my thighs, which were damp – and not only because of the shower.

Curious, I rubbed myself, and while I felt something that seemed like pleasure, I didn’t know what else to do. Nothing felt right, and the more I thought about it, the more awkward this whole situation seemed.

Frustration grew inside me, replacing that wonderful tingling sensation, and as the pleasantness faded, I smacked my head back against the tiled wall of the shower.

There was something broken inside me.

The part that was supposed to enjoy all of this just…didn’t.

“Maybe you’re thinking about it too much,” I told myself as I pushed off the wall and finished up the shower.

It was possible, I guessed.

Anything was possible…like having some big, tattooed sexy stranger swoop down out of a crowd to chase off some roughnecks, then linger long enough for a kiss.

Heaving out a sigh, I turned off the water and reached for a towel. Since clearly, I wasn’t going to be able to relax via self-induced orgasm, I’d dry off and pull on some PJs. I wasn’t ready to sleep, but I had other plans in mind.

Classes started in a little over a week, and I wanted to get a head’s up on the courses I was tackling for the next semester. So far, I’d been able to hold up my GPA, and none of my scholarships were in jeopardy. Even so, I wasn’t the sort to take any of that for granted, especially since I was carrying a heavier class load this time around.

Fifteen minutes later, clad in flannel pajamas, with a cup of tea next to my elbow, I cracked open the top book on the stack waiting on the table.

It wasn’t as good as lying back and fantasizing about some tall, dark, and sexy stranger, but if all that was going to do was end up with me frustrated, I’d rather study.

At least I’d feel like I accomplished something.