She had him curious. “It? What are you talking about?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Sex.”
Drew nearly choked on his coffee. When Eden was about to get out of her chair to make sure he was okay, he motioned for her to stay put. He didn’t want her anywhere near him. At least, not until she explained what she meant. There was no reason to ask her to repeat what she’d said because he had heard her clearly.
Clearing his throat, he asked in as calm a voice as he could, “Why would you need anyone to teach you about sex?”
**
Of course, Drew would want to know that, Eden thought as she took a bite of her chicken and then washed it down with water. The very man who had her thinking about sex, when she had never dwelled on such things before, was sitting across from her. She had known the moment he had walked out of the bathroom after taking a shower. The manly scent preceded him.
She had seen him before he had seen her. All it had taken was the sight of him in jeans, tugging his massive shoulders through a shirt, to make her breath catch. He hadn’t shaved, but thatmade him look even sexier, wild and untamed, while at the same time scrumptiously delicious. She had never thought of a man as being delicious until him. Seeing him had made her feel hot—so hot that she’d had to snatch open the refrigerator and stick her head in to cool off.
“Eden?”
She blinked when she realized she had been sitting there staring at him, while he had been waiting for her to answer his question.
She figured he deserved an answer. “I’m a late bloomer. If Mark and I had been a real couple, we would have made love by now, but that’s not the case. And I’m tired of Sophie telling me how great it is.”
She put her fork down, leaned over the table, and said softly, “To be honest, I’ve never given having sex much thought. My mind has been on finishing college while doing my modeling on the side. But in less than two weeks, I’ll be living in Paris on my own, and I don’t want to go there not knowing anything.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, and then asked, “So, you want to know how to please a man?”
She leaned back in her chair. “Heck no. I want to make sure any man I sleep with knows how to pleaseme.”
From Drew’s smile, she wondered if he found what she had said amusing when she was dead serious. “And you think a man won’t know how to please you?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I’m bothered by some of the things that I’ve heard.”
“Like what?”
Although they were alone, she still didn’t want her voice to carry beyond this little area. “From the whispers of the girls who stayed in my dorm, some guys could be real jerks in the bedroom. Some would get their pleasure without caring if yougot yours. They could be selfish and leave you unsatisfied. That was the main gripe I heard.”
“And what makes you think I’m not that way?”
Now it was her time to smile. “You, with five possessive, obsessive, and aggressive women gunning for you? I figured you must be doing something right. I’ve never known a man to get run out of a city for being so good in bed that the women refuse to give him up.”
“I never said I was good in bed.”
“You didn’t have to. The fact that you have all those women out to get you gave it away.”
“So, you plan to move to Paris and get buck wild?” he asked.
“No, I plan to move to Paris and be smarter than most men think that a twenty-one-year-old should be. If French men are supposed to be the best lovers, how will I know if that’s true if I have nothing to base it on? The only way I can make that determination is to know what real pleasure feels like. But more importantly, Drew, I want my first time to be with someone who knows what he is doing and won’t hurt me.”
She took another sip of water, then asked, “So, will you teach me?”
He held her gaze for a long moment. “No.”
CHAPTER 12
Drew tried to ignore the crushed look on Eden’s face. Her request had caught him off guard. It wasn’t one he would have expected her to ask in a million years. But then, what she wanted was probably based on curiosity, which was no different than his situation with Valerie, one of his former lovers.
He had wanted to know what it would be like to be in a cougar/cub relationship. That, and the fact she had been a very beautiful woman, were the only reasons he had hooked up with her. He soon discovered that she was also highly intelligent, astute, and savvy.
Valerie’s wealthy husband, Thomas Nixon, had been thirty-two years her senior. He had married her when she’d been twenty-four and he, fifty-six. Twelve years later, at the age of sixty-eight, Nixon had died of a heart attack, leaving the thirty-six-year-old Valerie a very wealthy widow. The man’s financial empire had been both enormous and extensive, and during the twelve years of their marriage, he had taught Valerie how to manage his vast businesses. He had also warned her to be wary of men who would consider her vulnerable if anything were to ever happen to him. For that reason, Valerie decided not to get involved in any serious relationships…but had no problem taking a lover.
Drew had met Valerie when she was thirty-eight. He’d been twenty-two and driving trucks for the Steele Corporation. Their chance meeting happened when he was making a delivery to one of her numerous warehouses. She told him that what hadattracted her to him was that, in addition to having looks and a solid, muscled body that exuded masculinity, he carried himself like someone a lot older than his age.
