“It’s interesting,” he said after one of those spontaneous predinner encounters. We were lying on our backs, staring up at the ceiling after a frenzied round of sex. We were both still fully dressed except for his unzipped pants and my discarded underwear.
“What is?” I asked dreamily, still caught up in the residual sensations of our lovemaking.
“I never expected to have great sex with my wife.”
I looked at him, my insecurities hitching up a notch. “You thought I’d be bad in bed?”
“Before I met you, I guess I assumed marrying a nice Arab girl from a Muslim family meant that we’d have nice, pleasant, polite sex.”
“In other words, you thought you’d have to settle.” I sat up and looked around for my underwear. “Let me guess, Lizzie was a maniac in bed.” Had he thought of her when we were making love? Did he compare my body to hers?
“Whoa!” He sat up fast. “What?”
I immediately wished I could take the words back. I was furious at myself for uttering Lizzie’s name and letting her intrude on our honeymoon.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “How am I supposed to be honest and talk openly if you’re going to make anything I say now somehow about the women in my past?”
It was a fair question. The man wasn’t talkative by nature, and the last thing I wanted to do was shut down what little conversation he did want to have. “I’m sorry. I’m a little insecure because I’m new at this.”
He reached for my hand. “You can’t really believe I’m thinking about anyone else when we’re having mind-blowing sex.”
“Mind-blowing?” That cheered me up. I always took pride in being an A student. “Tell me more.”
“The best sex I’ve ever had.” He dipped his head to kiss my neck. “Which I did not expect.”
I shivered at the sensation of his lips gently nuzzling my nape. “Let that be a lesson to you that you can’t put every Arab girl in a box.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” His mouth trailed up to nibble my earlobe.
“You have no idea what it’s like. We’re brought up with the threat of total ruin, including parental alienation and community shunning, if we dare sex it up with a boy before marriage.” I detested the idea ofbeing thought of as a cold prude because I followed the rules, even though I chafed against them. “Just because we abstain, that doesn’t mean we don’t want sex as much as guys do. Or as much as white girls do.”
“I never really thought about it, to be honest.”
“And, by the way, while you were expecting boring sex with your wife, I was fantasizing about magical, fantastic sex with my husband.”
“Were you?”
“Of course! If I’m only going to have sex with one man in my entire life, it has to be great sex, right?”
Amusement lit his handsome face. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on a guy, expecting him to be the ultimate fantasy in bed.”
I shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t make the rules. I just play by them.” I teasingly gave him a critical, exaggerated once-over. “I’ll have to wait and see how it works out.”
“What do you mean?”
“To determine whether the reality matches my fantasy. I haven’t seen any unicorns and rainbows yet.”
“Now you’re going to give me performance anxiety.”
I batted my eyelashes at him. “I think you might be up for the job. You’re off to a good start.”
“That’s a relief.” He chuckled, feathering his fingertips up my thigh. “I guess I’d better get back to work.”
“So much for going to dinner,” I said, lying back on the bed with a happy sigh.
Chapter Seventeen
Now
