“No. I just… I don’t know what to say.”
Still, I don’t remove my fingers, especially when she flutters around them. I think I hear my jaw crack as I bite down to keep myself from doing anything else stupid.
“Okay,” she says, gasping in breaths and attempting to appear calm, but the pulse in her neck is racing into the next zip code. “So you have sex in public?”
My eyebrows reach for my hairline. “No,” I say carefully, not wanting to kink shame her if that’s her thing. Fuck, is she into that? “Voyeurism isn’t my thing.”
She frowns, and it’s so damn cute I want to lick her entire body. Not a normal reaction for me.
“Whips? Chains? Oh my God. Do you DP? Who do you DP with? Do you expect me to DP? Do I get aftercare? A safe word? I can’t be a sex slave. I wouldn’t be very good at it anyway because I ask too many questions.”
What the hell is she talking about?
“I can tell you right now that I don’t like pain,” she continues. “I’m scared of it even. And the dark, but you already knew that, so I couldn’t like, be locked in a cage or anything.”
Her body stiffens, and only then do I remember that I’m still fingering her. Slowly, I ease my fingers out, and her keening makes me want to ram my cock into her warmth and never leave.
“Hold on, Clover.” Apparently, she has more knowledge than I expected. Perhaps that makes me a misogynistic prick, I have no idea. But her questions lead to some of my own. “How the hell do you know about double penetration?”
“It’s a thing, right? I read about it all the time in romance novels…” She tilts her head to the side, as though she’s imagining it happening in her mind, and a jealous roar vibrates in my chest. “I don’t see how it works. Like, how do two penises fit in that one hole? Seems painful.”
“Jesus Christ.” This has gone off the rails.
“And how do you position yourself next to another guy so that can even work? Wouldn’t you have, like, a butt in your face?”
“Okay, hold on. Double penetration is not happening anywhere near you, Clover.”
Her face falls.What the actual fuck?Was she thinking about it? Is that something I could do for her?
No. No fucking way am I sharing her after I only just found her.
She taps her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe I could be a sex slave, but like a gentle one. You know, where you boss me around in the bedroom, but not in the real world.”
“That’s not what a sex slave—” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “We’re so far off track here.”
“When you go to the club, do you go alone? Is there someone waiting for you? Do you have multiple partners?”
My spinning head can’t keep up with her.
“Back to the whips and chains,” she says. “That’s a hard no for me. Bondage too. I don’t think I’d like to be tied up. But?—”
I can’t take another minute of this.
Surging forward, I take ownership of her lips just to stop the incessant questions about what my sex life was like…before her.
I plunder. I ravage. I seek comfort in her taste, her arms, her.
When she’s gasping for breath and dazed, I finally pull back.
“The club caters to the wealthy elite and to…all tastes,” I say. “Mine, however, are straightforward. The women I’ve been with, and to be clear, I can count them on one hand, understand that there’s no kissing, no lingering glances, no intimacy. It’s a transaction. One where we both submit to STI checks and always use protection.”
Tears well in her eyes, and my gut clenches. I’m fucking this all up.
She pulls herself up to the headboard, then tucks her knees into her chest. “I—I can’t have a relationship like that, Valen. I—I’m sorry. I?—”
“Fuck no. Of course you won’t.” My voice is too loud, and she flinches. It’s the first time since leaving Happiness that she’s reverted to her jumpy, fearful ways because of me, and I hate myself for lashing out, so I use all my energy to control myself.
“I like your hands on me. I like kissing you until I swallow your moans. Everything I’ve required in my past is in complete contradiction to what I want with you.”
