“Oh yeah?” I choke on a wet laugh, gesturing to the tears now painting my cheeks.
“Yeah. Stand by what I said. Don’t think you have anything to be embarrassed about.” He runs an absentminded hand along the sun-kissed skin of his shoulder before he asks, “Have you ... been with anyone but Scott?”
“I had a boyfriend in high school.”
“Prom night?” Miller arches a wry brow.
“No,” I laugh softly. “But the equivalent amount of fumbling around before we left for college. And there was a particularly disastrous night during my first week of school with someone else I’d prefer not to think about.”
He drops his forearms to his thighs, a wave curls across his forehead, and he raises his hands. “So, uh, three?”
“Let’s call it two and a half.” I try to laugh, but my voice wilts. “Is that bad? Pathetic?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m just ... guessing none of them ... knew what to do with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s important ... at least to me, to make sure the person I’m with ... That it’s, uh, working for them.” He shrugs, but the muscles in his neck tighten. “Did it ever work for you?”
It should be funny—me, sitting here, talking about whether or not I can orgasm with a man who first met me when I had mustard in my hair and margarita all over my shirt. But Miller looks at me, and I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.
I shake my head. “Sometimes. Not often. There were things I liked that he ... didn’t.”
“Yeah?” His hands dig into his thighs, striations of veins running along the backs of them. “What did you want that he didn’t?”
He says it in this way, all weighed down with disbelief that there ever could have been a man who didn’t want something—anything—that I did.
“I wanted ... to be on top.” I chew on my bottom lip. “He didn’t like that or maybe, I don’t know, he didn’t like the fact that I was in control. So, we never found ourselves in that position, and as a result ... it didn’t work for me very often.”
“Do you—when was the last time you—”
I give him a flat look. “I have a vibrator, Miller.”
He makes a fist, pressing it to his mouth, and he groans. “I’d pay good fucking money to see that.”
Embarrassment pulls my shoulders back. “You’re making fun of me.”
“No.” He starts shaking his head. His hands find his thighs again, and he leans forward, looking up at me with wholly dark eyes, hair curling in waves around his ears now. “Trust me, I’m not.”
“I get it. It is funny. The thirty-two-year-old obsessed with dinosaurs who’s never had a satisfying sexual experience in her life. I might as well adopt a bunch of cats and—”
“You’ve got—” He cuts me off with an incredulous look and a slow, measured exhale. “You’ve got no idea, do you? You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
“No, I’m not.”
Miller splays his hands wide. “Oh, okay, I’m lying.”
All that does is draw attention to the carving paths of muscle across his arms, his broad chest, and the neatly stacked abdominal muscles that disappear into the waist of his swim shorts.
“Have you seen you?” I flick a hand towards him.
“Have you seen you, Ren?” he echoes, all flared impatience, before he drops back into the seat, slouching down. “You’re wrong.”
I frown. “About what?”
“Earlier, you started to say—you said—” He groans, scrubbing his face, sending the waves of his hair every which way before he stares at me, unblinking. “It is, something I could help you with. Something I’d be, uh, happy to help you with.”
“You’d want to have sex with me?” I ask, so shrill it’s almost a squeak.
