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“Yes,” she said. “Any man who can do that kind of wicked stuff with his tongue is definitely notgood.”

He shouldn’t like that. But he had definitely been seen as the wet blanket of his family for long enough that it felt... just a little bit good. Just a little bit good to have this woman look at him and think he was a little bit wicked.

“I’m smug about it. Especially because I’m sure you usually use it with busty redheads like Andrea...”

“Not for over a year,” he said.

“Really?” she asked, her eyes going round like tractor gaskets.

“Yes, Bix. Difficult though it might be for you to understand. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you always...”

“That you always want to. So before that she was... this woman that you had an arrangement with sometimes.”

“It’s all I’ve ever had. Casual arrangements with women who like the same. It works for me. It always has. I like it.”

“Oh. Casual, you mean.”

“Yes. Though obviously it’s also not a big priority a lot of the time. Since it’s been more than a year.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Why?”

He sighed heavily and rolled onto his back. “I don’t know, Bix,” he said. “It just didn’t seem important.”

“But you couldn’t resist me.” She sounded so pleased with herself.

“No, I couldn’t,” he said.

“Well, I like that.”

“You’re being very smug, Bix,” he said.

She let out a mean little chuckle. She was so cute. “I am smug.”

“All right, so you tell me why there wasn’t anybody, then.” He wanted to know more about her. Everything. He knew quite a bit, but now they were intimate. Now, they were naked next to each other, and he didn’t see why he shouldn’t just ask her about whatever the hell he wanted. Especially since she was asking him the same.

“Because. It’s too risky. And the guys that were around... They were assholes. I could’ve been with any of them. They certainly wouldn’t have protected me from anyone’s advances or anything like that. But I think that’s part of it. I knew that I was alone in this world. And I knew the sex... It wasn’t gonna make me any closer to somebody. I think that’s the temptation. But I watched all these women... Following these men around, these very bad decisions. Sometimes they would get pregnant, but invariably, they weren’t the same women that were around within two years. I watched all that. My brother did the same. My dad... Hell, my mother was long gone. My brother’s mother. I never saw sex do anything but cost a woman. I told myself I couldn’t afford it. But now I can. Daughtry, I’ve never... I’ve never had an orgasm before.”

“No shit,” he said, unable to help himself.

“Really. Ihadn’tbecause I... I just felt bad all the time. And it was like I was afraid to feel good. I was afraid of feeling lonely. Afraid of wanting sex and not having it.”

“But you have a romance novel.”

She looked away, her cheeks turning scarlet. “It was this little window into something I knew that I could never have. This secret... thing. And it made me hurt all over. It made me want to be touched and held. Rescued. And I knew that I couldn’t be. I’ve had that book for three years. I probably read it six times. But it scares me. It scares me how much I want that. But now it doesn’t feel quite so sad. Quite so precarious. Now it feels... it feels like I might even be able to just have it all together my own self. And that feels pretty amazing. It makes me feel like I can want more things. And not be quite as scared. That’s all.”

“What happens in the book?”

“Well, she sort of gets taken captive in order to be rescued. It’s a whole medieval Norman invasion thing. He chains her to the bed naked.” She sniffed. “She’s wrapped in furs. I mean, it was really very comfortable. A comfortable imprisonment.”

He didn’t know what he’d expected. But it hadn’t been that. “Really?”

“Yes. You could ankle chain me to the bed if you want,” she said. She looked so earnest he didn’t quite know how to interpret the offer.

“Well. That’s... something.”

She grinned. “Don’t look so shocked, Sheriff. You’re a man who carries handcuffs around. Are you going to tell me you’ve never used them to restrain a woman?”

“They would be a different set of handcuffs, Bix. Believe me.”