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Honey

I’d hadno idea about her parents. It made sense and explained why Bibliofile hadn’t wanted to talk about personal things. Someday I wanted to delve deeper and make her understand that she had done nothing wrong to make her parents neglect her like that, but that would be for another time.

“You have a seriously great butt,” Bren said.

“You have a seriously greateverything,” I told her. She looked gorgeous tonight, but she always looked incredible.

“Thank you, Honey Bea.”

“I need to come up with a nickname for you too,” I said as I stroked my fingers through her hair. I’d have to ask her what kind of conditioner she used to make it so soft and shiny.

She closed her eyes, as if basking in my touch. “Bren is already a nickname.”

“I know. But I need one that’s just for me. Like Honey Bea is just for you.”

“You could…” she started to say, then blushed and pressed her lips together.

“No, what were you going say?”

“I was going to say you could call me babe. Or baby. Since they start with B.” Oh. That was unexpected. Not that long ago she was determined never to speak to me again. Now she wanted me to call her baby.

“How about we try both? Babe.”

She tilted her head to the side as if she was considering. “Use it in a sentence.”

“Uhhh, hey babe, can I eat your chips?”

Bren smiled and handed me the bag. “You really were hungry.”

“Sure was, baby.”

She laughed. “I don’t know. I think I need to get used to them. I’ve never had someone use a term of endearment like that for me before.”

I had a million of them. Everyone in my family seemed to come up with several for me, some more ridiculous than the others.

“I’ll try out all kinds of them if you want. You can have whatever you want, Bren.” I meant that in more ways than one.

Our eyes met and the temperature in the room rose a few degrees. Bren shifted and closed her eyes.

“Before we… If we… I need to talk to you about something. I’d love to put it off, but I don’t think we can. You need to know a few things about me before we go further.”

Okay, we were doing this. She’d alluded to needing to tell me something last night too.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can trust me with it.”

She reached out and took my hand, squeezing my fingers so tightly that my bones ached.

“Thank you. I know. You’re the only person I’ve ever really trusted.”

Bren collected herself for a few moments.

“Firstly, I need to tell you that I’ve had sex before, but I’ve never…I’ve never, um, had an orgasm.” The last part came out in a rush, the words all hooked together so I could barely make them out.

I waited to see if there was more.

Her face was redder than I’d ever seen it and her fingers trembled in mine. She had been absolutely terrified to tell me this.

“Bren, baby. That’s okay. That’s fine. It doesn’t matter to me. That’s not always the goal. And maybe we can talk about it together and work on it. I mean, that sounds like it could be fun.”