Page 95 of Hell Bent

“Not from anything nefarious. It was Ben. You showed your license to somebody at the grocery store, and she commented.”

“Wow. He reallyisyour nephew. How on earth did he remember that? So me not telling you about my birthday made youmad?Sorry, but that’s another stupid one. I didn’t want you to think you had to do something for me!”

I stood up and did the thing I’d done before. Put my palms on the wall and banged my head a few times. She started laughing but still looked confused, so I said, “Could you please accept that Iwantto do something for you? Look at what you’ve done for me. I’m not what’s-his-name.”

“Oh, low blow. If you mean Ned.” She was looking a little annoyed for the first time. By that, but not by anything else? Why?

“Yes,” I said. “Ned. Who sat back and let you do it all. Decide everything. Fix everything. Take responsibility for everything.”

“You met the guyonce.For about five minutes.”

“And am I wrong?”

She thought about it. “Probably not.”

“There you go. Are we done having a talk? Because itisyour birthday, and I have some questions.”

“What kinds of questions?” She was still looking suspicious.

“First: Do you want to go out with other people tonight, or just you and me? We’re invited to dinner with Harlan andJennifer and Owen. Maybe some other people too, but if you’d rather do something more intimate …”

“Oh, I get to choose this?”

“Of course you do. What have I just been saying?”

“Then—OK. Here’s what I want. I want to spend the day with you and Ben, and then going out with other people sounds fun. But afterthat,I want …” She stopped.

“What?” My heart was pounding a little. Why?

“I want to go back to my trailer, now that Ben knows he doesn’t like peaty Scotch, and have birthday sex.”

“Excuse me? What did I just do?”

She laughed. “No, but— you know. The kind where I get to make noise.” Her color was a little high, I thought. “I don’t have any close neighbors now, not in winter. If you can do it more than once a day, that is. If not, no worries, but you seem like you know a lot of exciting positions, and I’d like to try some of them in a fully adult environment. Maybe with?—”

“With what?” How had Ifoundthis woman? “And of course I can do it more than once a day. What, I need Viagra? I’m thirty-one years old. But wait. Maybe with what?”

“With toys,” she admitted, turning pinker still. “If you have toys. Ned wasn’t very interested, OK? And as we know, I have limitations. But I’d like to at leasttry.”

“Right,” I said. “Right.” I couldn’t have stopped grinning if I’d tried. “That sounds like a birthday I can manage. Let’s go eat your birthday breakfast. Which I should’ve provided.” I gave her a careful little slap on the ass. “Another grievance to store up for tonight.”

This was going to be interesting, being dominant but still gentle enough not to hurt her. Good thing I had a whole day to figure out how.

37

NEW FRIENDS

Alix

When I walked into the living room, I started to get it.

There was a huge vase of flowers on the dining-room table. I mean,huge.Exercise-ball huge, to put it in Sebastian terms. They were pink, they were frilly, and they were the lushest, most unabashedly feminine flowers I’d ever seen. Like peonies, but they smelled better. They smelledamazing,more like rose perfume than rose perfume itself.

“Are they for me?” I asked.

“Duh. I doubt he bought them for me,” Ben said from the breakfast bar, where he was working his way through a mixing bowl of cereal and milk. “Happy birthday. I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten it was today, but Sebastian said I couldn’t say, because you were supposed to be surprised that he knew.”

“Since you didn’t tell me,” Sebastian put in.