Page 125 of Just One Look

She sighed. “I think I just failed BDSM 101. I got farther than I thought I would, basically by pretending I was somebody else, but I couldn’t quite seal the deal. Good thing you’re better at it than me. Also good that I was wearing my sexy underwear. Confidence builder.”

He said, “I liked your confidence. And fortunately, I’m good off the bench. No worries. You were bloody hot. Drove me mad.”

She got a hand on his face and asked, “Is your neck OK? Did you strain it? Any pain?”

“No. It’s fine.” He still had her hand, and that felt good. Safe.

Oh. Wait.

She said, “I didn’t get the condom on.”

His body stilled, and then he said, “I hadn’t had sex in more than three months before you.”

She turned her head and stared at him. “Really?”

He smiled and kissed her hand again. “Really. Don’t tell anyone. Spoil my reputation, eh. Tested heaps, too, because professional sportsman are a dirty bunch of bastards. No worries there.”

“I got tested, too,” she said. “After Kristoff. My ex. Just in case. He was in love with somebody else. He said nothing had happened yet, but …”

“Yeh,” he said. “Not likely. What about birth control?”

“Oh. No. I’m good. IUD.”

“Oh. Well, good, then.”

She was up on elbow, then, looking at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“No, really. What?”

“Just wondered whether you’d ever … thought about it.”

“Ababy?”

He frowned at her. “Don’t look so shocked. Babies do happen. Here we were tonight, with Nyree and Marko. You seemed to like that baby all right. I wondered, that’s all.”

“Haveyouthought about it?” she asked.

He had a hand on her face, now, was pulling her down to kiss him. “Easier if I go first, eh.” He smiled, and the tenderness in it took her breath away. “No worries. I can do that. No, I never … planned for it. I reckoned I wasn’t cut out for it.”

“Bad childhood,” she said. “No model.”

“Not bad,” he said, but it sounded automatic, like a story he told himself. “Just not brilliant.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Same. You have to be there all the time, for a kid. I don’t mean physically. I mean emotionally. I could be too stunted. How would I feel if I damaged somebody? If I damaged my own child, because I didn’t love them enough, or even if I just didn’t knowhowto love them enough?”

“So you haven’t considered it.”

“Yes. No.” She sighed. “The days just … go by, you know? I’m so busy, and the days go by, and the weeks, and the years, and then you’re thirty-four, and you have a great job and a great house, but …”

“Yeh,” he said. “The days do that.” His hand was stroking down her cheek. It felt so good. “What happened tonight? Before you came over? You were different.”

“Oh. My dad called.” Her eyes got hot, just like that, and her chest started to ache. She’d thought she’d been so tough on that call, and maybe she had, but what he’d said had hurt. She didn’t want to tell Luka, and she did want to. “He doesn’t approve of my life choices. I told him about you, for one thing. Just to shock him, probably. Juvenile, but I seem to be a little juvenile these days.”

“And he said something,” Luka said. “You can tell me. What?”

“That …” She had to take a breath and start over. It was hard, dragging those words out, but they were so heavy in her, weighing her down. “That I was embarrassing myself. Setting myself up for humiliation. That there was no way a professional athlete would be interested in me. ‘Those men date models. He’ll have sex with you, but that’s all.’ Something like that. Which is no pressure on you,” she hurried on. “I mean, obviously I knew that. I’m not stupid.”