Page 27 of Ruthless Creatures

“I don’t think I have.”

“Am I going to need to sit down for this? I have a funny feeling I’ve got a long lecture coming.”

“Let me just paint a picture for you of how perfect this is.”

“By ‘this’ are you referring to his penis?”

She ignores me. “He’s gorgeous. That’s a given. He’s totally into you. He’s alsoleaving soon.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there can be no emotional entanglements. That’s your favorite thing, remember?”

I grudgingly admit that it’s a check in the pro column.

“Also, it would break your tragic dry spell. It might even help you move on. Think of it like therapy.”

“Therapy?”

“For your vagina.”

“Oh my god.”

“All I’m saying is that I don’t see a downside here.”

She might if I shared the tidbit about him buying the house with cash so he could launder his money and how he equivocated at first when I asked him if I should be afraid of him.

On second thought, that would probably just make her like him even more.

According to what she told me about Stavros earlier in the conversation, it sounds like his tech job is a cover for his real gig as an arms dealer. Nobody needs that many passports or cargo planes.

“I just feel like… I don’t know anything about him. What if he’s a criminal?”

“What are you, running for public office? Who cares if he’s a criminal? You’re not marrying him, you’re just bouncing up and down on his dick for a few days until he leaves. Don’t make everything so complicated.”

“What if he has an STD?”

Her sigh is loud and heavy. “Have you heard of this newfangled thing called a condom? It’s all the rage with the kids these days.”

“You can still get an STD with a condom.”

“Okay. I give up. Enjoy your celibacy. The rest of us will be out here having enriching sex lives with totally inappropriate partners like normal people.”

We’re quiet for a moment, until she says, “Oh. I get it. It’s not that you think there won’t be any emotional entanglements… it’s that you think there will.”

I’m about to issue a loud and fervent denial, but take a second to consider it instead.

“He’s the first man I’ve had any kind of reaction to since David. The other guys I’ve dated have felt more like brothers. Like, they were nice and I enjoyed spending time with them, but that was it. I would’ve been just as content sitting at home with Mojo as going out with any one of them. I certainly had no desire to sleep with them. They were just… safe.

“But Kage puts my endocrine system into overdrive. He makes me feel like I’m hooked up to electrodes, getting juiced like Frankenstein’s monster. And that’s withbarelyknowing him.”

“You’re not gonna fall in love with him if you have sex a time or three.”

“Are you sure? Because that’s exactly the kind of horrible thing that would happen to me.”

“Argh! Will you listen to yourself?”

“I’m just saying.”