Page 36 of The Parent Trap

The guys I tend to go out with and sleep with aren’t the hardbody types, let’s just say. Thai’s accusation as to my type was scarily accurate.

I kick the blankets off and sit up with a frustrated huff. “Stop thinking about Thai Bristow,” I scold myself out loud.

Think about somebody else.

Anyone else.

I reach out and grab my phone. I have to distract myself.

Bring up a website I would never admit under torture to even knowing the name of, let alone that I frequently peruse in search of visual fodder for distraction and release.

I find a video.

The guy in it is all hard lines and sculpted muscles…and thick, throbbing member. He’s rough, demanding. The woman in the video is tiny and frail-looking with bolt-on boobs, but she takes him like a champ, acting like she loves every second of it. I ignore her. Think about him.

Pretend it’s me in the video, doing things that are a million and a half miles outside of who I am and what I like and what I do—I pretend I’m openly sexual. Hungry for him, eager. All the things I simply don’t have the courage to actually be.

I wouldn’t know how. I wouldn’t know where to start. I’d laugh, or more likely, I’d just never let myself even get close to a situation like that.

My sexual experiences are carefully choreographed. We go on no less than four dates before I let him kiss me. It’s more like six dates before I let him get any farther. When we do, it’s at an upscale hotel in town. Lights off. I undress—there’s no messy trail of ripped-off clothing. That frantic, Hollywood passion and frenetic, absurd need is fake. I’ve never felt anything even close to it, nor has any male ever shown a hint of it for me.

Thus, not real.

I take my clothes off, there’s a careful fumbling as he puts on a condom, and then we lie down and he enters me and does the thing, and then it’s over.

That’s sex, in the world of Delia McKenna.

Is it any wonder I’ve never been super desperate for it?

In my fantasy world, however…

There’s a man who has the body of a god rather than a marshmallow, and hewantsme. Can’t get enough of me. Touches me like he owns me. Demands I give him my body, my desire. He drags screams out of me. I’ve never screamed during sex. Barely manage a whimper, most of the time.

But like now, when I’m pretending? Watching this stupid fake scripted video and wishing it was me, I slip my hand under the waistband of my underwear and touch myself and a moan escapes me and I close my eyes and picture the sculpted, hardbody god levered over me with one thick, rippling arm like a pillar beside my face he’s staring down at me with blazing gray-green eyes and his hair is messy and wild and sun-kissed and his skin golden and he’s looking at me like he’s never seen me before. And he’s touching me. It’s his fingers at the apex of my thighs, swirling around my sex in light deft touches. His lips would touch my skin, scour and explore. I’d grip him and caress him and he would be unable to hold back, needing me and wanting more of me. Maybe he’d even pull away and kneel over me and bury his hands in my hair and bring himself to my lips. I’d act like I don’t want to, but secretly I would—secretly Ido. And I’d make him grunt and groan with wild need, he’d be crazy with how I’m making him feel.

He’d rip himself away before he finished in my mouth; he’d needme.

He’d need to be inside me, unable to wait any longer.

And when we joined, it would be…

Wild.

Delirious.

A frenzy of screams and primal roars.

I’d come again and again and again, and he’d hold back and keep making me come, and finally, in unison with me, he’d explode, helplessly.

The fantasy brings it out of me. I’m seized with tremors, moans escaping my clenched teeth, hips flexing.

It’s only when I’m limp and gasping and finally toppling toward a fitful sleep that I realize:

It was Thai in my fantasy.

* * *

I can’t lookat myself in the mirror as I get ready for my run, the next morning. It’s just past dawn, the sky beyond the trees pink-gray-orange. I wear what I usually wear to run: tight black yoga shorts and a super compressive sports bra, hair in a braid, earbuds in, running shoes laced tight.