Chapter Twenty
Aurelia
I can see Luke wrestling with himself as to whether to answer. I wait patiently, sipping my wine, and eventually he sighs and says, “Medium height. Brown hair. Hazel eyes.”
That makes me laugh.
His lips curve up. “What?”
“I don’t want a police sketch,” I scold. “I meant what was she like?”
A frown flickers on his brow. “She was cool and composed. Organized. Structured.”
It’s an interesting description. Not beautiful, funny, warm, sexy.
“She was very clever,” he continues. “She knew how to argue her position. She was a barrister.”
“Wow.” That surprises me, I don’t know why.
“I know,” he says wryly. “I punched above my weight there.”
“Not at all. You’re a smart guy.” It’s only as I say it, though, that I realize how true that is.
Previously, I’d thought of him as an army soldier, an automaton, trained to do as he was bid.
But that’s incredibly unjust. I’m not surprised at all that a smart woman would find him attractive.
Or did she just see him as the brawn to her brain?
“When did you meet?” I ask.
“Shortly after she left university. I’d already joined the army, and I was on leave.”
I know they only broke up last year, so they were obviously together for a few years. “Tough for both of you when you had to go back,” I say.
“I guess, although she was always super busy with her job. She worked really hard. She was abused as a teen by an uncle. She went into family law because she said she wanted to try to help other women who’d been in her position.” He looks down and scratches at a mark on his shorts.
There’s a deeper mystery here, something he wants to confess, but I know him well enough to understand that I’m going to have to tease it out of him. “Poor girl. That was commendable.”
“It was. But it meant she had a… complicated view of…” He trails off.
“Of what?”
His gaze rises to meet mine. “Of sex.”
My pulse picks up a little. The rain is lashing at the windows, and it feels as if we’re surrounded, cut off. The atmosphere has turned intimate. We’re not principal and CPO anymore. We’re two people getting to know one another, opening each other up like oyster shells.
“What happened?” I ask softly.
He hesitates, then says, “I don’t want this to come across wrong.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, I understand everyone’s different, and she’d been through a lot…”
“I know you’d never be purposefully mean or cruel,” I say. “You can tell me.”
“If anyone’s going to understand, it’s you,” he replies, somewhat mysteriously.
He surveys me as if weighing up the pros and cons of confessing.
Then he sighs again. “Her view of sex was somehow… I don’t know…
transactional, I guess. It served a purpose.
But she never… I mean she didn’t feel, you know… ” He’s struggling to frame it.
“Spit it out,” I say with a smile. “Just say it.”
Another sigh, and he runs his hand through his hair. “I tried to make sure she enjoyed it.” He looks embarrassed. “If you know what I mean.”
“To make sure she had an orgasm?”
“Yeah. I mean, obviously, women can fake it, so you never know. But she didn’t like being touched much. And she didn’t like oral.”
“Giving or receiving?”
“Well, neither much, but receiving especially. She said she didn’t like how it made her feel, and she was too sensitive. I think she saw sex as something you did once a week, to keep the guy happy, you know? She never… on her own…”
Ohhh… he’s saying she never touched herself. If anyone’s going to understand, it’s you. I think he’s talking about seeing my vibrator. I guess to him it means I’m open about sex, and I enjoy pleasuring myself.
I try not to blush. This has obviously been a real problem for him.
Maybe his family didn’t talk about sex much; his parents broke up when he was fourteen, right when he could have done with some guidance, and perhaps they were so caught up in their own problems that he had nobody to talk to, as his brothers were younger than he was.
Guys don’t tend to talk to their friends about sex, especially about problems or insecurities.
“I’m so sorry.” It feels weird to cast myself as the expert here when I’ve only had one partner, but it seems as if I’m more open than Penny was. “Did she not like talking about it?”
He shakes his head.
“Did she get embarrassed?”
“No, more impatient and dismissive. As time went by, I realized she just didn’t think about it. Not the way I do, anyway.” He gives me a boyish, mischievous look.
I chuckle. “Me too. As you’ve obviously gathered, from seeing the vibrator.”
“Honestly?” He gives me a helpless look. “The first thing I felt when I saw it was relief. You read about women using them, but I’ve never met one.”
“She wouldn’t consider it?”
“God, no. I think she had a naturally low libido and just didn’t think about it or have those needs. And because of that, and what happened to her, she saw people who liked sex as somehow aberrant, I guess. She didn’t understand masturbation at all and treated it like a perversion.”
Pity fills me. “She didn’t like you doing it?”
He looks embarrassed again, but continues, “My parents are religious, and I was brought up to think it was a sin. I still did it… but then Penny caught me once. Early in the relationship. She hit the roof. Said I needed to control myself. Ever since then, it’s made me feel guilty.”
“I’m so sorry. That’s awful. It’s natural, and it’s medically good for you.”
He gives a short laugh. “Really.” His voice is heavy with disbelief.
But I nod. “I’m serious. It releases feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters. And for guys, it helps guard against prostate cancer.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Men who ejaculate more than twenty-one times a month have a twenty percent lower chance of developing it.”
His eyes nearly fall out of his head. “Twenty-one times a month?”
“Yeah. So you’d better start building up the muscles in your right hand.”
That makes him laugh. He studies me with something close to admiration. “It amazes me how you seem so comfortable talking about it.”
“My family’s always been open about sex.
My parents answered any questions I had, especially my mum, and of course Caesar and Marcus were always joking about it, so I picked up on a lot of things from them.
” I shrug. “And orgasms are nice. I don’t see why everyone doesn’t want to have them as often as they can. ”
I sip my wine, wishing I could hear what he was thinking. He’s looking at me with a mixture of bewilderment, admiration, and hope, as if he’s pondering if I’m for real.
“Dominic is a fool,” he says softly.
“Why?”
“Letting you go. You’re perfect.”
I snort. “I’m far from it. We both know that.”
But he shakes his head. “You’re beautiful, warm, funny, clever, and you like sex.” He groans and tips his head back. “Where have you been all my life?”
I smile at the compliment, warming all the way through. Then, curious, I ask, “Penny wasn’t your first, though?”
“No. I had a couple of girlfriends before. But you’re so clueless about sex when you’re younger. It’s all fumbling and apologizing. Sometimes, I’ve wondered what it would be like…” His voice trails off.
I lean my head on my hand. The wine is having a pleasant effect, loosening the tight nuts and bolts in my joints, relaxing my spine, polishing off my edges.
I think it’s doing the same to him. For the first time, he slides down the sofa a little, his posture more open, less defensive.
We’re turned a little toward each other, and I lift my feet and tuck them under his thigh, the way I did earlier.
He rests his hand on my ankles, his thumb stroking the top of my feet.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Being with someone who was open. Who didn’t see sex as a chore.”
My heart goes out to him. Not every guy has had hundreds of partners. I love that he’s confident in so many ways, but secretly shy and unsure when it comes to affairs of the heart.
I sip my wine. “What would you do, if you were with someone like that?”
He gives me that gorgeous, boyish, mischievous look again, but just shrugs.
Oh God, I just adore this guy.
“Would you like to watch a woman use a vibrator?” I ask softly.
His brows draw together as if he can’t ever imagine that happening in the real world.
My heart racing, I ask, “Does it turn you on to think about me touching myself?” His eyebrows rise, and then he blows out a breath and brushes a hand over his face. I laugh. “You like that idea?”
He doesn’t reply, but his eyes are filled with wonder and wariness, as if he doesn’t believe this is real.
I’m beginning to understand that when he doesn’t speak, it’s not necessarily because he doesn’t know what to say.
It’s just that in the past, he’s had such a bad reaction to expressing an opinion that he’s afraid to say the wrong thing.
He’s rejected me several times before, but that was before we came to Evermore. Things have changed, and that—and possibly the wine—gives me the courage to act.
Our gazes lock. I think he’s holding his breath. His eyes are so hot, they practically turn me molten on the spot.
Reaching across, I put my wine on the table. Heart hammering, I get to my feet and turn to face him. Then I climb astride him and settle down on his lap.
I wait to see if he protests, tells me to stand, or even gets up. But he doesn’t. Instead, he lets his head fall onto the back of the sofa and looks up at me, fire in his eyes.
Taking his face in my hands, I brush my thumbs across the short bristles on his cheeks. I’ve wanted to kiss him for so long. I’ve dreamed about it for months. But in my dreams, I’ve only thought about what it would feel like when our lips touch. I’d forgotten about my other senses.