I nod, but I don’t like the look he’s wearing. It’s like a little of that anger from earlier has come back. Luc shakes his head again, almost like a dog shedding water.
“Come sit.” He pats the couch again. I take two more steps.
“I’m just reminding you,” I say softly, “that you said talking isn’t bad, so I expect you to keep your word on that.”
I say this—mostly—to make him laugh, and it works. If he’s laughing, I can relax. At least a little.
He reaches a hand to me, and I take it, moving the rest of the way toward him before sitting.
“Even if we have to talk about something bad, like I said, us talking won’t be bad.” He cocks a brow at me. “This is ours, remember?”
At this, warmth pours through me. “I remember.” And I squeeze his hand.
“Okay,” he says, as if it’s settled. Then his eyes narrow like he’s wincing. “I gotta tell you something—”
“You’re married,” I blurt.
His brows shoot up. “What?! No! What the hell, Millie?”
I shake my head. “Sorry. Sorry. I just went with something really bad. Like ripping off a Band-Aid,” I blather. “Now, anything you say will just pale by comparison.”
Luc blinks at me, looking both confused and mildly concerned. I take a cleansing breath, rub my free hand up and down one thigh, and nod. “Okay, I think I got that out of my system. Go for it.”
His brows downshift again. “Okay… So… On Monday?” He says it like a question, his voice dipping low, making it plenty clear he’s talking about when we had sex. I bite my bottom lip because I just knew something was wrong.
Is it me?
Is there something wrong with my junk? Like a freak-of-nature thing? “Did you know that male cats have barbed penises?”
Okay, even I can’t believe I just said that.
“Wh-ha-hat?!” If Luc looked confused and concerned before, he’s downright horror-stricken now.
And, God help me, I can’t shut up. “Yeah. They’re covered with all these little spines that appear to make cat sex really painful for the female,” I explain, my vet school training kicking in hard core. “But it’s believed that the spines trigger feline ovulation.”
“Millie—why?” Luc asks bug-eyed. “Why are you telling me this?”
I let go a breath. “Well… just that… maybe if something didn’t feel quite right when we… you know—”
“Stop.”
I stop.
Luc squeezes his eyes shut and runs a hand down his face. Then he blinks at me, looking like a man who has just been put through the wringer. He takes my hands with both of his, bouncing them on my knees with each word.
“Everything. Everything felt right, Millie. I swear to Christ.”
“Then what—”
“Millie, the condom broke.” He says this, and I realize that his face is going red, and it’s getting redder. “That’s all. I should have told you then, but I didn’t want to freak you out.”
I swallow. “Oh.”
“Oh?”He blinks four or five times. “You mean, you’re not freaked out?”
“Well…” All things considered, it’s better than him telling me that sex with me felt like banging a cactus, but, honestly, it doesn’t feel like news. “To tell you the truth, I’m not all that surprised.”
This time when his brows fly up, I can see he’s genuinely stunned. “What do you mean? Why?”
