“Max, I have not had even vaguely mediocre sex since that night. In fact, I would welcome mediocre sex at this stage. I would probably welcome vaguely subpar sex, or sex that didn’t end with me in an emergency room. And as for orgasms . . .not one! Not. One! Not even the start of one. In fact, I am very much convinced that orgasms during sex are a myth. Because I have tried very, very hard to have one. Believe me I have really, really, really—”
I cut her off. “Okay, I get it. You’ve tried.”
“The only orgasms I’ve had are all by my lonely little self and that’s because of you.You.”She poked me in the chest.“That sex we tried to have all those years ago has set in motion this sexual curse that I have been living under for thirteen years!”
“You think I cursed you?” My head was spinning. I was vacillating between taking this really seriously, getting turned on when she talked about giving herself orgasms, and then pissed off, so pissed off, when she spoke about other men, which I knew was totally hypocritical, but I couldn’t help it anyway.
“Your penis fucking cursed me, Max! It’s been all downhill since that . . .” She pointed at my pants and wiggled her finger about. “So while you’ve been running around having the time of your life and making Belinda, or Bianca, or Brice, Moon and Star or whatever her name is come ten times, not to mention making a vet pass out from screaming orgasms in the pool, I’ve been givingCPRto a man that had a heart attack while having sex with me and being secretly happy he did because the sex was so bad that I would have given anything for it to end. And now it seems like your penis might be cursing me all over again—well, the proximity of your penis at least! Ever since meeting your penis again on that plane, I have been literally out of my mind, and the weirdest things have been happening.”
“How do you know about Star, the vet and Bianca?”
“I told you—I’ve heard the stories, Max. Everyone seems to know about Maximillian Adam and his amazing ability to make women squirt fountains and give them seventeen orgasms so they are not able to walk down the catwalk the next day!”
I laughed and she snapped her fingers at me.
“Hey, this is not funny!” she said seriously.
“Ash, you shouldn’t believe everything that you hear.”
“Well, obviously I know you can’t make a woman come just by looking at her.”
I paused for a moment and then couldn’t help my smile. “No, that one is actually true.”
“What?” She pushed me in the chest.
“What the hell was that for?”
“You made a woman come just by looking at her and I can’t even come when I have a guy trying tomakeme come for, like, a full hour—it was so fucking awful I had to fake one just to make him stop! Are you serious?”
“He clearly didn’t know what he was doing if he was at it for an hour,” I said, and smiled at her, which was clearly the wrong thing to do.
“You think this is funny?” she asked, her face awash with anger now. I wiped the smile off my face.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“You should be sorry, Max. You should be!”
“Okay, I am. What can I do to fix it?” I asked.
“Well, it’s not like we can flash back thirteen years and have mind-blowing sex with a million orgasms so that my sex life didn’t start out on such a wrong foot that it is eternally cursed and doomed. Or maybe it’s just me. I don’t know. Maybe I’m the one who’s terrible at sex and dating—”
“Stop it.” I took her by the hands and pulled her towards me, pressing her into my chest. “Don’t say that. You’re not. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” she asked, her voice soft and apprehensive.
I stared down at her. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I walked us backwards. It only took two steps until I had pinned her to the door. I pressed her back into it while I pressed myself to her. Her eyes widened as she looked up at me. Her mouth fell open, her chest began rising and falling as her breaths came out shallow and fast.
“I can’t go back and change what happened thirteen years ago.” I took her hands in mine, laced my fingers through them and then pushed her arms above her head, pinning our hands to the door. She gasped and gripped my fingers tighter.
“But I can do something else for you,” I said.
“What?” she whispered.
I brought my lips to hers but didn’t kiss her. “I can make you come so many times that you’ll beg me to stop.”
CHAPTER 35
Max
