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Now he focused on the woman before him. She was more than a pretty face. He suspected there was a lot going on behind those intelligent blue eyes.
He wondered if she felt the little current of whatever this was floating between them. The strong physical connection. The I feel like we’ve met before feeling. Xavier had only felt this once or twice before, once with his now ex-fiancée, Sasha.
The minute he thought about her he pushed memories of her away. They were too painful. They were the whole reason he and a group of his fraternity brothers had created Nost in the first place. The little app had exploded over the last few weeks, taking them from a bunch of largely unknown software engineers to being propositioned by Google and Facebook for potentially millions. Xavier had nearly the whole world at his feet, but all he wanted was a little companionship. Temporary companionship, he reminded himself. He thought of Sasha, her dark eyes and cocoa skin, the way she tilted her head back when she laughed, how much she reminded him of his own mother. His mother who died when he was a kid. Sasha used to have him wrapped around her little finger. That was...until he found out she betrayed him.
He didn’t need more pain. Not now. Probably not ever.
Concentrate on the now. The future is too painful. That’s why you live in the moment, he reminded himself.
“So...was that really your first date from Nost?” he asked her, which was his way of prying without prying. He got why anonymous sex wasn’t for everybody. Newbies were a wild card. But he wasn’t about putting pressure on anyone. You were in or out, as far as he was concerned.
He watched the color bleed into her cheeks. “Yep. Happy Fun Time was it. Just signed up yesterday...and not sure it’s for me. My friend Sarah actually insisted I try it. But...I don’t know. I’m a little skeptical. What’s in it for women?”
“Oh, everything, actually,” Xavier said, raising his glass to his lips. “You’d be surprised.”
She quirked an eyebrow, clearly intrigued, as she set her own glass back on the bar, and played with the small black straw, pushing the slice of lime around her cup. “Casual sex was invented by men.”
“I don’t know about that. Women want just as many partners as men do, you know. It’s just that society tells them they should be good girls. But that’s all just a construct, really, something men want.”
“You’re saying men want women to have fewer partners,” she challenged.
“Of course. Men want it both ways: they want to have sex with as many women as possible, but keep most women at home, under wraps. A fully realized sexual woman who isn’t afraid to go after what she needs terrifies most men.”
A small blush crept up her pale cheek, which Xavier found a little bit adorable.
Definite newbie. Xavier had more than a handful of women who claimed they’d never consider Nost, who suddenly wound up in his bed. And it wasn’t just his imposing physique. He knew that anonymous sex could be freeing. If you let the concept in.
“I write for Helena, the women’s online magazine?” He knew it and nodded. “I kind of thought this would all just be fodder for my next article.”
“Ah, so you’re going to tell your readers how terrible and sexist the whole thing is,” he teased.
“N-no,” she countered. “I mean, I was going to research it and...”
“But you’d made up your mind before you even tried it,” he said, reading her like the open book she was.
“Maybe.” She stirred her drink once more, focusing on the ice cubes there. “And Happy Fun Time didn’t help.”
“Don’t let him be the poster child for your experience,” Xavier said. “Believe me, he’s the exception not the rule.”
“So what do you do for a living?” she asked him, blue eyes intent on an answer. She was a seeker, a collector of facts, someone who wouldn’t rest until she got all the information.
“Work in tech,” he said, and shrugged. He glanced at the melting ice cubes in his glass.
“Where?”
“Here and there.” He grinned. It was the truth. He’d worked at other companies before founding Nost. He’d had a lot of practice not revealing details about himself. He’d made that mistake in the past, letting on where he’d worked, and a woman found him through a Google search with only his first name and Nost. She stalked him, showing up at work, at his apartment, asking for a relationship he wasn’t willing to give. He’d been up front with her, but after two nights with him...she’d fallen for him. It had been a whole mess, actually. Now he’d learned to be more careful. He knew exactly what to reveal—and what to keep secret. He had his rules.
