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“You’re telling me you haven’t had sex in eight years?”
She let her silence answer for her.
He ran a hand over the back of his neck, wordlessly taking the glass of water she’d poured for herself and drinking it himself in three gulps as he watched her.
“Okay. Why?” he asked finally.
Riley had been prepared for him to accuse her of lying and to insist that there was no way she could be a sex columnist without sex.
Instead there was complete trust, albeit slight confusion, on his face.
She shrugged her shoulders a little. “No good reason, actually. No traumatic event that had me fearing intimacy. No crippling emotional issues.” Save for the fact that I might be halfway in love with you, and no other man compares.
But Riley was no dummy. There were some things you simply didn’t say to a gun-shy commitment-phobe like Sam.
“I just never felt … it,” she finished, feeling almost unbearably lame.
“But you have done it once, right? I mean, you’re not—”
“Not a virgin, no,” she rushed to reassure him. “No weird rituals or ripping of hymen to be expected.”
Sam winced. “Christ.”
“So does this … change things?” she asked, hoping her voice sounded like that of a sophisticated woman whose revelation was no more consequential than I take cream in my coffee.
“Who was it?” Sam asked, apparently not finished with the talking portion of the evening.
“Dan.”
Sam groaned. “The dork from college?”
“He wasn’t a dork,” she said, her
embarrassment starting to slide into exasperation. “And we were dating for, like, nine months, so quit giving me that you-hussy look.”
“No wonder you decided you didn’t like it,” Sam muttered. “I doubt that guy knew his dick from his Xbox controller.”
Riley opened her mouth to argue but then closed it. Dan had played a lot of videogames.
But this wasn’t exactly the way she had envisioned the conversation. Not like there was any best-case scenario, but she certainly hadn’t imagined it would devolve into a discussion of a boy she rarely thought about.
“Never mind,” she muttered, irritated with herself for driving away all the sexiness of the moment. Irritated with him for letting her.
“Uh-uh,” he said, moving slowly toward her. “No never mind.” He gave her time to back away, and his eyes seemed to glow in satisfaction when she stayed.
Sam stopped just inches from her before he gently wrapped his fingers around her long ponytail, tipping her head back so she had no choice but to meet his questioning gaze head-on.
“This article for Stiletto—the personal one—that’s why you want to end your dry spell?”
She shook her head. “It was only the catalyst. Not the reason.”
“What’s the reason?”
She looked away, wondering how much to reveal. She decided to play it safe.
“I want—I want to experience it.”
“Experience …?”
