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Josh looked around the room as if the lamp or coffee table might offer a translation of her feedback. “I’m not following you.”
Clara believed that he wasn’t being purposely obtuse. “It’s not really my cup of tea, I guess. Although the woman in the video certainly seemed to enjoy it, so I think we can mark it down as a matter of personal preference.” She folded her hands neatly in front of her.
Josh’s eyes narrowed. “How do your partners usually get you off?” His tone lacked all traces of lechery. She expected him to pull his glasses from his pocket at any moment.
Their conversation had taken an unexpected and dangerous turn toward her less than stellar track record of sexual experiences. Clara trailed her foot across the carpet in front of her and watched the fibers fold back.
“Wait a minute.” Realization must have dawned. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Josh placed an urgent hand on her arm. “Clara Wheaton, please tell me that a man has brought you to orgasm.”
Clara wished for a white flag to wave. “It’s not that some of them didn’t try,” she said, wanting to stand up for a couple of the sweet, well-meaning men she’d dated. “It just never happened, and I could tell that, after a while, they felt bad about it. It seemed more efficient and less awkward for all parties involved if I took care of things myself.”
He shook his head so vehement
ly, she wondered how it didn’t snap his neck. This time, when his eyes swept over her body with blatant heat, she knew he didn’t do it to embarrass her.
“What a waste.”
She didn’t know what to make of his reaction. He seemed almost angry, more bothered than she’d seen him since she moved in. Perhaps he felt sorry for her. Well, she didn’t need his pity. She gave him the withering stare she usually reserved for people who made snide remarks about her family.
“Excuse me.” She sat up as straight as possible. “I happen to bring myself to very satisfying orgasms.”
His eyes blazed at whatever image her confession conjured. “I’m sure you do. But it’s not the same. Doesn’t the thought of losing control excite you at all?”
When he continued, his voice ran like honey over her body, slow and sweet and sticky. “Don’t you ever ache for someone who doesn’t care how bad you want it? Someone who doesn’t grant you release until you’re begging for it?”
Clara clenched everything below her waist. She had to remind herself that his voice was full of promise, not because he liked her, but to prove a point. Unfortunately, that knowledge didn’t keep her from wishing he’d press his tongue against her racing pulse point.
“Haven’t you ever let someone learn your body? Let them taste every inch of you until the line between pleasure and pain blurs because it feels too good? Too much?”
Clara couldn’t stop her mind from playing back lurid images from the video she’d just seen with herself in the place of Josh’s co-star.
“Don’t you want someone who gets so. Fucking. Hard. Watching you squirm and pant and arch your back as you get close?”
Clara’s eyes fell shut. Josh had transported her to a place both splendid and wicked.
Nothing mattered except that he kept talking, kept using that voice that was more potent than any kiss she’d ever been offered.
But he didn’t. Instead, Josh snapped the invisible thread of tension hanging between them. When she opened her eyes, he’d sat back against the sofa.
“Jesus, Clara.” He ran a careless hand through his hair. “You’ve dated a bunch of lazy assholes if they let you get away with that shit. Sex isn’t about efficiency.”
“Maybe not for you,” she said under her breath.
Josh’s gaze bore through her for a moment, so deep she wondered for a ridiculous instant if he could see through not only her clothes but her skin as well, to the yawning chasm of insecurity underneath.
He got to his feet. “You know what? No.”
She followed the movement of his arms as they crossed in a show of defiance.
“No?” Clara licked her bone-dry lips.
“No,” he said again as if even more convinced of what needed to be done. “This is unacceptable.”
“It is?”
Josh shook out his neck and shoulders, like a swimmer preparing to dive before a race.
“Take off your underwear,” he said, his voice calm and deadly serious.
