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She shrugs. “I wonder sometimes about your relationship with her. She had your baby. You look after her. And you’re connected by Joanna. I wonder how close you are sometimes.” She swirls her hand in a circle, creating a whirlpool. “Do you love her?” Then she splashes, irritated with herself. “No, don’t answer that. I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
I kiss the top of her head. “Elizabeth, we’ve just had sex. It’s a reasonable question. The answer is that I love her like one of my sisters. She’s had it tough—her parents were very strict, and they were extremely harsh on her when she got pregnant. I mean, really harsh, practically medieval. They wanted to send her away to have the baby so their church wouldn’t find out.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Yeah. It’s the only time I put my foot down and said no, she wasn’t going.”
“I’ve wondered sometimes… you’re so honorable and, well, chivalrous, for want of a better word. Why didn’t you ask her to marry you?”
“Because I wanted you.”
She turns and looks up at me. I kiss her nose.
“Seriously?” she says.
“Yeah. I didn’t love Brandy, not in the way you should love someone when you marry them. I wanted to do the right thing, but equally I’m not going to sign my life away because of a one-night stand when a condom broke. And I didn’t want to lose the girl I was crazy about.” I sigh. “But I lost her anyway.”
Her eyes shine. “You should have told me.”
“Forget about it. It’s done now. All that matters is what happens next.” I turn her away from me again and run my fingers up the inside of her thighs. The refractory period has passed, and I’m ready for round two. “Let’s play a game. Intimate questions. You can ask me whatever you like.” I suck her earlobe.
She sucks her bottom lip. “Okay. Um… Have you ever fired a real longbow?”
My eyebrows rise and I stifle a laugh. “Okay, I wasn’t expecting that.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I just thought… never mind. Anyway, you don’t fire a bow. There’s no gunpowder involved. You release an arrow or you loose it.” I draw circles on her inner thighs. “And yes, I have used a medieval longbow. It had the same draw weight as the ones they found on Henry VIII’s warship, the Mary Rose. It had a one hundred- and eighty-five-pound draw weight and a thirty-inch draw—the arrows were thirty inches long. It was fucking hard to use. The guys must have had shoulders like the Hulk.”
“That’s so hot,” she says.
I chuckle. “Longbows turn you on?”
“The thought of you using one does.” She wrinkles her nose. “Go on then, your turn.”
“What’s your favorite sexual position?”
Her jaw drops. “Oh… I get the game now.”
“It’s okay, I’m more than happy to talk about longbows.” She blushes and elbows me, and I grin. “Your answer?”
She pouts and huffs. Then she says, “From behind, I guess.”
I give a short laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she asks indignantly.
I shake my head. “It’s a perfectly reasonable answer.”
She frowns. She genuinely doesn’t understand why I find her frank reply amusing.
I’m just beginning to get why she’s so puzzled about sex. I don’t think she’s had a single romantic moment in her life. All the men she’s been with have been Neanderthals. And she mixes mainly with men, so she’s used to the frank kind of dialogue that guys have. All the time I’ve known her, I would have teased her if she’d said anything remotely romantic or soppy. I don’t do it with women normally, but I do it with my friends. So no wonder she was confused when I teased her about sex. Nobody else has ever done it.
She’s glaring at me. “Okay,” she says. “What’s your favorite position?”
I think about it. “I like the woman on top, because it means she’s in control. She can touch herself, and I can watch. It turns me on, and I can learn what she likes too. Pressure, speed. Everyone’s different.”
Her eyes widen.
