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“You never answered my question about the books.”
Glaring a laser beam of anger into his head, Lori shoved the book back into her purse and dropped into her chair. “That was a hint that you were supposed to drop the subject.”
“But I didn’t. I want to know what all this is about.”
“All what?”
“Lori.”
She looked down at the table. The tips of her ears turned red. Her hands clutched each other against the tablecloth, knuckles growing whiter by the second. Shit, now Quinn felt like an asshole. “I’m sorry.”
Lori just shook her head. Oh, God, what if she was crying? What had he said that would make her cry?
He reached across the table to wrap his hand around hers. “Lori?”
When she looked up, her expression was stubborn, her face pink, but there were no tears in her eyes. “I’ve never, um…”
Quinn’s stomach fell, leaving a vacuum that sucked at his lungs and heart.Holy crap.“Lori? Are you saying…?” He leaned closer. “Are you a virgin?”
“No! Oh, God, no. I turn thirty in two months!”
His stomach snapped back into place, weak from all the travel. “But you said…Okay. Good. I mean, not that I wouldn’t be honored…”
“It’s not that. It’s just that I’ve never really…There are things I want to experience and I—Shoot, I don’t know how to say this. I really don’t.” She glanced nervously around the restaurant.
Quinn poured her the last glass of wine, then watched while she drank it too fast. The crème brûlée arrived in a ramekin shaped like a fish, and whatever the hell that was supposed to mean escaped him entirely, but then he was busy trying to analyze Lori and her stammered words.
Her lips closed around one of the raspberries that had been scattered over the dessert. A tiny drop of deep red juice stained her mouth for a moment before she licked it away. Boy, did she have great tongue.
“Is it that you’ve never had an orgasm?” he finally ventured.
Her steady gaze seemed to give him an answer, but then she tilted her head a little, puzzled. “I don’t think that’s it.” She looked around again before dropping her voice to a near whisper. “I mean, I’ve had orgasms. But on its own, coming is just coming.”
It was Quinn’s turn to look puzzled, and he felt he was doing a pretty good job of it. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, hell’s bells, Quinn, I don’t, either.” She smiled again, finally—he’d been missing that—and shook her head, making her curls brush her neck. “If you help me figure it out, I promise to make it worth your while.”
“Deal,” he said, before she could take that back. “So tell me about the books.”
“No.”
“Come on, Lori. We’re going to have sex. Isn’t that a little more intimate than talking about it?”
“No, it’s not!” She pulled her hand from his and crossed her arms. “You’re asking me what my fantasies are, and we’ve never even kissed.”
“We’ve never even kissed, and we know we’ll be lovers, butthatdoesn’t bother you?”
Lori reached for the wineglass, but when she saw it was empty, pushed her fingers into her hair instead. Then she blinked, pulled her hand carefully away from her curls, and patted them back into submission.
“You’d better tell me, Lori. Or I might read the wrong story and show up at your house with a turkey baster and a giant pink bunny suit.”
“A what?” she asked way too loudly, causing heads to swivel in their direction.
Quinn raised his eyebrows and wiggled them until Lori deigned to laugh. It wasn’t long before she had to lay her forehead on the table to try to compose herself.
Quinn offered a friendly wave to the people still watching Lori as she snorted into the tablecloth.
“A turkey baster?” she squeaked.
