Because it was. Because her mother said so. Because it sullied her reputation to be so free with her affections. Because it was out of wedlock. Because the rumor mill would have a field day with it. Because Jax could be hurt just by associating with her.
Em ran a hand over her hair, hoping she’d run her mother and all the other gossipmongers in town out of her head, too. “I don’t know. It’s not. I think.” She groaned. “I have all these conflicting feelin’s about it. On the one hand, I wouldn’t say you were loose if you chose to do it. You did choose to do it. You chose it a lot before Caine. On the other hand, I feel like I’ve gone against everything I was raised to believe in. I’ve never had anythin’ but marital relations, Dixie. I know in this day and age that’s ridiculous, but it wasn’t like anyone was offerin’ outside of Clifton anyway.”
Dixie’s eyes bled sympathy. She’d been raised by a mother much like Clora. Nothing should be enjoyed, every moment of her life was a chore—a task she met with the strong hand of the divine guiding it.
“I won’t pick on you for that voice in your head that tells you sex isn’t for a good, upstandin’ woman unless she’s married, but your mother’s done a real number on you, and it makes me want to shake her every time she sits across the table from me when we have Sunday dinner here. I don’t want to insult you either, but as your person, I’m compelled to say something. I just don’t know if you’ll like it much.”
Meaning, Dixie was loading up the shotgun. “But you’re going to say it anyway....”
Dixie’s brows crunched together, matching the angry line of her lips. “Clora Mitchell’s full of horse manure. She can suck the joy out of a room with just the purse of her disapproving lips, and they’re always pursed. She enjoys nothing without behaving like she just took one for Team Righteous—and it hurt—and she wants us all to know it hurt. I get the impression she’s the kind of woman who endured lovemakin’ rather than getting down in the dirty with it.”
Em cringed. “We weren’t open about...those things.” Heaven forbid. She’d never had those kinds of talks with her mother. In fact, she was shocked to discover she couldn’t remember talking about any of her feelings with either of her parents.
“Okay, then,” Dixie pressed. “Consider this. Maybe she’s slanted your views on things. If that’s what Emmaline really believes, if you really believe you can’t make love with more than one man in a lifetime without burnin’ in the fiery pit of Satan’s flames, and you’re that worried people will talk, then okay. I’ll hush. But if it’s what your mama beat you over the head with and you’re wafflin’ about it, worried she’ll cast that ugly look of disapproval every time you actually find joy in something, you need to do some soul-searchin’.”
Em shook her head, overwhelmed with all the crossed wires in her brain, the confusing mixed messages—the grip her mother’s lack of approval still had on her. “All that aside, Dixie, this isn’t like me. To give in to impulse. But I did. I gave in to it right there in his driveway. I offered to drive because Jax doesn’t know Johnsonville like I do. Now, I wonder if it wasn’t some sort of subliminal premeditation on my part.”
Dixie kept her face blank. “That sounds just like you, Em. Premeditated almost sex.”
She hid her face in her hands. “That’s exactly my point. I let myself get caught up, swept away. I’m sure I came off desperate and pathetic. None of what happened last night was like me.”
Dixie sat up and dripped her mug on the table. “Oh, baloney. How do you even know what’s like you? Did you know all this DIY was like you until you had time on your hands to find out? Did you know you had a stern teacher’s voice in you until you used it? So here’s the real question—did you like it? Was it good almost all the way?”
Good? It was gooder than good. Hot, wet, the best almost sex ever. “It was unimaginably good. I’ve never quite...well, you know...had so many things occur...in those parts...” She waved a hand over “those parts,” her face hot and red.
But mercy, what a relief to say it was good so it didn’t become a filthy secret she carried around with her like a wadded-up tissue full of snot tucked away in your sleeve. Like sloughing off dead skin.
She’d liked last night.
No, she’d loved last night. She’d like to do last night again and again, but...
Dixie clapped her hands together. “I do know, and I’m so happy for you! The two of you set a room on fire. How could it have been any other way?”
Em waved her finger in the air. “This is not an occasion to jump up and down like we just met a Backstreet Boy, Dixie.” This part. The part where she confessed the last piece of the puzzle that really made her sound like a bed-hopping trollop was the hardest confession of all.
“And why not?”