“Even when you were married?”
“When they were babies, the girls were so much work Shelly and I really never gave any thought to having more—or if we did, it leaned more toward hell no. Once they were older, everything started falling apart, and it was out of the question.” He trailed off, running his fingertips down the slender length of her arm. “I’m not sure anymore. What about you?”
“No. I like kids. I’m crazy about yours. But no, I don’t think I want any of my own.” Her dark gaze searched his, and he figured he knew what she was looking for there. He had no problem giving it to her.
“I understand that.”
“Really?” She chuckled. “People are usually so fond of telling me what I should be doing with my life and my body.”
“I have an idea or two about your body.”
Giggling, she came in for a kiss, her breath warm and minty from her toothpaste, and he lost himself in the taste and feel of her. By the time she pulled away and continued the conversation, his mind was on other things. Hot, wet, dirty things. He struggled to pull it back on track. “Would that be a deal breaker for you, though? If you decided you wanted more kids and…the person you were with didn’t?”
He wished she would speak openly of the possibility that they might work out. “If I wanted them, and you didn’t?”
It scared her. He saw as the uncertainty bloomed in her expression. Was the future such a frightening concept to her, especially a future with him? Hell if he knew how it would work out either, and he damn well knew what the people closest to him thought, but he couldn’t shake this feeling, this rightness.
“If that happened,” he said, leaning over to nip little kisses over the curve of her shoulder, “I would respect your position. Like you said, it’s your body.”
“You’re too good to be true,” she murmured, not sounding at all happy about it.
He knew at least two women who would disagree with her, and the thought of them was like a dash of cold water on his arousal. Hell. Raising his head, he made her look at him. “I don’t know what you want me to say to that.”
“Surprising. You seem to always know what I want you to say.”
“What?”
“You always have the right answers. Always. You always say exactly what I want to hear, what I need to hear. It’s very, very hard for me to trust that. You have to understand.”
“Except I haven’t said one damn thing to you that isn’t the truth, Starla. One thing about us is that we’ve always come from a place of truth, right? Your thing for Brian, my issues with marriage and kids and Macy—I mean, what the hell, I have all that going on, and you think I’m too good to be true? I may not be a psychotic asshole like your ex, but I probably bring more baggage and failures to the table than any of the men you’ve ever been with.”
“Please. I doubt it. Compared to the men I’ve been with, you’re a saint.”
Maybe it was crazy of him, but oh, how he resented that. Who the hell wanted to be a saint? “Is that supposed to put me off?”
“I don’t mean to put you off, Jared, but you really don’t know shit about me. And you swoop in and you save me and you talk about the future and us and…I just don’t think you know what the fuck you’re talking about.” She flung herself over to the side of the bed and stood, pacing naked with her thumbnail between her teeth. Resentfully, he tried not to look at the work of art her body was. How the hell was any red-blooded male supposed to carry on a serious conversation with a naked woman with pierced nipples ten feet away from him? Not to mention what lay hidden between her legs…
He leaned on one elbow and drew a deep breath, trying to cleanse the images from his mind. “If I don’t know you, introduce me. Try me. Tell me something that you think will make me turn from you, if that’s what you want.”
She stopped and stared defiantly at him, placing her hands on her hips. “I’ve had threesomes. I’ve been with two men at once. I’ve been with a man and a woman at once—more than once, actually. I’m a voyeur. I like to watch more than I like to be watched. He doesn’t know it, but I watched Brian fuck some random chick at a pre-Candace party a few years back, and by God, if it wasn’t one of the hottest moments of my life, and they didn’t even know I was there. I’ve never told another human being on the face of the earth about that, and I never will again.”
“Do you want me to be appalled or judge you or shame you? Is that what you’ve come to expect?”
She didn’t have to answer; he saw the yes all over her face. “You’ve been living under a rock if you aren’t aware of the double standard we live under. How men can nail every woman they meet and be a hero, but if a woman does the same thing, she’s a slut.”