“Is something wrong?”
She looked down at him. He was toying with the waistband of her panties and worrying his bottom lip. Damn, he was charming.
“I’m just still surprised.”
His face reddened. “Yeah—it’s— My best friend is a priest.” He shrugged. “It’s the guilt, you know.”
She was intimately familiar with the guilt tradition of the Catholic Church, so she could almost understand. But she still had plenty of questions.
“But you can do everything else without guilt?”
He smiled up at her, looking boyishly sexy the whole time. “Nothing that brings you pleasure could ever make me feel guilty.”
Just then, she forgot that none of this was really real. And she could see herself falling for Jack again. If she was smart, she’d use his chastity pledge to keep him at arm’s length. Close enough for Annalise to believe that they were in love, but far enough to protect her heart.
But she wasn’t in the mood to be smart, not when she had this little window of time with a sexy, charming man all but offering to let her use him for pleasure.
She could have her cake and have him eat her, too. The way he was looking at her right now, she could ask him for the moon.
“Anything, huh?”
His dimples deepened when she asked that. “Anything.”
Before she could think better of it, she reached over to the top drawer and grabbed her favorite toy friend—the only thing that had made the last couple of sexless years bearable.
“What’s that?” Jack asked, but he didn’t look disgusted. Mostly curious.
He held up the clitoral stimulator she’d purchased after breaking things off with the twat/urologist and turned it over in his hands. She felt her skin flush at the prospect of having to explain to him how it worked. And she almost grabbed it from his hands so she could throw it back into the drawer and try to make him forget that she’d taken it out.
But then she remembered that she wasn’t trying to convince this guy she was perfect. She wasn’t trying to convince him to get married or spend his life with her. She was just going to have to keep him on the hook for a few more days. And he said that he would do anything to please her.
She decided to go for it, but he beat her to the punch. He’d figured out how to turn it on and off and had figured out what to do with it without her having to tell him. “So you put this over—”
“Yep.”
“And then it—” He put his finger in and his gaze widened. She giggled; she couldn’t help it. He joined her and said. “Wow. Robots really are going to take all of our jobs.”
“You do bring some things that the machines can’t reproduce.” She leaned down and kissed him.
“I do.” He got rid of her panties with a smoothness a celibate guy shouldn’t have had and proved a quick study in using his new robot overlord in making her squeal and moan.
Her head fell back and she squeezed her eyes closed. And then he used his fingers, and she actually saw stars when she came. But the cherry on top was the look on his face—total adoration—just before he kissed her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NOW THAT SHE KNEW they weren’t going to be having penis- in-vagina sex because of Jack’s religious views, which had so many loopholes they looked like Swiss cheese, it strangely felt more intimate.
The only sounds in the room were their breathing and the drip from the bathroom faucet. The dripping usually didn’t bother her because she slept like the dead, but the slap of the water droplets against the ceramic was deafening right now.
She wasn’t supposed to want him to stay. He was supposed to be temporary, and she wasn’t supposed to start feeling real feelings for him. But he’d gone and made her original plan impossible. It was as though he was made for her, which was stupid. People got in relationships with people who fit them well enough and then they remade themselves to fit even better—or they broke up.
Even Jack couldn’t be perfect; he was just better at hiding his imperfections than any guy she’d ever met. No one who looked as good as he did, smelled as good, and knew exactly how to touch her clit could be all good. There had to be something about him that made him a monster, and she meant to find out what it was.
Maybe if she got the ball rolling, he’d let something slip. Just enough so that she would stop the free fall into love/trouble with him.
“I haven’t had sex with anyone, in—like—two years.” That was not something she should have said to someone she’d just started dating.
“You haven’t?”
She met his eyes then, afraid that she’d see the fear that she was hearing wedding bells swallow up any postcoital tenderness he’d had going. But she didn’t see that. His gaze was as open and curious as it ever was. And maybe she wasn’t imagining the hint of regret. Nothing but kindness and compassion on his face. Jesus, if she was the kind of girl who fell in love, she would be done for. As it was, her chest filled, and her eyes stung as though tears were about to fall. She gasped, afraid that he would see her losing it.
That would be the best way to lose him. At least then he would never know that she’d lied to him about her original motivation for dating him. No matter if she told him that she’d wanted to say yes to that first date before her boss demanded that she show that she wasn’t a heartless shrew, she never would have actually had the courage to go out with him if it hadn’t been forced.
She should be grateful to Annalise, and maybe even to Giselle, for forcing her into giving this glorious man—who was in her bed and wanting to just talk to her—a chance.
“How’s a girl like you still single?” His words could have stabbed her in the throat. They echoed the voice of every guy she tried to go out with after Noah, when she’d been trying to be the girl a guy would want to marry. The ones before she’d given up on finding anyone who wanted something real and lasting. But the way he said them was soft and curious, and that made her want to give him a real answer.
“I’m just not the kind of girl most men want to marry.”
He laughed as though she’d just said something unbearably stupid. “That’s rich. Pull the other one, Duchess.”
She slapped at his chest, and that only made him laugh more. Although she liked that he thought she was being ridiculous, she wanted him to take her seriously. So she crawled up on his chest so they were face-to-face and said, “Stop laughing.”
“I’ll stop laughing when you give me a real answer.”
“Why don’t you answer your own question?”