I let out a nervous laugh and took the empty glass from his hand. “I need more wine for this conversation.”
After I refilled, I led Grant over to the couch. “Can you just pretend you didn’t open Beauty and the Beast?”
Grant shook his head with a wicked grin as he lifted my feet onto his lap. He began rubbing. “Not a chance, sweetheart. Spill it. What’s your kink?”
“It’s not really a kink.”
“So let’s hear it. Or do I need to unveil your full Disney collection and figure it out for myself right now?”
I drank a little more liquid courage. “I found that I sort of like videos where the woman is pleasuring the man.”
Grant stopped rubbing. “You like to watch a woman give head?”
It was the new millennium. I shouldn’t be embarrassed by anything that empowered me sexually, yet I bit my lip and nodded.
“Jesus Christ,” Grant grumbled. “You’re fucking perfect. How the hell did you ever have a dry spell?”
I laughed. “My dry spell was self imposed. I have a pattern. I pick an asshole to date. Then I blame it on the entire sex and take a long hiatus.”
“You’re sitting here with me. Does that mean I’m an asshole?”
I sipped my drink. “I don’t know, are you?”
His playful smile wilted. “I can be. But I don’t want to be to you.”
“It doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to figure out where my issues come from. I have some serious trust issues, Grant. My dad used to accuse my mom of cheating all the time. I’ll never know if there was any truth to his accusations. I like to believe there wasn’t, and he was just irrational and unstable. But that’s what they always fought about, and were fighting about the night he ended her life. When he panicked and took off, he left me handcuffed to a radiator where no one found me for two days. And yet I still have a tendency to be attracted to dominating, asshole men.”
“And you see me as one of those?”
I shrugged. “I don’t now. Though I never see it at first. I like confident men—ones who are assertive and exude a certain kind of energy. You definitely fit that bill. But in my experience, the men with the take-charge personality I find so attractive don’t necessarily make the best partners. The last guy I dated was really controlling. He didn’t like me hanging out with my friends, and when I did, he’d check up on me. When I told him to back off, he had a way of making me feel guilty for wanting my own space.”
Grant took my hand. “I’m sorry. We all have past relationships that carry into how we deal with things in the future.”
“You know how I finally decided it was time to get rid of Scott, my ex?”
“How?”
“Without even realizing it, I’d started to click my pen.”
“And that means…”
“Scott had a pet peeve. He hated when anyone clicked their pens.”
Grant squinted. “You said Bickman hated foot tapping and heavy perfume and you used to do those things to secretly annoy him.”
I smiled. “Bingo. I was unconsciously doing things to annoy him. That’s not a sign that screams stable relationship. So I broke things off.”
“I’ll have to remember that. When you type at me in all caps, I’ll know what it means.”
I laughed. “Is that your pet peeve? Not sure you should have shared that with me.”
Grant smiled. “You have a wicked side, Saint James.”
I felt like I’d shared a lot of my past, yet I didn’t know too much about his. At least not the important stuff. I knew he was adopted from foster care, but I got the feeling his baggage didn’t come from that.
“Can I ask what happened between you and your ex-wife?”
Grant’s jaw flexed. He looked away for a minute and then stared down when he finally started to speak. “Lily had a similar background to me—an unstable mother with no father in the picture. Except her mother was mentally ill, not an addict like mine. When we first met, I was attracted to her because of how different she was than everyone else. I didn’t know back then that mental illness was hereditary. I thought she was spontaneous and wild. And for a long time she was. But slowly, over time, the highs she ran on started to spiral into lows. There was no middle ground with her.”
I’d learned a lot about mental disorders over the years. A part of me always wanted to believe there was something wrong with my father. I wanted to blame what he’d done on anything but him, because it would be easier to accept that he’d killed my mother if it wasn’t his fault. So I knew bipolar disorder and other depression-related illnesses often started in a person’s twenties.
“I’m sorry. That’s tough.”
Grant was quiet for a moment, and then looked up at me. “Thank you. Like you said, it doesn’t take Freud to figure out why I haven’t had many healthy relationships with women since then. I didn’t lie. I made a point of making sure they understood I wasn’t looking for love. I guess we both have trust issues.”
I nodded. “I appreciate your honesty. But is that what you want from me, too? I’m incredibly attracted to you. I might be okay with a sex-only relationship if that’s all you truly want. Though I could also see myself falling for you, Grant. So I’d appreciate you being up front about what you’re looking for.”
He tugged my hand and guided me to move from sitting next to him to sitting on his lap. He cradled my face between his hands and spoke into my eyes. “I want more with you. But I’m not sure what I’m capable of, Ireland. I won’t promise you something I’m uncertain I can deliver. Yet I’d like to try to make this work.”
His words weighed heavy on my chest. It made me sad for him that he seemed to think he was incapable of love.
I forced a smile. “Thank you for your honesty. I guess every relationship has a risk to it. So we’ll just take it one day at a time and see where it goes.”
Grant nodded, though he didn’t seem too sure of himself.
“How did we get from porn to our fucked-up lives?” I asked.
He smiled. “I don’t know, but I’d definitely prefer to go back to talking about how you like to watch a woman give head.”
I play-smacked his chest. “Of course you would.”
Grant crooked his finger at me. “Come here.”
I’d been sitting on his lap and now lifted one leg to straddle him. Settling, I moved my face close enough that our noses were touching. “Where? Here?”
He gripped the back of my neck and spoke with his lips pressed to mine. “Right here. Exactly right here.”
We made out like two horny teenagers after that. When our kiss broke, he tugged my hair to expose my throat and buried his face in my neck. He kissed and licked and bit his way up to my ear.
“Tell me, Ireland. Is it just women you like to see give oral? Because I can’t wait to bury my face between your legs and have you watch me lick you.”
“Oh, God.” I loved the sound of that. My body was already on fire from this kiss, and I could feel his erection pushing against my swollen clit. I might only have to move back and forth a few times to get myself off if he kept talking like that in my ear. I was this close to doing just that…until a voice interrupted the moment.