Warmth faded from his eyes. “Why?”
A warning light blinked in my brain, sensing murky waters ahead. “Because it’s like profanity. If you use it all the time, it loses its meaning.”
“That’s your opinion. Maybe it’s just fucking to her, and there doesn’t have to be meaning. It’s a business about pleasure, not emotion.”
Is that what this was between us? Just fucking? “But a girl should have standards.”
“You mean, she shouldn’t be a slut. She shouldn’t give it up to just anyone.”
The warning light graduated to a siren, but I ignored it. “Yes.”
“Even if she wants to?” Joseph’s voice was shockingly harsh. “What if she’d been a good girl up until then? Does that mean she’s not a slut if she lets a guy she barely knows fuck her on a table in his restaurant?”
The breath of air I gasped was so sharp it was painful, and I cringed.
“No,” he continued. He set down his glass and his hands clamped on my shoulders, straightening them. “I won’t allow this posture. You want to judge other people, you should be able to take it, too.”
I stared at him at a total loss for words.
“Yeah, society has taught you that she’s a slut, but she was careful, and safe, and doing what she enjoyed. She’s no different from me, really. And you said you wouldn’t judge.”
My mind fractured. Years of indoctrination had taught me that promiscuous women were sluts and going to hell. Deep down, there was shame inexplicably linked to sexual pleasure. Yet, despite all the years of Catholic school, I thought myself a feminist. Women could do anything men could, including running Fortune 100 companies. So why couldn’t Payton enjoy sex with whomever or how many people she wanted, just like men did?
“I . . . didn’t mean to judge.” My voice faltered.
Joseph took another sip of his wine and said nothing. Tension radiated off of him.
My fingers toyed with the loose end of the seatbelt as I tried to ease the awkwardness. “So Dominic paid for a night with her?”
“She refused his money afterward.”
“Why?”
“I’m told he was the first man to get through to her, and she wanted something . . . real.”
Real. Their matching tattoos.
“He took her back to Tokyo and that was that.”
Cold dread slinked into my chest and I fought to keep my expression free from judgement. “How did you meet her? Were you one of her—”
“No. We met at a bar.”
Perhaps he was being purposefully vague, punishing me. “Was she ever your sub?”
He sort of laughed. “Did she seem overly submissive to you?”
No. She’d submitted to Dominic, but not like I did with Joseph. I let out a sigh of relief. “So you haven’t slept with her.”
“I didn’t say that.”
It was before you, I reminded myself, trying to stave off the sting.
“It was a long time ago, Noemi. It was just sex, nobody had any feeling involved. We’ve both moved on to . . . ” his gaze swept down my body and came back up, “better things.”
My emotions had been through the wringer, and yet this was a compliment. Payton was provocative and sexually confident, not to mention, gorgeous. He thought I was better than that?
By the time we landed, Joseph’s stiffness had drained away, and we both grinned at each other when we deplaned out into the warm, humid night air, peeling off our layered travel clothes.