Muffin Top

Not that he’d admit it out loud to anyone who shared his DNA, but there had been days when Fallon had been in high school that he’d picked her up from school just to give the shitheads giving her a hard time a message. All he’d had to do was look at the little punks and they’d just about pissed their pants. Of course, Fallon had just rolled her eyes at him when he’d turned the same look on her and informed her that he was not happy to have to come get her from school but Mom hadn’t given him another choice.

“I don’t really date so much as I hook up, and the night we had dinner at Marino’s was when I found out that I’m the kind of guy someone bangs but they don’t take home to meet the parents. That little punch to the ego got me thinking, and until I figure some things out, I am on the sexual bench, something I’d very much appreciate you not share with anyone else.”

That last part he hadn’t meant to say out loud, but Lucy had that effect on him. She made him work for it, and the unvarnished truth just sort of came out. Man, if she had that impact on him, he couldn’t imagine what spilled out of her clients’ mouths when she’d sat them down and gave them that look. It was the one she was giving him right now.

Leaning forward with a neutral accepting look on her face, her forearms on the table, she gave off the air of someone who wanted to hear all about a person’s fuckups and would help fix them. “Sexual bench?”

“I’m temporarily celibate.” Fuck. If only the diner waitress had given him a stapler to use on his mouth instead of her number, he wouldn’t be stuck here watching Lucy have a non-reaction to his announcement, which was a reaction all in itself.

“How often do you usually have sex?”

“Few times a week.” Sometimes the same woman. Usually not. It had been fun when he’d been young and dumb. Now? Things were different. He couldn’t put his finger on the reason why, but it was.

“And how long has it been?” she asked, her voice as bland as if she’d been asking about the weather.

“A week.” He shoved another bite of tasteless pecan pie into his mouth.

Finally, her facade cracked and she grinned at him. “No wonder your forearms are so muscular. It must take a lot of wrist action to make up for all of that.”

He almost choked on his pie. That was not what he was expecting from her. Did she ever say what he’d presumed? The answer to that was a big negative.

“What?” she asked and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m dateless, not orgasmless. There’s a reason why sex toys are a fifteen-billion-dollar global industry.”

He shook his head, since his ability to speak wasn’t working at the moment. It wasn’t the first time in his life that he’d been rendered speechless, but it didn’t happen often—unless, of course, he was around one Lucy Kavanagh.

She nodded and went on. “The stats say twelve percent of women masturbate with a sex toy at least once a week, but come on, that’s gotta be underreported. Amazon has something like sixty thousand adult items in stock, plus there’s places like Babeland and Adam and Eve. And it’s not just women. Twenty percent of men say they’ve used a vibe.” She gave him that teasing grin of hers again. “Have you used a vibrator?”

He shook his head. Sure, he’d started the “down and dirty,” but he’d never expected her to really take it there—if only verbally.

“Oh Frankie.” She reached out and patted his hand as if he were some sweet, young, naive thing, which his male ego insisted he most definitely was not. “You are missing out.”

“How do you know all this?” And what else did she know?

“I am a curious, sex positive, grown-ass woman,” she said, her shoulders tensing and her chin going up as she withdrew her hand. “Or were you thinking it was just the old line about fat girls having to be more creative and enthusiastic in bed because it was the only way we got laid?”

She said the question in the same teasing tone she’d been using for the past five minutes, but there was no missing the line of tension wound through it. It had his muscles tightening in response as she watched him, waiting for his answer, no doubt having already answered it in her head.

“Why do you do that?” he asked.

“What?”

“Go straight for the worst thing someone could be thinking like you’re launching a pre-emptive strike?”

“Experience.” She stood, hooking the long strap of her purse over her shoulder, her hands shaking just the slightest bit. “Look, I’ll let you in on a secret to survival for someone like me. If you prep yourself for the worst, you won’t be disappointed, and if you own the insult before it can be uttered, you can’t be hurt.”