The Secret Note
He takes a sip of his beer. “Tell me about your games, Kaylee Rae. What am I in for here with you, if I’m lucky enough to get a shot?”
I bite my lip. “A magician never reveals her secrets, Ben.”
He suddenly looks very much like a man pretending not to have a hard-on under the table. His chocolate eyes darken with heat. “I find you incredibly sexy. Even more than I did seven years ago. And that’s saying a lot.”
“Good. Because I find you utterly panty-melting.”
“Jesus Christ.” His chest heaves. He licks his lips. “Kaylee, I’ve honestly never—”
The waitress is suddenly standing at the table, laying plates of food in front of us. We thank her politely and dig into the food, our eyes blazing.
“Good,” he says, referring to the chicken kabob he’s chomping on.
I nod my agreement. “So tell me something,” I say, putting my half-eaten kabob down. “After I relieved you of your pesky virginity, did you go on an epic tear when you got back home?”
Ben laughs. “Bloody hell, did I ever. But only after getting back together with my ex for a bit first.”
“The one you broke up with before coming to the States?”
“That’s the one. But it didn’t last. We were doomed. But, yeah, I went on a bit of a tear after that, trying out all the cool tricks my hot teacher taught me.”
I can’t help smiling at that. “And did all the cool tricks I taught you work like gangbusters?”
“Not nearly as well as they’d worked on you, to be honest. Turns out, you’re a bit of a . . . How shall I put this delicately?”
“Careful.”
“Live wire.”
I nod my approval of his word choice. “Why didn’t it last with the girlfriend? Was she pissed you’d lost your virginity to some random American girl while she sat at home, piously pining for you, her hymen neatly intact?”
Ben puts down his beer, a snarky expression on his gorgeous face. “Wrong on all counts, sweetheart. First off, you weren’t some random American girl. I’d perved hard at your photo on Carter’s Instagram way before the camping trip. Asked about you. I wasn’t planning to go on that camping trip at all, actually—I’d had some ‘hot date’ lined up for that weekend. But then I found out you’d decided to come at the last minute, and I dropped that other girl like a hot potato.” He smiles devilishly at my flabbergasted reaction. “And second off, my ex-girlfriend wasn’t sitting around piously pining for me, her hymen intact. Quite the opposite. When I got home, I found out she’d started dating a mate of mine pretty much the minute I’d left and wound up losing her virginity to him a couple weeks after my departure.”
“Holy shit. That was quick.”
“I thought so, especially considering I’d waited two months after leaving, out of respect.”
“How long had you two dated?”
“Well over a year. During which she always said she was waiting for marriage. It blew my mind to think that, in the end, she lost her virginity way before I did, not that I knew it at the time.”
I chuckle. “That’s funny.”
He shakes his head. “I certainly didn’t see the humor in it then.”
“And now?”
He smiles. “I think it’s hilarious.”
“Did you find out she’d banged your buddy before or after you had sex with her?”
“Before.”
“And you still banged her when you got home?”
He shrugs. “She offered and I couldn’t pass it up. After a full year of waiting on her, I wasn’t gonna turn down an opportunity to taste that fruit, even if I felt hurt and betrayed she’d fucked my mate. We’d broken up, after all—so I felt her conduct was shitty, but not, you know, flat-out wrong. At least, that’s how I rationalized it to convince myself to give it a whirl with her.”
“And how was it when you had sex with her? Everything you’d dreamed it would be?”
“Not at all. Turns out, I felt nothing but angry and betrayed. Plus, she was boring as hell. It was absolutely nothing like it was with you.”
My skin pricks to think he was in Australia, comparing sex with another girl to sex with me . . . because, truth be told, I was in America, doing the exact same thing with my next partner. And the next one. And the next. “I’m sure she felt betrayed by you, too, though, you know?”
“Why?”
“You broke up with her and went to America and fucked some nobody you didn’t even care about.”
“I didn’t sleep with her best mate.”
I nod, acknowledging he’s made a good point.
“In the end,” he continues, “I couldn’t fully enjoy it with her. I had too many weird thoughts going through my head while I fucked her. It was my first lesson that the physical act isn’t the biggest turn-on for me. It’s more what’s going on between my ears at the time.”