“You think you have to have had sex to know? You know you like men. But you didn’t need to sleep with a man to figure that out, right?”
“Right. True,” I say, because once I figured out for sure I liked men and only men, I knew I’d want to sleep with a man someday. “And porn helped. I’ve watched a lot of it.”
“Good. Porn is great for many things, including figuring out what turns us on. But real sex isn’t like porn.”
My stomach churns, but I’ve come this far, so I say the next thing. The hard thing. “I have no idea what real sex is like.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he says, his voice warm, kind of inviting. He makes me want to open up more as he says, “You figure it out in your own time. What do you like watching?”
That’s easy. So easy. “I’m pretty simple. Hot guys, ripped bodies, blow jobs, rim jobs, flip fucking,” I say, and holy hell, that was like a ten-ton truck driving off my chest. I feel a million times lighter. I’ve never said that out loud to another person. Never told a man what I fantasize about. But I fantasize a lot. My mind is a very active land. “And when I watch, I can put myself in all the roles. But I don’t know if that means I’m vers. I mean, maybe I am. I think I could be. I just don’t want you to think I lied to you.”
“I don’t think you’re a liar for saying you’re vers even if you haven’t had sex. Sex is in the mind. Some men learn if they like to top or bottom or both from experimenting, and some men know it intrinsically.”
Relieved, I drag a hand through my hair. “Right. But . . .”
I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say.
Except, what I want to say is, will you please sleep with me? Will you teach me everything you know about pleasing a man and being pleased, and I’m dying here because I’m twenty-two and I’m ready, I’m so damn ready.
And I want it to be you so badly.
Instead, I wait. Something I know all too well how to do.
“But what, Grant?” he asks gently after a few seconds. “Am I turned off? I am not. Am I freaked out? I am not. Am I curious about you and your choices? You bet I am.”
A wave of relief washes over me. “Good.”
“I want to know you. I want to know why you held out. I don’t think it’s that you’re waiting to get married,” he says, laughing.
“Yeah, that’s not it,” I say, laughing too. But before I can open up the book and tell him my story, I want to know his. “I’ll tell you, but first . . . how old were you?”
“I was seventeen,” he says, in a voice laced with regret.
“You sound like you’re not crazy about that choice,” I say.
“I was drunk. It was stupid.” He inhales sharply.
His decision not to drink makes more sense. That must be when he stopped. “Did someone take advantage of you?”
“No. It was just me being an idiot.”
“I can’t picture you ever being an idiot, but I suppose we all are at some point,” I say.
“Definitely.”
“Did you lose it with a guy or a girl?” I ask, a little unsure if he's talking about gay sex or all sex, so it’s best to ask.
He’s quiet for a beat. With a sigh, he says, “Both.”
It’s like someone just banged a cymbal. I scoot up in the bed. “Whoa. Not what I expected to hear.”
“Figured I’d surprise you,” he says drily, but not like he’s trying to amuse me by dropping that news. He’s simply sharing. “We were messing around, the three of us. A guy I knew and his girlfriend. They liked to . . . mix it up.”
“Wow,” I say, feeling so vanilla, so boring. “Was it . . . did you . . .?” I can barely finish my questions. I’m not bothered that he slept with a girl. I’m trying to wrap my head around how he’s so much more experienced than I am. “Did you like it?” I manage to ask.
“With her? Not really. With him? Hell yes,” he says.
“Then why did you say you were an idiot?”
“Because he wasn’t interested in me. He was doing it for her.”
“What?” I furrow my brow. “That does not compute.”
“It was her thing. He was bi, and she liked to get it on in threesomes, so they did. I was their . . . extra. Their plaything.”
I scrub a hand across the back of my neck, trying to understand what went down. “So, you had sex with both of them?”
“Yes. I fucked her, and he fucked me,” he says plainly, laying it out, and the image is weird. I can’t see the Declan I know doing that. Not that there’s anything wrong with it—people like what they like. Polyamory is cool, if that’s your jam, as long as everyone consents. But it doesn’t seem like it was his jam. Maybe because his focus on me at The Lazy Hammock was so single-minded. Maybe because he’s got a jealous streak—one that turns me on. That’s what’s odd. Declan seems like a one-man kind of guy.