"I can see why. It's beautiful here."
"You haven't seen the hot spring yet. It's amazing."
Mara caught her lip between her teeth and aimed those incredible jade eyes at me. "Would you show me?"
"Now?"
She nodded, still biting her lip.
I wanted to take that lip between my teeth and suck on it. Since I wouldn't tell her that, I said, "Sure. I can be your nature guide."
What the hell was I saying? I'd come here to show her the other thing I rocked at, but instead of seducing her, I was offering to be her tour guide.
"Maybe we could take the hike later," I said, leaning in closer. "I have something I want to show you first."
"What is it?"
I cupped her face in one hand, slanting in even more, brushing my lips over hers. "I want to make love to you, Mara."
Her breathing had become shaky, her eyes big and luminous. "You don't want to have sex with me, Ollie. I...get inappropriately excited about it."
I almost laughed but swallowed it. The look on her face convinced me she wasn't joking.
"Who told you that?" I asked, caressing her cheek with my thumb.
"My---my ex." She squeezed her eyes shut, scrunching up her face. "He said I need to temper my carnal urges because no man of good breeding wants a wife who gets too excited. Sex is for men, not for women. It's our marital duty."
"Why the fuck would he tell you that? Your ex sounds like an asshole."
"I'm sure my mom would agree with him if she knew about that part of my life. She very into what's proper, what society would approve of, stuff like that."
"No offense, but your mom sounds like an asshole too."
"She's not that bad, really. But my family, especially my mom, cares a lot about what's proper and what the rest of our peers think."
"Peers? Do you mean, like, royalty?"
"No." She opened her eyes to gaze into mine. "You're very sexy, Ollie, and I'd really like to be with you, but I couldn't stand it if you were disgusted with me."
"I won't be. But maybe we should talk a little first, so you'll feel more comfortable. I kind of sprang this on you." I pulled my hand away. "Or we could wait until later, or not do it at all. Your choice."
"Let's talk."
And then have sex, I hoped. Her family sounded pretty damn awful to me, but then, I came from a home where my mom and dad hugged us every morning and said, "Have a good day at school, sweetie, I love you." I would've bet good money that Mara's family didn't even shake hands without slathering on sanitizing gel first.
Maybe that explained why Mara had gotten so uptight.
"What did you mean when you said 'peers'?" I asked.
She bowed her head, gripping the mattress like it might fly up into the sky at any second. "My parents are wealthy. They circulate among the most prestigious social circles, they never say or do anything inappropriate, and they only kiss on the cheek in public. I've only seen them kiss on the lips three times in my entire life."
"But you love to kiss, don't you? And you're really good at it."
Her head came up, and those beautiful eyes focused on me again. "You think so? I do like it, a lot. I loved kissing you." She winced, then sighed. "And that's another thing that's not proper."
"Kissing me? Or liking it?"
"Both." She made a noise that was part growl, part whine, and covered her face with her hands. "I'm so sick of being proper."
"Then don't do it anymore."
She dropped her hands to her thighs, slumping her shoulders. "I'm already the family screw-up, so it probably doesn't matter what I do. Might as well go crazy, right?"
"I'm all for going crazy in moderation."
Mara stared at me like I'd gone totally insane. But when I winked and smiled, she seemed to get the idea I'd been kidding. Nobody went insane moderately. They went all the way or not at all. Or at least that's what I thought. I didn't have any experience with lunatics.
She almost smiled at my dumb joke, but the expression crumbled quickly.
"You're not a screw-up," I said. "Everybody makes mistakes. Even the uptight jerks who claim they never mess up."
"You don't get it." She made that noise again and flopped back onto the bed. "I can't even speak Japanese."
Okay, that was one thing I'd never heard on somebody's list of ways they'd screwed up.
I braced one hand on the bed beside her and leaned into it, gazing down at her face. "If that's the yardstick for being a screw-up, I'm just as bad as you are. I can't speak Japanese either."
"But nobody expects you to." She moaned pitifully, rolling her head side to side. "My mom is super proud of our Japanese heritage. So is my grandmother. My dad is half Dutch, half Welsh, but he doesn't expect me to speak Dutch or Welsh. My mom is so humiliated that I couldn't learn Japanese, even after years of lessons. I suck at it."
"It's a really hard language, huh?"
She moaned again, even more pitifully. "My mom learned it when she was a little girl. She's never been to Japan, doesn't know anybody in Japan, and the Kanda family has been American since my great-great-whatever grandparents moved here in eighteen eighty-three. But learning the language is like a badge of honor in our family." She pounded her fists on the bed. "And I can't speak Japanese."
"I won't hold that against you. I mean, I flunked out of high school Spanish and had to repeat it in summer school. Even then, I had to pay a girl in my class to tutor me so I could squeak by with a C minus."
"Are your parents Spanish? Do they think not speaking the language is shameful?"
"No, I can't say they do.
