“I was big into experimenting with fashion, makeup, hair color.”
He looked right at the nubs of her nipples, poking against the T-shirt. “Piercing.”
She smiled. “My last rebellion.”
“Having a hard time imagining you like that, but I love it. Does the consequences thing mean you don’t like working with numbers?”
“Math was the only subject I did like. Patterns I could understand. Stability. I love what I’m doing. Once I got over feeling like I’d already messed up my future and settled down, I realized I liked the magic of working with numbers. They tell stories, but they don’t lie.” She got to her knees on the sofa. All the better to crawl across it to him. “They’re reliably sexy. They don’t run around on you or skip out. If you can work them, you can trust them.”
“Okay, good.” He waited for her to move. He’d snuck in a bunch of question there and now it was time for Mena to keep her end of the bargain. When she didn’t, he pointed at his lips and puckered.
“I never said I had to touch you.”
“Oh fuck, that’s foul play.”
She shifted closer but kept her devious little hands to herself.
He groaned. “What happened about your dad?” If that was a sensitive subject she’d pass. Men were crap. Like on a generational continuum and that needed to change. Loads of his school friends had grown up with only Mum and at least half of the kids in his drum group were the same. Single mums were fucking heroes.
“He was a random boyfriend of Mum’s. Long gone before she knew she was pregnant. Doesn’t know I exist.” Mena made a hand dusting gesture. “Never missed him.”
Those devious little hands weren’t living up to their potential with the dusting, they were talented at handling his dick and it would be ace if they were showing off some skills about now. Come on, honey. Time to sex up the questions. “How old where you when you had your first kiss?”
“I was ten. My best friend Vera. It was for practice. We’re still best friends but we never kissed again.”
He slapped his thigh. “That’s so hot.”
“I was in primary school. It’s about as hot as you being scared of spaghetti. “
He palmed his face and laughed. “I was imagining you kissing a girl now.”
Mena rolled her eyes. “Of course you were.”
He needed a redeeming question, quick. “How old were you when you first had sex?” She unfolded, stood up and moved right to the other end of the sectional and sat as far from him as she could get. So yeah, that wasn’t it. “You can pass.”
“I’m not going to pass. I was waiting for you to get to R-rated stuff. I was sixteen. Wild, remember.”
Not wildly touching him, which was a stinker, but hang about, that was good. This was what he’d wanted, to learn about her outside of knowing her right breast was bigger than her left and she wasn’t vegetarian, and her success was hard earned.
“How was it?”
She scrunched her eyes together, and brought her legs up, curled to the side again. “It was terrible. It hurt. Neither of us knew what we were doing. But we kept at it, and you know what they say about practice.”
Whatever expression he was wearing was enough to make her crawl across the sectional to him. “Are you unhappy because my first time hurt or because I was sex obsessed?”
Not even touching him and he was aroused. “Did you stay sex obsessed? Is that a defining characteristic?”
“You’re jealous.”
He shook his head. “I. No.” Shouldn’t be, but yeah, that’s what it felt like, a hot shaft of resentment. “Shit. I’d like to have been that guy and made sure it didn’t hurt. I’m sorry it did. Might’ve turned you off for life.”
She quirked her head to the side. “It didn’t.”
He lifted both hands and jazzed his fingers. “Halleluiah.”
“My first was a good guy. He didn’t do wrong by me. We were just woefully ignorant and stupidly horny.”
They grinned at each other. “That was almost the name of our band. Tonight live, give it up for Woefully Ignorant and Stupidly Horny.”
“I’d have worn that T-shirt. I was sex obsessed in my teens, my early twenties. And then I promised myself I wouldn’t end up with limited choices again and got busy building a career because having a good memory and being good at sex wasn’t going to buy me nice things or help Mum out.”
Jesus fucking Christ I like you with clothes on, Mena Grady.
“I was sex obsessed for most of my life, but I was using it like video games, to have fun, let off steam, fill in time. It’s a crappy way to be with other people even when they knew the score. Until the other night I hadn’t had sex in—” He had to think about it. “More than a year.”
It wasn’t a question, but it got Mena to crawl to his side. It got him kissed. A kiss that was about comfort and understanding, a kiss that was the opposite of sex. He held Mena’s arms as she leaned over him and met the pressure of her lips with equal pressure of his own. He’d seen Jay and Evie kiss in a way that felt like this. Evie’s best mate Teela and her actor fella, Haydn, too. It was a lover’s kiss. It wasn’t asking anything. It wasn’t starting anything. Its only agenda was connection and it spoke to the part of him that was looking for something more than physical release.
The involuntary groan of longing was all his and it made Mena sit back away from him. He was breathing weirdly, as if he’d had a workout, as if he
