WORTH THE RISK

She shook her head, and frowned at him. His legs were thrust out before him, highlighting the powerful muscles in his thighs. How had she never noticed his thighs before? Because she doubted they’d cropped up overnight.

“Is that what it’s like for you?”

“I wouldn’t bother otherwise, would I?”

“It’s never that way for me.” Lexi took a breath, flipped over that ugly little stone she’d never wanted to look beneath and reminded herself that this was Tyler. That she could say anything to him. “I think maybe I really am frigid. Or broken, somehow.”

He didn’t sit with that in a solemn, concerned silence, as she’d expected he would. He rolled his eyes and didn’t look the least bit shaken by her declaration. “For fuck’s sake. Because that wanker told you so? A hundred years ago now? Real men don’t berate women for their own piss-poor performance in bed.”

Lexi had dated Christopher for two months that had seemed like a lifetime during term time their third year. A relationship—such as it was— that had ended after they’d slept together, he’d informed her that she was crap at sex, and he’d moved on to manipulate a wide-eyed first-year into his bed instead. A real charmer, that Christopher.

“Christopher was renowned for being good in bed, Tyler,” Lexi argued. “You like to pretend you can’t remember, but girls used to go around swooning left and right every time he smiled.”

“When he smiled, sure. After he embarrassed himself in their beds? Not near as much swooning, as I recall.” Tyler crossed his arms, which should have made him look angry. But when Lexi studied his face, his expression was bland. Maybe too bland. “It was his job to make you come, Lexi. Everything else was a load of shite mixed with mind games to disguise the fact he was a selfish prick.”

Tyler had growled the same response at her during their final year at uni, but she couldn’t remember all this…prickly heat.

“No one is good or bad at sex unless they try,” Tyler continued, sounding even more growly. “It’s sex, not surgery. Sometimes people have mad chemistry, which takes it all to a different level. But you don’t need astonishing chemistry to have good sex, Lexi. You can have good sex if you want it. It’s that simple.”

“I can tell you that it is not, in fact, that simple.”

“It isn’t a spot of calisthenics,” Tyler said, and again, there was something about how relentlessly bland he looked that made the back of her neck prickle. Even more than before. “Supposed skill or experience matters far less than what I’d call…” And he smiled then, in that friendly way he had that made her want to smile, too. “Observant enthusiasm.”

She wanted to smile, but she didn’t. “I have no idea what that means.”

His expression didn’t change and yet…there was that strange flickering thing inside her again. “Do you pay attention, Lexi? Do you think about something other than getting yourself off when you’re naked with someone else? I’m betting you do.”

There was no reason for her to be…breathless. But Tyler didn’t give her time to respond, even if she’d managed to find breath. “But I’d also bet that if you’re finding sex lacking, it’s a commentary on your partner, not you. It was true years ago and it’s true now.”

Lexi frowned and tried to look stern, not prickly and strangely overwarm though she sat beneath a cozy blanket and was bundled up nicely against the cool breeze—unlike some people, who were bare chested and barefoot. “That’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?”

“I’ve seen the men you date. So, no, it’s not sexist. It’s an informed opinion.” He did something with his face that made him look harder. Flintier, even. “And it’s not hard to make a man come, Lexi. That’s why it’s on him to make sure you do, or why bother to have sex with another person? He could just have a wank and be done with it.”

All of this suddenly seemed a lot less safe than it had before. Maybe it was the exhaustion messing with her, but he kept talking about coming and now she was imagining him handling his own cock, that same fierce look on his face she’d seen outside while he— Stop, she ordered herself.

She was so horrified she was afraid she might spill her tea all over his lovely deck, so she took great care to set it carefully to the side on the table there. And maybe that wasn’t precisely horror that coursed through her veins then, making her shift beneath the blanket he’d draped over her. Making her aware of her own pussy when normally, she saved such awareness for the privacy of her own bed.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Lexi made herself say in as dry and unaffected a voice as she could manage. “I like sex. Sometimes I quite like it.”

“Damned with faint praise.”

“Let’s talk about you, Tyler.”

She concentrated on him then, and the whole golden sweep of him that she’d been trying her best not to gape at. Without much success. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man. He was nothing but ridiculously lean muscle wherever she looked, and for all that he was meant to be a CEO forever in meetings, he clearly spent time in the sun. A lot of time. And then there was the hair that arrowed down beneath the waistband of his jeans, and made her need to shift a bit in her chair. Again.

Her mouth was dry. She told herself it was the sudden immersion in winter, the lack of sleep and all the rest of this strange and endless day.

“You’re doing something different,” she told him, as if she’d conducted an academic study. “I’ve met a lot of men who sleep with loads of women, and they’re all pigs. But you’re not.”

“Careful, or you’ll make me blush.”

“I can’t figure out what it is. Why are all those women so happy all the time? You toss them out, but they’d all gag for another chance. I’ve watched it happen. You’re this…magician.”

“Are you asking me a question, Lexi? Or leaving a review?”