Free Slow Surrender by Cecilia Tan Page A

flavor.
    When my attention returned, he gave his theory about the couple. “I believe they think you’re my daughter. I must be some rich fellow who can bring his bratty teenager to restaurants if I like. They’ve barely given me a glance, so they haven’t noticed I’m not old enough to have a teenager. Or perhaps they think I’ve had excellent plastic surgery.”
    “I don’t look sixteen.”
    “I beg to differ,” he said. “You’re far more fresh-faced than many women in their twenties. You haven’t caked on the makeup or mascara.”
    “True. And a lot of older people think everyone who looks the slightest bit young is a teenager. I’m twenty-six, but on campus older people often mistake me for a freshman or sophomore.”
    “The phone call, that was the woman calling their daughter back home and then having to let Papa talk to her as well.” He took a sip of his cocktail, which I hadn’t even noticed had come. I’d been so distracted by the salmon mousse and the conversation. By my side was a tumbler of pricey sparkling water, with the bottle set to chill in a container of ice. “The fact that I am drinking alcohol and you aren’t reinforces that image in their minds, too.”
    “Amazing,” I said. “You figured all that out by looking at them?”
    “I connect the dots. It takes just two points to make a line, so I only need to know two things to get a direction. Three makes a picture. Some of the dots they reveal and some of them I provide, like what we’re wearing or drinking.”
    He gave half a shrug. “I make educated guesses. The thing is, they are so busy making their assumptions that none of them will guess the truth.”
    “The truth?”
    “That I am, as we speak, already fucking you right in front of them.”
    He meant the Ben Wa ball. My breath caught and I felt warmth rush through me at the thought of it and from his words. I couldn’t feel the glass globe now that I wasn’t moving, but I knew it was there.
    “There is a man against the wall, by himself. He thinks we might be having a date. But even he doesn’t dare to imagine that we’re having sex at the moment, through words and shared knowledge, even though I’m not touching you.”
    I had to stifle a moan.
    “Squeeze your muscles down below,” he murmured quietly. “Do you feel it?”
    I nodded, trying not to look like I wanted to collapse onto the banquette and have him ravish me that second.
    As it was, he ravished me with his words. “No food they serve me tonight can compare to the lusciousness that you hide under your skirt. Have you had a man suck on your clitoris before?”
    “What? No. Lick, yes, suck, no. They tend to suck higher up.” I adjusted my breasts, which weren’t even held in by a bra.
    “Tell me about them.” He didn’t take his eyes off me as the old plates were replaced with new ones and new silverware set down.
    “My old boyfriends?”
    “Yes.”
    “If you want to have a sexy conversation, they’re not good topics,” I said.
    “Truly?”
    “Truly. They tended to suck. By which I mean they were sucky, not that they were into oral. Maybe if they had been, they would’ve been better lovers. And there haven’t been that many of them. Every time a guy turned out to be horrible in bed, it discouraged me from bothering to meet another one.”
    “That seems a terrible waste,” he said.
    “I guess. Maybe I just wasn’t what they were looking for.”
    “And what do you guess that would’ve been?”
    “I don’t know. Someone blonder? Someone with bigger boobs? Maybe that would have inspired them.”
    “Well.” He paused again while more new plates were delivered, this time with a ginger-and-lime-flavored broth poured over a hunk of white fish.
    We ate for a few moments in silence.
    “Any man who needs blond hair or a bigger chest to be ‘inspired’ enough to perform well isn’t a man worth going to bed with,” he said suddenly.
    I stopped eating in surprise.
    “Every part of your