Free Bella Summer Takes a Chance by Michele Gorman Page B

participant, which might not always be the case. Third, if I was sexually deficient in some way, as Fred seemed to suspect, I’d rather find out with someone I wasn’t yet emotionally attached to. ‘Let’s go to my room.’ I led him by the hand (though another option naturally presented itself), remembering too late that my floor was covered with the contents of my wardrobe. ‘Excuse the mess, it’s not usually this bad.’
    ‘I like it bad,’ he said. ‘Do you like it bad?’
    ‘Yes, I like it bad.’ It had been awhile. Bad, good, as long as it was with a living, breathing man.
    ‘Mmm. Good. Come here.’
    He had me out of my pants in just a few seconds while we stood kissing. The moment had come. My first time with a new man this century. He knew what he was doing all right. Ooh, that was new. Who needed a vibrator with fingers like that? Seriously, seriously good. He manoeuvred me to the bed. ‘Lie down.’
    I knew what was coming, and it made me uncomfortable. Oral sex wasn’t something that I entered into lightly. It was too intimate. Gently I tried moving his head back into kissing range but he didn’t budge. I could have put him in a headlock between my thighs till he stopped breathing but that seemed a bit drastic. Fine. I didn’t want to rain on a man’s foreplay.
    ‘You’re hairy.’
    What did he–? He did not just say that I was hairy. I wasn’t. I didn’t get five o’clock shadow on my bikini line. It hadn’t sounded like an accusation, though, more of a surprised observation.
    ‘I’m so horny for you. Would you like me inside you? Tell me.’
    I didn’t want to talk him through it like an IKEA assembly pamphlet. ‘Yes, please.’ I just hoped he brought his own Allen key. ‘Do you have an, em…’ Do not say Allen key.
    ‘I think I do. One sec.’ Conveniently his wallet held the key. ‘Do you want it?’ He growled. ‘Say you want it.’
    Sigh. ‘I. Want. It.’ I wasn’t used to having to sing for my supper in bed, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t plan to… Oh my. He certainly did eat all his spinach growing up. He was the sort of man whose endowments became legend in the annals of history, or at least in the wine bars of London.
    He certainly was rushing things a bit, though. It wasn’t the gentle stroll I hoped for. More of a gallop.
    And. We were done. ‘Did you like that?’ He said through a sweaty smile. Which was fair enough, after that sprint.
    Try as I might, I couldn’t banish the miniature sports announcer that materialized by his shoulder. ‘Well, B., what did you make of the first half? That was some performance, eh?’
    Must not giggle while a man lay naked beside me. ‘Very nice, thank you.’ I felt like I’d just had subliminal sex – it had flashed so fast that I had only a vague notion that something had happened.
    ‘You know what? I like that you’re hairy. It’s very natural. Old school. Do you ever wax?’
    There are some things that should never be said to a naked woman. Like ‘You haven’t got much use out of that gym membership’, ‘My mother is coming at the weekend’, and ‘You’re hairy’. I was not hairy. I’d shaved, I was as smooth as I’d be for a day at the beach. Unless. Unless the shaving wasn’t the issue. He thought he was seeing me the way nature made me. That I hadn’t spent ten minutes with my leg cocked up on the side of the bathtub trying not to slice into an artery. That was his idea of hairy? Jesus, what did he expect, a Hitler moustache? Honestly, men had no idea. ‘Er, thanks. And yes, I do groom.’
    Despite his having likened me to Sasquatch, in the nicest possible way, I liked snuggling next to him. I missed the contact, the closeness. And the sex. I missed the sex. Mattias and I hadn’t been overly sexual and in all honesty, our love life in the past few years didn’t so much excite the imagination as tick the boxes. To say it was a duty was disingenuous, because it was still nice enough. It just