Free The Trouble with Lexie by Jessica Anya Blau Page B

their two parts.
    â€œYou okay?” Daniel turned Lexie’s face toward his and stared into her eyes.
    â€œWhat about STDs? We haven’t done a panel!” Could she get something from that moment?
    â€œI haven’t been with anyone but my wife in more than two decades. And I can guarantee my wife hasn’t been with anyone else.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œJen is gorgeous and smart, but she has no interest in sex. She hit menopause two years ago and that was it for her.”
    â€œWell, what if she fooled around before?”
    â€œBelieve me. I know my wife.”
    â€œYou think there is no way on earth she’s had sex with anyone but you in twenty years?”
    â€œTwenty-two years. I’d bet my son’s life on it. And I know absolutely that I haven’t had sex with anyone else in twenty-two years.”
    â€œSo why are you so calm?” Was he lying? Lexie felt the shallow water of nausea stir in her stomach. Had she been completely bamboozled?
    â€œCalm?”
    â€œThis isn’t freaking you out? I mean, for twenty-two years, you’ve been having sex with the same woman, the same naked body, the same vagina, the same breasts, the same mouth, night after night after night. And now you’re here with me. And you’re not totally freaking out?”
    â€œI don’t freak out. I’m not a freak-out guy.” Daniel pulled Lexie in tighter and hugged her until she softened. He kissed her, sweetly, on the lips. The eyes. The nose. The chin.
    Lexie let herself breathe deeply. She looked over at her skirt on the chair. She could do this without the Klonopin in the skirt pocket. She could relax. “Well, even if you don’t have an STD, we need birth control.”
    â€œI was snipped. Not a problem.”
    â€œSnipped?” This was the first time fifty-three seemed old.How odd that Daniel was over and done with all the child-rearing stuff that hadn’t even yet begun for Lexie.
    â€œClamped. One of those reversible ones. You know, in case.” Daniel slid himself in between Lexie’s legs and rubbed back and forth like he was playing the violin.
    â€œThey can do that?” Lexie was growing breathless.
    â€œYes. You okay if I go back in?”
    â€œYou swear you don’t have an STD? I’ve never done it without doing a full panel beforehand.” Whatever resistance she had was being methodically rubbed away.
    â€œYou are a beautiful nutball. Don’t you trust me?”
    â€œMmm, I keep flipping back and forth with the trust.” She could barely keep her eyes open.
    â€œI trust you.” Daniel kissed her.
    â€œOK. I trust you, too.” Lexie was whispering. “I don’t know why. But I do.”
    THE SEX WAS INCREDIBLE. OTHERWORLDLY. TANTRIC. OKAY, NOT tantric. But maybe mystical. Lexie had never before known sex like this existed. She thought of case studies she’d read of crack addicts, how the first time they did the drug their brains lit up so intensely and in such a novel and spirit-altering way that all they wanted from then on was more crack. Now something deep inside of Lexie, a place she hadn’t known existed, was lit with an addiction-like intensity. And this internal light was entirely connected to the idea and the physical being of Daniel Waite.
    Guiltily, Lexie thought about Peter—dear, sweet, Peter. Sex with Peter was good, she wouldn’t have agreed to marry him ifthat weren’t the case. Peter was a man with skills. He was strong. He never made demands, asked for very little, and gave a lot. But their sex had never had the intensity of what had happened with Daniel. There had never been the tsunami of emotion that had almost drowned Lexie with sensation. And there had never been this postcoital dreaminess. It was a feeling Lexie couldn’t help but equate with the immaculate contentedness one feels when slightly drunk, after a perfect meal, with the very