and the Beast in the other.
He arched a brow. “She wasn’t joking.”
I felt the heat on my face and snatched the box from his hand. “I went through a dry spell. Don’t tell me you’ve never watched porn.”
He grinned. “Of course I have. I just don’t store mine in Disney DVDs.”
I laughed, took the wine out of his hand, and guzzled half of it in one gulp. As long as we were on the subject, I figured I might as well see what types of things he liked to watch. Lord knows, I’d found I had a bit of a fetish. “Is your collection specific to any type of porn?”
Grant squinted. “Are you asking me if I like to role play or have any fetishes?”
“I guess. I just found certain things worked for me, while others didn’t.”
He took the wine glass from my hand and drank the other half. “I’m not particular. But now I’m desperate to know what you’re into.”
I let out a nervous laugh and took the empty glass from his hand. “I need more wine for this conversation.”
After I refilled, I led Grant over to the couch. “Can you just pretend you didn’t open Beauty and the Beast?”
Grant shook his head with a wicked grin as he lifted my feet onto his lap. He began rubbing. “Not a chance, sweetheart. Spill it. What’s your kink?”
“It’s not really a kink.”
“So let’s hear it. Or do I need to unveil your full Disney collection and figure it out for myself right now?”
I drank a little more liquid courage. “I found that I sort of like videos where the woman is pleasuring the man.”
Grant stopped rubbing. “You like to watch a woman give head?”
It was the new millennium. I shouldn’t be embarrassed by anything that empowered me sexually, yet I bit my lip and nodded.
“Jesus Christ,” Grant grumbled. “You’re fucking perfect. How the hell did you ever have a dry spell?”
I laughed. “My dry spell was self imposed. I have a pattern. I pick an asshole to date. Then I blame it on the entire sex and take a long hiatus.”
“You’re sitting here with me. Does that mean I’m an asshole?”
I sipped my drink. “I don’t know, are you?”
His playful smile wilted. “I can be. But I don’t want to be to you.”
“It doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to figure out where my issues come from. I have some serious trust issues, Grant. My dad used to accuse my mom of cheating all the time. I’ll never know if there was any truth to his accusations. I like to believe there wasn’t, and he was just irrational and unstable. But that’s what they always fought about, and were fighting about the night he ended her life. When he panicked and took off, he left me handcuffed to a radiator where no one found me for two days. And yet I still have a tendency to be attracted to dominating, asshole men.”
“And you see me as one of those?”
I shrugged. “I don’t now. Though I never see it at first. I like confident men—ones who are assertive and exude a certain kind of energy. You definitely fit that bill. But in my experience, the men with the take-charge personality I find so attractive don’t necessarily make the best partners. The last guy I dated was really controlling. He didn’t like me hanging out with my friends, and when I did, he’d check up on me. When I told him to back off, he had a way of making me feel guilty for wanting my own space.”
Grant took my hand. “I’m sorry. We all have past relationships that carry into how we deal with things in the future.”
“You know how I finally decided it was time to get rid of Scott, my ex?”
“How?”
“Without even realizing it, I’d started to click my pen.”
“And that means…”
“Scott had a pet peeve. He hated when anyone clicked their pens.”
Grant squinted. “You said Bickman hated foot tapping and heavy perfume and you used to do those things to secretly annoy him.”
I smiled. “Bingo. I was unconsciously doing things to annoy him. That’s not a sign that screams stable relationship. So I broke things off.”
“I’ll have to remember that. When you type at me in all caps, I’ll know what it means.”
I laughed. “Is that your pet peeve? Not sure you should have shared that with me.”
Grant smiled. “You have a wicked side, Saint James.”
I felt like I’d shared a lot of my past, yet I didn’t know too