The band member, four little bottles of booze, and his skull with crossbones tattoo left a moment later. Kimber breathed a sigh of relief.
“Don’t mind him. He can be an ass.”
Kimber didn’t disagree. “He tells me you do everything together. He’s the third in your ménages, isn’t he?”
Jesse squirmed uncomfortably under her waiting stare. “So you know about that?”
“When you said you had a kink and you didn’t think I could handle it, I read a few tabloids, asked around. I got answers.”
“Ah, babe.” He wrapped his arms around her and placed a gentle kiss on her lips.
“It’s lonely without you. Those girls are meaningless. Ryan and Call make sure everything that happens on the road is meaningless. And nailing someone by myself just got too…common. A twice-daily thing, like brushing your teeth.” Twice daily? With a stranger? And regular sex had become too boring?
“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t say it to hurt you. I’m being honest. But you…
you’re the one who matters to me. I won’t be bored with you. I’ve thought about it, and I won’t share you. You’re too sweet. Too good. I need you to stay that way.” Lovely sentiment. But she wasn’t up for sainthood or anything. And what would happen if he did get bored? What would happen if she couldn’t get over Deke?
Frowning, Kimber slid onto the sofa cushion beside him. “I’m not too sweet. I’m not totally innocent. After I found out about your ménages, I looked up someone I knew who’s in to the same thing. He and his cousin…trained me.” Jesse’s face fell. “Trained you? You let them f**k—”
“No,” she cut in. “I told you I planned to come to you a virgin. I have.” Only because Deke had turned her down. Damn, there went that pain in her stomach again, making tight knots into tighter ones. She slept with it, breathed it with it, ached with it. Time was supposed to heal all, but the pain wasn’t easing or going away.
Kimber had offered herself to Deke not because she’d felt sorry for him. As if she’d give her virginity for a pity f**k. The only thing on her mind and in her heart that night had been her desire to heal him, to bond with him, be meaningful to him.
To love him. Somehow, despite his awful words to her afterward, a part of her—a big part—wished that Deke had accepted her offer and taken her. She suspected that him breaking her virgin barrier would help him break through his emotional one.
But now she’d never know.
Jesse breathed a sigh of relief. “So they just talked to you?”
“They touched me. I learned to touch them.” She wasn’t going to lie. She just wasn’t going to tell him she was in love with someone else.
Thunder boomed across Jesse’s dark face. “Touch, how?”
“Enough that I understand the appeal of the ménage and what draws you to do it.
I never expected you to change your sexuality for me. So I tried to adapt for you.” I tried to find out what fascination a crass, difficult soldier had for me and I got burned.
The answer seemed to mollify him. “That’s… Wow, you’re an amazing woman.
But You’re not like the whores and bimbos around all the time. I had no intention of sharing you. Not with Ryan. Not with anyone. If I make you bad, how can your good rub off on me?”
His tone was half-joking. Kimber wasn’t laughing. They really needed to get past this Virgin Mary image he had of her.
“Thanks for not wanting to share me with Ryan.”
Jesse leaned over, pulled her close. “You’re mine, babe. We’ve spent too many years apart for me to only get half of you. You’re the only one who really knows me. You’re the only one I care enough about to change for.”
“I didn’t ask you to change.”
“But for you, I want to. For you, I want to be a better man. Just being near you makes me one.”
His words were touching…but confusing. Why did he think he needed to change so badly? When had this all come about? And why had he pinned it all on her?
“Maybe we can compromise. You be a little better, I’ll be a little badder. It’ll all work out then.”
He hesitated. “Badder, how?”
“I hadn’t planned on being a virgin forever.”