“Sexual,” she supplied, after he paused for a few beats.
His little nod mussed his hair against her pillow. “A few of them.”
“Most of them.” She wouldn’t lie, and she wasn’t embarrassed. Not about having written explicit content, anyway. “Or at least on-page sex occurs in most of them, even if sex isn’t the main”—she couldn’t resist—“thrust of the story. So to speak.”
He half groaned, half laughed at that. “Don’t distract me, Whittier. This conversation is hard—difficult enough as it is.”
Dammit, he was right. Back to listening, instead of dirty punnery.
Finally, he raked the hair back from his forehead and kept talking. “Okay, so here’s my point: In your fics, there’s sex involving the character I play. And when you describe Aeneas in your stories, he doesn’t look like the Aeneas of Wade’s books. He’s not dark-haired or barrel-chested. He doesn’t have brown eyes. Instead, he’s . . . leaner. Golden. Blue-eyed.”
He really had read her stories, evidently. Which was both flattering and alarming.
And she couldn’t deny it. “He’s you. Or at least, he looks like you.”
“Yeah.” Letting go of her hand, he pinched his forehead between thumb and forefinger, eyes squeezed shut. “Now that we’re dating, I think that could maybe be a bit, uh . . . confusing for you? At least sometimes?”
When he didn’t add anything for a few moments, she shifted onto her own back and forced herself to think about what he’d said and offer him the most truthful response she could, untainted by her instinctive desire not to alienate him in any way.
“It can be disorienting.” It was a low-voiced, hard-fought admission. “I’m part of a private Lavineas server, and sometimes they post GIFs of your—Aeneas’s—sex scenes, and—”
He’d gone very still beside her.
“—when we were naked, when your hands were down my pants and when you were inside me or licking me, I swear to God I didn’t picture those scenes. But sometimes, when we’re not actively in the moment, I get these . . . flashes.” She swallowed over a dry throat. “Like, I’ve seen that before. Your ass. Your chest. Your expression. Things like that.”
Before he could respond, she rushed on. “I’m not embarrassed that I’ve written fanfic, and I’m not embarrassed to have written about sex in those fics. But now that I know you, I don’t think I can include any more explicit scenes in my Lavineas stories, because it’ll seem too . . .”
He didn’t try to help, maybe because she wasn’t sure he was still breathing. She had to find the words on her own, and she bit her lip as she searched for the right ones.
Copper on her tongue, she chose carefully. “It’ll seem too intimate, now that I know you. Invasive. And the last thing I want to do is inadvertently picture you—Marcus, the man I’m dating—having sex with another woman. Even if I’m writing about Aeneas, a fictional hero. I may love Lavinia, but I have no desire to share you with her, even in my imagination.”
Shit. She was assuming a lot. Way too much for this point in their relationship.
She cleared that dry-as-sand throat. “Not that we’re exclusive—” “I want to be exclusive,” he interrupted. “Just so you know.”
She paused, blinking up at the ceiling in shock. “You do?”
“Yeah. I do.” For the first time during their conversation, he sounded entirely sure of himself. “Do you want to be exclusive?”
Her bitten lip hurt as she began to smile. “Definitely.”
“Good.” There was that smugness again. Irritating but flattering too.
In one short syllable, he’d declared her someone important in his life, someone he wanted to himself with a possessiveness equal to her own. And yes, that was definitely good.
“Okay, then. I guess we’re exclusive now.” She turned her head on the pillow to look at him, her grin now wide enough to make her cheeks ache. “That was fast.”
He was looking at her too, his mouth soft and curved. “I’m almost forty. That’s at least two hundred in Hollywood years. I don’t have time to waste.”
“That only applies to women, unfortunately. Not men.” Her wrinkled nose expressed her disgust for that particular double standard. “Your industry is sexist as fuck.”
“No kidding. You would not believe—” He stopped himself. “Hold on. We weren’t done talking about, uh . . .”
Her smile faded. “Whether I want Aeneas, not you?”
He was breathing again, and meeting her eyes, but he still hadn’t reached out. Which meant she needed to keep talking, because