simply have an intimate cup of coffee with a friend. When a man has sex, he can expect that he will always have an orgasm. Why as a woman should you expect any less?”
“I—” But she stopped. She stared at him, and he could see the way she had to catch herself, as if her knees weren’t quite working. Once again, he was struck by how beautiful she was, this absurd argument and all. “It’s the closeness that really matters.”
Conrad sighed. “Do you know who says things like that? People who don’t know any better. Or men who don’t care to do their jobs.”
“I have a million orgasms,” she assured him. “All the time.”
“Rory. I can make you come in minutes. Right here. That’s the very least you should expect from a person you take into your body. It pains me to imagine that you have careened through life allowing your lovers to treat you so shabbily.”
“My lovers, of which there are many,” she said, in a tone of voice that suddenly made him wonder if she’d had any lovers at all, “know, as I do, that there’s a lot more to sex than just coming.”
“Of course there is.” He found himself smiling again. “Or everyone would simply masturbate and call it a day. I hope you do, by the way. Since you don’t achieve satisfaction anywhere else.”
“I’m a sexually liberated, infinitely satisfied woman. I am fully in charge of my own orgasm—”
“That’s a yes, you do. I think. I’m pleased to hear it.”
“I demand, and receive, exactly what I want in bed.”
“Then it’s sad that what you demand and receive is so paltry. And unsatisfying.”
“I think you’re full of it,” she threw at him, her eyes overly bright. “The truth of the matter is, everyone has different bodies. You can’t make sweeping statements like—”
“Like, I can make you come?” Another laugh came out of him, astonishing him. But then, this whole scenario was astonishing, and here he was. Still participating in it. “But I can. In minutes, as I said.”
She moved forward in a display of aggression that he would never have tolerated in any of the women he normally played with.
But there was something about Rory that entertained him. He couldn’t have said why. She was different. All wrong, in fact.
Yet that wasn’t really what he was concentrating on as she put her hands on her hips, stuck her face in his, and scowled at him.
Actually scowled.
At him.
“Okay, big guy,” she threw at him, which was obviously unacceptable on every level, and yet only made him hard. “Then prove it.”
CHAPTER THREE
RORY HAD MADE a mistake.
A huge mistake, she thought while everything inside her shuddered and those dark, navy blue eyes of his seemed to...turn to steel.
It was as if he’d put on a mask, suddenly.
Or worse, a voice in her suggested, taken one off.
It wasn’t that his face changed, really. He was still as beautiful. As striking, no matter he wasn’t her type. It was as if he was suddenly...more than all that. And she could feel her response prickle all over her, inside and out, until she felt almost feverish.
Hot. Cold.
Back and forth.
While she was wholly unable to jerk her gaze away from his.
Rory had the insane notion that he’d picked her up and was holding her in the palm of his hand, though he was only staring down at her in that darkly unreadable way of his. And wasn’t touching her at all.
Another man might have reacted. She’d banked on a reaction, but Conrad only burned. And studied her as if he was a sheathed weapon she had no business getting near.
She could suddenly see nothing else when she looked at him but that danger.
Rory couldn’t say she’d ever paid that much attention to her nipples before in all her life, but now they were so sensitive that the weight of her T-shirt against them was almost unbearable.
But if she let herself think too much about why, she thought she might pass out on the spot.
And the way her heart kept battering at her ribs, that was a very real worry.
“See?” She made herself demand, aware that her voice was a little too much on the uneven side. That wasn’t good. But she was still standing there, hands on hips and her face in his, and she was sure that if she didn’t double down, she might die. Or worse, something in her whispered. “All talk and no—”
“That’s enough.”
There was something about that voice of his.