“Oh?” I ask, my curiosity piqued. “You’re breaking from the spontaneous rule of our trip and actually have a plan?”
“Hey, technically it wasn’t ever a rule,” he says, underlining the fact.
We back out of the parking lot and the vintage Chevelle purrs onto the road.
He’s wearing the same black cargo shorts he wore yesterday and I get a quick glimpse of his rock-hard calves, one foot pressing gently on the gas pedal. A dark navy t-shirt fits his chest and arms just right, the fabric tighter around his biceps.
“Well, what’s the plan, then?”
“New Orleans,” he says, smiling over at me. “It’s only about five and a half hours from here.”
My face lights up. “I’ve actually never been to New Orleans before.”
He smiles inwardly, as if excited about being the one who gets to take me there my first time. I’m as excited about it as he is. But really, I don’t care where we go, even if it’s the mosquito swarms of Mississippi, as long as Andrew is with me.
Two hours later, after we’ve exhausted the random topics which have only been a distraction from talking about what happened last night, I decide to be the one to break it. I reach out and push the down button on the volume. Andrew looks over at me curiously.
“Stuff like that has never come out of my mouth before, just so you know,” I get it off my chest.
Andrew grins and moves his hand down on the steering wheel, letting his fingers casually steer instead. He appears more relaxed, his left arm lying across the door on the other side of him, left knee bent upward while the right foot stays on the gas pedal.
“But you liked it,” he says, “saying it, I mean.”
Ummm, there wasn’t anything about last night that I didn’t like.
My face is only a little red.
“Yeah, I did, actually,” I admit.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about saying something like that during sex before,” he says.
I hesitate. “Actually, I have.” I look over sharply. “Not that I sit around and dream about it though, I’ve just thought about it.”
“Why didn’t you ever do it before then, if you had the urge?” He’s asking me these questions, but I’m pretty sure he already knows the answers.
I shrug. “I guess I was just chicken shit.”
He laughs lightly and moves his fingers back up the steering wheel, holding it more securely as we go around a curvy section of highway.
“I guess I’ve just always thought of it as something Dominique Starla or Cinnamon Dreams would say in Legally Boned or Friday Night Dikes.”
“You’ve seen those flicks?”
My head jerks around and I gasp. “No! I … I didn’t know they were real, I was just making up—”
Andrew’s smile becomes playful.
“I don’t know if they’re real, either,” he says, giving in before I die of mortification, “but I wouldn’t doubt it, really. And I get what you mean.”
My face relaxes.
“Well, it’s hot,” he says, “for the record.”
I blush some more. Might as well just leave the blush on all the time because I find myself doing it around him a lot more every day.
“So, you think porn stars are hot?” I cringe inwardly, hoping he says no.
Andrew gently purses his lips and says, “Not really, it’s hot in a different way when they do it.”
My brows draw together. “Different as in how?”
“Well, when … Dominique Starla,” he picks the name from the air, “does it, it’s just to some random guy lookin’ to get off behind a keyboard.” His green eyes fall on me. “That guy’s not dreaming about anything with her except her face in his lap.” Then he looks back out at the road. “But when someone … I dunno … like a sweet, sexy, completely un-slutty girl does it, the guy is thinking about a lot more than her face in his lap. He’s probably not even thinking about that at all, at least on a deeper level.”
I definitely caught the secret meaning behind his words and he probably knows as much.
“It drove me mad,” he says, glancing at me long enough to lock eyes with me, “just so you know.” But then he turns away completely and pretends to be concentrating more on the road. Maybe he doesn’t want me to accuse him of ‘talking about it’, even though I’m the one that started this conversation. I take full blame and I don’t regret it.
“What about you?” I ask, stirring the brief silence. “Were you ever afraid to try something sexually you had the urge to try?”
He thinks about it a moment and says, “Yeah, when I was younger, like around seventeen, but I was only afraid to try things with girls because I knew they were …”
“They were what?”
He smiles softly, pressing his lips together and I get the feeling there’s about to be some kind of comparison.
“Younger girls, at least the ones I hung out with, were ‘grossed out’ by anything unconventional. They were probably like you in a way, secretly turned on by something different than the missionary position, but too shy to admit it. And at that age it was risky to say: ‘Hey let me do you in the ass,’ because chances are she’d be freaked out by it and think you’re some sexually disturbed pervert.”
A laugh pushes through my lips.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I say. “When I was a teenager, I was grossed out when Natalie would tell me things she let Damon do to her. I didn’t start actually finding them hot until I lost my virginity at eighteen, but …” my voice starts to trail thinking about Ian, “… but even then, I was still too nervous. I wanted to … umm …”
I’m nervous admitting it now.
“Go on, just say it,” he says, but not with any measure of playfulness. “You should know by now you can’t run me off.”
That takes me aback (and makes my heart flutter). Is the truth written all over my face, that I’m afraid of giving him any bad impressions of me? He smiles gently as if to give me that much more assurance that nothing I can say to him will give him a bad impression.
“OK, if I tell you, do you promise not to think it’s an invitation?” Perhaps it is, even though I’m not sure about that myself yet, but I definitely don’t want him to think that. Not right now, maybe never. I don’t know …
“I swear,” he says, his eyes serious and not at all offended, “I won’t think that at all.”
I take a deep breath.
Ugh! I can’t believe I’m about to tell him this. I’ve never told anyone; well, except for Natalie, in a roundabout way.
“Aggression.” I pause, still feeling embarrassed to go on. “Most of the time when I daydream about sex, I’m …”
His eyes are grinning! When I said ‘aggression’ something triggered in his features. It almost seems as if … no, surely that can’t be right.
He softens his eyes once he notices.
“Go ahead,” he says, smiling gently again.
And I do, because for some reason I’m less afraid to finish than I was seconds ago:
“I’m usually