Brothers of Paradise Series

“I’m not that much of an asshole,” Rhys says.

I take another sip of my wine, wondering if it’s giving me courage or making me foolish. Perhaps it’s only ever a mixture of both. “But you want to know?”

“Of course I do. And by the way you’re goading me, I wonder if perhaps you want me to ask you.”

“And why would I want that?”

“You tell me.” His hand stops next to mine as he finishes dealing out the cards. The space of couch between us has shrunk in the past hour. We’re closer than when we started. “Perhaps you don’t talk about this to a lot of people.”

“Oh, I don’t.”

“Tell me, then,” he murmurs. “If you want to. If it’ll make you feel better.”Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

I look down at his hand. Wonder if I can take it, and then admonish myself for the thought. Whatever Rhys and I are, we’re not that. Kissing on bridges in Paris had given me ideas.

“I’ve never had sex,” I admit. “It’s just… never happened.”

Rhys is quiet for so long that I have to look up to see what’s happened. Has he had a stroke? But no, he’s watching me, his eyes inscrutable. I meet them and can barely hear his words over the furious beating of my heart.

Rhys blows out a long breath. “Well, that’s not what I was expecting.”

“No?”

“I thought you’d say it’d been a while. That you’d had a less than satisfactory experience. That… well. Not that.” He raises an eyebrow. “You know I have even more questions now.”

I bury my head against the back of the couch, and he laughs, breaking the tension. Something pokes my bare knee and it’s him, using the deck of cards the same way I’d done to him earlier. “Come on. Doesn’t it help to talk things out? I feel like I’ve been told that once or twice myself in the past.”

“And you’re a therapist?”

“I can be, for the evening.” There’s no judgement on his face, which was what I’d been afraid of. What I’m always afraid of-that people will draw all kinds of false conclusions.

“Well, we’re on a couch,” I say, taking another sip of my wine.

“You know what I’m going to ask. You already know I’m thinking it,” he says.

“Yeah, I can guess.”

He runs a hand through his hair again. “You’re a virgin,” he says. “I’m sorry, but how the hell can that be true?”

“I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know?”

I blow out a frustrated breath. “It’s like, somehow, everyone around me in high school started getting boyfriends, got used to having sex, and then it was all casual hook-ups all the time, everywhere, like everyone was on some express train to Sexville but I’d still not gotten a ticket.” I throw up my hands, half-smiling out of awkwardness. “I go to college online. I’m working most of the time, and the men who ask me out all expect it to happen on the second or third date. There are expectations, and that’s what I hate, those damn expectations. Because I don’t know if I can deliver on them.”

Rhys frowns. “And you don’t think they’d understand? If you told them?”

“They might.” I wrap my arms around myself. “But I’ve never met anyone I felt comfortable telling. It’s all so… Look, I regularly delete comments on my social media. I don’t read my direct messages anymore. It’s all a flood of things, of men who only want one thing. And I guess I’m afraid that if I were to admit to this, I would be…” I can’t bring myself to complete the sentence.

“They’d see you as even more of a trophy?”

“Yes. And that’s the last thing I want.”

He nods slowly, like he’s trying to sort through a puzzle. I hope he’ll share the solution with me, if he finds one, because I could use some clarity. “So what do you want?”

“What do I want?”

“Yes? Do you want to have sex, ever?”

My cheeks heat up. “Yes, of course I do.”

“Right. And what would your ideal situation be like?”

“Rhys, I-”

“No, I mean it. Is there one?”

I close my eyes. “Yes, I suppose. I’m not… it doesn’t have to be serious. I’m not walking around and waiting for the one, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I don’t need that level of commitment. I just want to… God, Rhys.” I push my hair back. “I just want there to be trust. To go slow. To laugh. And to be seen.”

He nods slowly, the cards abandoned between us. “I get that.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. You don’t like the pressure.”

I breathe out a sigh of relief. “Exactly.”

“I also think you might be too kind for your own best interest.”

“What do you mean?”

He leans back against the couch, arms over his chest. “You can tell a man you don’t want to sleep with him. You can tell him mid-sex that you want to stop. You can make him wait ten, fifteen, twenty dates. You don’t owe anybody anything, and fuck them and their expectations if that makes them annoyed. You don’t have to please them in any way.”

It’s like he’s put his finger on my pulse and calculated it expertly, all in a matter of minutes. And from the expression on his face, he knows it.

“It’s one thing to know that intellectually,” I say, “and another to do it. I clam up at the idea of it, of having to explain this to someone I’ve just met.”

“Of course you do. It’s scary, but I know you’re brave enough.”

“You do?”

He snorts. “Yes. You agreed to this crazy trip with no one else to accompany you but me, didn’t you? And you’d never left the country before?”

I wet my lips. “No, I hadn’t.”

“So yes, Ivy, you’re brave enough.”

I glance toward the giant, linen-clad bed in the lodge. Think about all the different things I want to know, to see, to experience. The comfortable sense of exploration I’ve sought.