totally lost now. From V to a special man?
“Yes. He’s just way hot. He’s an actor. He lives in my building in NoHo— Well, I mean your building. Brandon? Brandon Delaney?” She seemed to be prompting him.
He shook his head. “No idea.”
She kept trying. “Blond hair, the most amazing butterscotch eyes...”
Dami had a property manager and a superintendent for the building and only a vague idea of who lived there. Some of the apartments were co-op, others leased. And butterscotch eyes? Was this a man or a dessert? “I’m afraid I don’t recall this Brandon.”
“Oh, Dami. He thinks I’m a child, you know? And I’m not a child— Well, yes, okay, I am inexperienced, not to mention naive. I get that. But I’m not stupid. I’ve simply been sick for most of my life and kind of out of the mainstream of things. But not anymore. I’m well and I’m strong and I’m living my dream. And I really, really need to get started on doing the things that normal, healthy women do—now that, at last, I am a normal, healthy woman. Dami, I need to, you know, hook up.”
He tried not to look as befuddled as he felt. “Hook up.”
“You know...have sex?”
“Er, yes. Of course I know.”
“But see, I feel so awkward and strange about it.” She lifted both hands and pressed them to the sides of her head, as though trying to keep what was inside from escaping. “I mean, I’ve met a few guys in Manhattan this past month and a half.” She let go of her head and waved her slim arms about in her excitement over something of which he still had no clue. “I’ve met a few guys and I’ve tried to picture myself with one of them, but the idea of doing it with any of them just doesn’t feel right—except for with Brandon. I find Brandon extremely attractive and I definitely could get something going with him. But he’s very much about his acting and he’s big on life experience and he won’t hook up with me because he doesn’t have sex with boring, innocent women.”
Damien’s head was truly spinning. “You...asked this Brandon fellow to...?”
“Oh, no!” More blushing. “Not straight out, I mean. I don’t know him well enough to ask him straight out.”
“Oh, of course. I see.” He didn’t, actually. Not in the least.
“But I did try to kiss him....”
“And?”
“He caught my arms and kind of held me, really gently, away from him.”
“You mean you didn’t kiss him after all?”
“No. He stopped it before it happened. And he looked in my eyes and told me that it could never work, that I’m so young and inexperienced and I wear my emotions on my sleeve. He said he would never want to hurt me, but of course he would hurt me because I would be in over my head with him. He said he doesn’t, you know, sleep with virgins and that he’s got no time for anything serious right now anyway, because acting is his life.”
What a fatheaded ass. “You are adorable, Luce, and thoroughly charming. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”
She put one of those flying hands to her heart. “Oh, Dami. See? That’s how you are. Not only have you treated me like someone who matters from the first time I met you. Not only did you come to my rescue and fly me to Manhattan when I’d almost given up on ever getting there. Somehow you just instantly, always, say the exact thing that I need to hear.”
He made another stab at finding out where all this was going. “So you came to me for advice, then?” He reached for his coffee cup.
And Lucy said, “No. Not advice. Sex.”
He set the cup down sharply. “Say again?”
“Dami, it’s so simple. I want you to have sex with me. I want you to be my first.”
Damien found himself experiencing the strangest sensation of complete unreality. “Dearest Luce. Did you just ask me to be your lover?”
She nodded, her shining brown head bouncing up and down as though on a spring. “Oh, yes. Please. I like you, Dami. I truly do. And when I think of having sex with you, it doesn’t seem like it would be too awful—and you are so experienced. I really do need someone who can help me be more sophisticated and you just happen to be about the most sophisticated person I know. And as for having sex with you, well, you seem like you would know what you were doing and I...” The words ran out.
He started to speak but fell silent when she moaned.
And then she let out a cry and put her hands to her cheeks as though in an effort to cool her fierce blush. “Oh, God. You should see your face. This is not going well, is it?”
“Luce, I—”
Before he could say more, she shoved back her chair and leaped to her feet. “Seriously. I don’t know what I was thinking. This is a bad idea. A really stupid, utterly inane idea. And now you’re going to think I’m such a complete child, a total dork...”
He got up. “No, I do not think you’re a child. Truly, it’s all right. It’s...”
But she didn’t stay to hear the rest. She whirled and bolted for the door.
“Luce!” Dami went after her and managed to catch up with her halfway down the hall to his private foyer. He grabbed her hand. “Wait.”
She moaned again and tried to pull away. “Let me go.”
He held on. “Please. Don’t become so worked up. I promise you, you’re neither a child nor a dork. And I’m quite flattered.”
There was yet another moan. “Oh, no, you’re not.”
He lifted the hand he’d captured and kissed it lightly. Then he wrapped his other hand around their joined ones. “Listen to me.”
A little whine escaped her.
“Tell me you’re listening,” he coaxed.
“What?” She sagged against the hallway wall, between two handsome nature prints he’d bought at one of his sister Rhia’s charity art auctions. “All right. Yes, I’m listening.”
“I am flattered.” He tried a hint of a smile and watched her soft lips quiver in reluctant response. “Really, Luce, you are so unpredictable. You know, I find I never know what you might do or say next. But at the same time, at heart you are so wonderfully direct, so honest.”
“Direct and honest,” she grumbled, but at least she’d stopped trying to make him let go of her hand. “Ugh. So I’m a good person, but I’m not especially exciting—that’s what you’re saying.”
“No, that is not what I’m saying.”
“Yes, it is.”
