“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
―Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Dare
I didn’t expect it.
I’m not used to people surprising me.
And she just surprised the hell out of me.
Because when I told her I was out, she didn’t look like someone whom had been inconvenienced or just had her pride stung.
She was gutted.
And that gave me a flare of hope, one I felt in my center of my chest. Alice may have been insisting she wasn’t interested in anything more than a sexual relationship, and only for the purpose of her academic ambition, but her reaction revealed there was more here for her than she admitted.
I pulled her chair right next to mine, draping my arm over the back.
I was now close enough to hear her breath hitch in the back of her throat and see her pupils dilate.
It was time I told her how this was going to go and I hoped like hell she was up for the ride.
“Listen, Alice, I know myself well. There’s no way I’m going to be down for some clinical fuck,” I said. I could feel the intensity rolling off me in waves as I talked with my hands. “I’ve got this mental picture in my head, of us tearing into each other, only to have you jot down notes in your lab notebook, scheduling our next session like it’s an appointment with the dentist or something.”
She let out a sigh of relief. “Is that it? That’s your issue?” she asked, her hand over her heart, which only brought my attention to those gorgeous breasts of hers. “City, it wouldn’t be like that.”
She’s not fully getting it.
I grimaced. “I’m not someone who believes in a lot of rules, but I do have two I live by. One, I don’t do anything half-assed, and second, I keep the circle of people I trust small. Part of what that means is I don’t fuck around. I don’t do casual.”
Her gaze went from my eyes to my mouth. I wanted to take that mouth. I craved her body in my bed, but I knew myself too well. I was greedy. Just her body would never be enough.
“If you don’t do casual, then why did you agree to be part of my study in the first place?” she asked.
I stared.
“Wow, it’s always the smart ones who lack common sense.”
She scrunched her nose. “Excuse me?”
Totally adorable.
“How do you not get that I’ve been looking for any ‘in’ with you I could find?”
She searched my face, as if she were trying to determine if I was for real or full of shit. Right then, I decided I wasn’t going to hold anything back, even if it costed me my chance.
“Dixie, how the hell can you say you’re studying the psychology of sex and yet you’ve been hell-bent on only giving your body? Don’t you get that great sex happens when all of you is in it? Without the mind and heart, the body can’t fully surrender.”
“Of course, I get that,” she said, barely above a whisper. “It’s just that . . .” she blew out a breath. “I’m used to living my life compartmentalized, pieces of me set aside in little boxes. It’s how I survived.
“Even when I was with Chad, someone who swore he loved me, I eventually came to realize he only loved the parts of me he could understand or relate to. The rest, he tried to wash away, in ways so small and insidious I didn’t even catch on ‘til much, much later. I guess I’m still trying to forgive myself for letting him convince me there were pieces of me that weren’t good enough.”
She looked so small sitting in that big chair next to me.
“I get that. In order to survive, we had to reconfigure ourselves into things not entirely of our creation,” I said, reaching out to brush the stray hair out of her eyes. “We’ve all done it. Just swear to whatever God you believe in to never do it again.”
She stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“How is it I hardly know you, and yet, you get me more than the man I was engaged to?”
“I don’t know,” I said. And, as I did, I swear I felt my heart come back to life. “But that doesn’t make it any less true.”
She took my hand into her lap, threading our fingers together.
Her touch already felt like home.
“I can’t do half measures,” I said.
“I know, but I can’t let myself drown in you either. I can’t make my life all about your life,” she said, squeezing my hand.
“Is that what happened with your ex-fiancé?”
She nodded. “I met him freshman year and we were together throughout college. We broke up halfway through my master’s program, last year. What I thought was my own fairy tale, of the poor girl being swept off her feet by the rich prince of North Carolina, ended up something very different.”
I let that sink in. “I’m assuming you’re the one who called it off?”
“Yes,” she said, picking off an imaginary speck of dust off the skirt of her dress. “Chad didn’t take it well. He’s used to getting what he wants.”
“I bet. You know all the douchebags throughout history are always named either Chad, Dick, Trevor, or Blaine, right?”
Her mouth twitched. “You just made that up. Didn’t you?”
I paused, then winked. “I did,” I said, “But that doesn’t make it any less true.”
She busted out laughing.
Warmth spread through me. “Getting you to laugh is going to be my new favorite thing.”
Her eyes lit up. “I’ll tell you what, City. I wouldn’t mind that. Not one bit.”
“Challenge accepted.” I said. “One more thing.”
“Hmm?”
“I want to hear about him. I want to hear all your stories,” I said. “But first, we’re going to leave this restaurant before we close it down and I’m taking you back to my place. We may end up just talking all night or I may find myself dick deep in you. You up for that?”
She sunk her top teeth into her bottom lip. “We’re going down the rabbit hole, aren’t we?”
“Dixie, you have no idea,” I said as I stood up to take her away. “I’m hoping you’re going to find that falling’s never been such a rush.”
“How can you know so soon?” she asked, looking up at me.
“I know because it’s going to be with you.”