“Good,” I said. The man already knew it. There was no point in lying.
“So. Mind if I borrow the rest of your books?”
I regarded him, wondering what he was really getting at. “Why?”
“I liked the one I read.”
I looked at him, stunned. Since he’d brought the one from yesterday back so fast, I assumed he hadn’t been able to read more than a few pages. “You did?”
“Yeah,” he said, shoveling down food.
“What did you like about it?” Men sometimes said that they liked my books after they’d found out what I did for living in order to hook up. Killian could avail himself of my shower, but he wasn’t availing himself of my vagina.
“The humor, mainly. And the emphasis on community and people just being decent and good to each other. Oh, and the glitter bomb Erika sent her boss at the end.” Killian grinned. “That was hilarious.”
“So you really did read it,” I said, surprised and pleased. Those were the reasons I loved that book, too. And I appreciated that here was the first man I’d met who not only read one of my books but understood what I wanted to convey in my writing world: good people finishing first and living happily ever after. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
“Of course. I wouldn’t lie about it, not when I’d get found out in a second.” He washed down his latest bite with the tea. “Could’ve used more sex, though.”
I almost choked on my eggs. Should’ve known he’d go there.
“But the three sex scenes it did have were hot as hell. Erika came ‘over five times’”—he was making air quotes with his fingers—“in the first one. How many times did she really come, though? It wasn’t clear from the text.”
I bit my lip to contain a laugh. Of course he remembered that detail and wanted to know more. It was such a guy thing!
“If the book didn’t say, it means you don’t need to know.” I tried to say it with a touch of prim asperity but the truth was that I didn’t recall every detail of the story. It’d been months since I’d finished it, and right now, my mind was focused on Molly and Ryan’s romance.
He grunted. “Too bad. Your readers would definitely want to know that level of detail. So tell me, do you write the kind of sex you want to have?”
Here we go. I inhaled deeply so as not to lose patience. For some reason, every time people learned I wrote sex scenes, they considered it completely acceptable to ask personal, sex-related questions. Even my now-former dentist had asked me how much “research” I did while getting his tools ready and having me inhale laughing gas.
At least Killian had cooked me an excellent breakfast. And he wasn’t being overtly condescending—or asking with an unhealthy leer, like the dentist. “Are you going to ask me if I research them in person, too?”
“Do you?” His blue eyes sparked, a smile curving his lips. The dimple popped on his cheek, and he looked more tempting than a ripe strawberry dipped in chocolate. “If so”—he raised a hand—“I volunteer as tribute!”
I burst out laughing at his homage to The Hunger Games. His questions were predictable, but he just seemed curious. And I liked the way he’d made a joke with my question.
“Tribute? As in the Roman sense? Like a slave?”
“Hey, whatever you’re into. I’m an equal-opportunity kind of guy.” The smile went up about two thousand kilowatts.
I laughed again, the exchange lightening my mood. I took a swig of tea and looked at him speculatively. The sex scenes in my books weren’t necessarily my fantasy. The kind of sex my characters had largely depended on their personalities and the couple’s dynamics. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun to research some of them in person for the first time in my life, especially if the partner was as fine as Killian.
On the other hand, he was very aware he was just oozing sex appeal, and men like that were bad bets for relationships. Exhibit one: my father. He charmed the panties off every pretty twenty-something he ran into. It was gross and humiliating.
But…why was I thinking about relationships in conjunction with Killian? I wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend, long-term or otherwise. If I needed to scratch an itch, a collection of nice sex toys that had never let me down was waiting in a drawer next to my bed.
“I don’t do research,” I said finally. “And you can borrow my books if you’ll keep cooking me breakfast.” If I wasn’t going to bother with lunch and dinner—he was right about that point—so I should have a decent breakfast every day.
The dimple appeared again. “That’s a deal. Oh, and my sister is a huge fan and wants to buy all your books. Autographed. Can I buy them from you directly?”
I nodded, happy he wanted to talk about more harmless things. I told myself the heavy, languid feeling settling in my gut was something other than longing.
Chapter Thirteen
Emily
When breakfast was over, Killian put the plates in the dishwasher. He was surprisingly capable in the kitchen when it came to cleanup, too. It was a bit of a shock, since he’d acted like he was somebody famous in Sunny’s Mart when we’d first met. Maybe he wasn’t that famous, because…did really famous people even know how to open dishwashers? Didn’t they have maids and people who took care of everything like that for them?