"No."
I frown because I don't know what he means.
"No? But tonight with that girl. After the video, weren't you with her? And all the other women?" I'm completely confused.
"I sent Nina home in a limo," he says.
"Then where were you?"
"Not here." His grin is just a bit wicked. "Making you crazy."
Since I can't argue that, I skip over it. "But you have a reputation. And in your bed--I saw those two women, and--"
"None of them," he says firmly. "Not one."
I don't say anything. I just stare at him, because I don't understand at all.
He leans in and captures my mouth with his. The kiss is long and deep and I feel it all the way down to my toes, so intense that I feel like I'm floating. So passionate that I feel like I'm melting.
When he breaks the kiss, his expression is gentle, and he is looking at me as if I'm the most precious thing in the world to him. "Never," he says. "I've never fucked any of them, though at first it wasn't for lack of trying."
I push myself up to a sitting position. "But--but you're--" I cut myself off because this isn't easy to talk about. Except that's stupid, so I try again. "But you're hard. Like rock hard."
He half-smiles. "Nice of you to notice."
I roll my eyes. "I get why it happened with me," I say. After all, we have a history--a dark history and so much of a guy's performance is in his head. Any girl who reads Cosmo knows that. "But with other women..."
"I swear to you, Jane, you're the only woman I've ever been inside. And yeah, I hate it. Maybe I'm not as strong a man as I'd like to believe, because even though it shouldn't, losing my goddamn wood--not being able to fuck--it makes me--"
He cuts himself off, but I know what he was going to say. Makes him feel less. Makes him feel broken.
Isn't that what he'd told me? That he was broken.
"But everyone knows you fuck around," I say. "You're practically famous for it."
"Smoke and mirrors. An illusion. Just like a magic show."
"I don't understand."
"I've been building that reputation for years. It's important to me."
"Why?"
"What could be more important to a man who can't fuck than the reputation of being the best there is?"
It's a reasonable answer, and I certainly can't argue. But at the same time it doesn't quite ring true for me. But why he wants the reputation is his business. What I'm really curious about is how.
"What woman is going to admit to being the only one not fucked by the great Dallas Sykes?" he asks, when I beg him to explain. "And honestly, no woman has left my bed unsatisfied. So on the whole I think they're getting a pretty good bargain."
"I am sorry," I say. "I know it can't be easy. And this is going to sound terrible, but I'm glad it's not just me. On the island, after what you said, I thought I was the only girl you couldn't fuck."
I shift so that I am sitting up with my knees to my chest. "You said stuff that night about how they destroyed you, but you kept me in your head. So I guess I thought that it was just me. I guess I thought you blamed me."
"Oh, baby, no."
"You do remember, don't you? All these years you've said that you don't remember anything between them releasing me and you being ransomed. But it's not true, is it? You do remember, and you were alone." I feel a tear spill down my cheek. "You were all alone without me."
He pulls me close and kisses me. My lips. My cheek. My brow. He strokes my face and looks in