Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 78064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
“To the party or to the resort?”
He cocked his head. “I’ll take an answer for both.”
“I don’t know.” That wasn’t a lie.
With his hands now on his hips, he studied her. “Have you ever done anything like this before?”
He couldn’t tell she was out of her element? Or was he only being kind?
“No.”
“Did you book your stay because you were curious?”
She released a dry laugh. “Pretty expensive curiosity.” At the time, she was forcing herself to be brave. Once again, tonight proved she was anything but.
“Are you curious about this kind of life? Or are you here to discover your deepest, darkest desires?”
“I don’t have any dark desires,” she admitted. She had desires, but didn’t consider any of them dark.
She frowned. Or were they? She had no idea what was considered taboo and what wasn’t. At least in the real world and not in a fictional one.
“But you want to discover the real you who’s been hiding deep inside.”
She jerked up one shoulder. “Maybe I simply needed a change.”
The corners of his very beautiful mouth curled up slightly. “Said the woman who broke off a long-term relationship full of shitty sex.”
She stared at him, not sharing his amusement.
“C’mon. Admit it.”
“I wasn’t in a long-term relationship.”
“You mean recently,” he guessed. “Now you’re here looking for what had been missing from your former…whatever.”
She wasn’t getting into her past relationship with a stranger.
She was in her thirties. She wasn’t a virgin. She dated here and there. But it had taken her a while to scrape free from her former boyfriend. He had been determined to marry Cara. She had been determined not to.
But what this man guessed was true. The dry and uninspired sex had left something to be desired. She usually had to fake an orgasm to get Glenn to finish and get off her.
However, their problems weren’t only about their sex life, but the fact Glenn had been having sex with someone else. Someone Cara was close to. She hoped her best friend found that the shitty sex with Glenn was worth destroying their ten-year-long friendship over.
The smartest decision she made was to keep her own place and not move in with him. It made breaking it off much easier.
For her, anyway.
His anger about her leaving him turned ugly and it took a while for him to finally face the fact she wasn’t coming back to him. She’d rather stay single the rest of her life, read piles of books, and pull out her vibrator when needed.
While it kept life simple, sometimes loneliness crept in. It was that combination of loneliness and curiosity that made her search out a place like Double D Ranch.
“So, if it’s not years of shitty sex with an asshole partner, what made you come here? I’ll go back to my previous question about it being curiosity.”
“More or less.” Again, she wasn’t discussing her former relationship with a stranger—she didn’t even know his name—behind a building.
“And what did you see, do, or hear to bring that about?”
Oh crap. Should she admit it? Saying it out loud could make her sound like a naïve fool.
“You don’t have to be ashamed of your answer. We don’t shame people here. We encourage. Support. We even teach.”
Teach. Maybe that was what she needed. Someone to hold her hand and explain the details. Details that could very well be wrong in many of the romances she’d read. At the time, she hadn’t cared about accuracy since it was only fiction, but now…
Holy shit. Maybe all the books got it wrong and she was totally unprepared. She needed to know the truth. “I’ve…read things.”
“Articles?”
She shook her head. “No, books.”
“How-tos?”
“No…”
His brow dropped low.
“Fiction,” she explained, wondering if she’d regret it. “Romance, erotica…”
“Wait…” He huffed out a breath. “You came here solely because you read sexy romance novels?”
Heat filled her cheeks. “That was stupid, wasn’t it?”
“Did you do any of your own research?”
He thought librarians were smart. She just proved him wrong. “Isn’t that what this is?”
He threw his head back and laughed.
She pulled in an irritated breath. “Have a good night.”
He quickly sobered. “No, wait!”
When he grabbed her wrist to stop her from leaving, she glared at his hand. He released her immediately and threw up his palms in surrender. “Sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you but because…”
“Because I’m a fool.”
“No. If anything, you’re brave. I’ve never read a romance novel but I can’t imagine…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is they opened your mind to trying new things, right?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “Then who cares about the reasoning used to come here? The fact is, you’re here. Now you can safely see and experience all this place has to offer…in reality. The beauty of this resort is you can do as little or as much as you’d like. No pressure. You can spend your whole stay simply observing, if you wish.”