LITMIR.BIZ

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to be one of the most bizarre encounters he’d ever experienced in his life. In fact, he was still having trouble believing it. There were so many intriguing elements to their strange conversation that he had a hard time deciding where to start.

      Eighteen months without an orgasm? Ironically, her climax had left town about the same time he’d started showing up at the Blue Monkey, Ben noted absently. And The Vagina Whisperer? Another silent chuckle bubbled up his throat. Still stunned, he didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended. Ah, hell. Who was he kidding? He was damned flattered. After all, that nickname and what it implied was evidently what had brought April Wilson to his doorstep.

      Looking for a sexual cure, no less.

      From him.

      When he’d been systematically running through every available woman in Louisiana trying to get her out of his head?

      Suffering from a severe case of shock, he passed a hand over his face and laughed again. Had anyone told him when he’d rolled out of bed this morning and made his usual trek to the office that April would show up and ask him—ask him— to have sex with her, he would have never believed it. Instead, he would have told them to ditch the hallucinogenic drugs and seek professional help. Things like this just didn’t happen to him. He’d always had to make his own luck.

      Given the thin-lipped expression she’d adopted when the irony had all but gotten the better of him and he’d nearly laughed, Ben knew that his initial response—apart from shock—had annoyed the hell out of her. Not that he could blame her really. It couldn’t have been easy to make the decision to seek his help, and frankly, he admired her for being both mature and blunt. That, in and of itself, was wholly refreshing. No games, no guesswork. She could have just as easily made a play for him—which, given his recent behavior at the Blue Monkey, she knew he’d accept—and kept her motives to herself.

      But she hadn’t.

      Instead, in a ballsy no-bullshit move, she’d leveled with him and suggested a mutually beneficial deal. And a deal was good—it leveled the playing field and encouraged emotional boundaries. Furthermore, he’d put off the effort and minutia involved with pulling together the necessary content for a proper Web page because, in truth, he hadn’t found anyone whose work he admired as much as he did April’s.

      Her page was the perfect combination of professionalism and whimsy, gave the visitors and prospective clients an organized, aesthetic glimpse into who she was and what she could accomplish. She was damned good at what she did, Ben thought. She had an uncanny ability to interpret a theme and make that come together in a graphics format for her clients. She, too, was an artist. She merely worked in a different medium.

      Ben paused considering. If April hadn’t had an orgasm in eighteen months—eighteen mind-boggling months—then there had to be one helluva reason. Something more than just a string of subpar lovers. Hell, even a premature ejaculator knew how to work his fingers. A grin tugged the edge of his mouth.

      Or at the very least, she did.

      He couldn’t see her spending eighteen months in the equivalent of sexual purgatory without trying to tend to her own needs. Ben felt a smile tug at his lips. Not little Miss I-can-do-it-myself, he thought. That would be completely out of character. Her mother might have been a bona fide—quite frankly disturbed—bitch, but April could thank her for that my-way-or-the-highway attitude, if nothing else.

      Thwarting her control freak of a mother had made April one of the most self-sufficient, stubborn and determined women he’d ever known. That trait, coupled with her inherent goodness—and the goodness she could detect in even the most undeserving people—her wicked sense of humor, a sure sense of herself and an innate sexuality that oozed from every pore, made her one of the most interesting, compelling women he’d ever been around.

      Simply put, she charmed him. She always had.

      And knowing her the way he did, he was damned certain that she’d only considered asking for his help as a last-ditch effort to put an arc back into her evidently flatlined libido. He’d be willing to bet his left nut that she’d tried everything else, and when those options had failed, she’d decided to come to him.

      Call him an opportunistic bastard, but he was glad.

      And where others had failed, Ben thought with a slow smile, he would not.

      The Vagina Whisperer rumor notwithstanding, he knew how to please a woman. As with anything, the desire to perform combined with the old “practice makes perfect” adage could turn even the most mediocre man or woman into a competent partner, but in Ben’s opinion good lovers were born, not made.

      Being a good lover involved more than knowing how to find a G-spot or administer the perfect kiss. A good lover had the inherent ability to seduce the mind, understood that planning a seduction went well beyond the traditional candles, wine and roses. Attention to detail, investing time, learning to listen, essentially picking up on her signals until a man knew her well enough to morph into her fantasy.

      Most men had a tendency to rush the attraction, to hit the high spots for a mediocre payoff, when maybe just a few more days of patient consideration—priming, if you will—could result in a coupling so combustible the sheets all but set fire.

      That was the kind of sex he specialized in.

      He didn’t waste his time with “dumbed down” sex. When he did it, he did it right. Clearly, April had been getting the dumbed-down variety for so long that her poor, confused libido had finally said “screw it” and gone into voluntary hibernation. That, or it had merely rebelled, waiting for the right guy to come along. Whatever the reason, she needed him, and simply knowing that made several organs swell, both north and south of his zipper.

      Without warning, her plump, pouty mouth materialized too readily in his mind’s eye and he felt a flame of heat lick his groin. God, he couldn’t wait to kiss her again. Couldn’t wait to push his tongue into the warm cavern of her mouth, taste the addictive combination of hot spice and sweet innocence and something else, something far more wonderful and bittersweet than either of the previously mentioned two—the flavor of being wanted.

      Truly wanted.

      Ben was accustomed to being desired, to being the object of a woman’s lust. A come-hither smile, a bed-me look. Frankly, he got them all the time. He’d been blessed with decent good looks and a hefty dose of sex appeal. He couldn’t deny it and wasn’t above capitalizing on it when the urge struck. Which was often. He was a man, after all, and there was nothing politically correct about baser needs, the drive to procreate. He liked sex and didn’t intend to apologize for it. But there was a huge difference between being desired and being wanted.

      Desired—which was admittedly nice—was commonplace. But wanted was rare.

      Wanted implied a familiarity, a longing despite flaws and imperfections. Wanted meant I’ll take you warts and all. Ben swallowed. Wanted was just a hair shy of love, and the only time he’d ever felt that sort of connection—that sort of unconditional yearning—was with April.

      She’d wanted him.

      To know that she merely desired him now was a bit depressing, but when it came to her, he’d settle for whatever he could get. A bark of dry laughter erupted from his throat.

      He’d willingly—gladly—be her whore.

      Guess that didn’t make him much different from his father after all, Ben thought as his lips twisted with bitter humor at the unwelcome insight.

      Speaking of which, that raised another question. Did she know that her dad and his had become roommates? He’d wrongly assumed that had been the reason for her visit, and yet other than one awkward moment when she’d asked about his father, nothing else had been said about them. He’d sensed some tension, but if she’d known about their respective sires making the move to cohabit, she would have said something. Odd, then, that she hadn’t.

      He stilled. Surely to God she knew Marcus was gay, Ben thought, struck by the notion. He paused, mulling it over. Yeah, he scoffed. She had to

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