Jezebel (45 page)

She wanted to squirm.
Talking to a guy with a Mensa-certified I.Q. of one hundred and
fifty-one about needing more variety in your sex life seemed so
trivial. “You don’t want to hear the boring details.”

“
Try me,” he
replied, relaxing back into the booth.

Roxanne caught his gaze and
held it. “No judgments?”

“
Have I ever judged
you?”

Actually, no. Despite all
the tomfoolery she’d committed over the years, Leo had always
been tolerant.

“
I’m hornier
than a private during Marine Week.” She sighed dramatically. “I
haven’t had sex in—”

“
Eight months, three
days and…” Leo glanced down at his watch. Roxanne had
given him the titanium timepiece for landing his first client several
years ago. “Sixteen minutes and forty-five seconds.”

Roxanne wrinkled her nose to
keep from laughing. “You’re exaggerating the minutes and
seconds.” Leaning forward, she pulled the sugar shaker toward
her and fingered the rim. “I guess I’ve over shared one
too many times.”

Leo inched his index finger
toward his thumb. “I’m this close to handing out ‘Get
Roxanne Laid’ campaign buttons.” His perfectly timed
humor made Roxanne chuckle. “Jokes and horniness aside,”
he continued, “I believe the ‘why’ is more
important than the ‘how long’.”

Damn he’s good!
Roxanne sat back, wavering between confession and mule-headed
secrecy. She drummed her polished nails against the chrome tabletop,
trying to buy herself some time. But Leo’s
I-can-outlast-you-any-day look obliterated her game plan. “My
sex life is missing something.”

“
Missing what?”

Roxanne glanced at the
teen-pop crowd again. “Actually, my sex life is abysmal,”
she muttered.

Leo’s eyebrows jutted
above the frames of his black spectacles. “How abysmal?”

“
Black-hole, Deep
Impact abysmal.”

Leo rubbed his hand over his
mouth and regarded her with what looked like disbelief. “Deep
Impact?” Roxanne nodded. “Well, I wasn’t expecting
that. Not from the poster girl for young, black and fabulously single
in the Windy City. Up until several months ago, you ran through men
faster than the NFL draft.”

Roxanne winced. She hadn’t
been that free with the milk, had she? “You make me sound like
a two-piece-chicken-and-biscuit whore.”

Leo chuckled. They’d
come up with the term in college to define all the co-eds who’d
put out for the cheap two-dollar meal from Ray’s Bar-B-Que, a
popular late-night hangout.

“
You know I’ve
always followed the motto, what’s good for the goose is good
for the gander.” His voice dropped an octave. “So, let me
get this straight. You stopped having sex because whoever was doing
it to you wasn’t doing it for you?”

Roxanne smiled. Leo had such
a way of putting things. “All of them gave it their best. I
think they were just too…” Roxanne paused, hunting for
the right word to describe her whitewashed sex life.

“
Vanilla?”

Roxanne rapped her knuckles
against the table and Leo’s eyebrows rose another inch. Any
higher and they’d blend into his hairline. “Jessina says
I need a take-charge kind of guy. A macho man who’ll push me to
the edge, make me beg for it.”

During her sexual
confessional, Leo’s expression grew increasingly pensive. As
the seconds of complete silence stretched between them, Roxanne’s
insides twisted. For someone who considered herself a sexual being,
her lack of a decent sex life made her feel a little inadequate.

“
If you’re
looking for what I think you’re looking for, you’re
wasting your time on a traditional dating website.” He slipped
out of the booth and moved to her side, sliding in next to her. “You
need to go directly to the source,” he continued, swiveling his
laptop around to face them.

With a few quick strokes and
a click of the mouse, he pulled up a website with a black background
and deep red fonts. The site had the prerequisite smiling couple as
its blissful mascot.

Instead of the innocent
hugging pose, the man wore a half-mask and lay handcuffed to a
platform bed while his female companion stood over him with a braided
flogger.

“
WhipADate.com?”
she whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from the computer screen.
“Why have I never heard about this?”

“
You’re vanilla,
remember?” Leo maneuvered the cursor over the member profile
link and clicked enter.

“
Oh my,” Roxanne
breathed as a portal unlike any she’d ever seen unfolded on the
screen.

“
What are those?
Sexual fantasies?” she asked, pointing to a sidebar with
scrolling text.

“
Member testimonials
of fantasies fulfilled.”

Roxanne sat forward. Her
eyes devoured a catalogue of member photos featuring full-frontal
nudity, skin pinched with wooden clothespins, limbs entwined in rope
and chains, and mouths stretched with rubber balls.

“
You’ve got to
be kidding me,” she murmured aloud and then shook her head. It
was one thing to talk shit, quite another to walk the walk.

“
Everything on this
site is real and hardcore. And you’d better be as well, or at
least serious about your intentions, because the membership has a
tendency to out those who are simply window shopping. If they do,
you’re dead in the water and you’ll be using your
vibrator for another eight months.”

Roxanne stiffened. She and
Leo discussed pretty much everything, but never the most intimate
details of their sex lives.

“
You’ve never
used a sex toy, have you?”

Groaning loudly, Roxanne sat
back. “It’s confirmed, Houston. I’m vanilla.”

Leo drummed his fingers on
the keyboard. “Are you sure you’re ready for this? Do you
think you’ll be able to let someone else bend you to their
every whim?”

She might not have a
submissive bone in her body, but for some reason the idea of being
compliant to someone else’s every wish and command pulled at
something deep inside her.

“
You know, there’s
a more sensible alternative.”

“
There is?”
Roxanne hated that she sounded so eager.

Leo nodded. “You could
start out slow with someone you know. I think―”

“
Only one problem,”
she interjected. “I’ve never backtracked, and I’m
not dating anyone currently.”

Leo
turned toward her and propped his arm on the back of the booth. When
his thigh brushed against hers, Roxanne didn’t think anything
of it. While in college, they’d often slept in the same bed.
However, when Leo didn’t say anything…just sat there
staring at her…she started to fidget.

“
I don’t want
you to do this with anyone else, Roxie. I want to introduce you.”

Roxanne slapped his thigh.
“Ha ha, good one!”

Thinking nothing else of his
proposal, she picked up her half-eaten red velvet cupcake and took a
bite. Too bad the dessert didn’t come with a dick. The mix of
chocolate and cream cheese almost made her moan as she devoured the
rest of the cake. When she fell back down to earth, Roxanne finally
noticed she was the only one laughing.

“
You’re serious,
aren’t you?” She couldn’t keep the incredulous tone
out of her voice.

“
Very,” he
replied, powering off his laptop.

The crumbs in Roxanne’s
mouth suddenly turned to dust. She picked up the Mason jar next to
her plate and gulped down her milk, wishing it was something stiffer.

Never in a thousand years
would she have guessed Leo wanted more than friendship! If his
tight-lipped answer was any indication, a new millennium had
obviously dawned. Roxanne eyed him over her glass. Not as a good
friend, but as a woman eyeing a potential lover.

Easy on the eyes, Leo had a
curly mop of jet-black curls that offset his electric blue eyes and
the rich, olive-toned skin he’d inherited from his Greek
parents.

Those very same genes also
contributed to a pair of full lips, high cheekbones and a lean,
six-foot-plus frame that didn’t need much in the form of
exercise, even though he worked out on a regular basis.

Looks aside, Leo was also
very intelligent and the owner of one of Chicago’s most
successful internet companies. He’d earned his first million
five years ago at the ripe old age of twenty-four.

Despite the solid
foundation, Roxanne knew she couldn’t go there. Becoming lovers
would only complicate things. Boyfriends came and went, true friends
did not.

Wedged between a rock and a
hard place, she decided to grease her way out of a difficult
situation with reverse psychology. “You and I both know I’m
not your type.”

“
Not my type?”
Leo rolled his eyes. “You’re one of the most desirable
women I’ve ever met.” Leo’s light gaze slid over
her in a lingering perusal. Hot, predatory and disturbingly wicked,
the gaze lingered far too long on her cleavage.

Unsettled and feeling a
growing itch between her thighs, Roxanne snapped, “Who are you
kidding? Every woman you’ve dated sprouted from the same Grow
Me a Barbie Petri dish. All of them were size zero, blonde and
blue-eyed, just like your ex-fiancée.”

Roxanne winced as a shadow
fell over Leo’s expression before he quickly blanketed it.
Damn! Leo’s confession had so unsettled her, she’d run
roughshod into forbidden territory.

Two years ago, Victoria
Carlson, Leo’s former fiancée, had called off their
wedding a month before the nuptials on the ridiculous assumption that
Leo was in love with someone else. The idea was preposterous. Leo had
always been a one-woman man.

Roxanne reached out to
diminish the damage. When her fingers brushed along his forearm, a
jolt of electricity bolted up her own. Startled, she drew back. What
was wrong with her?

“
You’re looking
for excuses.” Leo cocked his head and mustered up a tight
smile. “I would have never taken you for a coward.”

Roxanne’s mouth fell
open. “Take it back!”

“
Coward.”

“
I think cautious is a
better word for it.”

Leo tucked his thumbs under
his armpits and flapped his arms. “Bock, bock,” he
clucked.

A patch of giggles erupted
across from them. Time to go. Ignoring the whispers and giggles of
the parochial set, Roxanne grabbed her clutch bag and pushed Leo from
the booth, sliding out behind him. “Let’s take this
outside,” she said, nodding at their underage audience. She
threw a twenty on the table while Leo gathered his things.

Roxanne stepped outside and
pulled on her leather gloves. Chicago’s temperature must have
plummeted twenty degrees while they’d been inside Let Them Eat
Cake.

Leo followed, bursting into
a speech as soon as he cleared the threshold. “Why won’t
you admit it? The real reason you won’t consider me is because
you’re not attracted to me. Roxanne Simmons always falls for
tall, dark and debonair. Not tall, white and geeky. You like guys who
wear cashmere, tailored suits from London and suede horse-bit
loafers. Not computer geeks who live in wrinkled khakis, button-down
shirts, Chuck Taylors and glasses.”

Broadsided by his
superficial opinion of her, Roxanne stood rooted to the spot—because
she realized she couldn’t entirely disagree. But saying she
found him unattractive wasn’t exactly the truth. Leo might not
be GQ’s man of the year, but there was something about him that
appealed to her in a way other men never would.

Still, his opinion stung.
She refused his hand when he found an opening in traffic, instead
picking her own way through Chicago’s midday rush. She needed
the brief respite to dampen her hurt and anger.

Once on the other side of
the street, Leo clicked his key fob, opening the doors to his silver
Maserati GranCabrio. Roxanne crossed in front of the shiny
four-seater, which Leo called his First Born, and scaled the curb.
Miffed by the whole situation, she didn’t get in the car but
instead started to pace beside it briskly.

“
Leo…I’m
hurt by what you said back there. I don’t find you unappealing.
Far from it.” Roxanne stopped abruptly and faced him. “But
you’re my best friend. I love you and I don’t want to
lose what we have by downgrading you to a booty call. Think about it.
If it doesn’t work between us, can you go back to what we have
now?”

For several drawn-out
seconds, he didn’t say anything. In the late-afternoon
sunlight, his exotic features were more pronounced and his gaze
twinkled like diamonds behind the black frames of his glasses.

“
No,” he finally
admitted, shoving his hands in the pockets of his khakis. “Once
I’ve tasted you, I’d be unable to settle for anything
else.”

Roxanne blamed the milk
she’d gulped down earlier for the sudden flutter in her
stomach.

“
Come on, get in,”
he said. “I’ll drop you back off at the boutique. I’ll
come over later and we’ll finish your profile.”

Roxanne nodded in agreement.
But as she slid in beside him, she wondered if what she really needed
was online…or already sitting right beside her.