Run To You

back at her. Then he set her on her feet and everything came crashing back. “What would you call it?”
    “I’d call it a momentary loss of judgment due to Gentleman Jack.”
    Blaming it on whiskey irritated her. “You put your lips on mine. I call that a kiss.”
    His gaze slid to her mouth. “It was more like a peck.”
    “Like you’d give a sister?”
    “I don’t have a sister.”
    “Your mother?”
    He raised his gaze to hers. “I don’t kiss my mother on the mouth.”
    “Random women in casinos?”
    “Depends on the random woman.” He shrugged a big shoulder and turned his attention to his dinner. “Are you going to get it all twisted and think it meant something?”
    Now he’d just irritated her further. “I don’t get things twisted, and I don’t think it meant anything other than you can’t resist me.” There. Take that, Sergeant.
    He scowled at his plate. “I can resist you.”
    “Obviously.”
    “Jesus.” He glanced up at her. “It isn’t like I put my mouth anywhere interesting or threw you down and laid pipe on the casino floor.”
    She cocked a brow, leaned closer, and said just above a whisper, “ ‘Laid pipe’?”
    “Go to the bone yard. Ride the baloney pony. Have wild monkey sex.” He waved his fork in her direction. “Whatever.”
    “There was never any danger of that happening on the casino floor or anywhere else.” She sat back but kept her voice low. “I’m not going to have sex, monkey or pony or whatever, with you or any man.”
    His gaze slid to her lips and throat. “Are you a lesbian, Boots?”
    “No. I’m just not having sexual intercourse until I am married.”
    “You’re shitting me.”
    “No.”
    The blond waitress approached and asked if they needed anything. Beau waited for her to walk away before he said, “You’ve never had a boyfriend?”
    “Of course I’ve had boyfriends. Doesn’t mean I had sex with any of them.”
    His eyes got kind of squinty. “Is this one of those jokes that you think is really funny but isn’t?”
    “No.”
    He lowered his chin and stared into her eyes. “You’re saying you’re a virgin.”
    She glanced about to see if anyone had heard. “That’s what ‘I’m not having sexual intercourse until I am married’ means.”
    He looked skeptical. “Maybe.”
    She laid down her fork and lifted her hands, palms up. “What else could it possibly mean?”
    He ate a few bites before he answered. “It could mean you’ve had way too much sex.”
    What? She dropped her hands to the table. “I’m twenty-eight.”
    “Could mean you’ve had so much sex that it’s just meaningless now. It could mean you’ve had sex on every continent, and faces and names are just a blur.”
    She’d never been out of North America and was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about her anymore. “That would make me a raging slut.”
    “I don’t know about ‘raging.’ ” He glanced up, then back at his steak. “I wouldn’t say ‘raging.’ ”
    “What would you say?”
    “That you need to sit on the bench for a while until sex means something.”
    Now it was her turn to be skeptical and she pushed her half-eaten dinner aside. “Are you saying you’re on the bench?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “I find that hard to believe.”
    “And I find it hard to believe that you’ve had boyfriends but you’re still a virgin.”
    Again she glanced about to see if anyone heard him. “It’s true.”
    “Are you a tease, then?”
    She shook her head. “When I get into a relationship, that’s one of the first things I let him know.”
    He continued to eat and asked between bites, “How many relationships have you been in?”
    “Three.” She thought a moment. “Well, there was that horrible one, so three and a half.” He’d been a real player and a jerk. He’d worn biker boots and ski goggles in the summer, and for some reason, she’d thought he was cool. “We didn’t go out very long.”
    He took a drink of water and sucked a drop from his bottom lip. “Probably didn’t like permanent blue balls.”
    “There are things people can do that don’t involve intercourse, you know.”
    “Yes. I do know. There are a lot of things.” He cocked his head to one side and set the glass on the table. “What specifically are you talking about?”
    She’d never before talked about sex with a man she had no intention of having sex with. “Touching and kissing.” But what the heck. She checked to make sure the waitress was across