“All right. When did you have your first sexual relationship… one that involved sexual intercourse?”
Well, no beating around the bush with Sylvie. Nothing like coming straight to the point. Well, I can be blunt, too. “Twelve.”
She closed her eyes as if her questions, or his answers, were painful to her.
“Could you elaborate, please? No, don’t tell me details. Just an overview.”
“An overview?” He grinned. Lord, but she was some kind of a nutcase. “The cloakroom of Our Lady of the Bayou School, during recess.”
Sylvie’s mouth went slack-jawed, and he knew she was imagining him as a twelve-year-old kid. That was the same year he’d asked her to dance with him, and she’d refused. She had to be wondering who the girl had been.
“You were certainly precocious,” she commented when she was finally able to speak.
He ducked his head sheepishly. “I probably set a record with my world-class, thirty-second screw.”
“It was Mary-Louise Delacroix, wasn’t it?” Sylvie blurted out. “The slut!” He could tell she immediately regretted her hasty words.
“Syl-vie! It’s not nice to call people names. Mary-Louise wasn’t really a bad girl. One thing just led to another and bingo-bango. We were just two kids, experimenting… and rather clumsily, at that.”
“I did not need to know all that,” Sylvie muttered under her breath. “Let’s fast-forward to the present. We can fill in some of these other details later.”
“Whatever you say, babe.”
“When was the last time you had sex?”
“Define sex.”
She groaned.
He took mercy on her. Besides, her face was so red he feared she might have a stroke. “I had sex with a woman six months ago.”
“Six months?” She was clearly surprised, no doubt expecting him to live up to his wild reputation. She probably thought he had sex daily, even several times a day. Hardly.
“I’m selective,” he explained. “And one-night stands don’t have the appeal they did at one time.”
She nodded, apparently in agreement.
“How often do you come to orgasm during a typical sexual encounter?”
He shot a startled glance her way. Well, she’d certainly blindsided him with that one. When he regained his breath, he chuckled. “Six times.”
She peered up at him with skepticism. “Liar.”
He winked. Then decided to elaborate. “I never lie, but occasionally I do bend the hell out of the truth.”
Her upper lip curled with distaste.
“When did you have sex last?” he asked, turning the tables on her.
“This interview isn’t about me,” she said primly.
“Fair is fair.”
She thought a minute, then revealed, “A year ago.”
“Unh, unh, unh. Isn’t that a wee bit of a fib, sweetheart? I saw birth-control pills in your briefcase yesterday.”
She sliced him with a glare. “I take birth-control pills all the time, to regulate menstrual flow. Lots of women do. So, believe me, when I say it’s been a year, it has been.”
“Well, holy moley, Sylv! The pump should be primed on both of us, then, even without the love potion. Why don’t you hop up on this hammock with me, and we’ll see what swings?”
She sliced him with a glare which he assumed meant, “No hopping! No hammock! No swinging! Nada.”
“Back to my questions,” she said. “How often do you think about sex each day?”
What a question! He exhaled with a whoosh. Hadn’t he read an article one time that said men think about sex every fifteen seconds or so? And it hadn’t even been in Playboy; it had been in Psychology Today, or one of those airplane mags. He didn’t want to appear too sex-crazed, though, so he said, “Once every five minutes, I suppose.” It was probably more than that when he was fishing and less when he was in court, but what the hell.
“And since the love potion?”
“Once a minute.”
“Okay, let’s get down to the intimate stuff.”
“This wasn’t intimate already? Maybe I’d better go for a cold swim before we start.”
“Stop teasing.”
“Who’s teasing?”
“Tell me, in general terms, how you’ve been feeling since you took the jelly beans.”
“Like hell.”
“Could you be a little more specific?”
“You said ‘in general.’ How was I supposed to… oh, all right. If you keep frowning like that, your face is gonna freeze… that’s what Tante Lulu always says. Let’s see… at first, I experienced just a twinge of arousal, thinking about you. It didn’t happen when I thought about anyone else. I even tested that theory the first night. I tried thinking about some very sexy ladies I know. Only a mild response. Even thoughts of Pamela Anderson, who isn’t really my type, but, let’s face it, she has a body that could turn an Apostle to sin… well, even she only generated a spark. But you! Bonfire city!”