Page 13 of Frequency of Attraction

He looked baffled. “What, come?”

There went that pulsing again. Quinn nodded.

He just stared. “You can’t come? Not even alone?”

She shook her head.

“Ever?”

She sighed. “No.”

“Ever tried being with a woman?”

“Once, and not then either.”

“You’ve never had an orgasm.” He looked genuinely concerned.

“Actually, I have them in dreams sometimes,” she answered hesitantly. “But never in real life, no.” She sighed again. “I’m starting to regret telling you this.”

The electricity in his blue eyes danced on her skin. “No, you don’t. You told me because you know I can fix you.”

There was nothing but seriousness in his face. His stupid, beautiful face. If anyone could read the riddle of her body, she knew it would be him. She shivered. “I’m not broken.”

“We’re all broken, Quinn.”

He took her phone from her hand without asking. She eked out a protest. Touching her phone might be more shocking than dropping the word “come” at work at full volume.

“Calm down,” he said, handing the phone back. “My number’s in there. I’m in apartment 313 at the OrbitAll complex in town. You ever want to work on that little problem, come see me.”

Her heart thundered at his suggestion. “What, like I just show up and we…and I just leave? But we work together.”

Vadim shrugged, looking completely unperturbed by an idea that rocked Quinn’s very world. “I’ve never had a problem making women come. Why not you?”

She didn’t recognize the panicked noise in her throat. Sleeping with Vadim? For fun? He loomed closer, which did not help her scrambled thoughts.

“It’s just sex, Quinn.”

She stared up at him, overwhelmed by his smell, his heat, against his hard body and the stories in ink marked on his skin, terrified and enticed by everything he was. Everything he’d said. No, it wasn’t just sex. Not for her. Not with him.

8

Vadim knew women. It would take about a week for Quinn to go from irritated to curious. Then she’d show up at his place brazen. As brazen as she could get, anyway.

He’d had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing at the horror on her face at his suggestion that they fuck their way through her little problem. As if there were any other way. Why the stress? Neither were in danger of anything deeper. Quinn bordered on hot, sure, but timid wasn’t his thing. He liked women who knew what they wanted.

Like Chen’s ex, Fleur.

Chen’s college girlfriend had shown up at their old apartment in Toulouse two months after Chen had left for grad school in Hong Kong. Vadim had seen the need in her eyes the second he’d opened the door. They hadn’t even exchanged pleasantries and were fucking within minutes.

Fleur had been unhinged, like she’d been waiting for years for Vadim to systematically dismantle her body. They’d fucked on every surface of the apartment except his bed. While she rode him backward, she’d scratched his thighs so hard that he’d bled. He’d paid her back by fucking her so hard into the floor that she got rug burns on her knees. Her body had been so flexible and her tits so gigantic that he’d been able to get her nipples in his mouth while pounding into her from behind. He’d fucked five orgasms out of her that night. It was the night he still thought about when alone.

Timidity aside, he found Quinn attractive. The little blonde had a body made of soft curves and a wide mouth that looked capable of all kinds of fun. Learning to speak the language of her body would not be a chore. He lived for that moment when a woman gave herself over to him. That one moment where trust and power were exchanged in anticipation of pleasure. Most people knew that the danger of that moment, the vulnerability, was well worth the risk. Quinn didn’t. She didn’t know beautiful devastation at the hands of someone like him. But she would.

She needed to. The woman operated at maximum stress levels. No orgasms and no dating history meant she probably didn’t even know what she liked. Finding out would be the first step in Vadim’s loose plan. Get her comfortable, boost her confidence, make her come. Simple. Quinn’s body would be just one more thing that needed to be studied, memorized, and conquered while at OrbitAll—a knot Vadim needed to unravel, a problem to solve. Luckily for Quinn, he came more than equipped for the challenge.

He spent all weekend settling into Victory. He signed up for streaming services and switched over his cell phone. He enrolled at the local gym, skipping the free session with a trainer and instead opting for free weights and jump rope for his visit. On Saturday morning he wandered every aisle of the grocery store to see how the products differed. He saw no people his own age, or anyone he knew from OrbitAll. Apparently, Saturday mornings at the market were reserved for people over eighty. The woman ahead of him in line kept eyeing his tattoos with distaste. Vadim gave her his most predatory smile and made sure to stand too close.

At home in the apartment complex full of OrbitAll employees, he meal-prepped for the coming week. Then he started studying for his driver’s license test. He was certified to fly a commercial aircraft in every EU country, but the Americans were making him pass fucking driver’s education before he could even begin the certification process with the FAA. It was backward and annoying as fuck.

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