Page 26 of His Curvy Temptation

“Are you always this bold with women you like?” I ask him.

“No,” he replies. “But then…I guess I haven’t liked many women.”

I raise a brow.

“I’ve dated,” he says. “And I’ve met women I’ve enjoyed talking to, spending time with…but I wouldn’t say I’ve really felt romantically attached to many of them, if any.”

“But you feel that way about me?”

“I do,” he replies. “Does this make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” I lie.

He tilts his head, his intense eyes boring into me.

“It’s okay if it does,” he says. “We’re strangers. You don’t know a lot about me.”

“And you don’t know a lot about me,” I point out. “Yet you feel attached to me. Why?”

He leans forward.

“I won’t lie to you,” he says. “A great deal of it is physical. I like the way you look, Andy, and I can’t seem to stop imagining you naked in my bed. Ever since I first saw you.”

My breathing quickens and I feel heated, like his eyes might set me aflame on the spot right now.

“But it’s not just that,” he says. “It’s not just lust. Sex without anything of substance is empty. It leaves people lonelier than if they’d just been alone the whole time.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“I am,” he says. “And I decided that I’m tired of that emptiness. I don’t like the hollow feeling it gives me, I don’t like the transactional nature of that kind of relationship. I want more than that, and I want it with a woman who makes me feel something other than shallow lust.”

“I make you feel that way?”

He nods.

“You know more about me than you think,” he continues. “You make me want to…talk.”

“Talk?” I repeat.

“Talk,” he agrees. “It might not sound like much but I’m not a very talkative man to begin with, I guess. For me to be talking this much on a date at all, talking as much as I am right now with you, is…weird. It’s a new experience for me. And it means a lot. You make me want to talk to you, you’re a good listener and you’re…”

“I’m what?” I ask.

“Sweet,” he says with a shrug. “In that innocent, open-hearted, optimistic kind of way. You listen and you’re compassionate. I like that. You’re so different from me.”

“You’re not compassionate?”

He shakes his head.

“I’m a cold-hearted son of a bitch,” he says. “At least, this is what I’ve been told.”

I laugh.

“I feel like that can’t be true,” I say. “Or you wouldn’t have fired that gross Dan guy on my behalf.”

“The way that I fired Dan was far from compassionate,” he says darkly. “Dan’s just lucky that I didn’t do worse than fire him. But he’s got more coming to him. He’ll find out how ruined his reputation is in this city when he tries to find another job. Nobody with any sense, nobody who wants to work with me or my companies in the future, will touch him with a ten foot pole.”

I stare at him, shocked by the bite in his voice.

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