Page 72 of Changes on Ice

“You’ve been wanting to say something all morning. Spit it out.”

“I haven’t.” But when she slanted him a raised-eyebrow look, Rusty had to admit, “Okay, maybe.”

“Go on. We’ve got half an hour before we have to saddle back up.”

“Um.” He cleared his throat, decided on a bit of a roundabout approach. “Do you know anyone who’s, like, demisexual? Or asexual or gray-ace, whatever?” There’d been other options on the websites he’d cruised after Cross hung up, but his eyes had crossed somewhere around autochorisexual. Cross had said demi, only the definitions seemed incomplete.

“Not personally.” Kris chuckled. “Nita reads all these romances—”

“Nitadoes?” Nita was Will’s trusted second in command on the ranch, a compact, quiet woman, no-nonsense, and so deeply practical that a romance in her hands was hard to imagine.

“Yeah. She’s told me about a few stories with asexual and demi characters. Not sure I trust romance authors to get it right, though. Why?” She narrowed her gaze. “I thought you were in gay heaven slutting around Eugene when you got there. Meaning slutting in a positive way—yay, sex. Was I wrong?”

“No! I mean, I wouldn’t call it gay heaven. Some of the sex was good, some not so much. But I like sex. A lot. I didn’t mean me. I was just wondering.”

“Cross, then.”

“Hey, I never said that!”

Kris raised her hands. “Sorry, of course not. Okay, so hypothetically, what are you asking?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to go on, given she said she didn’t know much. He shrugged.

“Look, I won’t joke about it, okay? You can talk to me.”

In the end, the urge to talk tosomebodyovercame his reluctance. Kris was his best friend. “I just wondered, you know, like, how soon someone who is demisexual decides they want sex after all.”

“I guess it would depend on the person.” Kris tilted her head. “Demisexual’s the one where they need to know a person first and have a connection, before they’re attracted to them, right?”

“Yeah. The definitions online say demi people like sex, once it’s someone they’ve gotten to know and trust.”

“That sounds like what Nita described. There was one where this skier fell for her demisexual teammate and it took half the book before they kissed, because they had to be close friends first. The first woman wasn’t demi, so there was a whole lot of UST.”

“UST?”

Kris laughed. “Unresolved sexual tension. Like, lusting after someone who doesn’t want you back, or not yet. You can tell I’ve been hanging around Nita too much.”

“Speaking of you and UST?” Rusty teased, glad to shift the conversation from his own love life.

“No U about it. Very much resolved.” Kris looked happy. “Although it took a lot longer than I wanted. She had this hugehangup about how she’s ten years older than me and I was just a kid, yada, yada.”

“You too? Cross does that shit all the time. Acting like he’s doing something wrong because he’s ancient and I’m not.”

“Ancient. Do you call him that?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t tease him about his age at all. I swear, he acts like he’s going to run every time the subject comes up.” He sighed. “How did you get Nita to come around?”

“I’m not sure. She started out really big-sisterish. I tried some seducing, which didn’t work. Some pining, plus trying to make her jealous whichreallydidn’t work. In the end, I guess we just spent enough time together that she saw I could hold up my end of a job and a conversation. One day, it just happened, like, boom.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks. We’re not official.”

“You live together, though.”

“In Will’s old trailer which has two bedrooms, yeah. We lived together for months before theboom. So nothing really changed, as far as the other hands are concerned.”

“You think they know?”

---