Page 33 of Lockout

Daryl and I both cracked up laughing at that.

“I highly doubt he’d be wound so tight if you’d spent last night rocking his world,” she declared. She picked up her coffee mug, then looked over at me in horror. “Unless you’re so inexperienced that you suck at sex.”

I gasped and scowled at her. “I’mnotbad at sex,” I said, defending myself.

“You sure?” she asked.

“No one has ever complained before,” I said, trying not to let the little worm of doubt crawl its way into my brain. I wasn’t bad at sex.

“I’m sure you’re just fine at it, Honey,” Daryl said, trying to comfort me.

“This is the strangest conversation I think I’ve ever had,” I said out loud.

Daryl chuckled. “Stick around, you’ll hear worse. I promise you.”

“What’s taking so long?” Isla asked, getting us back on track. She was like a dog with a bone.

“I-” Looking between their eager faces, my own got warm as I admitted, “I’m finding it a bit hard to…go for it.”

Isla sighed. “Just unzip his pants and-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Daryl said, patting her on the shoulder. “Maybe you should let me handle this one.”

Isla shrugged. “You’re a guy. Tell her how easy it is to get your species revved up.”

“We’re not a different species,” he said with a laugh.

“Says you,” she countered.

“Fair enough. Be that as it may, you don’t want to,” he searched for a polite way of saying his next words, “go in guns blazing. Not if you eventually hope to have a relationship.”

“Huh,” Isla said after she swallowed some of the coffee. “I thought being willing to do what other women wouldn’t, was a good way to hook a guy.”

Daryl blinked at her. “Well, yeah, I guess it can be,” he said. “But if you start out with stuff like that, he’s going to only think of you as a good fuck.”

I sighed because he wasn’t bothering to censor his words anymore. What was the point with Isla sitting here? In fact, censoring your words would probably only confuse her. Much like how being blunt would confuse Sloane.

“You want him to obsess over you in a different way,” Daryl continued. “To be unable to get you out of his mind. To fall in love with you. Commit to you. Then,” he said with a grin over in Isla’s direction. “You hit him with all that other stuff. That man will be devoted to you until the end of time.”

They were grinning at each other like lunatics. “What kind ofstuffare we even talking about?” I asked, suspicious.

“Do you have a gag reflex?” Isla asked.

“Notthat,” he said to her. To me he said “Don’t you worry about that right now, Lock will lead you in the right direction when the time comes.”

“Or you can come to me and I’ll give you some suggestions,” Isla said with a smug look, poking her tongue into her cheek.

“I’m not sure I even want to know what kind of kinky, weird ass shit you and Butcher do,” I told her.

She threw her head back and laughed at that. “Too bad. We’re friends now, right?”

“Right,” I said after a slight pause.

“Then you’ll find out. The article I read said sharing things with girlfriends was an important part of bonding.” She stood up, took her mug, and headed toward the stairs.

“I don’t think they meant sharing your sex dungeon stories,” I pointed out.

“No, that would be Boone,” Daryl said. “These two would probably be having sex on a dead body.”

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