Careful here, he thought. No mistakes now.
"IKNOW THAT wasn't too great," she said, not looking back at him. A pink flush crawled up her neck, but she continued, doggedly, "I haven't had that much experience, and the men… weren't very… good." She was struggling with the words. This was hard. "You could show me a lot about sex. I'd like to know. I really would. I'd like to know everything. If we could find a way to talk about it without being too, you know, embarrassed about it."
SHE DERAILED HIM.
He'd been one second from taking her, and her words barely penetrated the killing fog. But they got through.
She wanted what? To learn about sex, a lot about sex? The idea was an erotic slap in the face, like something from a bad pornographic film, where the housewife asks the plumber to show her how to…
He stood frozen for a moment, then she half-turned and gave him the shy, sexy smile that had attracted him in the first place. Qatar pushed against her again and fumbled the rope back into his hip pocket.
"I think we could work something out," he said, his voice thick. And he thought, silently amused: Talk dirty-save your life.
JAMES QATAR WAS an art history professor and a writer, a womanizer and genial pervert and pipe smoker, a thief and a laughing man and a killer. He thought of himself as sensitive and engaged, and tried to live up to that image. He kissed Barstad once more on the back of the neck, cupped one of her breasts for a moment, then said, "I've got to go. Maybe we could get together Wednesday."
"Do you, uh…" She was blushing again. "Do you have any sexy movies?"
"Movies?" He heard her, but he was astonished.
"You know, sexy movies," she said, turning into him. "Maybe if we had a sexy movie, we could, you know… talk about what works and what doesn't."