“You shouldn’t compare yourself to any of them. You’re different. You feel like a woman. A real woman. It’s their job to look like that so the clothes look good on them,” I shrugged. “But I wouldn’t kick any of them out of bed for eating crackers…”

She scowled.

“I might kick you out of bed, though. So I could fuck you on the floor again, of course.”

“Wow, the things you tell a woman just to get in her pants…”

My hand stopped on her arm and closed around it—a little too tightly, I realized, when she sucked in her breath. I let up on my hold and she turned, our eyes fastening on each other. “I don’t lie to a woman. Ever. Not to you. Not to any of them.”

“I could make you lie to me.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, but it didn’t have the intended effect. She smiled craftily.

“How many lovers have you had?”

I hesitated, pulling back. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

She raised her head off the pillow and looked at me. “What if I told you how many I’ve had?”

“Tell me, then.”

“Let’s see… I was seventeen my first time—junior prom. That was my high school boyfriend—”

The thought of her with other men was annoying me for some reason, even if it was ancient history. “Just a number, Weiss, not a complete sexual history.”

She shrugged. “You’re number six.”

I lay back on my pillow and watched her, running my hand down her leg again.

“Well?” she said after a minute. “Come on…tell me your number.”

“The truth?” I sighed. “I have no idea.”

Her brows shot up. “What?”

I shrugged. “It’s not like I count.”

“Okay, but…could you count if you sat down and thought about it?”

I stared at the ceiling, avoiding her eyes—and the question. She was probably disgusted.

“Are we talking dozens, scores, hundreds? Ballpark it.”

A sly smile spread across my lips. “Definitely less than a ballpark.”

She smacked the back of my arm and laughed. “Jackass.”

I laughed and shrugged. “But it’s just a number anyway. I actually think sex gets hotter the longer you are with someone. You get to know them better, their body, what they like…”

My hand smoothed over her again. Had I ever touched skin this soft before? And even after all that sweating she’d done from our scorching encounter downstairs, she still smelled amazing.

Her eyes widened. “Wow, that’s so not something I expected to come out of the playboy millionaire’s mouth.”

Yeah, if I kept talking like that, I stood to damage my reputation. But I’d already started to feel jaded about all that anyway.

And seeing Cyndi tonight had reminded me of that emptiness. Of how I probably would never be satisfied if I kept hooking up in those shallow, unfulfilling liaisons. Sure, it was fun to get my rocks off in the moment. But at the end of the day, I went home alone. The chick might not even be someone I’d want to sit around and watch movies with or have a meal or long conversation.

I hadn’t had any of that in a long time, until… My hand stilled on top of April’s weird tattoo at the small of her back, right at the curve above her ass that drove me crazy. I rose up on one elbow to get a better look at it, running my hand over it again.

“So here it is, the damning tattoo.”

She tensed under my hand. “You mean my brand of shame? My scarlet letter?”

“Your what?”

She turned her head and looked at me. “Oh, please don’t tell me you’ve never read the novel. The Scarlet Letter? Nathaniel Hawthorne?”

“I was homeschooled. My mom didn’t like classic literature. I saw the movie, though. Some Puritan chick got pregnant out of wedlock and they made her put a red ‘A’ on all her clothes.”

She got that same dreamy look on her face she always did when she talked about books. “Hester Prynne. She was an amazing woman. They tried to shame her, but she rose above their jeers and taunts. She bore the brunt of their horrible treatment, stood up on the scaffold and faced the humiliation in front of everyone in the village. The scarlet letter was meant to be her brand of shame. Eventually it became her badge of honor.”

I traced the skull and snake tattoo at the small of her back. “And this is your brand of shame?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes it feels like that.”