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it wasn’t working. The events of the night kept flashing through his mind unbidden, leading right up to the most recent. ‘Mon Dieu,’ he muttered as he flapped the sheet back.
    Getting to his feet, he walked to the kitchen, where he pulled a shallow plastic dish of microwave mac and cheese from the fridge. He padded to the door and set the bowl outside, glancing up the breezeway to see that annoying dog come running.
    Returning the lock, he shook his head at his insanity. Jesus, when would he ever learn?
     
    A dorm room, a candle’s glow turning pale yellow walls golden. Her top is off, jeans too. Jason is kissing her breast, turning her inside out—his hands are in her underwear. He’s trying to pull them down, but she’s saying, ‘You know we can’t.’
    ‘Yes, we can, Stephie.’
    ‘We can’t. We don’t have a…you know.’
    He’s kissing her neck, them whisperin. ‘Yes, we do. I bought some, just in case.’
    ‘Really?’ Why hadn’t it occurred to her that it was that simple, a walk to the drugstore?
    He nods against her neck, molds her breasts In his hands. She feels it between her legs. And it hits her that they really can do it, if she decides it’s okay. And the big sex mystery will be over, at last.
    She’s afraid—but she wants to. Her heartbeat echoes through her whole body.
    This time when he tries to lower her panties, she doesn’t stop him. Biting her lip, she runs her hands down his chest and reaches for the snap of his jeans. She is saying yes. Yes.
     
    It should have been a good memory, but it wasn’t. Stephanie pushed it away.
    Still, the power of the recollection remained jolting as she lay in bed, covers pulled to her waist. The quiet room in the quaint bed and breakfast just beyond the French Quarter felt like a safe hideaway from the decadence taking place on the streets nearby. She absently listened to the laughter of a romantic couple, watched their shadows move past her window, but her mind was back at DePaul on the night she’d given up her virginity. Maybe the last time she’d felt such overwhelming passion that she’d lost herself in it—until tonight.
    It was strange to suddenly realize she had once understood the power of sex, yet had somehow stopped understanding somewhere along the way. The encounter with the bartender had apparently brought back a lot of little slices of her past she hadn’t thought about in a very long time. Slices she’d actually forgotten—experiences she’d somehow tricked herself into believing she’d never had.
    Upon returning to the room, she’d traded in her sexy clothes for silly cotton pajamas \Tina had given her her last Christmas—a blue background dotted with black and white sheep. A desperate bid to get back to her simple life, a simple self she knew. Unfortunately, though, that hadn’t stopped the uncontrollable sensations assaulting her. Same as if she were still in that sinfully red room with that sinfully sexy man, her breasts ached and the juncture of her thighs felt heavy.
    She wanted to keep telling herself it was just about the situation, the strangeness of pretending she was there to sell her body. And maybe that was what had started in the back in the red room, but what she felt now was nothing manufactured, nothing made up to get her through the night. If anything, it had almost not gotten her through the night.
    The man was downright intriguing with that smooth, steady voice and the way he managed to seem distant and aloof even as he nearly seduced her. She couldn’t help thinking he was something of a bastard, but she also couldn’t deny the desire she’d suffered for him—that deep, deeper, deepest desire she’d not quite believed she was capable of feeling. She closed her eyes in an effort to blot out the moment when she’d realized it was only a game.
    It was the first time in her life she’d ever gotten that intimate with a total stranger, the first time she’d ever wanted to have sex with someone