The Mistress
Page 85

“Don’t feel bad. Trust me. I know the feeling.”
“I don’t feel bad,” Laila said.
“You blushed so bright they saw it on the space station.”
Laila buried her face in the pillow.
“I can still see you.” Wes narrowed his eyes at her. “And the blush.”
“I give up.” She turned her head and faced him.
“If it makes you feel any better, I was still a virgin when I was your age. God, I sound like Nora. She was an ‘old virgin,’ too. Her words, not mine.” He unzipped the leather bag and pulled out a blood-testing meter.
“You don’t feel well?” she asked, the blush fading.
“A little light-headed. I don’t know if it’s my blood sugar or talking to your uncle, though.”
“He has that effect on people.”
Grinning, she scooted closer to him on the bed and picked up an alcohol swab.
She took his hand in hers and swabbed the pad of his middle finger.
“Do you mind? I never get to play with humans.”
“No, go for it. You’d probably have better aim than I do right now.”
Laila took Wes’s hand in hers and pushed up his finger, forcing the blood to pool at the tip.
“Why don’t you use a pump?” Laila picked up the lancet and pierced Wes’s finger. He didn’t even flinch.
“Tried it for a while. Didn’t work. I ride horses, go running, swimming. I can’t deal with something being stuck on me all the time.”
“You ride horses?”
“All the time.”
“I love horses. We sometimes get to treat them on house calls. But not many horses in Copenhagen.”
“Come visit me in Kentucky. I’ll show you horses like you wouldn’t believe.”
Laila put the strip in the meter and waited for the beep.
“You’re okay,” she said. “One hundred five.”
“Good. Thank you.”
She took the bag and packed up the supplies neatly.
“So, no boyfriend?” Wes asked, and she noticed him staring at her hands. “Really?”
“None. It’s his fault.”
“Your uncle?”
“He keeps telling me I’m joining a convent. He has one picked out for me already.”
“How nice of him. You want to be a nun?”
“No.” She laughed a little. “I don’t think he wants me to be a nun, either. He just doesn’t want me to date. He takes sex very seriously. He considers it sacred.”
“Do you?”
Laila scooted back on the bed, needing a little breathing room. She was on a bed with the most attractive guy she’d ever seen in her entire life, and they were talking about sex. Someone needed to check her blood sugar right now. And her vital signs. Heart attack seemed imminent.
“Yes, but not in the same way as him. Tante Elle and I talked about it. She believes sex is sacred, too, but in a different way. He says that the only people he’s ever been with, he loved them. Tante Elle thinks sex is like...” She unzipped Wes’s bag of testing supplies and held up a bottle of insulin.
“Insulin?” Wes asked.
“Medicine. She thinks it can help heal people.”
“It can hurt people, too.”
Laila nodded as she zipped closed Wes’s bag of supplies and put it back in the nightstand for him.
“She knows that. She told me that all she hoped for me was that my first time would be as special as hers. And that I would only have sex when I wanted to and for the right reasons.”
“And what are the right reasons?”
“When I wanted to.”
Wes laughed and rolled onto his back.
“Of course. That’s Nora for you.”
Laila stretched out on her side and propped herself up on her elbow.
“You don’t like her reasons?”
“I think ‘wanting to’ is maybe not the best reason to do something. Sounds like a recipe for chaos.”
“Chaos sounds like a good description of her life sometimes.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Wes said, and she saw a flash of bitterness in his eyes. Bitterness and fear. He might smile and chat with her, but she could see the fear there hiding behind it all. What else was he hiding? She’d give anything to know. Even her body. Especially her body.
“I don’t know if I agree with my uncle that you should wait for true love to have sex with someone. I don’t even know if true love exists, although he believes it does. And I don’t think you should have sex just because you want to. I think it should at least mean something.”
“What do you mean by ‘mean something’?” Wes rolled onto his side to face her.
“It’s hard to explain. When my grandmother died, my aunt and uncle came for the funeral. I could hear them in the guest bedroom.”
“What did you hear?”
“Talking. Only talking,” she lied.
“Sure. Right. I totally believe you. Go on.”
“First, I have to ask you where you usually take all your insulin shots.”
“My stomach. Why?”
“So I know the best place to punch you when you tease me.”
“Stomach. Definitely the best place to hurt me.”
“Thank you.” She shot her hand out and pretended to punch him in the stomach. He flinched and pulled tight into the fetal position.