“Demeaning how?” Noah repeated as he fell in step beside her.
Oh, yes. He’d asked her that and she’d yet to answer. She let her mind go back to the words she’d read—the hot alpha hero and his simple sexy commands …
No, not sexy. Sexist. “Good girl? Like she’s a dog?” She hoped her voice sounded disgusted instead of intrigued.
Noah shook his head vehemently. “Not like she’s a dog. Like what she does pleases the narrator. Isn’t that what sex is about? Pleasing one another?”
“Not at the disgrace of one of the parties.” They’d made their way to the shop’s doors now. Jaylene pressed through, noting that though he was on the wrong side of their dispute, at least he did not try to hold the door open for her. Another point in the Noah-is-awesome column. Too bad he was also finally collecting some points in the not-so-awesome column as well. Seemed it existed after all.
He waited until they were outside and heading back toward Beacon Street before he started in again. “Why is it disgraceful to her? In that story, I mean. Because she wanted to please him? Because she willingly submitted to him in her sex life? That isn’t how people have to act in the real world, Jaylene. That’s the bedroom.” He was worked up, obviously passionate about his viewpoint. “Not all the rules apply.”
Now that she could argue, and with solid conviction. She didn’t even need the comfort of hiding her eyes behind her dark sunglasses, though she wore them anyway. “But that’s exactly where they should apply. Otherwise husbands could still rape their wives simply because they’re married, and the only orgasms achieved would be by men.”
Oh, God, please don’t let Noah be one of those orgasm hoarders—the men who still believed that the G-spot was nothing but a rumor.
Noah waved his hand in the air dismissively. “Yes, yes, I’m not discounting any of that. There have been valid injustices done to women in and outside the bedroom, and they still occur around the world. I know. I get it. I support and admire those who fight to end that type of oppression. I even contribute to a women’s rights organization that works globally.”
Jay smiled at that as she mentally ticked another mark in the pro-Noah column. With as equal-rights minded that he seemed, it was interesting, actually, how convicted he was on this one topic.
He let out an audible stream of air. When he spoke again he was calmer. “But if it’s consensual … if a man and a woman agree that they enjoy dropping their usual culturally acceptable gender roles in favor of something they both find pleasing in their sexual relationship, they shouldn’t have to feel guilty about it or judged by people like you.”
“Why is this so personal to you?” It wasn’t like he participated in the production of erotic romance novels. And he’d said outright that he didn’t read them.… She froze in her tracks and gasped as it hit her. “Oh, my God! You’re into that stuff, aren’t you?”
He stopped a step ahead of her, turning back to say, “I’m not really a reader of—”
She cut him off. “Not the reading. The sex. Dominant behavior. You like your partners submissive. I’m right, aren’t I?”
He didn’t respond, which was in itself an answer.
“I am right!” She practically clapped at her successful deduction. Okay, she did clap. But only once.
Then …
Oh, shit.
The thrill of victory evaporated as she realized the deeper implications of her discovery—Noah was into dominant sex. The kind of sex that undermined all the female progression that had occurred in the last half century. The kind of sex that made a woman nothing more than a man’s servant. The kind of sex that she would never willingly participate in because as attractive and hot as much of it sounded, it went against her core values.
And that meant that she and Noah could never have sex. And that was really very sad.
She started walking again and he fell in with her. He was quiet and she appreciated that he was giving her time to process, but his lack of contribution only led her to think the worst.
Maybe she didn’t have a precise enough picture. “So are you into all of it?” she asked. “The whips and chains and bondage and pain?”
“I’m not a sadist,” he answered. “Or a masochist for that matter, though I like to deliver a nice spank now and then.”
“Oh.” It was so barbaric. So why did the idea of being spanked by Noah make her panties slippery?
“And I like tying up.”
She shivered.
“And blindfolds.”
Her mouth went moist.
“But mostly I just like to be in charge.”