Gone Country (Rough Riders #14)(38)

Come on, Daniels, don’t be a *. You’ve been a * your whole life, which is why you haven’t gotten any *. Own up to all you don’t know.


“Yeah. Remember when Dalton staged that intervention after the incident at the club and I said if I ever found my balls again and started dating that I’d come to you for advice? Here I am.”


Ben gave Gavin a considering look. “I ain’t much help on dating, but sounds like it’s sex advice that you’re after anyway.”


“It is. And I have to admit, this is so far out of my comfort zone I may as well be on another planet.” He inhaled slowly. “But I’m ready to figure out a way to fix it.”


“You want my help, I’m gonna expect you to be completely honest about everything—and I mean everything, Gavin. Good shit, bad shit, the shit that you’ve kept bottled up inside, the shit you don’t think anyone will understand, the embarrassing shit. All of it.”


“I can do that.”


“Start at the beginning.”


Gavin frowned. “Of what?”


“Of your sexual history,” Ben clarified.


Seriously? Gavin wanted to ask why that was relevant, but seeing the hard set to Ben’s jaw, he decided to start talking. “This’ll probably shock a guy like you, but I’ve never been that into sex. I had my horny teen years where I thought about sex twenty-four/seven and jacked off that many times every day. Got my first girlfriend, we had sex a few times but she wasn’t that into it. Of course, at that age I never imagined it could be my lack of experience which caused that reaction in her.”


Ben chuckled.


“By then I’d started college. I focused on academics and when I wasn’t in school, I worked for my dad, learning the real estate business. Prime time for my sex drive, right? Well, I was more interested in spreadsheets than finding a girl who’d spread her legs. After I graduated, I was even more driven to prove myself. I didn’t date, didn’t do anything but work.”


“Didn’t your family encourage you to find a woman and settle down? God knows the McKays are all about that.”


Gavin shook his head. “My dad married later in life, so as far as he was concerned, I was following in his footsteps.” He paused. “Then I met Ellen at a party. This young, gorgeous woman was all over me. It’s f*cking pathetic, but I’d never been the guy the women look at and say I wanna get with him because he’s so f*cking fine. Ellen’s attentions were beyond flattering; she slept with me the first night we met. Then she kept coming back for more. At that point in my life, having sex with her twice a week felt like I’d hooked up with a nympho. I fell for her hard, not seeing her for the manipulative, psycho bitch she was. After dating six months, she told me she was pregnant. Even then I hadn’t known I’d been set up from the start.”


“Lemme guess. You did the right thing and married her.”


“Yes. I thought I’d had it all. A job I loved, a hot wife who loved me and was pregnant with my child.” His hands unconsciously tightened on the reins. “Before Sierra was even born Ellen demanded we buy a bigger house. I wanted to make my wife happy so I opened my wallet and she proceeded to empty it. Sounds corny, but when Sierra was born my world changed.” Gavin remembered the instant the nurse placed the screaming and pruny-looking thing in his arms. He’d also had a moment of anger, imagining his birth mother just handing over a helpless baby to a stranger.



Focus on the here and now.


“I never doubted that Ellen loved our daughter. But from the time we brought Sierra home from the hospital, I saw Ellen had no desire to learn to be a parent. If she couldn’t deal with Sierra, she hired a babysitter or called my mom and went shopping. Then Ellen started screwing around on me. By the time Sierra was five, I’d had enough of the bullshit and lies and divorced her.”


“So how was sex after you got married and after Sierra was born?”


Gavin shrugged. “Ellen claimed exhaustion a lot, which I forgave because I was tired too, so we were having quick, no-frills sex about once a month. Then it tapered off to once every two months and then the last year, no sex at all.”


Ben cocked his head. “Did it ever occur to you to cheat?”


“No. Any sexual urges I satisfied with my hand. And it wasn’t like the ladies were propositioning me anyway.”


“So you haven’t had sex since you were with your ex?”


“I slept with a woman at a weekend conference a few years after the divorce. Then after my mom died, there was a friend I ended up with for a few months, but she stopped calling. Now I look back and I wonder if it was because the sex sucked.”


Ben held up his hand. “First off, the past is the past. None of that matters. Is there someone specific you’re lookin’ at around here that you wanna impress with your sexpertise?”


“Rielle.”


“You’re with her? Or you want to get with her?”


“We’ve been together.”


That caught Ben by surprise. “How long’s it been goin’ on?”


Gavin blushed and felt like an idiot for it. “After I moved here, things started out slow, us talking and hanging out. Then we found an excuse to touch each other. Then we were making out like crazy whenever we were alone. And the night before last…we had sex. It happened so damn fast. Too fast.”