Sex as a Second Language
Harlequin Blaze
April 2007
Series: Lust in Translation
ISBN: 9-780373-79320-4

Eurogirl: A single woman in Rome. Sleeping with hot foreign men. Waking up blissfully alone. Sharing all the yummy details online. It's life just the way sexcapade blogger Ariel Turner likes it until the ideal Italian bed buddy comes along.

Now she's found a candidate for that position. Marc Sorrella is drop-dead gorgeous and he has the most delicious moves!

Unfortunately Marc seems a bit too interested in Ariel's past and her blog—places she definitely doesn't want him to go. The best way to distract him? Turn the tables and dig around in his past. What she discovers just might revoke his eligibility for a spot on her top-ten-hotties list!

Reviews

4 stars from Romantic Times: Ariel Turner, aka Eurogirl, writes a blog about the erotic exploits of an American girl in Europe. When she found out her last lover was a terrorist, she fled Greece for Rome, and a message on her blog indicates he knows why she suddenly left. Her blog is getting boring, so when she finds a potentially interesting man in a cafe, she follows him. Marc Sorrella, a CIA agent investigating a local terrorist cell, is filling in for the U.S. Embassy surveillance guy when he spots Ariel. It turns out that the man Ariel was watching, hoping to pick up, is of interest in the investigation, so Marc will have to investigate her up close and personal. Both funny and intriguing, Sex as a Second Language (4), by Jamie Sobrato, is an exciting, sensual tale.

Excerpt

http://sexasasecondlanguage.blogworld.com
Sex As a Second Language—A blog about the erotic exploits of an American girl in Europe.

Could You Please Shave That? (Or why I had to get the hell out of Greece faster than the speed of the local train service)

He had the firm, sinewy thighs of a soccer player and the darkly expressive eyes of a man with a deep longing. I had to know—was he longing for his next drink of ouzo, for Greece to win the World Cup or for me?

And I should have known better. Having just broken up with my boyfriend, I was on the rebound, and rebound judgment is notably flawed. Plus, perfect lovers never fall into my lap the way he did. I mean, he literally fell into my lap one night at the rowdy bar where he worked.

No, in the real world, great lovers need to be carefully sought out, tested, cultivated. Extremely rare is the man who knows all the right moves on the first encounter.

And there is no worse surprise than discovering that the man you are about to get down and dirty with has a hairy ass. Not just a little hair, either. We're talking a full-on coat of fur covering the ass cheeks. I've never seen anything like it, and I hope like crazy I never do again.

I just didn't know how to get past that. My first thought was to feign violent stomach cramps and get the hell out before I burst into laughter, but he was so earnest, so eager, so—erect. It would have been beyond cruel to bolt that far into the game.

So I'd have to avoid touching or looking at his ass. Not too big a deal, right? Well—he had mirrors over his bed.

And while normally that might add a fun extra dimension to our sexual exploits, this time, it was like watching a documentary on gorilla sex. Maybe that's not the most inspired description, but I am, truly, at a loss for words here. And we all know how rarely that happens. Let's just say a change of position was in order, so that I didn't have to stare at the mirrored ceiling any longer than necessary.

I'll spare you the gruesome details. I only mention this to show you why I had to leave Greece, a country where I spent nearly one year and had six lovers, all of whom were far too hairy.

Comments:

1. Juno says: Ewwww. Butt cheek hair!

2. Mariana says: You poor girl. I hope Italy proves more fun for you.

3. calidude says: Can u post pics?

4. Eurogirl says: No, sorry, no pics allowed. Must protect the innocent and hairy. And besides, this was one instance where I definitely had no desire for a camera in the bedroom.

5. Anonymous says: I know why you really left Greece, and it had nothing to do with that guy.

Rome, Italy

The guy three tables over was hot. Seriously hot. But Ariel Turner, world-traveling connoisseur of men, could not catch his eye. Even more frightening, she was having a hard time even working up the desire to flirt.

Had the whole world gone to hell, or just her life? Ariel, known to the blogosphere as Eurogirl, loved three things—sex, caffeine and the written word. But sometimes sex could get a girl into serious trouble, as could the written word. So now her only safe vice seemed to be caffeine, and the whole situation was making her cranky. Not to mention the gorgeous guy in Armani reading the paper and ignoring her.

She turned her gaze from the guy across the café back to her laptop computer. Her stomach balled up as she read the fifth comment on her blog. Who the hell had written it? Did anyone really know why she'd left Greece? And if so, how had they found out her blogging identity? She was seriously screwed if so.

She deleted the fifth comment, then closed the Comments window, inhaled the heavy scent of pollution in the air and took another sip of her latte in a doomed attempt to calm her nerves. Around her, the city bustled with foot traffic through the piazza and past the outdoor café that had already become her favorite spot to write when the May heat was unbearable inside her one-room apartment.

Normally by now, she would have had fifty or sixty responses to her post, but Sex As a Second Language was dead in the water at the moment. Maybe it had been that creepy fifth comment, or maybe she just sucked. She needed to write a new entry, for sure. Her most recent one was lame at best, a lie she'd concocted to cover up the truth about her Greece disaster and subsequent flight from the country.

She gazed over at the hot guy again, forcing herself to admire the way his suit perfectly hugged his wide shoulders, the way his lips sensuously hugged his cigarette—. But she wasn't feeling it. She continued to stare, thinking maybe if she caught his eye and he began to flirt, she'd get her groove back and join in the festivities.

But when he finally glanced up and his gaze glossed over her as if she was wallpaper, she felt her hopes wane even more. He wasn't wearing a wedding ring, and her impeccable gaydar had labeled him firmly heterosexual. So maybe it was her. Maybe she was sending out bad vibes.

No surprise there. It was no wonder she didn't feel like writing lately. Changing jobs and countries always threw her off her creative stride a bit. Factor in the extra stress of the past month—family drama, relationship drama and general angst about life—and she had the perfect formula for a mild case of depression and a raging case of writer's block.

How could she have known that Kostas, the svelte, loose-hipped bartender with the agile hands—and for the record, a perfectly nice, nonhairy ass—was, in actuality, a terrorist?

he'd been her lover for five months before she'd become suspicious of his mysterious comings and goings from her life. She had begun to wonder if he was married—one sexual boundary Eurogirl had no desire to cross.

After Kostas had borrowed her laptop a few times, Ariel had seen the opportunity to snoop on his activities. Being a traveling blogger, she'd acquired enough computer expertise to know that nothing was really deleted from a hard drive. She was able to use a device in her software meant to protect against accidental deletion to retrieve his Internet history.

It had only taken a quick glimpse to reveal his deep interest in the November 17 movement, a radical group who garnered both public sympathy and scorn, depending on one's political leanings.

Needing her curiosity confirmed, she had taken a peek into his e-mail and discovered that he was not only actively involved in the movement, but was also fearful that he was being watched by the government.

Having suffered through 9/11, terrified for her little brother—who at the time had worked in the twin towers of the World Trade Center—Ariel's stomach contracted at the mere word terrorist. And she was even more horrified when she thought of how many times she had accepted a package or seemingly innocent message for Kostas from one of the names on his e-mail list. Had she aided a terrorist?

Ariel's first thought had been to call the police, but she realized there was a good chance she'd end up in a foreign jail. So she'd bolted the next morning, stopping at a public pay phone to make an anonymous call about Kostas to the police. Then she'd boarded the first train to the airport and headed for Rome.

"Bellisima!"

Ariel glanced up from her laptop computer and smiled at the passing man who was still grinning at her, still staring as if she were sitting at the café stark naked. Only her fifth day in Italy, and she was already growing accustomed to the outrageous flirtatiousness of Roman men. Too bad that one looked about as appealing as her great-uncle Stan, but still. This was progress.

For the first time in her life, Ariel was having trouble working up the enthusiasm to find a new guy. This was bad, especially for a writer of erotic memoirs—and a blogger in need of current material. She'd always drifted happily from one guy to the next, and she'd assumed that's how she'd always be, but now."

It had to be the stress, the upheaval, the depression. Depression. Ugh. Such a downer concept. She'd never considered herself one of those people before. And yet here she was, thirty years old, the world at her fingertips, in her favorite city, but she wasn't happy. She finally had to face that her dearth of energy and creativity was something bigger than a bad mood.

But Ariel believed sitting around feeling sorry for herself was not the way to live her life. She had to be proactive. She had to plow forward, shitty feelings be damned.

Her gaze landed again on the man she'd seen for three days in a row at the café. He had all the important surface ingredients. He was tall, gorgeous, well-dressed and—leaving the café, damn it. He talked on his mobile phone as he passed by. At any other time in her life, he would have been a guy she'd strike up a conversation with. The old Ariel would have been flirting with him like mad. The old Ariel would have at least been able to catch his eye.

So what had changed?

She closed her laptop, jammed it into its carrying case, downed the last of her latte and hurried after him. Maybe she couldn't work up the nerve to full-on flirt, but she could do something.

She could follow him.

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