Their room was on a high floor and he’d pulled the curtains against the afternoon sunlight. He set her luggage down and ran his hand lightly up and down her back. “Welcome to Houston, Bunny Sherri,” he said, kissing her neck with his hard lips. His hand searched down, further down, until he’d lifted the hem of her dress and slipped his fingers inside her underwear, making her jump. She fought the urge to slap him. He must think she did this all the time! He led her to the bedroom and gently pushed her to the mattress.

Couldn’t he have at least taken her out to eat first? Offered her a drink? “I’m exhausted from the flight,” Sherri said. “How about I take a nap?”

Sam threw his hat onto the floor and unbelted his giant metal belt buckle with a horse’s head on it, dropping his pants. “Oh, you can’t go to sleep on me now. Look how excited I am to see you.” She’d never actually looked at a naked man before. He was proud of himself for luring Sherri there, that was for sure, the way he might have beamed over a winning bid for a prize calf.

“I brought these,” she said. Her hands shook so hard that she could barely open her purse. She pulled out a condom and tried to remember if she’d taken her pill that morning.

“We don’t need ’em,” he said. “I’m fixed. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Sherri closed her eyes, gripped the sheets in her hands, and tried not to show she was nervous; it had been easier last time, when she was with a boy her own age, and after a shot of Galliano and a few cups of wapatui. She had thought that losing her virginity would make her first encounter with Sam easier and more comfortable. She was wrong.

Without much ado, Sam pushed himself into her, exclaiming, “Oh Lord, girl. You’re tighter than wallpaper!” She bit her lip and closed her eyes and tried to decide if Sam was telling the truth about getting “fixed” and how not being fixed implied he once was broken. She should have insisted he wear a condom, but he hardly gave her a chance to assert herself, not that she even knew how. She couldn’t even say the word “condom” out loud.

She remembered what Carmen had told her about escaping into a dollhouse. She closed her eyes and tried to distract herself by imagining she was working, adding up orders, calculating tax.