" He gave me a smoldering look. “You know why. You keep trying to belittle what we have, but you need to understand that it’s as new to me as it is to you. I have a past. A wildly sordid past. I can’t change it. I would if I could. You are going to run into a lot of my ex-lovers. That’s an unfortunate fact. It will be a lot less painful for you if you can just get it into your head that none of them were anything but a fuck to me. And fucking was nothing to me before I met you. Sex was a bodily function to me before I met you. That’s why I call this making love. It means something to me.” “I’ve never even had a girlfriend before you, never even considered the idea. I’m sure it sounds callous, but no woman has ever been anything to me beyond a fuck, a sub, or a friend, occasionally all three, though never all of them for long. They all knew the score. I was brutally honest with every single one of them, without exception. You are the one that I want, the one that I need. So getting upset about my past, or feeling jealous of women I’ve been with, is unwarranted. "
― R.K. Lilley , Mile High (Up in the Air, #2)