Page 46 of Breaking the Ice

“Umm…”

He chuckled as he leaned in to whisper in her ear. “First time?”

“Uh huh.” There was little point in denying it given she mustlooklike a woman who was seeing one hundred fake phalluses protruding from a wall for the first time.

“It’s okay,” he continued in a whisper, “you’re allowed to seek out your own gratification.”

Annoyed by hispermission,she glared. “I know that,” she hissed.

Ignoring her defensiveness, he said, “Actually, it’s a bit of a turn-on.”

“It… is?” For a second Samantha was back in the alley with him, her heart pounding from his devastating kiss.

“Sure, sisters doing it for themselves and all that. Taking charge of your own sexuality. And” – he grinned – “it’s especially great if you get to watch.”

Samantha blinked. Okay, that waswaaaytoo much information. Clearly, Nick was having too much fun at her expense.Again.“Yeah well, don’t hold your breath. I’m probably going to look silly enough the first time I use it without having an audience.”

He laughed. “Fair. So… have you decided yet?”

Samantha cleared her throat. Okay, having him here was weird but he was right – she was a modern woman taking care of her own needs. She didn’t have to pretend she wasn’t a sexual being. Shecoulddo this with Nick watching her. She got a tattoo with him there for goodness’ sake, and this was a lot less painful.

And maybe some male input would be beneficial.

“I don’t know. Have you had much to do with these things?”

Samantha forced herself to look at him without blushing or flinching. She was thirty years old, not some gauche teenager. If he could be an adult about this then so could she.

“It depends,” he said, plucking one of the larger models off the wall and switching it on. The pink head rotated in front of her eyes. “What are you after?”

“I don’t know, Nick,” she said, snatching the frightening phallus off him and hastily returning it to the display. “You’re talking to the woman who bought two hundred condoms because she couldn’t decide.”

Nick laughed again and his lovely brown eyes twinkled and Plan B seemed like a much more sensible alternative than the contraptions in front of her. “How about we get an expert,” he suggested and went for some help.

Jenny, the Angie-like expert, looked all of sixteen as she introduced herself and got straight down to it. “This one is our top seller,” she said, reaching for one of the less endowed models.

She got out a velour square of cloth like she was working in a jewelry store, not a sex shop, and stood it in the center. Fiddling with the bottom she turned it on and Samantha watched as it started to hum. “My boyfriend bought me one for my twenty-first birthday. There’s nothing fancy about it but once you try it, you won’t ever want to get out of bed.”

The next fifteen minutes, while excruciatingly embarrassing, were the most informative of Samantha’s life. What Jenny didn’t know about her product didn’t seem to be worth knowing.

How could she have been so unaware all her life?

Why hadn’t they donethisin sex ed?

Jenny was also an excellent salesperson. She persuaded Samantha to upgrade from a basic model to a slightly fancier one. Nick flirted with Jenny the entire time but Samantha was too mind-boggled to notice on more than a peripheral level. She handed over her money and took the paper bag, still unable to believe she was in a sex shop with Nick and had just bought the Orgmaster 2000.

“There you go.” Jenny smiled. “Once you’ve tried that you’ll give men up for good.”

Samantha laughed at the wounded expression on Nick’s face. If it was as good as its packaging made out then Jenny could well be right. Except it couldn’t give her a baby and her eggs weren’t going to be satisfied until at least one of them got to divide and multiply.

“So, are you using it tonight?”

“That is none of your business,” Samantha said as she opened the door to Birdie’s.

“Oh, come on Sam, we have no secrets now.”

He was right. They had, after all, just bought the Orgmaster 2000 together. Heading out the back, she stashed her bag and the fascinating bit of latex occupying it like a loaded gun.

“You know,” Nick said as she reappeared again, “if you need a hand with using that thing, you can just knock on my door.”

---