Page 205 of Secret Shifters Next Door

I struggled to meet her eyes. “Yeah. Um…when you say come…I know what that means, but I’m not sure if—” I managed to pull my eyes up to hers. “Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure I’ve actually ever?—”

“Sweet baby Jesus, are you kidding me? You’ve never actually had an orgasm?” Felicity had looked beyond shocked. She looked confused, too, and I thought I needed to explain.

“Well, I do it. Like, I put it inside me and…er…ride it? I guess, that’s what you call it. It feels really good.” I rolled my eyes and smiled shyly. “Like, really really good. Except, there’s never a final, I don’t know, explosion? I think I’ve been super close, but no orgasm.”

“Oh my God, you poor thing. This man is gonna break you. In a good way, though,” she had added quickly. “Toys are great, but nothing can compare to feeling a dude thrusting away inside you. That look on their face when they get close? Oh, girl.” She sighed, a nostalgic smile on her face. “And the thought that it’s you and your body that’s having that effect on him? Shew, it’s almost enough to get me excited just thinking about it.”

She had told me about all the ways a man could touch a woman, and how I could touch and stimulate myself. I drank glass after glass of wine to lower my inhibitions and make the conversation less awkward and embarrassing. I was a little ashamed of my lack of knowledge. I wrote pretty raunchy novels, but I had no experience. It was the same as a guy writing a book about medieval warfare. He had no experience, but he still wroteabout it. This was a little weirder, though. At least I wrote stuff that most people had experienced in life.

By the end of the evening, I’d been pretty sloshed, but I had a lot more ammunition to use when and if I ever found myself naked with Miles. Which was looking more and more likely as each day went by. And then Felicity left, and Miles stopped by. Oh lord. The things I’d said. Had I really told him Felicity had been teaching me how to seducehim?

I rolled over, buried my face in the pillow, and screamed. Ugh, how could I be so lame? But the way he’d reacted? That hadn’t been lame at all. I could almost still feel the hardness between his legs pressing into me. I even recalled how, buoyed by the alcohol, I thrust my hips against his. That was something I wouldn’t have believed I was capable of a few days ago—with or without alcohol. Before he’d left, he'd slid his tongue across my lip, and I’d almost had my first ever orgasm right then—full melt down into a writhing, spasming puddle on the floor. It was probably the closest I’d ever gotten in my life to orgasming. Sighing, I rolled out of bed to get my day started.

My brain urged me to write what I had in my mental outline, but as I sat in my living room, all that seemed to appear on my page was line after line of smut. Cocks, boobs, doggy style, missionary, tongues, and deep-throating. It seemed to be all I could think about. At one point, I had to erase an entire page because, for some reason, I’d decided to write a steamy sex scene between my main characters when they were supposed to be three states apart at the time. I guess I could have made it a fantasy scene, but it was…unusually dirty, even for one of these books.

I grunted in frustration and slammed my laptop closed. A glance at my watch told me I’d been sitting there writing sex scenes for over two hours. My panties were wet, and I had no idea how to get any further in my story.

“What the hell am I going to do?” I whispered.

Almost as though the universe heard my question and wanted to answer it with the most terrible thing it could think of, a knock came at my door, making me jump. I spun and looked at it with wide eyes and a rapidly increasing heart rate. After the second knock, I had to force myself to walk to the door. A quick glance through the peephole showed me my worst fears were confirmed. Miles was standing there. I clapped a hand to my mouth to stifle the squeal of panic threatening to explode out of my mouth.

Maybe he’d think I was out. Then I remembered the newspaper out front. I’d gotten a one-month subscription, so I could stay up-to-date on the world. I had yet to get it. It was still sitting right there, by his feet, a sure sign I hadn’t left my apartment all day. Shit.

Reluctantly, I composed myself and unlocked the door, opening it before he could knock a third time. I smiled at him, hoping I didn’t look like the same woman who’d admitted she was being coached on how to get into his pants.

“Hey, Miles,” I said, trying not to sound breathless.

He smirked at me, and my knees went weak. “Get dressed. You’re spending the day with me.”

I blinked several times. “I’m sorry? Can…can you repeat that?”

“I said you’re coming with me for the day. Be ready in thirty minutes. Bring a warm jacket.”

Without another word, he went back into his apartment. I stared after him, my mouth hanging open. Maybe I could pretend he never came over and asked me out. But the idea of spending more time with him made my heart hammer in my chest. Making a final decision, I slammed my door and ran for my room. I yanked off my lounge clothes and got dressed. I had no idea what we would be doing, but he’d said to bring a coat, soI dressed warmly and slipped my feet into a pair of comfy tennis shoes. To my horror, I realized I hadn’t showered yet. But there was no time for that because he knocked on my door again.

Almost thirty minutes exactly. “At least he’s punctual,” I groaned to myself.

Foregoing any type of shower, I went to the door and opened it again. He looked me up and down and raised an eyebrow. “You ready?”

“Yup.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I frowned at him, not sure what he meant. He pointed behind me at the hook by my fridge. “Coat?” he asked.

I looked back and saw my warm coat hanging on the hook. I cursed the thing for making me look like an idiot as I snatched it off the hook. “Huh, thanks. Where are we going?”

Miles walked me to the stairs. As we went down, he looked at me with a knowing smile. “Getting a little fresh air, is all.”

I didn’t know what that meant. It was about as vague as you could get. I didn’t argue. My gut told me I was safe with him. Miles wasn’t the kind of guy who would take advantage of me. If he was, he would have jumped my bones last night when I was drunk and would have agreed to anything he had in mind. I’d never felt so safe with anyone before, so I decided to trust my gut.

He helped me get into his truck, and then we drove off. We drove for over an hour. During the drive, Miles asked me questions about my childhood and how I got into writing. I tried to pepper in some questions about his past, but he was a little closed off about that.

We were deep in the mountains when he looked at me and nodded toward the wilderness scene we were driving through. “I’m kind of an outdoorsy person. I love being in nature. It’s…I don’t know, revitalizing. Do you feel the same way?”

I shrugged. “I grew up in California, in the city. I spent my childhood in foster homes. Those places usually didn’t have parents with a lot of money for vacations. I never got to venture out and see more than the concrete and asphalt. One home was about a mile from the beach. I snuck down there once or twice, but got in trouble, so I stopped. Books were my way of seeing the world. Open one up, and I could be anywhere. A galaxy a billion light years away, the court of a Renaissance queen, a mountaintop in a post-apocalyptic world? It was all there in the pages.”

“Well, I’m about to change that. Books are amazing—and necessary—but sometimes you really have to get out and see the world. I’m taking you to my absolute favorite place in the whole world.” He gave me a sidelong glance and grinned. “I hope you’ve got the stamina to go as long as I can.”

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