Page 1 of Stocking Stuffers
Chapter One
Sasha lifted the toy from her huge red bag with a flourish, and the jingle bells on her reindeer antlers tinkled merrily.
“This little darling, the Love Bite, is my favorite of the bunch.” She displayed the toy in her hands like a model onThePrice is Right. She’d found, after years of peddling her wares to anyone and everyone who would listen, that drama sells. Especially at Christmas. “The handle is ergonomic, and it’s sturdy. Frankly, there is nothing I hate more than a flimsy sex toy.”
The Staunchly Raunchy Book Club members tittered, and Sasha grinned. “Y’all know what I’m mean. I can tell.”
Gently teasing the clients was one of Sasha’s customer service tricks. She was adept at figuring out which Lady Robin’s Intimate Implements partygoers were gregarious and bantering with them. But today, Sasha’s heart wasn’t exactly full of holiday cheerorconsumerism. She felt like the fake elf at the party, and she’d never been a very good faker.
“The Love Bite uses suction technology, and I swear to the Ghost of Good Orgasms Past, it’s the closest to real oral I’ve ever found in a sex toy. You just place the head over your clit and it creates a suck-and-release sensation,” she said matter-of-factly.
Sasha normally loved filling in at a Lady Robin’s sales party when one of the regular reps called in sick. She loved chatting with the clients, and she definitely loved the commission money.
But shehatedChristmas, so this party sucked.
Sasha passed the Love Bite to Valerie, the party’s hostess and a beautiful femme lesbian, who tested the suction on her thumb.
“Oh, very nice,” Valerie said. “I might give up the girlfriend search for this baby.” She waved the Love Bite at her friends. “This is my new girlfriend now!”
Sasha couldn’t hold in her professional pride. “Plus, it’s waterproof.”
Sasha’s friend, Robin, had started Lady Robin’s Intimate Implements, a boutique sex toy and lingerie company, as a pop-up shop seven years ago. Sasha had been the whole of the marketing department for the first three years before their company had exploded into a multi-city operation. They supplemented their online and local vendor sales with bridal showers and birthday parties attended by their salaried marketing reps. This was the first book club they’d been commissioned for, as far as Sasha knew. Their company had made Robin, and Sasha by extension, stockings full of cash.
A blast of wind hit the Winterberry Inn, causing the old house to creak and rattle. Sasha whipped around to see out the big bay window. It was dark out there, and she desperately hoped the expected snow and ice held off until she was home. Her darling baby—a restored 1984 VW Bug—was a disaster on icy roads.
Valerie, who owned the Winterberry Inn and was definitely the evil mastermind of the Staunchly Raunchy Book Club, called a pause on the proceedings to get everyone mulled wine and spiked eggnog. Sasha took the brief reprieve to glance around the luxurious hearth room. The inn was a cozy bed and breakfast with seemingly endless rooms and Christmas charm in every nook and cranny.
The hearth room spilled over with Christmas bobbles, garland, boxwood wreaths, and lights. A huge spruce tree, decked out in glittery gold, was activating Sasha’s allergies.
Christmas made her itch, even when it was beautiful.
Maybe especially when it was beautiful.
Once the book club members were back in their circle of seats, Sasha pulled a paddle out of her bag and pasted on a fake smile.
“We don’t have a huge variety of impact-play instruments, like crops or whips, but if you’re in the market for that, I can give you suggestions for other vendors. We only have one paddle, but it’s exceptional, if I do say so myself.” She brandished the wooden paddle Robin had created for the holidays. It had a wordetched into the wide, flat end. “You can personalize the word, so it could be your name or your partner’s name. Other common words areBABYorSLUT. This is our Christmas edition, you know, if Santa gets you going.”
The group laughed as she handed off the paddle adorned with the wordHO!The book club members had been discussing a BDSM romance novel when she’d arrived, and the group erupted in chatter as they deliberated over whether the characters in the book would have enjoyed such play.
Sounded like they definitely would have been down.
Sasha listened to them with half an ear as she removed the last items from her bag. For a perverse second, she wished her roller bag was velvet, like Santa’s, rather than boring nylon. Velvet would match the red dress she’d donned in the hopes of appearing to be a bundle of cheer.
False cheer, but whatever.
Once the room quieted down, Sasha displayed her final toys.
“Last but not least, next month we’re debuting a new line called Prick Me, for the person or persons in your life with dicks and prostates, but we have a bit of stock available for purchase today. Call it a sexy sneak peek.”
She waved one of the toys—a holly-green cylinder with an opening on one end. “Here is our Fancy Fleshstroker, which comes in twelve diverse skin tones and several fun colors. These have a soft, silky interior and are super easy to clean. We’re also debuting two vibrating prostate massagers of differing shapes, named, quite simply, the P-Spot Pulse and Pulse 2.”
She held them up and demonstrated how to turn them both on.
A quiet, earnest-looking white woman named Louise laughed. “This might sound stupid, but can you explain how those work?”
Sasha smiled, a real one this time, and put her proverbial sex-educator cap on. “So the prostate is a gland in front of the rectum in people born with penises and prostates. It has tons of pleasure sensors, so it can feel good when it’s stimulated. A lot of people with prostates enjoy having theirs touched, and that isn’t specific to certain sexualities. Prostate play can result in some pretty spectacular orgasms. With consent, of course, all you have to do is lube this baby up and insert it into—”
A bigthumpresounded almost directly behind her, and she dropped the toys onto the hardwood floor. Somehow, the vibrator on the Pulse 2 was activated on impact, so it buzzed and danced all over the place.
