27. West
CHAPTER 27
WEST
She’d gotten me hard at dinner with the image of her touching herself once or twice a week. It’s an image I shouldn’t have, shouldn’t think about, but now it’s all I can think about.
The way her eyes lit up when I mentioned praise… I suspected we’d be a fit there. But her prettily flushed cheeks confirmed it.
But remembering the future men she’ll date was enough of a cold bucket to wash away the heat and turn it into ice. I’m jealous of men she hasn’t met yet. Irrationally, desperately jealous.
And furious at all the ways they’ll fail to deserve her.
Nora is quiet beside me in the car. It isn’t until I pull into the parking lot outside Afterglow that Nora makes a strangled sound.
“Oh my god,” she says. “Oh my god .” Her expression is open. There’s something wondrous there, and then nervous. And then her gaze flicks back to mine.
“Too much?”
She shakes her head and undoes her seat belt. “No. I’ve been to a sex shop before.”
“When?”
“Years ago. I was studying abroad. A few of my friends and I went into one during a night out. We mostly giggled the whole time.” She wets her lips. “Is this because I said I had never tried toys?”
“We’ll buy some for you,” I say.
The look in her eyes when she watched the other couples has stayed with me. Her fascination with the oral sex. She hasn’t been well taken care of in the past, and I’ll be damned if that’ll ever happen again.
“Oh. Oh .” There’s excitement in her voice. “We can look at toys for you too.”
“I don’t need any.”
“Fair is fair!” she says and pops open the door. I follow her into the shop, stopping only to nod at Sam and Madison. They’ve parked next to us, and they follow a few feet behind us into the shop.
They’re the best of the best. They won’t comment on the location.
Afterglow is all sleek decor and pale pink, with a smiling attendant that says hi as we enter. A display of candy is the first thing we see. Nora’s gaze lingers on it, but then she moves on to a shelf that has a dizzying array of condom types and lube. More flavors than anyone has need of.
Her brown hair flows down her back, and I know what it feels like to drag my fingers through it now. Forbidden knowledge.
“XXL,” Nora reads on one of the condom boxes. “I think that’s a vanity purchase.”
“Never been with anyone who needed one of those?”
“No. I know there’s size variation, but XXL?” She looks over her shoulder at me quickly, then back at the packages. “What size do you buy?”
Don’t get hard again, don’t get hard again…
I shove my hands into my pockets. “The ones that are ribbed for her pleasure.”
She laughs a little and moves on down the shelf, past the lubes. “Clever way to get out of that question.”
“Are you saying you’re interested in the size of my?—”
“West!” she says, glancing behind me at where Sam and Madison flank the front door. She motions for me to follow her deeper into the store.
I grin. “They’ve signed an NDA.”
“ Still ,” she says.
If the stalker watches us here… Dark satisfaction spreads through me, nipping at the heels of my guilt. He should see how well taken care of Nora is. I want the thought of how many orgasms I probably give her to plague him.
Get even more reckless, I think. Come out of the shadows.
So I can close the noose around him.
Nora stops in front of another row of toys. These are all in leather. She pauses and tilts her head. “Is that a…”
“I believe so, yes.” There’s a ball gag on one of the shelves. “Not your thing.”
“Are you kink shaming me, Calloway?”
“Never,” I tell her. “I’m guessing, though.”
Her eyes linger on mine for a second before she turns back to the shelf. “No. Not my thing. Not that I’d even know what my thing is…”
“You know,” I say. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Downplay what you want.” I step closer, my words only meant for her. “You have fantasies. You’ve touched yourself for years. You know what turns you on.”
Her breath catches. “Yes.”
“You know there are things you like and things you don’t. And you know what you’d like to try.” I lean against the edge of one of the shelves. The blood is rushing south, but I won’t let it distract me. “Don’t downplay that. Not with me, not with any guy.”
She wets her lower lip, and the entire world narrows to that single movement. “Tell me where I should begin in here.”
I raise an eyebrow. “We could ask the attend?—”
“No,” she says quickly. “You.”
Me.
I take a step closer and hold out my hand. She doesn’t hesitate before she slips hers into mine. Warmth and triumph, one and the same, zing through me at the touch. “Come.”
We walk down an aisle of cheap polyester costumes. Nurses and devils and maids and angels. I turn to the right, and we walk by a row of crops, paddles and handcuffs. “Oh my god,” Nora breathes. “Look at that.”
I pause, her hand still in mine. “Yeah. For people who like the pain.”
“I’ve read about it. The whole BDSM thing. Doms… and subs,” she says.
“Yes,” I mutter. There’s one of them among my own friends, and discovering that about him had been more intimate than I ever thought we’d get. “There’s one thing it gets right, though.”
“Um, BDSM?”
“Yes.” We walk down the aisle and turn past a number of plugs and toys until we get to the vibrators. “It’s about trust. And sex should always be about trust.”
“I don’t think everyone feels like that.”
“Then they’re doing it wrong.” My voice comes out harsher than I intend. The idea of Nora people-pleasing in bed makes something inside me turn hard with fury. Not at her. Never at her. At the men who might not have listened.
It makes me hate my own gender. The idea of men on a date, seeing her beauty, seeing her kindness and her smiles, and thinking only of their own gratification.
“West,” she says. She’s looking at me with furrowed brows. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Is that how you do it, then? Sex?” Her cheeks flush. “It’s all trust-based?”
“Yes.” It would be with you, I think. Earning your trust and getting to touch you would be a fucking privilege.
Instead, I reach out and grab one of the small pocket vibrators in a purple box. “You love pleasing others. But good sex is about pleasing yourself, too.”
“That one is small.”
“That’s the point.”
She turns it over and looks at the description. “Oh. It has vibrations.”
“Mhm.” I look over at the selection. “There are better ones, I think.”
“Who made you such an expert?”
“I told you. I like pleasure.” Reaching for another one, I hand it to her instead. Take the bullet one and put it back. “This one has suction.”
There’s a small, audible intake of her breath that sends heat rushing straight down my body. My cock hardens and pushes painfully against my zipper.
Fuck. I thought I would be better in this role.
What an illusion.
“Oh,” she whispers. “So one would hold it against… one’s clit?”
That makes my lips twitch. “ One would, yes.”
“That’s interesting…” Her attention is locked on to the toy in her hand, and fuck it, I’m going to have to adjust myself.
I turn from her and scan for something bigger. There’s plenty of them, but I settle for a medium-sized curved vibrator. It’s meant for internal stimulation too. No suction, if she finds that too much…
“I think,” she says, “that I want to buy this one.”
She’s still looking at the one I handed her. The image of her using it flashes through my mind. I shove it away with nothing but pure force. This is not the time. But I know it’ll come back. Along with the hardness that needs to recede. Don’t picture her bent legs, her hand gripping the toy…
“We’ll get several,” I tell her.
She looks up at me. “Several?”
“Yes.”
“And… we?”
“Pay using my card.” I hold up the other one for her. “This one too.”
She reads the box like it’s a manual, like we’re still at the restaurant and she’s looking through menu options, and there’s such curious focus on her face that it makes me bite my tongue. I need to get a fucking grip.
I don’t think anyone has ever turned me on as quickly, as easily, as she does.
“Yes, this one sounds good,” she says.
“Do you mean that? Or are you saying it just because I picked it?”
She rolls her eyes, and more heat pulses through me. “I’m not just saying that. I’m not trying to people-please around you all the time, you know.”
“I know. You do it more with other people.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended that it never really crossed your mind with me.”
She takes the vibrator from me and stacks it atop the other one. “Your pick, Calloway,” she says with a smile.
My pick.
Flattered, then. More than flattered. It fucking wrecks me that I’m one of the few people she feels safe enough to be mostly herself around. That she doesn’t preen or pretend for me, doesn’t offer me fake smiles or hide her opinion.
She walks along a long line of increasingly outlandish dildos. Ribbed, curved, colorful, sparkly. Fantasy inspired and painful-looking.
She’s incandescent beneath the low lighting of the store. A little wine-drunk and high off the conversations we’ve had.
She’s being such a good girl.
I follow behind her and try not to picture her using the vibrators I’ve picked out for her. I fail.
At the end of the aisle, she stands stock-still and quickly backs up two steps.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sam and Madison will see us at the register. They’ll see what we buy.” She worries her lip between her teeth. “I know I shouldn’t care about it. I just need a moment, and then I’ll do it.”
“Do you want me to ask them to turn around?”
“No.”
She’s cute, this flustered and hot. Her face isn’t the serene, unsmiling picture of beauty she offers when modeling. Now it’s a beautiful kaleidoscope of her emotions. Playing over her cheeks, the green of her eyes, her full lips.
“Want me to buy them?”
Nora shakes her head. “I should do it. It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong.”
“No, you’re not.” I’m strung taut, the pleasure-pain of being on the edge for hours playing at my temples and the base of my spine. So I shouldn’t, but I do it anyway. Reach out and tip her head up. “You’ve got a body with desires and wants like everyone does.”
Her eyes are the deep green of winding ivy and full of trust. I feel heady with it, drunk on the power of it.
I smooth my thumb over her flushed cheek. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. What other people think of you doesn’t matter. You’re allowed to be you, trouble. And you’re allowed to be a woman who wants pleasure.”
Her lips part, and warm breath washes over my thumb.
I could kiss her right now.
I want to.
“I’ll buy them,” she says. “What’s your PIN code?”
I smile at her. “That’s my girl. And it’s one-nine-one-two. The year Fairhaven was completed.”
She smiles beneath my thumb, and I’m lost. Maybe I always was. But this is the moment I know it, wholly and completely.
There’s no recovering from her.