Chapter 3 #2
I put my arm around him and led him through the room.
“If there’s one thing you don’t have to worry about, it’s people thinking you can’t perform in the bedroom.
We’ve all heard it. You may have soundproofed the rooms upstairs, but you did nothing about the external walls in your bedroom.
Every night when we’re sitting out on the deck—”
He elbowed me away and chuckled. “Fine.”
Maybe the reason Tak chose me had nothing to do with his fear of being teased by other men in the house. Maybe he needed someone who would talk him into it and put his doubts to rest.
One of the workers approached. “Is there anything in particular you gentlemen are looking for? Something for a special occasion?”
Tak opened his mouth as if to speak but got tongue-tied. “Uh, yeah, I’m… W-We’re just looking.”
While she recited a sales pitch about markdowns, Tak stood as stiff as a tree, his eyes downcast, his cheeks as red as two apples.
“Vibrators?” I asked.
She gestured to the glass displays in the middle of the room before walking off.
Tak faced me in a panic. “Never mind.”
I seized his arm and dragged him toward the counters. “Oh no. You’re not getting out of this one, big boy.”
“Everyone will see us.”
“Do you think people are here shopping for church? They lock them up so people won’t steal them.”
“Or buy them.”
I stifled my laugh at his embarrassment. If I made this any more uncomfortable, he’d likely leave skid marks on the floor on his way out.
How unfortunate that would be for poor little Hope.
Tak stopped in front of a display of sexy costumes and pinned his gaze on a pink-and-white apron with a lacy hem. The model on the package wasn’t wearing any clothes beneath.
I couldn’t contain my laugh. “Do you plan on making her cook and clean on your date?”
He gave a toothy grin and waggled his eyebrows. “There might be something on the floor she needs to pick up. I wouldn’t want her to get dirty.”
I tossed it into the basket. “Good call.”
We stopped at a table of neatly stacked boxes with several samples on display.
Tak eyed the fleshlike vaginas, seemingly flummoxed. He bent over and stared closely at the opening on one. “For single men? I should get one for Krys.”
My eyes wandered to the display sign, which advertised: New Feature. Motion-Activated Sound.
Before I could stop him, Tak picked up the rubbery vagina and tapped it against his hand.
A woman’s voice cried out, “Oh! Oh! More. Give it to me harder. Your cock is so big… I need it.”
Tak thrust it back onto the shelf in a panic, but that knocked over the boxes, which tipped the entire display. Suddenly we were surrounded by vaginas bouncing at our feet and shouting, “Give it to me harder! Don’t stop!”
Sitting on a concrete wall, I watched the pedestrians walk by, most of them occupied by their phones. “We should do this again.”
Tak froze while licking his ice cream cone and glowered.
“I meant hanging out. Adult stores are optional. That was the most fun I’ve had in months.” I bit into my waffle cone, and the cookie dough ice cream was freaking heaven. “I thought you were going to need a paramedic.”
Tak licked his chocolate ice cream. “We don’t hang out alone very much. You’re right. We should have more adventures. Well, not that kind of adventure. I don’t ever want to do that again.”
I waggled my eyebrows. “Watching you stack lady parts was more entertaining than when you knocked them over. I bet that woman who helped is going to have a good time later tonight with her new fantasy.”
“Why doesn’t that embarrass women? The way that clerk was running her finger around it and trying to explain how it worked…” He stared off into the distance and shook his head. “Hope will be embarrassed by all this.”
“Then it’s your job to make her comfortable.”
“What if she thinks I’m trying to tell her that she’s not enough? I don’t want her to get the wrong idea.”
“Tell her you’re satisfied but wanted to show her that you’re open to new experiences.
If you talk it through and she’s still uneasy, listen to her.
It’s not about pressuring her into something she doesn’t want.
Maybe she needs to play with everything by herself first—try out the goods on her own terms.”
“You should be a sex therapist.”
“Virgil Nightingale doesn’t do therapy. Everyone’s built different, but it’s good to let her know you’re willing to explore.
If she knows you’re open-minded, she won’t feel self-conscious about telling you her own fantasies.
Women love all that communication stuff.
You might discover some interesting secrets about her.
” My ice cream was beginning to melt, so I bit into the cone.
“She might be into role-playing more than toys. It’s all about discovery.
Your options are as limited as your imaginations.
And if she wants to use all those toys alone, let her. It can only enhance the sex.”
My hands were rough, since I hadn’t shifted all day. After eating Bear’s steak last night, I crashed hard and slept in. Tak had woken me up to join him on this errand, so my hands and neck were still red from all the sun I’d gotten yesterday.
A man whirred by on an electric scooter.
“Technology will be the death of us all,” Tak muttered.
“Says the man who got bucked off his horse last week.”
“Luna was in a grumpy mood. I found a nail in her hoof she must’ve gotten while we were out riding.
She didn’t get it from our property. Archer walks around with that magnetic sweeper thing all the time, looking for nails we lost on our projects.
” After finishing his cone, Tak wiped his mouth.
“You never talk about being a Gravewalker.”
That came out of the blue and caught me off guard. “What’s there to talk about?”
Tak knocked his heels against the brick wall, which bordered the curb, and kept his gaze locked on the parking lot across the street. “The fact that you never want to talk about it.”
I licked my ice cream, uneasy about the topic. It dredged up too many painful memories.
“I’m your Packmaster. You talk a lot about your life, but I hear nothing about what matters. Everyone came here for a fresh start, and I understand there are some who want to leave their past behind. But being a Gravewalker is who you are now. It’s who you will always be.”
When I reached the bottom of the cone, I stared at the melted ice cream and lost my appetite. A grackle squawked from the top of the green slope behind us, so I tossed it to him. “I wasn’t raised in a pack, but I’ve lived in one. It’s where I want to be.”
“Tell me more.”
I rubbed at the drop of ice cream on my jeans. “My mother raised me by herself. When I turned thirteen, she thought it would be better to join a pack before I went through my first change.”
“And not before? She was a Shifter, right?”
“Mm-hmm. She lived in a pack before I was born, but they kicked her out.”
Tak sighed. “Because of you.”