Breaking the Ice

Chapter 15

15

“Do you think it’s possible to become a virgin again, Bec?”

“Technically, no. I don’t think so.”

“If I don’t meet someone soon I’m going to have to buy a vibrator.”

“You don’t have a vibrator?”

“No! When would I have time for one? Why? Do you?”

“Of course. What sort are you thinking of? There’s some great models on the market.”

Great, her older sister who had four children not only had a vibrator but apparently knew the vibrator market? “Um… basic?” Clearly, she needed to spend some time on Google.

Bec’s exaggerated sigh was loud in Samantha’s ear. “Or you could just go to Plan B.”

“I have a Plan B?”

“Sure, Plan B. Boink Nick.”

“I am not going to boink Nick.”

“Even though he kissed you in an alley and Cher played in your head and you haven’t been able to stop thinking about it?”

“I told you, already. We talked about how it was a one-off and it’s behind us.”

There was a commotion in the background. “Hang on a minute.”

Bec put the phone down and Samantha listened to her sister refereeing an argument between her nieces which only amped up the yearning for a child of her own.

“Look, I’ve gotta go. Major hormonal tweenie crisis looming. I love you. And Sam?”

“What?”

“Consider Plan B.”

Another couple of weeks passed when Samantha decided the vibrator option was looking better. The blind date scene was its usual comedy of errors. A chiropractor with a weird facial tic. A vet with the hugest nose she’d ever seen. A university professor who seemed to think that asking for the dessert menu first constituted a major crime.

She was no closer to biological – or sexual – satisfaction than when she’d first started.

Working with Nick wasn’t helping. The man oozed pheromones all over the shop. She couldn’t even escape to the obscurity of the shelves as Nick’s eau de sex appeal lurked everywhere. It used to be that she’d walk into Birdie’s and the smell of old books and peppermint would hit her instantly. All she smelled these days was Nick.

And Bec’s Plan B kept rearing its ugly head. Seriously, she needed to release some of the pressure before she jumped him in the back room.

Because Plan B was not part of her goals.

God knew they were being difficult enough to achieve without getting totally off track and losing herself in Nick. And anyway, just because he’d offered and could kiss like he had a PhD in the subject, didn’t mean he actually really wanted to be Plan B’d by her.

She had presented him with a challenge that night that any red-blooded male would have found hard to resist. But the man had been out with so many Angie clones in the last couple of weeks it was clear she wasn’t really his type. Despite Nick’s protestations that he liked real women he didn’t seem to actually date any of them.

Yes, he flirted with her. But he flirted with every woman who came through the door. Crabbers fan or not. Even Dulcie got the Nick treatment. After years in the great dating pool of life, she knew better than to fix her sights on men like Nick.

So. A vibrator it was.

The day she finally decided to go for it, they shut up shop after lunch and she caught the downtown bus with Nick under the guise of shoe shopping. He was going off to his physio session and, luckily, the nearest sex shop was only a couple of blocks from Nick’s clinic.

When they reached their stop, he went right and she went left, hitting the mall soon after, determined to join the ranks of city girls the world over. She’d started this enforced new phase of her life determined to change her attitude and this was just one more step in her metamorphosis.

But, when she got to the adult shop she couldn’t quite bring herself to go in. She went and bought a hot dog from a nearby stand and sat on a seat opposite the door and wondered why sex shops had to look so… sleazy?

The plate glass window was obscured by a thick dark curtain. A row of red flashing lights outlined the window, a little saggy in places, and a red neon sign proclaimed The Pleasure Centre. She should have just purchased online. But she’d wanted to be able to fully investigate before she bought.

Samantha watched people come and go, some leaving with intriguing brown paper bags. She thought it would be all horny teenage boys or men like the guy who did her tattoo but most of those frequenting the establishment were women who all seemed to look a bit like Bec. And the men were spread across the spectrum. From young to old, professional to blue collar.

She glanced at her watch – time was a’wasting!

Her phone buzzed with an incoming text but she ignored it. If she didn’t do this now, she probably never would.

Putting on her big girl panties, Samantha walked toward the shop, browsing in the shoe shop window next door for a few moments before casually sauntering past The Pleasure Centre and back again then quickly stepping inside.

Her mind was instantly boggled by what she saw. So much so Samantha felt as if she’d entered an entirely new dimension. There were the usual videos and magazines and sexy lingerie but also inflatable partners and bondage equipment and something for every fetish.

And vibrators. Lots of vibrators.

She stood in front of the display that would have put the nuts, bolts and nails wall at Home Depot to shame. There they stood, all one hundred models, proudly erect, displaying their virtues in all their towering glory. Black ones, pink ones, flesh-colored ones. Big ones, bigger ones and ginormous ones. Ones with attachments and others that had bits that rotated.

Overwhelmed by choice, Samantha swallowed. This was crazy. She was getting out of here. She was looking for something to ease a little frustration, not cripple her.

“Well, well, well, Samantha Evans, you saucy minx.”

She froze. Nick? What the hell. Please don’t let it be Nick . Slowly, heat rising in her cheeks, Samantha turned.

Yup. Nick Hawkeye Hawke was smiling at her. Well… crap.

“Nick.” She chewed at her bottom lip. How in the hell did he find her in here? Was he following her? “I thought your session went for a couple of hours?”

“It does but the physio had an emergency come up and had to leave. I texted you. Then I spotted you coming in here so I followed.”

She heard the suppressed amusement coloring his voice and smiled weakly. What to do? Pretend she was buying something for a friend? That she stumbled in by accident?

“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 must look like 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 his permission, 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 was waaay too 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. She could do 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 done this in 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.”

He was only joking but Samantha thought about it for a beat or two longer than she should have, wondering what Nick would say if she called his bluff. If she said my place, seven-thirty .

But she didn’t have the nerve to carry it off.

“Thanks, I think I’ll figure it out.” She didn’t bother to temper the sarcasm in her voice.

He grinned. “They can be much more fun with two.”

Samantha frowned. “Why would you use a vibrator if you had the real thing?”

Rolling his eyes, Nick gave a half laugh. “Variety. Spice. You know… fun. Sex is supposed to be fun.”

“Oh, gee , that’s what I’ve been doing wrong all these years.” The sarcasm literally dripped from her words now. “I do know how to have fun, Nick. Just because I don’t see fireworks every time I’m in bed with a guy doesn’t mean I don’t know how to enjoy myself.”

He quirked an eyebrow, unperturbed. “Really?”

She glared at him, not bothering to answer. Great… Nick thought she was boring and didn’t know how to have fun. So much for metamorphosis.

“Okay then, prove it. I want a full report on the Orgmaster in the morning. Its good points. Its bad points. And a rating.”

Ugh. For the love of… “I’m not a dude, Nick. I don’t rate my dates. Mechanical or otherwise.”

“Yeah well, maybe you should. If you don’t mind me saying, you must have had some real doozeys. A rating out of ten. Are you up for it?”

Samantha couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. “This is ridiculous.”

“No. What would be ridiculous is if you just spent two hundred bucks and didn’t get your money’s worth. See, I have this really strong feeling you’re going to shove your new toy at the back of a drawer and let it collect dust instead of using it.”

Samantha had been thinking the back of the bathroom cupboard but there was no way in hell she was admitting to that. “Of course I’m going to use it.”

“Tonight. I dare you.”

She looked him straight in the eye. “Tonight.”

But first she was going to need to stop at the liquor store for a bottle of vodka. She was going to need to be really smashed before the Orgmaster could come out to play.