THE FAMILIAR SOUND of the door’s bell jingling fills my ears as I walk into the local novelty store. I always get the club’s supply of lube, toys, and things here, even though it would be cheaper to buy in bulk online. The guys and I decided it would be better to support one of our members’ businesses. Plus, she gives us a bomb-ass discount anyways.
I grab a hot-pink basket from the stack, and without looking around, I head right for the wall of dildos, knowing exactly which ones we need. But before I can reach the colorful mass of phallic-shaped toys, I stop dead in my tracks as my path is intercepted by the most adorable creature.
“Well hello, there,” I purr, taking in her shoulder-length shiny dark hair, framing a clean face that is lovelier than even the most professionally made-up ones I’ve ever seen. Her black-rimmed glasses perch on her slightly upturned nose, giving her a sexy librarian look. How lucky am I to have found her in a sex shop? Makes me wonder what she’s here to buy.
“Welcome to… Toys for Twats. Can I help you find anything?” Her face flushes red, and it’s not until I see her name tag that it clicks she’s an employee, one I’ve never met before. All the others have been here for years and we know each other by name. My real name, Seth. Only the owner, Roxanne, knows my Dom name since she’s a member of Club Alias, the BDSM club I own with my three partners.
“I have a list, actually,” I tell her, pulling the folded paper out of the front pocket of my dark jeans. I hand it to her, watching closely as she reads the first item on the list.
She looks up at me, her brow furrowing. “Um, okay. Right this way.”
I step forward, expecting her to turn in the opposite direction and head to the wall of dildos, but we end up colliding as she goes to walk around me in the direction from where I came through the door. A scent that is uniquely her, combined with her floral shampoo wafts up my nose, and my eyes nearly cross at how wonderfully intoxicating it is. So different from the leather and expensive perfumes I’m used to smelling every day. My dick twitches behind my zipper.
“Oh, gosh. I’m sorry. What you’re wanting is right over there,” she tells me, embarrassed, pointing over my shoulder.
It’s not. Nothing on my list is over there. But color me intrigued. I want to know just what the fuck she’s trying to take me to see. So I step out of her way and gesture for her to lead the way.
“Um, do you… are you wanting a certain, ah, size or anything?” she asks, and I have to fight to keep a straight face when I realize just what rack she’s now standing in front of. I glance around, trying to see if Roxanne is playing a trick on me, but with no store manager in sight, I decide to see where this goes.
“No, I don’t really have a preference. What would you suggest… Twyla?” I read the name on her badge. Such a unique name for such a beautiful woman. It fits her perfectly.
She clears her throat and looks up at me. “Well, ah, is… is the dildo for you or for your um… partner?”
I use every ounce of self-control I can muster not to burst out laughing. “It would be for my partner,” I say seriously. I’m into some kinky shit, but dildos and butt plugs are not my thing when it comes to myself.
“Okaaay.” She turns back to the rack and grabs a purple medium-sized, torpedo-shaped plug. “I would say, depending on what your partner is used to…” She glances down at the front of my pants and flushes crimson, her bright blue eyes widening behind her glasses before they meet mine. I can’t help but smile. The glance might have been unconscious, but my hard-on inside my jeans is definitely not what she expected to find in her line of vision. She gracefully tries to ignore it. “I, uh… depending on what they’re used to receiving in the bedroom, I guess you’d want to either, um… match it, or go bigger. Smaller, and they wouldn’t really feel it. But I suppose you wouldn’t want to go bigger, because then when it’s just you again….” She looks absolutely horrified by the words coming out of her own mouth.
I put her out of her misery, take the butt plug from her hand, and place it in my pink basket. “Sounds good. All right, next on the list?”
She stares at the purple plug in the basket, either surprised she talked me into it or trying to figure out if the size of it actually matches the size of my cock. I refrain from informing her the toy’s not even close.
“Twyla? The list?” I stoop down to catch her eyes with mine, snapping her out of it.
“Oh! Yeah, sorry.” She fumbles with the paper and reads the next item. “Nipple clamps.” Her head lifts as she glances around the store, her brow furrowing in confusion. “I’m not exactly sure we have those. Um, possibly over here.” She heads to the back corner and stops before the display of bondage equipment. “Nipple clamps, nipple clamps,” she mumbles, bending over to look on the lower hooks, giving me the perfect view of her incredible ass encased in black leggings. She pulls off a package of clothespins, flips them over to read the back of the label, and then replaces them on the hook. When she stands and faces me, she looks almost defeated. “I’m sorry, we must be out of them.”
Hating the look of disappointment on her face, I tell her, “No biggie. Next on the list?”
She pushes her hair behind her ear, her face brightening when she sees what’s written last. “Lube. We’ve got lots of that. Right this way.” She hurries in the correct direction for the first time, and her posture lifts. “Do you know what kind you need? We have several brands, regular and flavored. Take your pick.”
I look at the shelf of lubes, spotting the one I know I need for the club. Yet I’m not ready to end this time with the new sex shop employee who clearly knows nothing about the products she’s supposed to sell. She must be a vanilla kind of girl. Either that, or she’s never been with anyone who’s shown her any adventure in the bedroom.
“What’s the difference between water-based lubricants and the silicone kind?” I ask, and watch as her eyes fill with dread. Damn. With how confidently she strode over here, I thought for sure maybe she had just been trained on these items and was excited to use her newfound knowledge. Wrong. She was obviously just happy she knew where something was located.
“I uh—”
“Seth, honey!”
Twyla and I both jump at the interruption. I had been so focused on her that I didn’t see the shop’s owner come out from the back office. I take a step back from her new employee and give her a grin.
“Roooooooxanne!” I sing, belting it out so flawlessly Sting himself would applaud.
She strolls over and gives me a peck on the cheek before glancing into my basket. “Your load’s a little light today, isn’t it?” she asks.
“That’s what she said,” Twyla mumbles absently, and as all eyes turn to her, she slaps her hand over her mouth, looking like a deer caught in headlights. “I’m so sorry,” she says from behind her palm. “It’s a really bad habit my sister and I have.”
Roxanne and I look at each other and then immediately burst out laughing.
“So you do have a sense of humor. Lord, I thought for sure these past few days that you wouldn’t know a joke if one smacked you in your serious, pretty little face!” she tells Twyla. “Thank goodness. You can’t work at a sex shop and not have a good sense of humor. Ain’t that right, Seth?”
“No doubt,” I reply, as Twyla lowers her hand, a small smile lifting the corners of her lips.
She breathes a sigh of relief. “Well that’s reassuring. I seriously saw my job flying out the window. I mean, you’d think professionalism is key when you’re trying to sell someone a dildo.” She points into my basket.
Roxanne looks from Twyla, to the basket, then up to me, before doubling over, resting her hands on her knees as she laughs again. “God a’mighty, we’ve got some training to do,” she manages to get out.
Twyla looks up at me then down to where Roxanne is still bent in half catching her breath, and then back up to me. And it finally dawns on her. “Wait, you know each other?”
“Seth here is one of our regulars,” her boss explains.
Twyla cocks her head to the side, narrowing her eyes. I point down into the hot-pink basket dangling from my forearm. “Butt plug,” I stage-whisper, and then point to the back wall. “The great wall o’ dildos.”
Judging by her earlier embarrassment, I wait for her face to heat, but this time, fire sparks in her eyes. “You were playing me the whole time?”
I grin. “I couldn’t help it. Roxy hasn’t had a new employee in the three years I’ve been coming here. When you tried to sell me a butt plug as a dildo, I just had to see what other comic gold I could get out of you.”
The older woman giggles beside me. “Twyla, darlin’, how did you not know the difference between butt plugs and dildos?”
The beauty before me huffs, flinging her hand in the direction of the wall of dildos. “I thought those were vibrators. That thing in his basket has like… a handle thingy on it.” She makes a motion with her hand like she’s grasping the handle of a bicycle tire pump and moves her arm back and forth, and I nearly die laughing when she says, “So you’d grip it like that and move it in and out of… wherever you decide to stick it.”
When Roxanne and I finally catch our breath, we look at the new girl. I notice her rising discomfort, and then the panic in her eyes; it cuts my hilarity off at the quick.
“I’m a fast learner, Roxy. I promise I’ll learn about everything and you won’t have to worry about me messing up again. I really need this—”
Her boss waves her words away. “I have no doubt, honey. Don’t you go getting all anxious. It was just a stroke of bad luck you had Seth here—the man who’d give Christian Grey a run for his money in the sex toy knowledge department—as your very first customer.” Twyla nods, relief blanketing her delicate features. “Actually…” Roxy looks up at me, her eyes narrow and a smirk lifting the corner of her mouth. “It might not be bad luck at all. Seth, what do you say? You have your training sessions at the club. Could she attend some classes? Who better to learn her new trade from than a master?” She drawls out the last word.
“Excuse me?” Twyla inserts, clearly confused.
“As much as I’d love for her to be one of my students, the training sessions are for club members only,” I sigh.
“Yeah, official training sessions… but what about private lessons? Say like… after club hours.” Roxy wiggles her eyebrows.
My eyes take a long, slow stroll from the tips of Twyla’s black Converse up to the single pin holding her dark hair back from her beautiful face, and I grin wickedly when I see her fidget in place. “I’d be down for that, if the lovely Twyla is game,” I challenge.
She looks unsure, but Roxy cuts in. “You have an amazing opportunity right now, honey. The education Seth can give you would be like learning your chemistry stuff from the guy who invented the Magic Eraser himself. Pure genius, am I right?” She directs the question at me, and I shrug.
“What do you say, doll? Will you let me teach you? I promise I won’t bite… until lesson three.” I lick my lips, looking her directly in the eye.
And when she breathes, “Yes,” and looks at her feet, I know she’s all mine.
DEAR GOD, BUT this man is freaking delicious. From the second we collided in front of the rack of flavored condoms, a dull ache had begun to take up residence between my thighs. He smelled so good, like leather and expensive cologne. And his body had been hard as a rock, completely opposite to his soft hazel eyes and friendly face. He was devastatingly handsome, with a closely cropped beard and thick eyebrows. Jesus, when he lowered those dark brows over those intensely bright eyes, looking up through his long lashes to give me that wicked grin, I swear… it clenched. My. Vagina. Clenched. It had been all I could do not to whimper and rub my legs together to relieve the tension.
And it’s with these feelings coursing through my veins that I respond with an automatic “Yes” when Seth asks if he can teach me all about the things inside the store. I don’t take into consideration the context clues between him and Roxanne. Something about a club? Training sessions? A master at what he teaches? Giving some guy named Christian a run for his money?
A regular in a sex shop, looking for dildos, nipple clamps, and lube?
All I know is when he said he’d love for me to be one of his students, and then looked at me with those mesmerizing eyes as he asked if he could be my teacher, I felt this undeniable urge to please him. I couldn’t say no.
Plus, with my boss standing here telling me what a great opportunity it would be to learn all about her products, how terrible would it look if I turned them down? I need this job. If my sister’s ex were to come looking for us, there’s no reason he would ever consider checking here. In a way, leaving it up to fate placed us in the perfect spot. If Brandon ever worked out we’d left together, then certainly he would try to track us somewhere that my job as a chemical engineer would take us. And as we discovered, there’s not a single place in town that my degree and job history would be of use. My new workplace is pretty much the best disguise we’ve got.
“Do you have Facebook?” Seth’s voice cuts into my thoughts.
“Huh? Oh. No, I don’t have any social medias,” I reply, and see the familiar look of astonishment cross his face. It’s the look everyone gets when I make the confession. “I used to have one, but once I got into college, I found all that stuff really distracting. I deactivated it so I could concentrate on my work. It was such a relief not feeling like I had to keep up with it that I never turned it back on.”
“That’s actually… kinda cool. I bet it’s refreshing not feeling tied to your phone all the time,” he says, and I blush at the praise. “Well, you at least gotta have an e-mail address, right?”
“Yes, it’s easy. Twyla Quill at Gmail. I can write it down for you at the register,” I respond, and he grins.
“As if your name couldn’t be any cooler, you gotta go and add Star Lord to the end of it!” The excitement in his voice makes me smile coyly, but he must see the confusion on my face, because he prompts, “Star Lord? Peter Quill? Daaaaayum.” He turns to Roxanne. “She earned cool points for the The Office reference she let slip, but loses a few for not knowing Guardians of the Galaxy.”
“Even I knew that one, and I hardly ever get your pop culture references,” she mumbles, then chuckles at the look I’m giving them. “This man is fluent in movie and TV show quotes and song lyrics. It’s like his second language.”
“Dude! I just realized. We both have Chris Pratt character names! Yours is Quill, from Guardians, and he plays Owen in Jurassic World.” He reaches his hand out and takes mine, the warmth of his palm spreading throughout my entire body. “Seth Owens, doll. Pleasure to meet you. I’ll e-mail you times I’m available, and the address of my club.”
If his flesh against mine didn’t have me completely centered in this time and space, his squirrel moment would have given me whiplash. “Sounds good.”
Then I watch in slow motion as he lifts my hand to his lips to press a kiss to my knuckles, and my heart pounds so hard behind my breasts my nipples harden. I don’t know if it’s the feel of his soft lips or the devilish look in his hypnotic eyes that makes me lose my breath, but I suddenly feel faint as everything around us disappears. It’s not until he speaks again that the spell is only slightly broken.
“I look forward to it. But for now, I gotta grab my dildos, nipple clamps, and lube for the club,” he tells me, humor lighting his handsome face.
“Take her along with ya, Seth. I’ve got an order to place in my office.” And with that, Roxanne vanishes once again. Without letting go of my hand, Seth leads me to what I now understand is a huge wall of dildos.
“You seriously thought these were vibrators?” He looks down at me, his eyes twinkling.
I huff. “Well, they vibrate, don’t they? Lots of them have remotes and settings.” I gesture to the ones directly in front of us, obscene, vein-covered, penis-shaped toys that make me want to take a wide step in the opposite direction.
“Yes, but here’s the thing. Vibrators are their own category. There are vibrating dildos, but not all vibrators are dildos,” he explains.
I take a moment to absorb what he’s saying. Seeing the confusion on my face, he lets go of my hand, and I immediately miss the connection but try to concentrate on what he says next. He reaches out to the left to grab a package, his muscular bicep bulging directly in front of my face as I get a whiff of his deodorant. Dear Lord, how can a man’s deodorant even be sexy? Leather, expensive cologne, deodorant, and him. The combination is lethal. The crotch of my panties is officially soaked.
“This, lovely Twyla, is a vibrator. More specifically, it’s a bullet. Some people like to insert it into either the vagina or ass, but mostly it’s used for clitoral stimulation,” he tells me, his voice unwavering. He obviously feels none of the tsunami of embarrassment that’s crashing down on me. “Ah, none of that, doll. No need for pink cheeks around me. At least… not the ones on your beautiful face.”
I gasp and take a step back, unsure if his innuendo is appalling or a total turn-on.
He chuckles, shaking his head, a wicked gleam filling his eyes once more. “This is gonna be a blast.”