Chapter 2

Ash

The craft store was slow today, which was a good thing because I needed time to declutter. Annoying customers had thrown everything everywhere, and it felt like I was drowning in a sea of glitter and yarn.

I didn’t really enjoy working in the craft store, but it gave me the money I needed to save up for my own business, and it gave me discounts on all the things I needed to make my jewelry. It was a decent tradeoff for now.

While I worked, my phone kept buzzing. I couldn’t answer it while I was out on the floor, but when I went into the back for a break, I checked it. I’d posted my “Hot Man Wanted” ad a few days ago. I had expected many men to message me when I posted it, but some of them were annoyingly persistent.

I’d check out their profiles and read what they wrote. I passed on most of them without sending a return message. Some of the men got angry because I wouldn’t message them back, and others just kept messaging until I responded. I’d get responses like “I could rock your world” or “Is this thick enough?” coupled with a picture of some cock he probably pulled from the internet. All I would do was shake my head and tell the person I wasn’t interested.

Some would get mad, and others would call me names, but all that did was solidify the fact that I’d made the right decision in turning them down.

Unfortunately, what I’d written in my ad was true. I’d never had an orgasm. Not my fault. According to my best friend, Frank, I’d only been with boys. Never men.

“You need a man who knows what he wants, not some boy who’s still impressed by the size of his cock,” Frank had told me.

She was the one who had convinced me to post this idiotic ad, but I had to admit that the attention was nice. And it wasn’t like I’d never experienced an orgasm. I mean, I knew how to work a vibrator, but I’d never had one in bed with a man. Apparently, they were a thing that was supposed to happen, but they just never had for me.

Frank had told me that my fingers didn’t even come close to what a man’s tongue could do, so she sat me down and we wrote up this dinky little ad on this random dating website.

I fished through the messages and blocked some of the guys on the app. I was about to close out my phone and get back to work when a message from Mason Masters popped up. My knee-jerk reaction was to exit the conversation and get back to work, but his profile picture caught my eye. His eyes were dark, and his hair was luscious. His skin had this sun-kissed tan that was sexy but didn’t dominate his strong features.

God, he was hot.

But his introduction message made him perfect.

“Sounds like the stress of those goals and aspirations are interfering with your love life. Care for me to intervene?”

It was cocky. I had to give him that, but it didn’t come with a dick pic, and that was a plus. There wasn’t any bragging about how thick his shaft was or any horn-tooting about how every woman he’d ever been with had come multiple times over.

I liked it, and I enjoyed his profile, so I responded.

“I suppose it depends on your method of intervention.”

I was shocked by how quick his response was, and I slowly leaned back into my chair and smiled at his message.

“I could spout off some stuff about my tongue or the size of my cock, but something tells me you’d prefer a few drinks first.”

He wasn’t wrong. I wrote him back. “Straight to the point. I like it.”

“But straight to the point doesn’t really cut it for women in bed sometimes,” he responded.

That statement made me think back to all the other guys I’d been with—how they wanted to stick it in so badly that sometimes I had to bust out the lube because they didn’t take the time to work me up. I thought about the times I’d woken up to my boyfriend grinding his nasty morning wood into my back, hoping I’d just spread my legs and he’d slip right in.

“What cuts it for you in bed?” I asked.

“When a woman yells my name.”

That statement made me shiver. Sure, I’d had sex that had felt nice, but I’d never felt the need to scream out into the room or anything. Part of me thought that stuff was fake, that women only said they did that just to give the impression that their sex lives were awesome.

“Ah, so you like a grand entrance?” I wrote.

He responded, “No, just a grand finale. The entrance means nothing if you can’t deliver.”

God, every response was perfect. If his body was just as perfect as that mouth, there was no doubt in my mind that this man could be the one to give me that one thing I’d been missing in bed for so long.

I must’ve waited too long to respond, because he shot me a message before I could formulate an answer.

“Care to get drinks tonight so you can tell me all about these big goals and aspirations?”

“You give a shit about those?” I asked.

“If they’re getting in the way of enjoying sex, then they’re probably pretty important.”

“My lack of orgasm is probably due to being with men who don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” I quipped.

“Then let me buy you a drink and show you how it’s done. Then you can tell me about those dreams.”

Jesus, my pelvis was burning.

I wrote back. “There’s a place called Low Light downtown. You familiar with it?”

“I could be,” he answered.

“Could you become familiar with it by 8 tonight?”

“For you? Yes.”

I physically groaned at that last message.

“I’ll see you there at 8,” I wrote.

My phone buzzed with his response, but I clicked it closed before I could look at it. My boss, Luna, had come into the room, and I knew she had caught me texting on my phone.

“New-fangled technology,” she said, shaking her head. “No wonder you kids don’t know how to keep jobs.”

“Not everything that’s modern is bad, Luna,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Many technological advances have helped many people, like robotic arms and online web stores.”

“Ugh, not this again,” Luna said.

“You could make an online store and advertise your products,” I said. “You could reach an audience broader than L.A. We could provide shipping services, and we would have the capability of tripling what you bring in monthly now.”

“We do just fine,” Luna said, sighing.

“But we could do better,” I urged.

I tried to reason with her, to get her to understand that the difference between being fine and being comfortable was the fact that she didn’t have an online store. Hell, she didn’t even have a website. She relied solely on word of mouth and foot traffic to get people into the store, and some months, that just wasn’t enough.

“That’s what a savings account is for,” she’d reply.

I knew it was a lost cause, but I wasn’t giving up that fight with her. I needed to convince her somehow that having a website would be the best thing this shop ever did for itself, even if I had to design it myself. I had no idea how to, but I’d figure it out.

As my work day continued, I found myself thinking about the night to come. The last message he had sent me was a brief description of what he would be wearing: a dark red button-down shirt with black slacks and no tie.

God, my mouth was already salivating at the idea that this man might actually be between my legs before the night was out. Most men I’d been with had had things like washed-out mohawks and piercings up and down their ears. Put-together men in tailored suits didn’t look my way, but I had a feeling that was about to change.

But I couldn’t help that I was worried. My ex, Jason, was the definition of emotionally unavailable. He had a grown-out blond mohawk with dark roots, a tall and slender build, and piercings I couldn't rip my eyes from. I loved watching his hands play his bass whenever I got the chance to watch him perform. HHis arresting blue eyes always lit up whenever he was plucking away at his instrument. But Jesus, was he lazy.

And a mooch.

He didn’t appreciate me. He crashed on my couch and ate all my food, and whenever he did get money from his gigs, he didn’t even think about taking me out anywhere. He’d buy a new piercing or he’d get some new clothes, and then I was responsible for paying the bills he racked up but never helped with.

That meant I needed to keep the upper hand tonight. I needed to make sure I stayed in control so I wasn’t taken advantage of. I was the one who had posted the ad, so I was the one who got to dictate what happened. All I wanted was an orgasm, and if he didn’t want to give that to me in the way I thought it should be done, then he was gone.

“Easy as pie,” I whispered to myself.

“Ash!” Luna called out.

“Yeah?”

“Time to go home,” she said.