Chapter 1
Carmina sat on her bed and glared at the vibrator. It rested on the nightstand, taunting her. She took a deep breath and blew it out, cracking her neck as she did so, trying to relieve some of her tension. It didn’t help. She stood up and shook out her arms, then jogged in place for a few seconds. There. Better. Her therapy dog, a big mutt named Buster Keaton, raised his head and tilted it to the side as he watched her. She sat back down and drummed the fingers of both hands on her thighs and he put his head back down with a doggy sigh. A glance out of the corner of her eye showed the vibrator still sitting there, waiting. Carmina de la Cruz, you can do this, she told herself firmly. Hundreds, thousands, millions of women do it every day. No big, right? Looking around the room, she blew out another breath. Of course she couldn’t get off. This place looked like a military barracks. There was no atmosphere. Nothing about the beige walls and carpet and plain white sheets in her room said sexy. They screamed boring head case. Ugh.
Determinedly, she popped up off the bed and turned off the overhead light. Too dark. She flipped it back on. Now it felt like the vibrator was going to interrogate her. Yeah, that sounded sexy for sure. She snorted. She stomped out to the living room and opened several cabinets before she found a candle. She’d bought it in case of a blackout. Masturbation atmosphere seemed like an equally important emergency situation.
After five more minutes she gave up on finding something to light the damn thing with. Good thing it hadn’t been a real blackout emergency. Like most things in her life after Afghanistan, she’d only managed to accomplish half of the emergency plan. Candle? Check. Matches? I don’t need no stinkin’ matches. She snorted again. She could have tried rubbing two sticks together to light the damn candle. Then she could procrastinate longer. She felt like an idiot walking around her apartment buck naked and alone with her dog staring at her.
Slowly, she headed back to the bedroom. Turning on the bathroom light and partially closing the door was the best she could do for lighting. At least she got rid of the glaring overhead light. With mixed feelings, she grabbed the vibrator off the nightstand and threw herself down on the bed. She adjusted the pillows behind her. She had a drawer full of vibrators, but this vibrator was new. Maybe this would be the magic wand. She grinned at the private joke. It was one of those rabbit-type ones, with a little ear for clitoral stimulation and a big plastic dick for other, obvious reasons.
With another deep breath she closed her eyes. Time to try the imagination thing again. Who would it be today? She’d tried just about every guy she knew in the starring role in her fantasies. Except her best friend, Sam. That was just gross. His boyfriend, King, was out, too, because he was just an extension of Sam. That left about ten guys on the Birmingham Rebels NFL team. Because of Sam and King, who were both defensemen for the Rebels, those were the only men she really knew these days. She didn’t get out much except with Sam and King and their girlfriend, Jane.
Carmina let out a wobbly sigh. She knew she should try harder to meet people. But since the IED in Afghanistan and the resulting traumatic brain injury that had impaired her speech, she preferred staying in to going out. No guy wanted a woman who couldn’t even manage a simple sentence without breaking out in a cold sweat from the effort. They either treated her like she was mentally impaired or like an invalid. She was neither. She was just a horny goddamned woman who hadn’t had an orgasm in three years, five months, sixteen days and—she glanced at the clock—six hours, give or take a half hour or so. Not that she was counting.
Her last orgasm had been self-induced. In Afghanistan the guys always talked about jacking off to relieve the tension. She’d tried it and had gotten off. It hadn’t relieved the tension, but she got to come, so it was a trade-off. The point was, she’d come. She knew she could do it. Before that damn IED, she’d masturbated to completion probably a hundred times. So why hadn’t she been able to come for over three years? She thunked the side of her head with her fist. This was why. Her freaking messed-up brain.
She shut down those thoughts. Instead she focused on Tom Kelly, the rookie running back with the Rebels. He was a couple of years younger than she was, true, but not so much that she felt pervy about it. He was big, a few inches over six feet, with the sort of wholesomeness that only comes from growing up in the heartland of the Midwest. There was something about boys that came from there. She’d known several in the Army. Every time one of them opened his mouth, you expected him to offer to mow your lawn or carry your groceries. But at the same time, you wanted him to ask if you’d like to climb into the back of his pickup truck and hump him like a porn star. Which she most definitely wanted to do to Tom Kelly. The problem was, he was humping everyone these days. She shook her head. He’d apparently discovered he was bisexual once he hit Birmingham, and that boy was making up for lost time with both sexes. She envied him that carefree sexuality. She’d give anything to be a happy slut right about now.
Carmina turned on the vibrator and let it rest against her clitoris, the low hum of the toy loud in the quiet of her room. The vibrations made her toes curl, and she spread her legs wider, bending her knees. She’d read up on how to do this right, even watched some how-to videos. She’d felt like a total pervert watching women get themselves off, but she’d studied those videos like she was taking the masturbating SAT tomorrow. She tried all the tricks, all the steps. She let the little rabbit ear massage her clit, she powered up the vibrator as her excitement escalated, she pushed that fake, plastic dildo right against her G-spot, imagining it was Tom Kelly’s dick.
Her thoughts wandered and she found herself thinking about Tom’s best friend on the team, Danny Smith. He was an enigma to her. She’d run into Danny and Tom a few times over the last couple of months when she’d been out with Sam and King and Jane. Tom and Danny were always together, it seemed. A few times when she’d been talking to Tom she’d caught Danny looking at her with an intensity that unnerved her. Danny had gorgeous, dark-brown eyes with long lashes, and dark-brown skin covering a seriously hot body. It was a very potent combination. Normally, guys that intense didn’t do it for her. But she wasn’t sure whether his intensity was directed at her or at Tom, and because she was screwed up in the head, that uncertainty did do it for her. Just thinking about it, wondering if he was hot for Tom or her or both, got her hot and sweaty and crazy turned on. In the past, her mind never would have gone there. But she’d clearly been influenced by Sam’s unexpected revelation that he was bi, and that he was in a relationship with King and Jane.
She let her mind follow the fantasy until she was imagining her and Tom and Danny together. She’d like to hold Danny’s shaved, smooth head down and make him lick her clit while Tom fucked her. Because why not? It was all in her imagination, after all. She could make them do anything she wanted. She didn’t have to talk to them in her fantasy. When Fantasy Danny broke free from her hold and slid in behind her, nudging his big cock against her ass, Carmina felt a rush of excitement that had her trembling on the edge. But she didn’t come. She fought for it, but gradually her clit got numb and she felt sore and eventually she turned off the vibrator. She lay there panting for a minute or two and then threw the vibrator across the room, where it bounced off the wall with a thud and fell to the floor.
She was going to have to try something else. There was no fucking way she was going to bring this up in a group session at the VA, and she wasn’t going to go see yet another therapist. She was in physical therapy and speech therapy, as well as the group sessions. That was enough people crawling around inside her head, thank you very much. No, this was a problem she needed to solve herself. But how?