Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
“Still no dick?” she guessed.
“Still no dick,” I confirmed with a sigh, taking two cookies for myself.
Fuck it. I had to find my happiness somewhere.
Hannah watched me as I chowed down the first one. “This has got to stop.”
“I know,” I groaned. “It’s driving me crazy. I want Mark so bad, but we reach a certain point and…my mind just gets in the way and my desire dies. Every time this happens, it’s a blow to Mark, I can tell. It’s eating away at him too, but he won’t admit it. He says he understands, and I know he does, but at the same time, I think he feels like I don’t want him anymore. He’s stopped trying to be intimate with me.”
“Does he still kiss you?”
“Yes, but he ends it quickly. Like—I don’t know. Like he wants to stop it before I do.” I suddenly grabbed one of the pillows off the couch next to me and squeezed it as hard as I could. “It makes me so mad! I just want to tie him down and make him fuck me sometimes. To force us both to get past the bullshit cluttering up my brain.”
“Well, why don’t you?” Joy asked as she gently stroked her baby’s head. “Ramon loves it when I take control every once in a while.”
“But Mark’s so dominant…” I had to admit, now that I was thinking about it, I found the idea kind of…sexy. “He’d never go for it.”
“Leo’s as dominant as they come, no pun intended.” We all giggled, and Hannah continued. “Anyways, he’ll let me take charge every once in a while, and he gets off on it big time.”
I looked at my friends, so grateful that they were in my life. Hell, they felt more like the sisters I’d never had rather than just friends. It was so nice to be able to share my burdens with two amazing women who always had my back.
Running my hand through my hair, I let out a frustrated huff. “He’s afraid that I’ll go into a fugue state if he pushes too hard. That I’ll relive that…stuff.” Both women made sympathetic noises but didn’t say anything. “And he’s got me afraid that it will happen. What if I tie him up and freak out, leaving him helpless while I check out of reality?”
“Do you really think that will happen?” Hannah asked as she traced her fingers along the back of the couch. “Did you get any feelings like a panic attack?”
“No, I just…I can’t orgasm. Not that Mark hasn’t been trying! We’ll be having a good time, getting hot and heavy, but I can’t get over the hump, so to speak. God, this is so embarrassing.”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Joy said in a firm voice. “You’ve been through a trauma. Your brain has proven that it is very good at trying to keep you safe.”
“I know, but it’s so frustrating. My therapist said relaxing would help, but I’ve blown sex so out of proportion in my head, it’s become a trigger. I want to climax, I want to fuck, I want to feel that connection with Mark again.”
Joy cleared her throat and gave Hannah a look, who cleared her throat in return and gave her friend a different, but just as meaningful look.
They both nodded, and when they turned to me, I narrowed my eyes. “What was that about?”
“What would you say…” Hannah leaned forward, the diamond pendant at her throat sparkling in the sunlight. “If I told you I had a way for you to overcome your body’s issues?”
“What are you talking about?”
“An aphrodisiac,” Joy said as she rocked her daughter on her shoulder. “An honest to god, totally works, where have you been all my life aphrodisiac.”
I rolled my eyes then flopped back in the couch. “I wish. You know it’s all bullshit, that there is no such thing.”
“Oh,” Joy said with a mysterious smile, almost feline smile. “But there is.”
“She’s telling the truth,” Hannah confirmed with a dirty grin of her own. “There is one, and it’s legit.”
“No way. If that was true, it would be all over the news, sold out in every store on Earth.”
Hannah nodded. “That’s true, because if it was public knowledge, it would be the biggest thing since sliced bread. But it’s not public knowledge. It’s a Cordova secret.”
Over the past few weeks, I’d learned more than a few Cordova secrets, things the outside world had no clue about. Sensitive knowledge that I was trusted with. It made me feel good to be included on the inner workings of their world, even if it was a criminal world. They didn’t hide who they were from me anymore, and I valued their faith in me.
“What is it? Ground-up insect bits of some exotic bug that only exists in one tiny forest in the Amazon?”