Page 23 of Deeply Examined

I wipe the back of my hand across my lips, which burn from the phantom of Jessica’s kiss.

No one’s kissed me since my mother, and her kisses only came after the stinging slap of her hand.

“A kiss to make it feel better,” she used to say.

That’s when I learned that nothing ever made me feel better.

Chapter six

Jessica

Monica is fascinated when I tell her about the date.

“Wow,” she says. “I can’t believe he did all that. I bet he’s into BDSM and all that kinky shit. Soon he’ll be ordering you to crawl to him and call him Daddy.”

I wrinkle my nose, not sure if I like the sound of that or not. “I think he’s just bossy. Not a true dom,” I say, proud I know that lingo. All those dark romance books I love to read have taught me a thing or two about that world. It sounds so thrilling and forbidden. So far my sex life has been pure vanilla, but late at night, after I’ve read about Mafia men, serial killers, and dirty-mouthed psychos, sometimes I’ve had to pleasure myself. To relieve the urges those books raise in me to do naughty, filthy things. Could I be that way in real life? Be that adventurous?

Probably not.

“Besides, he may never call again. Not with how fast he ran out.” I sigh mournfully.

“He’ll call. He’d be nuts not to. Look at you. You’re pretty and kind and surprisingly okay with being tied to a bed. Oh! I was reading last night about this crazy thing. It’s called urethral sounding.” Monica’s voice drops low, laced with the thrill of the taboo.

“Say what?” I ask, grateful to be distracted from my worries about Dr. West.

“Yeah. It’s when you stick something up your partner’s urethra. You know, where the pee comes out. They have special rods for it, or some people use household items.”

I gape at the phone. “No way. You’re making this up.”

“I’m serious! Then you put the rod in your mouth and hum. In dudes it stimulates their prostate or some crap like that. They say it gives the most intense orgasm ever.”

“You were reading about this why exactly?”

She laughs. Monica has always been more sexually free than me. She doesn’t believe in the concept of a red flag. “One of my masked men was talking about it. You know, The Specter.”

“Is that the guy you’re obsessed with? The one that you’re always forwarding to my Instagram?”

“That’s him,” she sighs wistfully. “He can sneak through my window any night. I’d let him stick anything into me, even into my pee hole.”

I laugh at that. “Sometimes I worry about you.”

“I know,” she says cheerfully. “It’s because you love me. Look, I get that you’re upset with how the date ended, but trust me, that doctor will come around eventually.”

“Maybe,” I tell her, but the more I remember that look of abject horror on Dr. West’s face when I kissed him, the more I’m sure she’s wrong.

I blew it.

My one chance with sexy Dr. West and I had to go and get all sentimental and kiss him.

I’m such an idiot.

***

He doesn’t call me. I must be so stupid because I really believed Monica. I thought that in a day or two my phone would ring, and he’d apologize or at least say he wanted to see me again. Surely, he recognized how mind-blowing that sex was? Wouldn’t he want to do it again?

I have long conversations with myself about how this is for the best. After all, I don’t want just a fuck buddy, no matter how good they are in bed. I don’t want a man who can never kiss me back. Dr. West obviously has issues if he likes to go around tying women up but not kissing them. That’s not exactly well-adjusted adult behavior.

Forget him,I tell myself.That relationship, or situationship, or whatever was never going anywhere.

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