Page 31 of Almost Love

Blowing out a breath, he pushed his shoulders back and nodded as his thumbs flew across the keyboard. If she wanted honesty, he’d give her honesty.

Oakley

Do you want me to tell you that the minute I saw the Cereal one, I burst into tears? That I savored it and cried the whole time. That it reminded me of the simple pleasures in life. I had a vision of us waking up together and it felt so real. It made me wonder what it would feel like to sit with you while we eat cereal together after a long day. That I feel so fucking special to know you were up early this morning to make donuts for me. Or that one donut filled me with more joy than anything else has in a really long time.

He closed his eyes and before he could change his mind, he hit send. The notification changed fromDeliveredtoReadand he grit his teeth to calm himself.

Oakley

Is that what you wanted to know, Clementine?

Within seconds of his second message, hers came through.

Clementine

Yes.

He stared at the one word, three letters and his heart soared.

Clementine Kinney would be his ruin and he was okay with it.

CHAPTER 9

FEBRUARY

Clementine was horny baking.

It was a new development, because like she told Mack, she’dneverhorny baked before. She stress and anxiety baked, because it kept her mind distracted. But horny baking? It was a whole thing.

She’d woken up that morning feeling out of sorts and thought a session with porn would do the trick. Spoiler: it didn’t. Then she decided to bake, since that usually settled her mind. Multiple times over the course of the morning, she caught herself running her fingers through whipped cream, licking each digit clean as her mind wandered. Not to some random faceless human; to the handsome blond with his sparkling eyes and bright smile.

She’d done everything possible to stop him from becoming a fixture in her mind. But he was relentless. Not in real life; the Oakley meandering around her in her head was a lot more forward. The feelings she’d been ignoring were suddenly bubbling to the surface. One minute she was rolling her eyes at his dazzling smile, the next she was curious what it would feel like to be pressed against him.

All of this was most unlike Clementine.

Feeling horny was a rare occurrence and even then, she didn’t have dreams about sex or masturbate. She did own a vibrator, but it still lived in the box. Masturbation had honestly never done anything for her.

In college, she decided to give self-pleasure a shot. Except she spent too much time trying to figure out which part of her vagina she was touching, which brought her pleasure and what would really do the trick. As someone who thrived on research, she studied about pleasure and sex and orgasms. Those books didn’t reallyteachher how to masturbate.

Whenever someone talked about masturbation with glee and unbridled joy, she would fake it for the sake of not being the odd one out. She knew there was nothing wrong with not wanting to pleasure herself, but she was already the loner with her head stuck in books. If she wanted to fit in Clementine believed she needed to walk the walk and talk the talk, no matter how little experience she had in both. When her friends started dating, she struggled to meet people. Everyone was boring or only after one thing: sex. She couldn’t understand what happened to the days when people communicated and discussed favorite movies or books before stripping off their clothes. Now all they wanted to do was skip to the bedroom activities.

That didn’t appeal to her.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want sex. Her body sometimes had this urge and craving; a need to be touched, kissed and stroked. She read enough romance novels to know what it could feel like—the pleasure building up your spine, toes curling and body shaking—and she wanted it too.Sometimes. Unfortunately, when she wanted it, nobody was around. When she wasn’t in the mood, the horny assholes came out of the woodwork.

While Clementine had never put too much thought into her sexuality, she knew that she liked people. It might have also taken her a while to date, but when she met Cora hersophomore year, she experienced something out of this world. Cora was the first to take the time and teach her about pleasure. They experimented together, Clementine learned everything she could about her vagina and all the pleasure points that brought a different sensation to her body. She learned that sometimes, pleasure didn’t happen because she pressed a button. It could take time and it would still be well worth it. With Cora, she had her first of many orgasms.

But like all college relationships, it was short lived.

Where Cora could be considered an appetizer, Brianna was the whole damn meal. They met in pastry school and when study sessions experimenting with recipes turned into coffee dates where they flirted constantly, she took a shot and kissed Brianna. Everything changed then. Unlike with Cora, her relationship with Brianna was driven by sex. They fucked everywhere they could—the practice kitchen, their apartments, closet spaces and even the locker room.

That also fizzled out and she didn’t blame Brianna for the sudden death of her sex drive. Sure, she and Brianna didn’t really converse that much between rounds of sex, but they’d built something of a connection before clothes came off. People she met either had something to say about her body or weren’t interested in being friends before they became something more.

In the last ten years, there hadn’t been a single person who made her feel anything close to horny.

Until Oakley West.

Who, within a few weeks of making her official acquaintance had shown up every day, made her fight back countless smiles, devoured her baked goods like they were going out of style and wanted to be her friend.

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