Page 21 of For the Plot
“I’m sorry.” I spoke the muffled words into his shirt. James rested his chin on my head, holding me tighter. It’s something all the guys knew, that in times of distress, pressure always helped calm me down faster.
“Why are you sorry?” James murmured back.
“Because I’m always so… much. So emotional, so reactive, so chaotic."
“Hey.” James pulled back, cradling my face in his hands. “You’re never anything but perfectly you.” I felt heat rising to my cheeks at his words. He tracked my reaction with his eyes, crinkled at the corners now with amusement. “You never could take a compliment, could you?”
I huffed a laugh, pushing at his chest halfheartedly. He stumbled back, clutching his chest, a grin on his face as he sat on the edge of my bed. “So what do we do now?” I joined him on the bed.
James turned to me, pulling one knee up onto the bed, and I mirrored him.
“Well,” he began contemplatively, “I know you said you wanted to have sex, but whatexactlyis it you want to get out of this?”
My brows scrunched in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Do you just want to bang it out, one and done? And if so, what kind of sex did you want to experience? Hands, oral,penetration? All of those are different types of sex we could have.”
“Oh,” I replied, my heart racing again, but for a different reason. Hearing him lay it all out like that should have felt more clinical than sexy, but I found myself getting aroused again as I pictured all the different options. I realized I should have been asking him the same. “Um, well, first, are there any boundaries that you have?”
“NikNak, I don’t think there's anything you could think up that would cross my boundaries.” The glint in his eyes had me squirming where I sat, a fresh wave of wetness coating my panties.
I shot him back a challenging look. “Oh yeah? So you’d be down for me to peg you then?” I had no idea where the boldness came from, but I just liked pushing his buttons as much as he seemed to.
James licked his lips, readjusting himself in his pants while keeping eye contact with me and my core clenched. When he spoke, his voice was pure sin. “Oh, darling, you have no idea how much I would enjoy that.”
Fuck. Well, that had backfired.
I tried speaking, but my throat was so dry I had to swallow and try again. “Okay, you’re probably right about that then.”
“I’m always right. It’s what makes me so awesome,” James looked way too smug as he spoke, and I simply glared at him until he broke into laughter. “OK, OK, I’m kidding. Just not about the pegging.” He winked.
“I guess I need to think about what I want to do then,” I replied.
The grin on his face subsided into something softer, more real. “Once you think of what exactly you want to do, I’m happy to do whatever you want. I promise.” James lifted his pinky finger, and I reached up to wrap my own around it.
“Thank you, James,” I replied. “For everything. I really mean it.”
Releasing his pinky from mine, he leaned back on the bed, resting on his elbows. “So, do you have any ideas of what you want? Do you want me to come up with ideas with you, or do you want me to leave and you tell me later?”
I took a moment to think about it. The idea of talking about it made me squirmy and not in a good way, but James had the experience I didn’t, which is why I'd asked him to help me in the first place. My face flaming, I tried to be brave and forged on. “Would you help me?”
James smiled. “I would love nothing more. Now, come here, lie down and stargaze with me. I know it’s easier to not make eye contact during awkward conversations.” He fully collapsed to his back, tucking his hands under his head. Most of the tension eased from my body at how well he knew me. With a smile of my own, I did as told, lying back and folding my hands over my rounded stomach, staring up at the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling.
“So, what’s the goal here?”
“To get past my writer's block and finish writing my book.”
“No, that’s theresultyou’re looking for. What is it you actually want to try? Just penetrative sex? Or do you want to explore?”
I paused, caught off guard with his question. To be honest, I hadn’t thought through what I wanted past “get fucked and no longer be a virgin trying to write a smutty romance book." While I thought the idea of virginity was just heteronormative purity culture bullshit to control women and their bodies, I still sometimes felt the stigmatization around it. But yeah, I may have gone into this impulsively, with no thought-out plan. ADHD strikes again.
“I probably should have thought about this before diving in, huh?” I replied wryly.
“Maybe,” James hedged. “But also, maybe it’s a good thing we’re talking it through together and setting clear expectations and boundaries for both of us. For instance,” he sounded uncertain for the first time in this entire interaction, which piqued my interest, “I do have one boundary I’d like to discuss.”
“Of course,” I rushed to reply. “Anything.” What could James, who was always confident in his sexual exploits, be nervous about?
“This is purely physical. I can't— I can’t do any relationship-type things. Casual sex between friends is never an unmessy thing, so we can't catch feelings. Is that OK?”
