Page 105 of Perfectly Naïve
Full lips twitching, Verity ignores the old woman and focuses on me. “Let me get this straight. You asked your brother’s best friend to give you sex lessons?”
“I’ve always had a crush on Sawyer,” I say with a shrug. “It’s not weird.”
“Oh, honey, no. I wasn’t implying it was. I think it’sgenius.Truly, I thought you were so sweet and innocent when we met before you left for London. I’m impressed that you had this bold goddess beneath your skin the whole time.”
It’s my turn to laugh at that. I may be a lot of things, but abold goddessisn’t one of them. As if to illustrate my point, I say, “Then I made a PowerPoint presentation that included facts and figures to convince the rest of the pack to help teach me too. Though I didn’t make it far enough in the presentation to show them those slides.”
Verity chokes on her coffee. “You did what, now?”
“Liam interrupted the slideshow. I didn’t know he was part of their pack.” I tell my sister-in-law all about Liam. How we met when we were teenagers. How he was always so sweet and kind. I tell her how he admitted to always having feelings for me. And then I tell her about the benefit gala.
“Then I pulled out his dick, dropped to my knees, and sucked him off right in that little room while the party was going on outside. I’ve watched enough porn to know that cum is supposed to be salty, but I was surprised by howmuchof it there was. And just how salty the alkalinity of his seminal fluid made him taste. It wasn’t abadflavor, but it will take some getting used to.”
There’s a choked sound, and I glance up to find our server standing there with a tray full of food. His face is beet-red, and it looks like he’s struggling to breathe.
“Oh, no.” My whole body heats as mortification turns me the same shade of red as our poor server. “I... You... You’re a guy. Surely you know more about seminal fluid than I do.”
He lets out a strangled squeak, sets our food down, tray and all, and runs away from our table like his backsideis on fire.
Not my finest moment.
“Oh my God,” Verity says between fits of laughter. Tears pool in her eyes, and she wipes them away with the back of her hand. “Can we please do this more often? You are quickly becoming one of my favorite people on the planet.”
Despite my embarrassment, part of me preens at the surety of her comment. I’ve always been one of Henry’s favorite people—he’d tell me that whenever I was having a hard day or our mother said something particularly hurtful—but now I have half a dozen people who make that claim.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been this happy.
The conversation shifts to talk of pack life. I ask Verity if she ever struggles to make all of her alphas feel equal in importance and love. She tells me how she makes a point of going on individual dates with each of them every month, and that it’s normal to have times of struggle where one member of the pack needs some extra attention. She’s patient and open with me, never once making me feel like I’m stupid for asking questions or deficient for not knowing all the ins and outs of sex with a pack.
She tells me about her first heat, which I find both exciting and terrifying because now that I’m done using the scent and heat suppressants, my own first heat looms large in my future. Verity is careful not to give me any specifics about my brother as it relates to sex, for which I am extremely grateful, but she doesn’t shy away from my curiosity.
I think she may be becoming one of my favorite people too.
“Let’s do this again soon,” she says as she hugs me tightly. “I’m so glad you’re home now.”
“Me too,” I tell her. “And, yes, please. I would love to do this again soon.”
“Olivia? Is that you?” My mother’s voice cracks like a whip, reverberating through my parents’ expansive house the moment I step through the front door.
It feels far too large and cold compared to the pretty house the guys share.
“It’s me.”
“Where have you been?” Her face is pinched as she storms toward me, her lips pursed.
I try not to bristle at her condescending words or the harsh tone. I’m not a child, and yet she continues to treat me like one. When the guys showed me the beautiful nest they’d created for me, I’d believed that, logically, it was too soon to move in with them. I’m questioning that logic now.
“Excuse me?” I try to keep my tone light. The last thing I want is to get into an argument with my mother.
“You are unbelievable, you know that?”
“What’s going on?” My dad, Eric, strolls into the room, frowning at the sight of my mother bristling before me. He gives me a quick smile before turning to my mother. “Why are you yelling?”
“I’m not yelling,” she shouts.
I have to fight to keep my lips from twitching, and by the look on my dad’s face, I’m not the only one.
“Then what’s wrong, dove?”
