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CHAPTER 1
Twyla
“The shipment of new dildos and intimacy companions were delivered this morning, boss. Just in time for the big sale. I left them all in the boxes for you, since I know you prefer to inspect the ones we’ve never carried before,” Christi tells me, grabbing her purse from the safe beneath the register. She tosses it on her shoulder, then rounds the counter, giving me a high-five when I hold my hand up as she passes me on her way to the front door.
I ignore the little bit of panic that hits me when she reminds me how close we are to our bi-annual sale, which this year happens to land on my husband’s birthday. And I haven’t figured out a worthy enough present to get for him.
“Awesome. I’ve been dying to see for myself just how ‘lifelike’ these things actually feel,” I reply, pushing my glasses up my nose as I turn my head toward the back room, but her giggle has me facing her once again, my eyes narrowing. “What?”
She smirks and shrugs. “Nothing, Twy. Just didn’t think you swung that way.”
My brow furrows, my confusion written all over my face—as usual. “Huh?”
Christi rolls her eyes then says, “The sex dolls. They’re all… you know… female.”
My face flushes as it always does when a misunderstanding like this happens, no matter how long I’ve worked here at Toys for Twats. Even after I took over as the head honcho when Roxy, the former owner, decided she wanted more time with her husband and retired—my own husband, Seth, quickly swooping in and buying her out, incorporating it with his BDSM club, Club Alias. And even after the probing and exposing experience of pregnancy and the birth of my daughter, Luna, I still get a little embarrassed.
Maybe it’s the fact that I was a virgin until I was twenty-four.
Or maybe it’s because I kept myself sequestered and focused on my studies, then work before my sister and I made our escape from California and landed here on the East Coast several years ago. I hadn’t been exposed to all the sexual stuff everyone else seems to find normal in TV shows, movies, and… well, everywhere you look, really. I was firmly planted in laboratories and cleanrooms while working as a chemical engineer, with no time for social media or even friends.
So how did I end up here, as the manager of a sex shop, you might ask?
I might not have had social media or friends, but I had my big sister. And as the only thing I cared about outside of my career, when Astrid needed my help to escape her abusive boyfriend, I was all in, a hundred percent. With her very life at stake, the way things were going, I knew we only had one chance to do it right. I quit my job, picked her up in the middle of the night, and after closing our eyes and letting fate guide our fingertip on the map, we drove straight to the other side of the country.
To a small military town called Ft. Vanter, where there was absolutely no use for a chemical engineer who focused on developing all-natural cleaning solutions.
And with that fancy degree and specialty, I was quickly labeled “overqualified” for literally every job I applied for around town… until Roxy took pity on me and hired me.
The virgin who had never even seen a vibrator in real life before.
But as fate would have it, during my very first week of working here, in walked Seth Owens, the—secret—owner of the local BDSM club, at which he was also the trainer in all things sex toys and equipment… although in a much more hands-on way than one would teach a new employee at a novelty store. But at that time, I didn’t know that, and after a completely mortifying mishap, where my now sexy, goofy asshole of a husband pretended he was some regular guy stopping into a sex shop for the first time, Roxy spilled the beans and basically offered me up to the sex god as his newest disciple. She recruited him to teach me about all the things I was supposed to sell… and the rest, as they say, is history.
Along with my V-card.
I giggle at my last thought, my hand coming up to cover my lips, and receive a confused look from Christi much like my own a moment ago.
“Sorry. I squirreled there. Um. No. Not what I meant. The skin on these intimacy companions, it’s supposed to feel incredibly real and unlike the silicone and other materials used for dildos and men’s masturbators. I did a deep dive into this company’s products, and judging by the compounds and componen?—”
“Boss. As much as I love seeing you geek out about chemistry stuff, since you get so excited you don’t even hesitate on words like ‘dildos’ or men’s ‘masturbators,’ I’ve really got to get to class. I was just pickin’. I knew what you meant,” she assures me with a smile, giving me a little wave before shoving open the tinted glass door.
I shake my head at her. “Have a good night, Chris.”
She grins and makes her exit, but not before calling out her parting words for not only me but the customers walking inside to hear. “Text me after you squeeze her boobs!” And I stand there, red-faced, eyes wide, my mouth opening and closing like a guppy as the couple looks from her departing, laughing figure over to me.
“I—” My brain has shut down at the expression on their faces after registering it as worry, as if I plan to grope the well-endowed but fit black woman with long, thin braids decorated with gold beads. All I can do is shake my head in denial, hoping she understands Christi wasn’t talking about her. But the words that finally leave my mouth don’t help to convey that fact. “To see if they feel real.”
She raises one perfectly sculpted eyebrow and turns her dark-brown eyes framed with extra-long, thick lashes up to her tall, handsome companion. The straight, white teeth of his big smile seem to light up not only his dark-tan face, but the entire store as he wiggles his eyebrows at her. She looks at me again and must see my natural reaction is the last of the human instincts to either fight, fly, or freeze, recognizing the misunderstanding.
She smiles then, hers even more powerful than the man’s, because she has an endearing little gap just between her two front teeth, her lips painted a cool purple I couldn’t dream of getting away with. “I mean, I didn’t get them this big to look real, but if you want to squeeze them, go right ahead, honey.”
My eyes widen even more, and my hands shoot up in front of me as if to ward her off. But then I realize it could look like I’m holding them up right at boob-squeezing level, and I jerk them back, my elbow hitting the display of individual, flavored condoms, sending them scattering to the floor like obscene little pieces of colorful confetti.
My eyes close behind my glasses then, so I don’t see who walks through the door when the little bell dings at that moment.
But I sense him.
And knowing exactly who it is just by the way my body responds to his presence, my anxiety dipping and my heart rate calming, I’m both relieved and extra mortified for him to appear right in the middle of this embarrassing situation.
