“Bye!”
I clicked my cell off and used two fingers on each hand to massage my temples. Despite what Ava had suggested, I wasn’t planning to literally jump Marc right now. I wanted to—I really, really wanted to—but with our stupid seduction plan, I’d just get shot down. But she was right about one thing, which was that I had not been very vocal about getting laid since the last aborted attempt.
Today that ended. There was an errand I’d been putting off, and I planned to tackle that next.
I grabbed my purse, slipped on my flippy-floppies, and was on my way. As I walked out, I bumped into Marc carrying an armload of books to the dining room.
“What on earth?” I exclaimed when I saw the table. It was filled with more books. Stacks and stacks of them. “Did you rob a library?”
I desperately wanted him to say yes, because that would be a pretty badass move.
He put down the pile in his arms and greeted me with a grin. “No, I just picked up a few resources on wine. It’ll help us get better at tastings.” He proudly displayed what looked like a hundred scholarly tomes on grape varietals.
“Uh.” I scanned a few of the titles. The Grape Grower. A Beginner’s Guide to Vitaculture. The Organic Backyard Vineyard. The Weekend Vintner. The Vintner’s Compendium of Grapes. Not quite as badass. But very, very Marc.
It must have taken him several trips to get them in the house. I couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten them to his car from the library.
And, as far as I was concerned, all of them could go.
Which was maybe not fair.
So, in an attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt, I picked one up and flipped through it. “Soil notes?” The doubt was gone. “No. Just no.”
“Soil is important! Nitrate levels affect the flavor of the end product,” Marc protested.
“Says the farmer.” I took a deep breath and squinted, trying to figure out the best way to explain alternative forms of learning to someone who was married to the traditional methods. “Look. Marc. Nothing you read is going to help you get better at taste. How did you not understand that getting better at wine meant we just drink a shit-ton of it?”
“Reading—”
I cut him off. “—is not experience. The words on those pages has nothing to do with the buds on your tongue.” His amazingly talented tongue. On my bud. Aw, yes.
Now I was distracted.
I shook my head and forced myself to focus. “The only way to learn a taste is to taste it. It’s like—I’m on my way out to buy seduction-worthy lingerie. I imagine you think that could be done online, too, huh?”
Marc’s eyebrows perked. “You’re going lingerie shopping?”
“Yes. And, since the point of lingerie is to highlight the body, it’s a task best done in the flesh and not ordered over the Internet.” It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but I figured it would do the trick.
It did do the trick. Marc had forgotten all about the books, and was now focused solely on lingerie. “You’re planning to go try on lingerie?”
“Yeah. To make sure I have the perfect fit and all.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Why do you need to come? I am more than capable of choosing my own underpants.”
“The fact that you call them underpants says that you have no business choosing seduction-garments for yourself.”
“Whatever.”
“Have you even looked at yourself in the mirror lately?”
“No. What? Why?” I ran to look in the hall mirror and found my nose and forehead were covered with ink. A glance down at my fingers showed ink all over them too. I slipped into the bathroom and washed up before returning to the dining room.
“You really think you’re capable of managing your own appearance?” he asked a bit smugly for my taste.
“I’m an artist. Ink stains come with the territory.” I suddenly worried my last, um, drawing session had left ink in other incriminating places on my body.
“You need me.”
“I don’t—”
He leaned in so he was only a couple inches from my face, and said sternly, “I’m coming, and that’s the end of the story.”
The sudden transition to professor mode was hot. I couldn’t argue with Hot Professor Marc.
“Fine,” I said with a huff. “But if you’re coming, you’re paying for half of anything I buy.” Seemed only fair since the lingerie was as much for him as it was for me.
He didn’t argue.
Half an hour later, Marc and I stood wide-eyed inside the door of Get it On, the closest “adult store” to our house, according to Siri.
It was a veritable sex wonderland. The very air itself was scented with edible strawberry lube. Bins of dildos competed for attention with racks of sexy nurse and French maid costumes. There was an entire aisle devoted to anal. An entire aisle. This was absolutely going into the Screwmates sitcomic.
Also, it was very clear to me that the entire rest of the world was having more and better sex than I’d ever even dreamed of experiencing. It made me want to go right back to hiding in my room, to be honest. I was so much further out of my depth than I’d even known. But no, no. This was me moving out into the big world, no nervousness. I was learning from the sex thing.
“When you said we were getting lingerie, I was thinking something more like Victoria’s Secret,” Marc said under his breath.
“Victoria’s Secret is, sadly, not in our budget.” I picked up a shopping basket. “Well. If we’re doing this…”
Marc took the basket from my hand and returned it to the stack. He grabbed a cart instead and rolled up beside me. “I think this situation calls for a bigger boat.”
According to the signs hanging from the ceiling, lingerie was in the back of the store. Of course. Meaning that no matter what way we took to get there, we’d have to walk past a lot of crazy shit. Crazy, intriguing, terrifying shit. I couldn’t wait.
“This way,” Marc said, turning down the DVD aisle. Clearly, he was overwhelmed. “This section seems manageable.”
Every kind of porn imaginable was featured—straight, gay, stepbrother, BDSM, gang bangs, transgender, role play, celebrity, fake celebrity, My Little Pony (not even kidding—it was next to the cat costume porn), vintage, parody, and so much more. Types of porn I’d never heard of before (balloon porn?). Types of porn I never wanted to hear about again (breast milk porn—I’d never be able to watch Lizzie nurse again. On the other hand, I also knew she was always short on money—I made a note to gently suggest a new side business.
There was a whole section for Kim Kardashian as well as one for Donald Trump, though that one had seemingly been mixed with the clown porn.
“Does anyone have normal sex anymore?” Marc remarked as we made our way slowly down the aisle.
“I think that’s supposed to be this area.” I nodded at the shelves to the side of us.
A position on one of the covers caught my eye—the woman was in a handstand while the guy banged her from behind.