by Amy Andrews
“I saw Della today,” he said, staring into the bottom of his tumbler.
Bingo!
“O…kay.” Drew nodded encouragingly even though he was frowning. “But…she lives with you, so I’m assuming you see her most days.”
Arlo lifted his head and pierced Drew with a look. “She was coming out of Frieda’s. With a bag.”
“Ah.” Drew’s frown straightened out.
Ah indeed. Well…she hadn’t wasted any time, had she? Her dating life hadn’t exactly been a roaring success, so it looked like she’d decided to take care of a few things herself. Tucker wished that wasn’t so damn tantalizing.
“I guess that was kinda…” Drew cast around for what Tucker could only assume was an appropriately descriptive word. “Awkward.”
“As fuck.”
“Was she there by herself?” Tucker asked.
“No, she had a whole posse. Including Winona.”
Drew laughed. “She went with Winona? I’m surprised she didn’t come out with a jumbo bag.”
“This is not funny,” Arlo snapped. “Frieda sells…things that could be triggering.”
“Oh…sorry.” Drew didn’t know any of the details of Della’s abuse, except that it had been bad, and it was obvious he understood Arlo’s concern. “She seemed okay, though?”
“Yeah.” Arlo sighed. “She seemed fine.”
“Good.” Drew took a sip of his beer. “Look…tell me to shut up if you want, but…the visit to Frieda’s? If her purchase helps to take her mind off finding some guy on Tinder, which makes you kinda crazy, then surely that’s a good thing?”
Arlo nodded slowly, and Tucker could tell by the contemplative expression on his face that Drew’s observation had been a welcome one. Despite being outwardly fine with Della playing on Tinder, they knew Arlo had reservations, and clearly, her seeking an alternative way to have her needs met was going down a lot better.
If only Tucker could stop thinking about another kind of alternative…
Chapter Eleven
Della couldn’t believe her luck when Arlo’s pager went off just before eight p.m. that night. It had been kinda awkward between them this evening with their accidental meeting outside Frieda’s so obviously fresh in both their minds. Thank God for the television giving them something to focus on other than the sexual contraband stashed under her bed.
Waiting for Della’s attention.
Had she not been busted by Arlo with her Frieda’s Palace bag, she’d have pleaded a headache and retired to her bedroom two hours ago. Hell, if it had been up to her, she’d already have worked her way to The Suck-u-buzz. But given that he had, Della didn’t feel she could take herself off to bed too early.
Too…eagerly.
And if that meant watching the true-crime docs that her brother liked so much until her usual eleven p.m. bedtime, then so be it. She didn’t start until two tomorrow afternoon—she could sleep late. In fact, she planned to. She planned on being exhausted.
Arlo stood. “There’s been a pileup on the interstate. Denver wants all hands on deck.”
The news didn’t surprise Della. It’d been storming for the last two hours. Heavy rain, hideously loud thunder, and lightning illuminating the entire house. The lights had even flickered on occasion, too. And it was almost a guarantee that every time the weather turned nasty there’d be some idiot traveling too fast for the conditions wreaking havoc on the interstate.
But tonight, that was at least going to work to her advantage.
“Okay. Sure.”
She stood as he headed to his room to get dressed, tapping her fingers on her leg impatiently. He was back five minutes later, dressed in his uniform, his hat in one hand, his raincoat slung over the opposite arm.
“Be careful out there, okay?”
She knew he would be. Arlo was an experienced officer—he’d probably be the most experienced one on the scene—who was a stickler for doing things by the book. But the conditions would be dangerous. Dark and wet and slippery. And then there was the other side of things. The human side. Having to sort through twisted wreckage to rescue people who could be critically injured.
Recover bodies.
It was a hell of a job, and Arlo had witnessed some terrible things in his career. It never seemed to affect him, though. He always seemed so…stoic. She’d been the exception, of course. Della’s rescue and what she’d suffered in her marriage had affected him deeply. He’d shared some of those feelings with her and Selena in those early therapy sessions.
But everything else seemed to slide off him like Teflon.
Another flash of lightning lit up the house, and the lights dimmed again momentarily.
Arlo scowled at the fixture overhead. “Are you going to be okay here by yourself?”
Della was going to be fine. More than fine. But she knew why he was concerned. “Of course. I have my flashlight, don’t worry.”
He nodded uncertainly. “I’ll keep you up-to-date if it looks like I’m going to be there for hours.”
She smiled. “Okay. Thanks.”
He left then, and, out of habit more than necessity, she locked the door after him. Most people didn’t lock their doors in Credence. In a place where everybody knew everybody else and had for generations, there was very little petty crime. But in the beginning, before the news of Todd’s death in prison, Della had locked up obsessively. Arlo had even installed locks on the windows for her so she’d feel safe in his house.
Della waited until she heard Arlo’s police vehicle drive down the street before making a beeline for the shower. She had an evening of debauchery ahead of her, and she wanted to start it right with her cupcake-scented body wash and fully shaven legs. Okay, it may not be a real date, but it was the first time she was staring down an orgasm—or three—and hell if that wasn’t worth some pre-pampering.
Once out of the bath, she got into her pajamas, then changed the sheets on her bed. Next she lit a half dozen large, slow-burn vanilla candles and placed them strategically around her room. Crossing to the door, she locked it and switched out the light. The room glowed soft and pretty—the perfect setting for a romantic liaison, even if it was with herself.
Heading to her nightstand, she opened a Winona Crane story on her Kindle to really get her all sexed up, then pulled the pink bag with the black print out from under her bed. Her pulse did a funny jump as she upended the contents onto the sheets and three boxes tumbled out.
Della took a while unboxing everything, reading instructions, checking batteries, and testing settings before lining her BOBs up on the bedside table in order of use.
Dildo first. Rabbit next. Suck-u-buzz last.
She noticed that Frieda had included a small tube of flavored lube, which Della tossed back into the bag and stashed under the bed again. She sure wasn’t going to need any artificial lubricant tonight. She was already wetter than the rain hitting the windowpanes.
Stupidly nervous, Della slid under the covers, grabbing the dildo as well and tucking it under her pillow for the appropriate time—whenever the hell that might be. Then, taking a steadying breath, she opened Winona’s book.
It didn’t take long to get her in the mood. Just the way Winona wrote an exchange of longing looks between her hero and heroine was enough to get Della’s engine revving in her current state of sexual readiness. Within ten minutes, her body was at DEFCON 5, and Della was easing her underwear down her legs, ready to deploy the heat-seeking missile under her pillow.
Right…deep breath in, let it out. She could do this.
Della spread her legs and nudged the hard plastic dome of the dildo at her entrance. Slowly, she inserted it, trying to breathe and relax as the unfamiliar object slid inside.
Fortunately, there was no sign of the holy hymen, proving her revirgination theory wrong.
By the time it was seated as
far as possible, Della’s pulse was so fast she thought for a few seconds she might actually be having a heart attack. Which would be just her luck—dying before she got to the good bit. With a dildo wedged up her hoo-ha.
She could see it now: the crime scene officers gathering up the rabbit and The Suck-u-buzz and the discarded bag under the bed with the unused lube. Fingerprinting her Kindle, still open at Winona’s book. The cause of death on all the official paperwork would be sexual misadventure.
And her epitaph? Here lies Della Munroe. She died with a smile on her face. Or maybe—Here lies Della Munroe. Curiosity really did kill the cat. Or, more likely—Here lies Della Munroe. Masturbator!
Della shut her eyes against the ridiculous thoughts and forced herself to breathe, to relax, to settle her madly beating heart. It was just a dildo. Millions of women did this all over the world—probably very few of them died of a heart attack in the process.
Focus, Della.
Shutting everything out, she concentrated on the sensation. Down there. On the fullness. Frieda had said it would fill her up, and it did. She didn’t feel stuffed full or stretched to her limits, but she was aware of the solid hardness between her legs, and gradually she relaxed.
Opening her eyes, she picked up the book again, flicking to one of her favorite scenes, where the hero sits the heroine in his lap, her back to his stomach, in front of a mirror. She’s naked and he’s fully clothed, and he massages oil everywhere.
Clearly Winona had no problem getting this couple to do it.
By the time the hero’s fingers furrowed between the heroine’s legs, Della’s fingers had followed suit, eagerly exploring uncharted territory, finding the hard nub of her clitoris and stroking.
Oh yesss.
It took a pathetically short amount of time to climax. Seriously, if she’d had minute rice cooking in the microwave, she’d have been done before it. But that didn’t make it any less cataclysmic. The orgasm rose up out of nowhere, her sex suddenly clenching tight around the dildo as waves of pleasure washed over her in a series of hard, frantic pulsations.
As quickly as it started, it was over, and, excruciatingly sensitive down there, Della pulled the dildo out and curled into a ball, waiting for all the scattered cells in her body to reassemble themselves.
If that was possible.
She had never had an orgasm until tonight. And hell yeah…she could definitely see what all the fuss was about.
She cried then, tears welling in her eyes. Cried at the realization that Todd, who had taken so much from her, had also taken this—pleasure. Had taken the path of sexual discovery and exploration from her—a path they could have taken together—and erased it. He’d made her feel so…unworthy of pleasure that it had taken her three years to realize she wasn’t. That she deserved to have pleasure in her life, too.
And for that she had Winona to thank. And Frieda. And Rosemary. And, yes, Tucker Daniels. Definitely Tucker. He more than anyone had woken her body, stirred it into life, spurred her into seeking out what she’d been missing.
She’d thank him the next time she saw him, she decided as a wave of overwhelming malaise mixed with the tangle of her emotions and she drifted to sleep.
Half an hour later, Della woke to a massive thunderclap. The room danced with candlelight as she sat up, temporarily disoriented. Her hand came to rest on a cylindrical object in her bed, and it all came flooding back. A huge grin split her face, and Della fell back against the mattress, stretching languorously.
She’d had an orgasm, and, glancing at the rabbit standing taut and ready on her bedside table…she was about to have another.
Stripping off her pajamas, she reached for the cactus-shaped device and its remote. Flicking it on at the bottom, she watched for long fascinated seconds as the head of the vibrator rotated. It was hard to believe that would feel sexy, but it had been given a resounding thumbs-up by multiple women at Frieda’s today, and she’d be an idiot to ignore that kind of market research.
Switching it off, she lay down and got to work. She was still so crazily aroused the rabbit slid in with no problems, it just took a little squirming to get it anatomically correct both internally and externally. But as soon as those ears slid properly against her clitoris, it was like glories streamed from heaven. A whimper slid from her throat, and Della sucked in a breath as she took a moment to just appreciate the feeling.
Oh yeah…the eagle (or the bunny, as the case may be) had landed.
Assessing the remote control for a second or two, she turned on both the internal and external motors. The control dropped from her fingers as everything pulled taut, and her eyes practically rolled back in her head.
This orgasm took an even shorter time.
Had she been more sexually educated and a dude, she might have started to worry about her staying power. But she was neither, so she let it lift her up and spin her around and tumble her over and over and over, thinking about Tucker touching her and kissing her until she was gasping and crying out his name until she was utterly, utterly spent.
And she’d only put it on level one.
Della woke an hour later, and this time she wasn’t remotely disoriented. The rain was still heavy on the roof and against the window, and the candles were still burning, and with the rabbit still inside her, everything came back in full, wonderful Technicolor. Wow. She must have fallen asleep as soon as she’d climaxed. Who knew this coming business was so damn exhausting?
Either that or she’d developed some kind of post-orgasmic narcolepsy.
She sighed, and her brain involuntarily drifted to Tucker. To how she’d fantasized about him and called out his name as she’d climaxed. Was it okay to think about a guy like that? To…use a guy like that? Would Tucker mind?
Would he care?
Who did he think about when he…touched himself? When he masturbated. Did he think about kissing the hell out of her in Wade’s apartment last week? About those dizzying moments when he forgot himself and just unleashed?
Her internal muscles twinged deliciously. Della contemplated finding the remote for the rabbit and trying it out on level two. But given the first level had knocked her out for a good hour, she wasn’t sure she was ready for level two. Not when she wanted to be awake enough at some point to try The Suck-u-buzz.
Reaching down, she slid the rabbit from her body, an involuntary shiver sparking a wave of goose bumps that prickled every cell in her body awake. Discarding it on the bedside table, she grabbed device number three.
“Well,” she whispered as she contemplated the strange-looking contraption, which seemed more UFO than Big O. “Let’s see if you live up to the hype.”
Although clearly, she was very easy where vibrators were concerned.
Shutting her eyes, she once again fiddled around for a bit, positioning the vibrator so it was sitting right. She was glad she was doing this alone because she was pretty sure her getting the vibrator in correctly face was not her sexiest. Once she was satisfied it felt right, Della took a couple of calming breaths, focusing on the sensation its presence was creating.
It definitely wasn’t as filling as the rabbit and didn’t sit as high. Frankly, Della had serious doubts it was going to have the same result, but the mouth part was sitting bang on target and…Frieda hadn’t led her wrong yet.
Reaching between her legs, she switched it on. Or tried to, anyway. Frieda was right about having to blindly grope, and God alone knew what setting it started at, because Della was just wildly pushing buttons and hoping for something.
She was unsuccessful for frustrating moments, then suddenly—bam! The alien spaceship whirred to life and oh dear Lord. She did have a G-spot after all.
Clutching the bedsheets with a gasp, Della surrendered to The Suck-u-buzz.
…
Tucker’s cell phone rang just as he was pulling into his drive. The power had gone o
ut at Jack’s twenty minutes ago, and he’d sent everyone home. While power outages in Credence were common, they didn’t tend to last beyond a few hours, and the cold room would keep everything safely chilled until morning at least.
“What’s up, Arlo?” he asked as he sat in his pickup in the pouring rain.
Arlo didn’t exchange any pleasantries. “Power out there?” he yelled. Wherever he was, the rain was much louder and there was a dull kind of machinery noise, too.
“’Bout twenty minutes ago,” Tucker confirmed.
“I’m out on the interstate at a pileup. Probably will be for quite a few hours yet. I’ve texted Della to let her know, but she hasn’t answered. Could you go around to my place and check that she’s okay?”
A chill pricked at Tucker’s neck. “Do you think something’s wrong?”
“No. I just…” There was a pause, in which Tucker could hear nothing but torrential rain and the background warble of a CB radio. “She’s scared of…storms.”
Tucker remembered that night in his pickup. The night she’d first kissed him. How her knuckles had gone white around the steering wheel as she’d driven through the thunder and lightning. He’d thought then being alone in the dark with him, with a guy, might have caused her fear, but maybe it’d been the storm.
“Of course.” Tucker could no more have disregarded that request than chopped off his own testicles. The thought of Della alone and frightened was as abhorrent to him as it was to Arlo, and even though he’d been trying to avoid her, he couldn’t ignore this plea for help. “I can hang out till you get home, if you like.”
He knew the offer would put Arlo’s mind at ease. Arlo, who probably needed to be concentrating on other things right now—life-and-death kind of things. And he had to face Della sooner or later. Probably best to do it in a private setting rather than at the bar or Annie’s or somewhere public, where any awkwardness between them could and would be picked up by any number of locals who knew them too well.
“Thanks, man. I owe you one.”