Megan Hart - Switch

You will find the one thing that embarrasses you the

most, and you will use it until you achieve orgasm .

Why had I been embarrassed to buy this bottle of liquid

from a man who didn't even like women, and therefore

shouldn't be blamed for not seeing how fucking sexy I

realy am? I shook it again and took the stopper out. It

looked like a medicine dropper, but without the marks to

indicate dosage. I squeezed the rubber nipple again as I

pinched my own.

In the mirror, the woman did the same. I held out my

fingertip, the dropper poised over it. The liquid, stil

shining, made a teardrop before it fel onto my skin. I

rubbed it in with my thumb and waited. The slickness

didn't dissolve and faint warmth filtered through my skin.

Why was I embarrassed to have a stranger think I couldn't

Why was I embarrassed to have a stranger think I couldn't

have an orgasm? I let another drop fal onto my fingertip. I

spread it on my nipples. This time, when I squeezed them,

my fingers skipped and slid over my skin. My nipples,

hard, now, warmed under the oil and my touch.

Lubricated, my finger slid across my clit like silk on satin.

My lips parted. Air eased out. I touched myself again,

finger circling, and waited for the heat. It came a second or

two later, hotter than it had been on my nipples. I bit my

lower lip with a hiss.

It was hard to tel if the oil had aphrodisiac powers or the

effect was in my mind, but in the end, did it matter? I lay

back on my bed, my legs spread, feet planted firmly on the

comforter to make it easier to rock my hips into the

seduction of my hand.

I rubbed my clit in slow, smooth circles, just the way I

liked it best. The oil absorbed into my skin but left it slick

enough I didn't need to add more. I let my fingertips

explore the familiar dips and curves of my body, the soft,

secret places that could bring me such pleasure.

My clit got hotter as I rubbed, and that seemed only

natural, because heat and shame both rode the same bus

to school, so far as I was concerned. Sweat pooled in my

to school, so far as I was concerned. Sweat pooled in my

armpits and salted my upper lip. I licked it away, wishing it

were someone else's tongue on my mouth. Another

person's hand between my legs.

Why had I cared so much what a stranger thought of me?

I groaned and closed my eyes to push away thoughts of

anything but the sensations building in my body. It was

easier to pretend that way, to imagine I wasn't alone in my

brand-new bed with the clean, new sheets that had never

had another body in them. With my eyes closed, the

whisper of my hand moving against my skin tugged my

ears.

Why did I want so much to folow the commands of a

stranger not even meant for me?

The oil slid from my fingertips down my labia and into the

crack of my ass. I used my other hand to folow its path. I

could probably come from this, in a minute or two, but I

stopped, thinking of how it had been such a short time

since last I'd done this. It didn't take a genius to figure out I

was psyching myself out, losing my orgasm to too much

thinking.

Or maybe I realy was embarrassed?

She might not be too smart, but she's pretty enough.

One of Stela's friends had said it, not knowing I could

hear.

I groaned. I didn't want to be thinking about my father's

wife and her friends when I was trying to get off. Yet the

hotter the oil on my clit got, the less interested I became in

finishing what I'd started. I stopped trying.

She might not be too smart, but she's pretty enough. Just

like her mother.

They'd laughed, but not as though they found the subject

realy funny. More like it embarrassed them. As a kid I

hadn't understood why, exactly, just that it had made my

stomach hurt to know Stela thought I wasn't smart, even if

I was my mother's pretty daughter. As an adult, I figured it

out. It embarrassed Stela to admit she'd married a man

who'd been so swayed by some tart, he'd knocked her up

and then had the compassion to make the bastard child a

part of his life. Sort of.

To them, I wasn't Paige. I was some slut's daughter.

Thinking of that, I understood something else, too.

I wasn't embarrassed by the fact a man I didn't know or

like, a gay dude, for that matter, didn't want to jump my

bones. No. What had been most embarrassing was not

that he didn't want to fuck me, but that he'd believed I was

something I wasn't.

I licked my mouth, tasted the salt of my sweat. I listened to

the sound of my breathing stil coming fast. I roled to get

the tiny bottle from under my ribs and tossed it into the

trash can by my bed, and then I tucked my legs up toward

my chest with my extra pilow in my arms, hugging the

lover who wasn't there.

The notes started coming more frequently. Every morning

before I left for work, or sometimes when I came home,

there was another sleek card teling me how to go about

my day. Sometimes the list was short, a sentence or two.

Listen to your favorite radio station today. Sing out loud.

Sometimes the instructions were lengthier. More

demanding.

At eleven-thirty today you will stop what you are doing

and focus on one thing in your life that makes you

happy. For thirty seconds you will do nothing but

appreciate this reason for joy .

I'd spent the entire morning waiting for eleven-thirty to

arrive, half-afraid I'd forget and half-defiant, imagining I'd

refuse when the time came to folow the instructions. I did,

of course, helpless to resist in the same way someone

who's told not to think of the pink elephant can do nothing

else.

If there is someone in your life whom you've hurt, you

must make a true apology .

That one had been easy enough. I hadn't seen Kira in

weeks and arranged to meet her after work for coffee in

Hershey, halfway between Harrisburg and Lebanon. She

wasn't quite ready to forgive me.

"But can you blame me?" I asked over steaming mocha

lattes. "I mean…Kira…it's Jack."

"Jack Rabbit," she said. "Yes. I know."

I raised a brow. "I'm sorry. It wasn't when you were even

I raised a brow. "I'm sorry. It wasn't when you were even

close to being with him."

She sighed, then, and shrugged. "I know. I guess I'm just

pissed you got him and I didn't. But then, so what else is

new?"

That wasn't exactly what I'd expected to hear. "Huh?"

She pretended to be very interested in her new beige

manicure. "Just like every guy I ever liked, right?"

"What are you talking about?"

She leveled a look at me. "Austin?"

"What about him?"

Kira just stared, then looked away.

I had to laugh. I realy did. "You tried to get with Austin?

But you were mad at me for fooling around with Jack?

What a hypocrite!"

Her eyes flashed. "You knew how I felt about Jack! It was

different with Austin."

"How was it different?" I finished my coffee and picked up my purse to go, not because I was furious but because as

I'd said not so long before to the very man we were

discussing, that cake was baked.

"You left him! You didn't love him anymore." Kira

grabbed up her own purse, too, glaring. "Not that it

mattered."

"He turned you down, huh?"

Her expression was enough of a reply.

"That's why you were pissed off, isn't it? Not because I