**WATTPAD HQ EDITOR'S PICK Nov/Dec 2021**
BOOK ONE in the STEAMY FORBIDDEN ROMANCE series
Coralie Watson, a British thirty-year-old living in San Francisco, has a tormented past with men. Physical and mental abuse, abandonment issues, incompatibili...
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♫ Even though I'd die to see you I don't trust myself to meet you' Cause we both know ♪ (Bebe Rexha—Gateway Drug)
"I'm still sore," said Coralie, adding an orange peel to her second attempt at a cosmopolitan, that she slipped over to Delilah. "I mean, can you be sore after," she leaned in close and cupped a hand over her mouth, "masturbating?"
Delilah sipped from the carnelian-colored drink. "Um, this is perfect. And honey, you don't need to whisper; everyone masturbates."
Coralie's eyes widened as she peered around, worried the patrons had heard Delilah shouting out the m word. But to her surprise, no one seemed to care. A few girls were giggling over cocktails at one end of the bar, a group of bros were high-fiving as they clinked their beer glasses, and a couple was making out on one of the couches near the empty DJ booth.
It was a slow Sunday, which Coralie appreciated—it gave her time to practice her drink-crafting.
"And yes, you can be sore if you're really going at it." Delilah smacked her lips and winked, her fake eyelashes so voluminous they made Coralie dizzy. "Which, I imagine, you were, while watching that gorgeous man play with that enormous chunk of—"
"—Delilah!" Coralie slapped Delilah's wrist, almost knocking over her beverage. "Not here!"
She wasn't a prude, but didn't appreciate her roommate blasting penis-talk at her place of work.
"What?" Delilah twirled her silky hair around one finger and adjusted her bubblegum pink halter top. "For real, I wish you had snapped a screenshot, so I could admire it too. Something like that needs to be memorialized."
"Uh," Coralie snorted, "I was a little too busy to snap a picture, dude." She whirled around to hide the flush creeping up her cheeks.
Was it okay to talk about such private things in public? Sure, she agreed with Delilah, everyone did it; but did everyone detail it? And did everyone do it during a video-chat in front of someone who was married but that they'd been in love with for twelve years?
She'd known Delilah for a while, and had no trouble confessing her online mischief to her. But she didn't want every customer—and her boss, who hovered nearby—to know what she'd done. How she'd played and panted and posed for Ryan, how she'd sucked her finger and circled it around her tongue to show him how much she craved him—
Stop! Stop it!
She fidgeted left and right in front of the sink. The muscles in her lower abdomen tightened, as they always did whenever she reminisced over her session with Ryan. And she reminisced about it... a lot. About his smile, his flexed arms as he drove to work, his flashy t-shirts with silly sayings, and the way he'd touched himself to please her—
I said stop!
She did have a tendency to become obsessed with attractive men, but it wasn't like her to struggle with such intense sexual tension, not anymore. Even before she came up with her celibacy decision, she'd approached sex with extreme caution.
