The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2) - Rosie Danan Page 0,2
opened a dialogue that made people feel comfortable advocating for themselves in their relationships?”
“I suppose . . .” Howard had started to turn puce.
“Do you ever ask yourself why people are so afraid of sex?”
Naomi winked at the woman staring at her in open horror, in an effort to fight a sinking feeling of disappointment in her gut. For all her grand speeches, she’d finally hit a wall she couldn’t swim under.
“I do. All the time. I’ve got theories. And maybe they could actually help people. But no one wants to hear it.”
Outside of her ego, Naomi believed sex ed and relationship discourse had a place in accessible, mainstream education. Her experience and theories would have the greatest impact if she could establish a wider audience. As much as she loved society’s rebels, she didn’t believe healthy resources for establishing intimacy should be restricted to them.
“And it’s not like I didn’t know that going in.” Naomi huffed out a dramatic exhale. “But I guess—call it the naivete of youth, but I thought the world might get a little more open-minded by the time I retired from performing. But I was wrong. And you know why?” She pointed an accusatory finger at her startled audience.
“Because if anyone let me teach, they would have to address the toxic environments and toxic people they continue to uphold. And that would be really uncomfortable, wouldn’t it? That would be really fucking inconvenient.”
“Miss Grant,” Howard tried to cut in, “perhaps we might move on to the next—”
“Don’t you ever get mad, Howard?” She walked up and placed her hands on either side of the lectern. “The numbers are bleak. We’re facing a dating epidemic, not to mention an orgasm deficit. The sooner we stop pretending the digital age hasn’t changed the way we interact, the better we make our chance that entire generations don’t die horny and alone.”
“Right.” The instructor tugged at his collar and raised his voice, trying to rein in the room. “Anyone else want to jump in here?”
Naomi sighed and returned to the circle, letting the new tension in the room roll off her back. Her shame sensor had run out of batteries a long time ago. She’d made her career out of being an outlier, and a safety net out of being an outcast. It was easy enough to tune out the rest of the intros. At least until they got to a man who was way too hot to be a teacher.
He looked like a Calvin Klein model, and she observed that with the authority of someone who had fucked more than her fair share of Calvin Klein models. The shadow cast by his bearded jawline was ridiculous. She could wait out a summer storm underneath that thing.
“Hey everyone. My name’s Ethan Cohen,” the model said, “and I used to teach high school physics.”
Naomi immediately wanted a follow-up on that used to. Had he been cast as an extra? Those cheekbones deserved at least a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. Her eyes traced his profile as he kept talking. On closer inspection, he was too short and lean to be a model. In heels, she’d have the advantage. The chiseled sculpture of his face had distracted her inspection. That and the way he carried himself. His legs were spread wide enough that . . . damn. She couldn’t tell with him in those khakis.
Still, she smiled, target acquired. He was the perfect distraction from her occupational woes.
It had been a while since she’d wanted to jump someone the way she wanted to slither all over this guy. She loved her job, but running a start-up meant regularly working eighty-hour weeks. The combination of stress and exhaustion was hell on her libido. How ironic that satisfying sex was her life’s work and yet her last few months had been decidedly sexless. She smirked. Unless you counted solo sessions. Those were still A+.
What kind of underwear had she put on this morning? Certainly, if she’d known the day would present such delectable opportunities, she would have pulled out something set to stun.
Introductions wrapped, and Howard released them back to their seats with a wave. As the familiar scratch of multiple pens moving over paper lulled her into a daze, she sifted through approach tactics. Usually when she wanted to get someone into bed, she just took off her top to save time. One cursory scan of the room confirmed that plan wouldn’t fly in this environment. Oh well. She’d wing it.