A low hum of conversation broke across the room as her words landed. Everyone else had just given their name and the subject they taught, but Naomi wasn’t satisfied with the mixture of skepticism and confusion her introduction had received. A ridiculous urge to make these strangers understand her experience kept her talking, even when she knew they’d wave away her qualifications like everyone else.
“Look, I think we can all agree that pompousness and privilege rule academia. It’s bullshit.”
“Umm.” A man raised his hand to interject.
Naomi ignored him.
“I’ve got an advanced degree from Cal State. My website collects over a billion data points about relationship dynamics and sex annually, and I have the unique lived experience of navigating intimacy as not only an adult performer but a public figure to boot. You’d think that would qualify me to teach people how to establish intimate connections, but apparently”—she threw her arms up—“you’d be wrong.”
Enough people had told her no at this point that her mind had turned earning acceptance from a stuffy institution into a dare. She wanted the gravitas of an employer with an established name. Besides,she’d already built Shameless from scratch, and while a start-up was rewarding, it was also exhausting.
“Don’t you think, Howard, that the world would be a better place if we 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 westop 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 thatused 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 beendecidedly 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.
But, as it turned out, she didn’t have to. While she packed her bag at the end of the lecture, a pair of khakis stopped next to her desk.
“Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you, but I wondered if I could make you a proposition.”
Naomi raised her eyes slowly. Above his leather belt, he wore a perfectly pressed white button-down, open at the collar, though not enough to pay off the shadowed promise of chest hair. Once again, she lingered over his jawline. It was even better up close. She couldn’t wait to feel that beard against the inside of her thighs.
“Sure,” Naomi said, putting a little purr into ther. “Give me your best.”
When he smiled, his whole face went to work. Damn, this guy was trouble. It was a good thing she’d shown up as Naomi. Hannah Sturm wouldn’t have stood a chance.