Chapter 1

Rural California

Present Day

She loved sex. Lots and lots of sweaty, pumping, pounding, gloriously wicked, undeniably naughty, kinky as all hell S-E-X with a capital S for Sex.

It didn’t matter where she was—even driving along the highway in her very unsexy clunker of a car, the mere thought of impending passion made Dorothy “Dot” Araiza’s pulse race. It made her doe-brown eyes grow heavy-lidded and her legs squeeze together. It made her hands clench into tight fists and her breath catch in the back of her throat.

(Confused passersby on the interstates might have mistaken her arousal for seizures a time or two, but oh well.)

Yes, Dot loved sex. There was no denying that fact of life. It was just too bad she wasn’t getting any, she thought with a snarl. Because maybe if she was, she wouldn’t be sitting in her car, driving through a torrential downpour, voluntarily giving up her Friday night to sell her toys at a bachelorette party.

Dot’s nostrils flared as she stepped on the gas pedal and plowed through the back roads of the one-horse bumpkin town like nobody’s business. She’d never even heard of Nowhere, California, for Pete’s sake! It certainly wasn’t on the map. But work was work and if this Nowhere existed, well hell, she’d find it.

Dot supposed being a sex toy maker had its distinct advantages. She got to work from home. She enjoyed the thrill of invention. And, she thought on a harrumph that could rival any bah-humbug by Ebenezer Scrooge, the local charities never hit her up at Christmas for donations to the Toyz For Tots fund. One look at what kind of toys she made and all bets were off.

Her former shrink had once told her she loved sex so much because in her mind it was a replacement for affection. An infliction that mostly males suffered from, but which strikes the occasional female. If that was true, Dot supposed she was a human lightning rod.

She often fantasized about being swept off her feet by an extremely tall, muscular, hunky, alpha male kind of guy. He would snatch her up and gently but demandingly throw her onto her elegant pink satin bed with all its lace and ruffles. And then—oh boy and then!—he would, to be blunt, fuck the shit out of her. Oh yeah, Dot thought with a small smile, she entertained that fantasy a lot.

The problem with turning fantasy into reality was that, as much as she loved sex, Dot also had the distinct disadvantage of being rather, well—shy. Very shy, unfortunately. Wallflower shy, she thought through gritted teeth. Wallflower, hopeless, sexless, utterly pathetic kind of shy. Arrrg! The minute a man so much as glanced in her direction she was all babbling idiot and no action.

Dot thought back on the last time she’d almost done the horizontal mambo and couldn’t help but to grimace. Henry had been far from tall, not at all muscular, and nowhere in the vicinity of being an alpha male. The extremely conservative and rather butt-ugly pharmacist with the perpetually running nose might not have been a hunk or even close to it, but he’d been able to put her at ease enough to talk to him. Not even a woman so shy as she was could continue to babble like an idiot rather than carry on a half-intelligent conversation with a man as harmless as Henry.

And so they’d gone out. Once. Twice. Three times. By the time the tenth date rolled around and the pharmacist had made no move to bed her, Dot feared they’d never get down to business and have sex. So she’d set out to seduce Henry. What a disaster that had turned out to be!

Dot had read in a men’s magazine that males really go for forward women, that they love it when their woman seizes the moment and jumps their bones. If that was the case, she thought, her hands gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white, the author of that column had clearly never met Henry.

 She had donned that see-through, peek-a-boo, pink satin nightie of hers which perfectly coordinated with the pink satin draped across her bed. Slipping into her matching pair of high heels, she picked up “Diesel-Dirk”—the name she’d given to the 30-speed ten-inch vibrator she’d designed and patented herself—and sashayed into the living room of her modest home-cum-laboratory where Henry had been patiently waiting on her to get ready for yet another date at the local frozen yogurt parlor.

The sound of Henry blowing his nose into the stained, moist hankie that always accompanied him like an appendage didn’t deter her. The fact that she was two inches taller (six inches in heels) and about twenty pounds heavier didn’t matter in that moment. She let down her chestnut-brown hair from its confining bun, shook it out until it cascaded down her back in soft waves, took a deep breath as she regally thrust her chin up and breasts out, and continued her seductive walk into the living room.

“Hello Henry,” Dot had breathed out in a practiced, sultry voice. Henry had stilled as she came to a halt before him, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping. His expression made her confidence falter for a brief second, but recalling an old Mae West line she plowed on determinedly. “Is that a gun in your pocket,” she asked in a Marilyn Monroe whisper, “or are you happy to see me?”

His face chalk-white and his eyes unblinking, Henry had then proceeded to pull out two very used hankies from his pocket and lay them on the coffee table, his deer-caught-in-headlights expression never wavering. Dot had frowned. That hadn’t been the reaction she’d been going for.

You were supposed to say you are happy to see me, idiot! Now what do I do!

Her heart began pounding against her breasts. Her brown eyes rounded in embarrassment and horror. She hesitated for a moment before taking a calming breath and regaining her original level of confidence.

Plowing onward, she took “Diesel-Dirk” out from behind her back. She smiled as she held up the long, thick, veined vibrator that was, if she did say so herself, the perfect imitation of a well-endowed African-American man’s cock. “Dirk has given me pleasure beyond my wildest dreams,” she said in that smoky voice she’d practiced for ages. “Let him give you pleasure, too, Henry.”

What she’d meant by that statement was she wanted to use Dirk on herself for Henry’s viewing pleasure. Apparently Henry had thought Dot meant to screw him up the butt with it for not even five seconds later, the pharmacist had gasped, eyes rolling into the back of his head, as he’d fainted dead away.

Arrrg!

Needless to say, the night had only gone downhill from there. She’d spent the next hour reviving and re-reviving a frightened, stuttering Henry. Within thirty seconds of being able to stand upright on two shaking feet, he’d ran from Dot’s house as though she’d sprouted horns and spewed green venom at him.

That, she thought, nostrils flaring and jaw tight as she drove down the back road through the pouring rain, had been the last time she’d had sex. Or almost had sex. That was four years ago now. Actual penetration with a member of the male species had last occurred four years before that.

The memory of that night was even worse than the Henry fiasco.

“Men suck!” Dot wailed into the night, yelling at everybody and nobody. “Who needs you anyway. I’ve got my toys!”

And oh boy did she have toys. If there was one thing Dot knew she could do better than anybody else, it was create the perfect sex toys for sexually frustrated females. Being one of those women, well, she’d managed to turn her hobby into a full-time job.

There was “Freddy-The-Fish”, a male mouth that could suck a woman blind. “Cum-Hither-Kenny”, a 20-speed vibrator with interchangeable heads that could do everything but make you breakfast. And, of course, there was good ole Dirk—still her most popular seller. Dirk could not only make you scream like a banshee in heat, but he was also capable of screwing you—hands free!—when mounted on a special mechanism she’d designed solely for the purpose of a woman being able to get off without having to hold the vibrator steady in her hands.

Dot reached over to the passenger seat and affectionately petted Dirk on the crown of his glorious black head. “I just want to get this damn bachelorette party over and done with,” she muttered, “then me and you will go home and have a little fun.”

Who needed a real man, Dot decided on down-turned lips. She had Dirk. And Kenny. And—and…

Shit!

Dot screamed as a bolt of lightning illuminated the nighttime sky and cracked down in front of her car, effectively scaring the daylights out of her. Reacting instead of thinking, she veered a sharp left and before she knew what had happened her small sedan was in a flat-spin on a rainy, muddy back road.

“Oh my God!” Dot cried out, her heart racing and her eyes wide. She couldn’t get control of the car. “Somebody help me!”

It was too late. She espied the tree a moment before the sedan made impact.

Her eyes rolling back and slowly flickering shut, she saw a flash of white and then nothing else...