Dangerous Curves: Naughty Little Secrets (2 page)

“But if for some reason Samantha doesn’t come through, just fill in for her, okay?” Mariah said, dashing out the door.

Fill in for her.

As if I could just snap my fingers and produce an article out of thin air. But that was exactly what Mariah was asking me to do. It was what I’d been forced to do two weeks ago, when “Vegan Cooking on a Dime” hadn’t come through. I’d had to wing it, making phone calls well into the wee hours of the night begging chefs around town for last minute interviews. I’d managed to pull it off, producing an article on cheap vegan dishes that had won raves from both upper management and readers alike.

The ultimate kicker?

I’d received no credit for it. The credit had gone to “Staff Writer,” instead of
Violet Lewis. All that hard work and I hadn’t even gotten my name on the piece.

Why did I work here again?

Other than the fact that I have the requisite brown eyes. (Har har.)

But, seriously, this place would be a dream – if Mariah wasn’t determined to make our work environment such a nightmare.

Tonight was proving to be no different. As predicted, the freelancer who’d been assigned the “My Naughty Little Secret” column never sent I her piece – nor did she call or e-mail to explain what had happened. I spent two hours trying to reach her to no avail. Finally, I called Mariah.

“Samantha’s missing in action,” I said flatly. “We’re down one article.”

“Okay,” Mariah said. “I have a freelancer list on my desk. Make a few calls and see if you can find somebody to cover at the last minute.”

Find somebody to cover? She didn’t want me to write it?

“You really think one of our freelancers will be ready to go at this short a notice?” I asked.

“They’ll have to be,” Mariah said. “We can’t go live without that column.”

“I could always pen something if you want,” I offered.

“No,” she cut me off. “That’s not really your thing,
Violet. No offense.”

“No offense?” I repeated.

“Yeah….” her voice trailed off. “The vegan cooking piece you did was fine and all, it was definitely good enough for a last minute filler. But I don’t really think you’re up to writing this article.”

“This is last minute filler, too,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but it’s a different kind of last minute filler.” She paused. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Violet, but I don’t know that you’re cut out to write the ‘Naughty Little Secrets’ column.’”

Whoa. Was she saying what I think she was saying?

“Naughty Little Secrets requires much racier writing. It’s a much sexier column than, say, writing about vegan eat. Don’t take this the wrong way, Violet, but I’m not sure you have it in you.”

I wasn’t sure there was a right way to take that. Her words played back through my head.

Don’t take this the wrong way. No offense.

I hate it when people preface their insults with a disclaimer. It’s so condescending and annoying.

I knew better than to argue with her, though. I’d just get the damn freelancer to do the piece and move on with my night.

Trouble was, there were no freelancers who were available on such short notice. Forty-five minutes, and a dozen phone calls later, I was right back where I started: staring at a blank screen waiting for someone to send me an article to fill it. I tried calling Mariah, even sent her two text messages, and got only this response:
You’re a professional. That’s why I put you in charge. You handle it.

By the time the clock struck
11 p.m., I was fed up with waiting. I knew what I had to do. It didn’t matter who wrote the article – they credit would go out to “Staff Writer” anyway. If I couldn’t find a freelancer to write it, I’d have to do it myself.

It took me a few minutes to come up with an idea. Our “
Naughty Little Secrets” column – one of our most popular features – usually a true confession of, you guessed it, someone’s dark, Naughty little secret. Past topics have included such revelations as My Husband is Not the Father of Our New Baby, I Had Sex With My Brother-in-Law or the ever-popular I’m Seeping With My Boss.

I had to laugh at the thought of that last one. The idea of sleeping with Nicholas Colby was absurd. Not that he didn’t get around…he just didn’t get around to girls like me.

I blushed at the thought of someone like Nicholas reading this column, but then remember two things: Mr. Colby was likely far too busy to pursue our little online magazine and b.) even if he did read it by some off chance, he’d never know it was me – the byline was anonymous.

For once I was grateful for that. My mom and dad both perused Brown-Eyed Girl and, as much as it bugged me not having my name on the vegan eats article, I was pleased by the cloak of anonymity here.

I really could tell a ‘naughty little secret’ if I wanted to – and no one would ever know.

The thought was kind of electrifying. I rarely share the private details of my life with anyone – my best friend Katie included. Even my blog typically sticks to lighter, less-than-personal topics. If I wanted to cut loose, here my chance.

I thought about it for a moment, turning the idea over in my head. What did I want to write about? I could say anything. It took me a few minutes to come up with a topic, then I started typing.

My
Naughty Little Secret

I had my first orgasm in the eighth grade.

It happened at the most inopportune moment, and was not at all like I’d imagined. 

It did not happen during a steamy encounter I had the first week of school. Hiding behind the bleachers, the older boy trailing kisses down my neck while his fingers inched their way up my skirt.

And it did not happen during one of the hurried, desperate make-out sessions that my then-boyfriend and I would squeeze in every day after school. Him, almost painfully rock-hard, moaning as his fingers played beneath my panties, stealing as much time as he could between my legs before my parents came home.

Those two boys both tried, so diligently, to get me there, to make me come.

But my first orgasm didn’t belong to either of them – to any man, really. It happened, instead, while I was asleep.

I’ll never forget that moment when I woke up, from the dead of sleep, crying out in pleasure. I was in a state of dazed euphoria, unaware at first of what was even happening. There had been no sexy dream, at least nothing I remembered, but I had been jolted awake by a throbbing pleasure so intense it shocked me. I had laid there, writhing underneath the blanket, unable to keep from gasping aloud as the orgasm rolled over me. 

Naturally, this did happen in the privacy of my own bedroom, but at a slumber party filled with half the girls in my eighth grade class.

By the time I’d “come to,” I’d woken up the entire room. They would never let me live it down.

“Ooh, you were having one, weren’t you?” my friend Leah had teased.

“Look at how red her face is!” another girl had squealed with glee.

My whole body, in fact, had become flushed. All the signs of arousal were there – my nipples were still hard, poking through my cotton nightshirt. I was also struck by sudden, desperate urge to pee.

I tried to deny what happened. “No,” I’d said hotly. “I was just having a bad dream.”

“Sounded like a good dream to me!”

“Ahhh, oooooh,” Leah had moaned, leaning back and flailing in her sleeping back. “Ahhhh, it feels soooo good.”

“I did not say any of that!” I’d insisted, but it was useless. The entire room had dissolved in a fit of giggles as they began calling out zingers at my expense.

“She’s definitely a screamer!” one girl had said, “I bet her boyfriend loves that.”

“No wonder he’s over there every day after school.” 

“I bet they can hear you coming all the way next door!”  

It went on like that for a while, until everybody settled down and the talk finally turned to dresses for the eighth grade prom. My orgasm forgotten, I was finally able to slip into the bathroom and relieve myself.   

As I splashed water on my face, and smoothed my hair down, I reflected on how ironic it all was: here these girls all thought I had some exciting sex life, full of daily makeout sessions capped off by screaming orgasms.

And while the first part of it was true – my eighth grade boyfriend and I “played around” almost daily – I had never once achieved that kind of pleasure from his touch.

Most people reading this will probably say – so what? He was an eighth grade boy, what could he know about bringing a girl to ecstasy? And to some degree they would be right. We were so young then, and his hands were so inexperienced. We never experimented beyond that, never moved on to oral sex. It would be years still before I would experience the feeling of a man’s tongue between my legs.

But that night in eighth grade is more telling than it should be.

Because despite all the years that have come and gone between it, despite all the men who have tried – I have yet to experience that one true pleasure: No man has ever been able to make me come.

That is my
naughty little secret.

To this day, I have only had an orgasm one way.

Alone.

It was a pretty personal article – not the sort of thing I would ever share on my blog, which I publish under my real bname. But hiding behind the moniker of “Staff Writer,” I felt surprisingly bold.

I ran through the article
multiple times to make sure there weren’t any typos or grammatical errors and then, taking a deep breath, I hit posted it onto the website and hit
upload
.

A few hours later I was just finishing the updates when I heard the noise ding telling me I had a new e-mail. That wasn’t unusual – it was almost 2 in the morning, and at this time of night my inbox often received spam. 

But when I clicked on the tab to open my inbox, I was stunned. The e-mail was wasn’t from a spammer. It was from my boss, Nicholas Colby.

I stared at the screen, trying to get over the shock. Nicholas Colby had never e-mailed me before. Even more surprising, it had come from his personal e-mail account, sent to my personal account. How had he even gotten my private e-mail address?

His message was short and to the point. Two sentences, no subject line.

To:
Violet Lewis

From:
Nicholas Colby

Subject:
(blank)

I like your new column.

Nick

I stared at the screen, confused. Did Mr. Colby know I’d written the vegan piece from the week before? It had been published under “Staff Writer,” but Mariah sent him a weekly status report on the magazine. Perhaps she’d put it in there. That had to be it.

I pulled Nick’s e-mail onto the screen and typed out a quick reply.

To:
Nicholas Colby

From:
Violet Lewis

Subject: (Blank)

Thanks for the compliment! I didn’t figure you for a vegan ;)

His reply was instant.

That’s not the column I’m talking about.
I’m talking about what you wrote tonigt.

I hit reply, and typed:

I’m sorry,
Mr. Colby, I don’t follow….

Again, he replied right away. Only this time, he’d taken care to fill in the subject line.

To:
Violet Lewis

From:
Nicholas Colby

Subject:
Your naughty little secret

That’s the one I’m talking about. Interesting piece.
You should write more oftenfor the magazine.

Whoa! I jumped back from the desk. Had I put my name on it? I quickly hopped online and double checked. Nope. It was listed as Staff Writer, as was the protocol. I had not been planning on telling anyone about that column – not Katie, not even Mariah (although I suppose she would have found out eventually). Still, I’d intended to keep the secret for as long as possible…which was apparently only a few hours.

I could think of no appropriate response. I wanted to say a million things – how did you know it was me? Why did you read it? Why are you e-mailing me? Instead, I kept it short and
to the point:

To:
Nicholas Colby

From:
Violet Lewis

Subject:
re: Your naughty little secret

You read that?

To:
Violet Lewis

From:
Nicholas Colby

Subject:
(blank)

I read every word.
Twice.