A Long List of Firsts: A Carlsbad Village Lesbian Romance Read online

  A Long List of Firsts

  A Carlsbad Village Lesbian Romance

  Sabrina Kane

  Copyright © 2021 Sabrina Kane

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: Sabrina Kane

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  A Long List of Firsts

  by Sabrina Kane

  Chapter 1

  I am so fucking done!

  Rachel, her jaw set, turned her head and stared at Matthew lying next to her on the bed. He was breathing hard but nonetheless had a self-satisfied grin on his lips. And why shouldn’t he? Once again, he had had all the pleasure.

  Watching him, her own pleasure not even in sight, Rachel saw absolutely nothing appealing about the guy anymore. Fine, he was good-looking, with a hipster beard and dark Mediterranean features, but now she had about as much attraction to him as she would towards a walrus.

  Four times. They had now had sex four times and in Rachel’s opinion, four times was enough. Did she really need a fifth time of having sex with this guy and not even getting close to orgasming? Did she really need yet another go around of Matthew’s selfish form of lovemaking, where his idea of foreplay was squeezing her boobs a couple of times as if that was the secret to turning a woman on? And, finally, did she really need a fifth time of sex with this guy lasting all of two minutes before he ended up just as he was now: lying next to her, completely spent, huffing and puffing as if he had just finished a marathon.

  And for what? For the privilege of being seen with such a good-looking man every time they went out?

  Nope! Four times was enough.

  Taking her eyes off him, she looked down at her nude body. Her breasts and her abs were covered with tiny black hairs that had rubbed off Matthew’s chest during his two minutes of hard labor. Hairs that stood out clearly in stark contrast to her own lightly sun-bronzed skin.

  “Ugh!” she couldn’t help exclaiming in revulsion, swatting at her body with her hands to bat the hairs away, wanting them off her as quickly as possible. Of course, this wasn’t the first time a man had shed hairs on her—it was an occupational hazard, so to speak, of being a straight woman. Normally, it didn’t bother her but today, it was disgusting her.

  “Huh? What’s wrong?” Matthew asked sleepily as Rachel got up off the bed, still swiping at her body.

  “Nothing,” she said, finding and then putting on her robe. She didn’t want him looking at her nudity. It might give him ideas, although she doubted it. After four times, Rachel had learned that Matthew was not only a quick lover but a one-and-done kind of guy. “Look, I have a showing soon and so you need to go.”

  Thankfully, he didn’t argue. She had been worried he would try to convince her to let him stay. It was early Saturday afternoon and he didn’t need to be at work today. But, fortunately, after stretching and yawning—really, the guy made it seem as if he had just gone twelve rounds in a prize fight, Rachel considered—he got up and headed directly into the bathroom.

  With her arms crossed, Rachel remained where she was, dressed in her robe, waiting for him to be done.

  In a few minutes, Matthew was not only done in the bathroom but dressed.

  “You want to hook up tonight after your thing?”

  Showing, dumbass! It’s a showing and it’s my career! Aargh!

  Rachel managed to pout regretfully.

  “Probably not a good idea,” she said. “I think my period is about to start.”

  Huge lie. Her period was temporarily a figment of her imagination. The birth control she was on made sure of that. Matthew, however, did not need to know this fact. All he needed to believe was that the only bit of her that he apparently cared about was about to start gushing blood.

  Her fib did the trick. Matthew got that Please-don’t-tell-me-anymore look of fear on his face all men get when women start talking about the mysterious world below their waists. He shrugged his shoulders. She then started walking him to the front door.

  She allowed him to kiss her goodbye. It was a deep kiss and though she let her tongue dance a little with his, she felt absolutely no desire bloom from it. Not even a flicker of want.

  Yep, she thought…she was making the right decision.

  With a promise to call her tomorrow, Matthew finally left.

  Oh, thank god!

  Rachel leaned with her back against the now closed front door and rolled her eyes.

  She’d tell him tomorrow over the phone that she didn’t think they should see each other anymore. That’s if he even called. Another thing about a lot of men, Rachel had learned: they tended to think a woman on her period was not someone to bother; as if her period meant she needed to be isolated in a protective bubble through which all contact was impossible. Matthew seemed like that kind of guy.

  In any case, if he called, she’d tell him it was over. Normally, doing such a thing over the phone was anathema to her nature but she was well and truly fed up. Matthew was just the latest in what has been a long line of men who—although they may possess other wonderful qualities—were absolute shit in bed, and Rachel was tired of it.

  Finding a man who was nice and sincere? Great.

  Finding a man with a good job, able to support himself? Also great.

  No criminal record? Fantastic.

  But Rachel wanted more. She wanted a fabulous sex life to go with all the other stuff. She was still young, after all! Her twenty-ninth birthday had just passed last month in December. And she knew she was attractive! Five-seven, with fiery red hair and a lean figure that possessed nice curves top and bottom, Rachel had never been concerned about her physical appeal to others.

  But why was it that each and every man she started up with was a loser in some way, shape or form—particularly in the bedroom? Was she really that bad at picking guys? Was she somehow genetically predisposed to choosing men who had zero sexual talents?

  Her mouth dropped open when she realized something…

  Why this particular thought popped into her mind just now, she had no idea. It had to be because of the still very recent disappointment of what she had just experienced with Matthew. In any case, the thought was now in her head. Actually, it was less of a thought and more of an uncovered fact.

  Surely, she must have always known this fact but had subconsciously repressed it. Now, for some reason, her mind wanted her to see it in all its naked truth.

  She had never once had an orgasm during sex!

  ***

  “Wait, what do you mean ‘done?’” Rachel’s best friend, Amy, asked an hour later.

  They were in Rachel’s backyard, sipping coffee Amy had brought over from their favorite coffeeshop, La Vida Mocha. Amy had come over after Rachel had texted her, asking if she was free for girl-time—their code for “I need to talk about something with my bestie.”

  “I mean, I’m done with men,” Rachel said, repeating what she had told Amy shortly after Amy had arrived.

  Amy made a face, her chocolate-brown eyes showing puzzlement.

  “Like, you’re becoming a nun?” she asked.

  Rachel laughed
.

  “Okay, maybe not that done!” she stated. “I just mean, I’m taking a fucking break from them. I’m going on a purge. Whatever you want to call it. But I have reached a point where I am absolutely tired of dealing with them! You don’t know what it’s like!”

  That was an understatement, considering Amy was a lesbian—a fact which Rachel was very much now envious of.

  Rachel went on.

  “I seem to have this talent for both attracting and choosing men who are either assholes in the personality department and lousy in bed, or pretty okay in the personality department but still totally lousy in bed.”

  She recounted her morning’s sex—if it could even be called that—with Matthew to Amy.

  “He didn’t even ask if I’d had an orgasm!” she added when she was finished—sparing Amy most of the icky heteros-having-sex details, a skill she’d come to master since she and Amy became friends freshman year at UCLA.

  A thought occurred to Rachel.

  “Wait…is it really like in Sally’s books?” she asked.

  Rachel knew she was probably a statistical anomaly: a straight woman who was a huge fan of the books of one of the top lesfic authors on the planet. It had come about back when Amy started dating said lesfic author, Sally Lassiter, who was the writer of a series of wildly popular lesbian romances written under her pen name Jillian Ashley. Out of curiosity, Rachel had started reading Sally’s Jillian Ashley books and had been blown away!

  Okay, fine, the writing was superb and the storytelling fantastic…

  And, sure, the character development was on point and the plotlines interesting and solid…

  But the sex scenes!

  Rachel had never imagined prior to discovering Sally’s books that she could enjoy reading explicit descriptions of women having sex with women, but holy fuck! Not only had she enjoyed them but it was as if they had shown her the possibilities of what sex could be. Well, what sex with a woman could be. All she had to do now was find a man who could take care of her sexually the way the women in Sally’s books took care of each other sexually.

  Totally. Completely. And often. Very, very often!

  “Is what really like it is in Sally’s books?” Amy asked.

  “Well, I notice in, like, all of Sally’s books, the women never ask their partners if they had an orgasm.”

  Amy laughed.

  “Because we usually don’t have to!” she replied.

  “That’s what I’m asking!” Rachel pressed. “Is that true? I mean…” she felt herself blushing at this line of inquiry but she really, really wanted to know. “Lesbians can actually see a woman coming, right? And feel it, right? I mean, you can always tell when it happens, right?”

  And now Amy was blushing, which Rachel thought was super cute.

  “Rach, we never talk about these kinds of details!” Amy exclaimed, laughing.

  “Well, I want to talk about them now because I’m curious!” Rachel insisted. She wanted to know if all of those explicitly descriptive passages she’d read in Sally’s books—especially in Chapter 25 of the first book, The Fordham Road Fling—about women’s centers visibly convulsing when they came and their inner walls clutching and squeezing inserted fingers were true.

  She knew that when she gave herself orgasms she certainly felt her sex contracting rapidly, though she’d never seen it. And when she has her fingers or a toy inserted, she certainly feels her walls gripping those things, the severity of the gripping depending on the severity of the orgasm. But would a guy feel that with his equipment? And if a guy was eating her out, would he actually see her center convulsing? Was it really that noticeable during climax?

  And if the answer was yes to both feeling and seeing a woman coming, why have none of her lovers ever bothered to make sure she actually came?

  “Fine,” Amy said. “Yes, it’s that obvious, just like in the books. About the only time it’s hard for a lesbian to really know for sure if her partner had an orgasm is when…” Amy rolled her eyes and her blush deepened. “…is when she’s fucking her with a strap-on,” she finished. “That’s just a piece of rubber or whatever with no sense of feeling, right? And so it’s not like you’re going to…you know…feel…you know…”

  “The clutching?” Rachel offered.

  Amy rolled her eyes again.

  “Yes, the clutching,” she confirmed. “But, usually you don’t need to feel that anyway in that circumstance because it’s been my experience that women are pretty good at letting you know they’re having an orgasm. Besides, a woman who doesn’t let you know if she’s been satisfied is only cheating herself.”

  Rachel was fascinated by everything her bestie was telling her but it was also frustrating her even more. So, to recap: just like in Sally’s Jillian Ashley books, a woman’s orgasm can be seen by her lover and it can be felt by her lover! And yet in over a dozen years of being sexually active, not one of her male lovers had ever bothered to make sure he saw or felt her having an orgasm during sex!

  She shook her head.

  “Anyway,” she began, “like I said, I’m taking a break from men. I figure if I take some time off, maybe my selection system will reset in some way and I’ll be able to actually detect the men who are great in bed.”

  Amy laughed.

  “Just for the record,” she began, “plenty of women are lousy in bed also! Lesfic always shows the ‘perfect world’ scenarios when it comes to sex. Just once I wouldn’t mind reading a book where the sex is either downright bad or just so-so.

  “Tell Sally to get started on that,” Rachel suggested.

  “Why would I tell—oh, yeah…right. I’ll mention it to her.” And Amy blushed again.

  “Speaking of…is she home editing?”

  “Editing what?”

  “I follow her—well, Jillian—on Twitter, Amy! She tweeted that she just finished the first draft of her latest book.”

  “Oh, yeah…right! Um…yep, she’s home editing away!”

  “Tell her I said hi,” Rachel said and then checked her watch. Her showing was in a little less than two hours.

  She had a good feeling about this one. The house was of modest size but absolutely gorgeous, in a great neighborhood close to the beach and, for Carlsbad, was exceptionally priced. The owners really wanted to sell fast; something about moving to Alaska of all places to spend their retirement. Rachel couldn’t understand leaving the beauty and warmth of California to spend your golden years in what she perceived as an arctic wasteland. She herself had grown up enduring the harsh winters of New England in Maine and after only a semester at UCLA had resolved never to go back.

  Oh well, if the Havershams wanted to retire to Alaska, to each their own.

  What really mattered to Rachel was selling their property. Doing so would mean meeting her sales target for this quarter already—and it was only the first of February!

  She thought about what she had to do to prepare for showing the property to today’s client. Yesterday evening, she had stopped by the house to make sure it was presentation ready. The Havershams were already gone, currently in Fairbanks renting an apartment until their house sold, so the house was empty and spotless. Rachel hadn’t seen anything untoward during her inspection yesterday. So, all she really needed to do was make sure she looked professional and competent. This meant she could spend a little more time sitting here, chatting with Amy.

  Today’s client was a new one, a word of mouth referral. This meant that she really needed to be on her A-game, which shouldn’t be a problem. Rachel had gained a good reputation as a realtor who not only knew her business backwards and forwards, but who was also incredibly nice and fun to work with.

  So, sitting back and enjoying her coffee, she continued telling Amy all the other reasons why she was getting sick of men.

  Turns out, there were a lot of them.

  Chapter 2

  “Heels?” Ainsley asked Charlotte.

  Charlotte, reclining on Ainsley’s bed and flipping through
a magazine, took no time to consider her answer.

  “Definitely,” she declared. “You’ll automatically intimidate her with your height and put the balance of power in your favor.”

  Ainsley laughed.

  Charlotte, a pediatrician, was big on the whole balance-of-power thing. Ainsley knew that Charlotte liked establishing the correct power hierarchy early on when dealing with her patients—or “the little shits,” as Charlotte often referred to them. Ainsley always thought it odd that her best friend, who apparently did not even like children, had decided to focus her medical career on treating them.

  “What if she’s just as tall as me?” Ainsley asked, with a cocked eyebrow.

  But Charlotte shook her head.

  “Less than five percent of little girls grow up to be as tall as you, Ains,” she said. “Trust me…you wear those Blahniks you splurged on last year and she’ll think she’s dealing with a Greek goddess and won’t dare to mess with you.”

  Ainsley laughed again.

  “I’m trying to establish a working relationship with this person,” she said. “Not go all Greek goddess on her.”

  Nonetheless, Ainsley did choose the black Blahniks from her shoe rack. She had splurged on them and had only worn them four times thus far. After slipping them on, she moved to stand in front of the eight-foot-tall mirror she had found at an Italian home furnishings store and surveyed herself.

  She was far more dressed up than normal for a day off. Her five-ten athletically slender frame was wearing a charcoal-grey pencil skirt that was subtly ruched and a white sleeveless blouse with a scoop neckline which allowed just the right amount of her cleavage to be visible. She was glad she had purchased such a large mirror because with the high heels on, she was easily six-two and yet she could still see her entire body.

  “Hair up or down?” she asked Charlotte.

  Charlotte gave her a disbelieving look.

  “How do you function without me?” she inquired snarkily.

  Ainsley sighed.