Page 165 of The Virgin Romance Novelist Chronicles
“Why does it smell like that?” I asked, burying my face into Henry’s side to soak in his cologne.
“Latex, plastic, and jiz. What did you expect?”
“Ew, that is not what I’m smelling right now.” I looked around and leaned into Henry some more, so the shop owner didn’t hear me. “It does not smell like semen in here.”
Henry pointed to a black curtain off to the side. “Remember the jiz booths I talked about?” I nodded. “Back there, love.”
“How do you know this?” I gasped. “Oh, my God, have you been in one before? Ew, Henry, getting it off in public is so beneath you.”
A full-on belly laugh took over Henry’s body, and I couldn’t resist watching his Adam’s apple fall in rhythm with his laughter. The way his shoulders shook and flexed under his simple white button-down caused a warm sensation to take place within my stomach. I wanted him . . .again. . . in a sex shop.
“Rosie, you think so highly of me.” He shook his head. “I have been in one.”
Check that, I didn’t want him anymore.
“Gross, Henry.”
“Not because I wanted to,” he added quickly. “I was with a couple of friends and they dared me to go in one, sit down, and watch a video.”
“Why would you do that? Did you touch yourself?”
“No.” he chuckled. “I didn’t touch myself. It smelled so much like soured spunk I nearly threw up, but once I got out, I was a cool one hundred dollars richer. Joke was on them because they paid for my beer for a couple of days in college. It all worked out.”
“Except for the fact that you went into a porn booth.”
“Eh. Chalk it up to life experiences. Do you want to see what it looks like?”
“No,” I replied right away, disgusted with the suggestion.
I looked at the curtain. Even though I didn’t want to go near one of the booths, I had to admit, I was mildly curious to see what it looked like.
Henry must have picked up on my curiosity, because after observing me for a few moments, he asked, “You want to see, don’t you?”
I bit my lip as I weighed my options. Research was an important thing when it came to writing a book. As an author, you wanted to be accurate in your descriptions, you wanted to make sure anything you typed would make sense to the readers. Therefore, if I ever wrote about a porn booth, then I had to see one, right?
“I think maybe, for research, it might be beneficial to see what one looked like, but I swear, if you push me near it, I will break up with you so hard, you won’t be able to catch your breath before I snap your penis in half.”
“Whoa, don’t want a broken penis. I’ll keep my distance.”
Henry led me to the velvet curtain that hid the booths. I took a deep breath, and allowed him to take my hand and propel me into the dimly lit space. I didn’t really know what to expect when I crossed the velvet-curtain threshold but was shocked when I took in the surroundings. Music played in the background—cheap elevator music. The walls were black and the doors to the booths were red, all marked off by a number. Sex paraphernalia hung from the ceiling. Surrounding the walls and in the center of the floor were trash cans, lots and lots of trash cans.
“What is with the garbage cans?” I whispered to Henry, hearing a random grunt here and there. They really needed to turn up the elevator music in this joint.
Henry quirked his eyebrow at me. “What do you think they are for?”
“Umm . . . no food or drinks in the booth?”
Henry shook his head, then made a motion near his crotch, as if he was jacking himself off and then spooged everywhere. “Cum has to go somewhere, love.”
Oh. My. God.
“Ewwww,” I said rather loudly. Henry shushed me, and motioned with his hand.
He was about to say something when one of the booth doors opened. A very attractive middle-aged man poked his head out and stared us down.
“Do you mind? I’m trying to whack off before I have to go home to five kids, four of them being two sets of twins.”
Waving his hand at the man in an apologetic way, Henry said, “Sorry, man. We’ll be quiet, pump away.”
