Misbehaving by Tiffany Reisz

bothered pursuing anyone while she settled into her new apartment outside of Washington, D.C., and reconnected with friends. She’d forgotten how much she’d missed sex. Orgasms she had every day and while she enjoyed them, those solo satisfactions could never completely replace the pleasures to be found lying naked underneath a man like Ben, her thighs open to receive him into her, her body a gift given to him, his body a country to be endlessly explored.
    While she was stretching her back, Ben peeked his head around the wall by the bathroom. He crooked his finger at her.
    “What?” she whispered.
    “Come here,” he whispered back.
    “Why are we whispering?” she asked.
    “I have no idea.”
    She followed his beckoning finger into the bathroom where Ben had drawn a bath in the large Jacuzzi tub.
    “Are you trying to get me wet?” she asked.
    “Soaking wet,” he said and then with a heroic flourish swooped her up in his arms. Beatriz squealed with surprise as Ben feigned dropping her in the water. Instead he sat her gently in the tub and stepped in behind her.
    With a blissful sigh, Beatriz lay back against his chest as Ben wrapped two strong wet arms around her.
    “Bath. Good idea,” she said.
    “Purely therapeutic,” Ben said. “I think I overworked an ass muscle during a figure-eight grinding maneuver.”
    “I’ll put that warning in the review notes.”
    “I can’t believe you’re going to write about us fucking for this blog.”
    “Why not?” she asked. “I won’t put your name in it.”
    “Your name’s in it.”

    “I know. But I don’t care. It’s not like it’s some big secret that women masturbate and have sex.”
    “You’d think it was the way people act about sex.”
    “Someone has to talk about sex like it’s just any other normal human activity. If no one else wants to do it, I guess that means I have to,” she said.
    “How did you get to be like this?” Ben asked as he scooped up handfuls of warm steaming water and poured them over her chest.
    “Like what?”
    “Like this sex goddess who writes about sex, studies sex, reviews sex toys…. I mean, how did you decide to go into that field?”
    Beatriz laughed and sighed as Ben massaged her breasts with his soapy hands.
    “Well, you know I was born in El Salvador. I lived there until I was ten.”
    “I know. You told me about all the fighting and civil unrest.”
    “After my parents died, my grandparents did everything they could, spent every penny they had to get me to the States. America is free, they said. You can do anything in America, be anything you want in America. In my country, a woman who was raped couldn’t get an abortion, even if the pregnancy would kill her.”
    “That’s crazy.’
    “It’s a beautiful country, so much to love. But hard to live there for a woman. And then I came to the United States, and I decided that I would use all the freedom my grandparents had worked so hard to give me. So my senior year in high school, it’s almost time for prom. And the school starts to freak out because the guidance counselor says they should have condoms at the prom. This counselor, Mr. Lear, was such a good guy. Not judgmental. He said teenagers would drink no matter what parents and teachers did so they should offer a prom-night taxi service. And teenagers would have sex no matter what parents and teachers said so the school should supply condoms.”
    “What happened?”
    “He was fired.”
    Ben sighed. “No surprise there, I guess.”
    “But I was a student so I knew they couldn’t fire me. I bought fifty boxes of condoms and put them on the tables at prom. I got in so much trouble for that.”
    “You rebel.” Ben laughed so hard he made a wake in the bathwater.
    “My foster parents fought for me, stood up for me. I got suspended but not expelled. Apparently they couldn’t find any school rules that said students couldn’t give other students condoms.”
    “You’re my hero right now,” Ben