Amanda's Guide to Love by Alix Nichols

at his feet.
    “You should’ve done some market
research first,” she admonished, “before you bought all this . . .
equipment.”
    “I did!” His expression was both
hurt and defiant. “I read several articles in men’s magazines. They all said
the same thing: women can’t resist a man like Christian Grey.”
    “Poor fellow, you don’t get it, do
you?” Amanda breathed as much pity as she could into her tone—she wasn’t going
to let on how disappointed and betrayed she was feeling. “What women find
irresistible about Christian Grey are his billions, not his whips and paddles.
If he were a schoolteacher with a playroom in his parents’ attic, how do you
think they’d react to him?”
    He jutted out his chin but didn’t
answer.
    “Well, I think they’d call
him a disgusting pervert and wouldn’t want to touch him with a ten-foot pole.”
She spun around and marched out the door, not bothering to say good-bye.
    What was wrong with men these days?
Why couldn’t they just make love to a woman without using crutches and
contraptions?
    She’d enjoyed 9 ½ Weeks as much as the next cultivated
person. But even the most tasteful things Mickey Rourke did to Kim Basinger on-screen
would be messy and off-putting in the real world. Especially in Amanda’s world,
where discomfort extinguished desire and ridicule blew it to pieces.
    After Fabrice, she went out with a
couple of high-profile businessmen whose lovemaking turned out to be every bit
as self-centered as their conversation.
    And after that, it was just her and
Faceless Man.
    Until that mind-blowing weekend in
Deauville.
    Now, Kes was a different matter.
She couldn’t think of anything he’d done in bed—or in the beach cabin they’d
borrowed—that she hadn’t liked. In fact, with respect to most of the things he
did, the word like was too mild to describe her reaction. Take
pleasure would be a more adequate expression. Savor would be an even
better fit. As for what he’d done to her with his clever tongue, relish might begin to convey how she’d felt.
    Amanda’s right hand went to rest on
her tummy and then slid lower, settling between her legs. Her treacherous mind blocked
out the inconvenient fact that the very reason she was taking a bath was to
avoid doing what she was about to do now. She threw her head back, closed her
eyes . . . and felt someone—or something—staring at her.
    She sat up and tensed.
    It was a spider. A big, black,
disgusting creature sat across from her on the edge of the tub. It was close
enough for her to discern each of its eight legs.
    Had there been another human within
earshot, she would’ve screamed. But seeing as there was none, she didn’t. She
just froze.
    So did the spider.
    Right. OK. She could handle this. All she
needed was an object that was sufficiently heavy and broad to squash the
critter. Amanda pictured herself picking up one of her pumps and hitting the
spider with it.
    Yuck . She’d have to clean its revolting
remains from the sole of her shoe afterward, and that was more than she
could handle.
    The alternative was to finish her
bath, lock herself up in her bedroom, and hope that the spider would go away by
dawn the same way it had come in. And if it was still there, well, she’d have
to get over her squeamishness and sacrifice one of her least favorite shoes.
    She glowered at the mini-monster.
“Stop staring, you perv, and turn around.”
    The spider shifted its position.
    Amanda rolled her eyes and
scrambled to rinse the soap off her body. She stepped out of the bathtub,
grabbed the towel, and rushed into her bedroom. As she dried herself in there,
a memory began to take shape in the back of her mind.
    A happy memory.
    It was a book, or more precisely, a
series of beautifully illustrated books called Christophe’s Adventures in
the Enchanted Forest. She hadn’t given them a thought in two decades, but
she still remembered most of the stories and the pictures that