Free What She Needs by Lacey Alexander Page A

of like . . . coming home in a weird way.
    As it turned out, Chris had worked here for only six months before meeting a girl on a weekend trip to Miami whom he’d soon married, and now he was a respected psychiatrist and happy father of three. Brent, on the other hand, had never left.
    Sure, he’d gone home to his family in Pittsburgh on holidays, but that had lasted just a few years. Now he only sent gifts and actually spent Thanksgiving and Christmas here with friends who, again, had come to feel more like family to him over time.
    A weird lifestyle? Sure, he supposed it probably seemed that way. But he knew his work here truly helped people lead more fulfilling lives, and he took pride in it—enough that after three years as a facilitator he’d taken an extended leave of absence to get his PhD, allowing him to return as a guide. And he’d become so enmeshed in the resort that when the older couple who’d originally opened the place—Charlie and Madge—were ready to retire, they’d kept twenty-five percent of the business for themselves, selling other equal shares to Brent and two of the other longtime guides, Mariel and Dave.
    So what did Jenna Banks think of him—a guy who chose this as a way of life?
    And . . . hell, why did he give a crap? He’d met literally thousands of women here and seldom thought about their views of him. He could only attribute this to the oddity of having to perform the more personal guide duties to a female guest.
    The peculiar part was—designing a plan for her should have been harder than usual, but it was easier. Guys were more difficult to analyze, because they often had a hard time being open, even on a questionnaire. With his usual guests—who could be cocky jock types, forty-year-old virgins, newly divorced men, guys having midlife crises, you name it—it was always a challenge digging into their psyches and figuring out what was missing in their sex lives, why it was missing, how it affected them beyond sex, and many other questions. With Jenna, she’d kindly put it all out there on the forms she’d completed, making it startlingly clear-cut—and then she’d simplified matters further by showing him last night that she was in denial about it all.
    And while it had been tricky to get her to agree to the fantasies while being in denial, now that she had, the rest seemed . . . incredibly simple. So simple that as he walked along the water’s edge, hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts, he devised her fantasies, one after the other, all in about twenty minutes. There’d be more details to work out as they went along, and as he saw how she responded to each—but his job here was plain: Take her from being a woman who desired sex but inside feared it was dirty and wrong . . . to being a woman fully in touch with her sexual self, fully at ease expressing her sexuality; a woman no one would ever call Little Mary Sunshine between the sheets.
    “Get ready, Jenna,” he whispered to himself as the surf rushed up over his feet, “because the first thing we need to teach you is how to follow my instructions.” She’d already let him know last night that putting him in a position of control worked for her—so that was a central tool he’d use to get her through this process. Once she grew accustomed to obeying his commands, half the battle would be over—she’d soon be rising above her past and accepting her true sexual nature.
     
     
    Jenna had found a quiet, secluded spot on the beach not far from her building where a few umbrellas stood lodged in the sand—padded lounge chairs dotted the area as well. She’d taken a book, a Civil War memoir that would normally hold her interest, but she found it hard to concentrate. God, she wished she could call Shannon and tell her all that had happened—but Shannon worked in a busy office where she couldn’t take personal calls, even one about the most freaky occurrence of her best friend’s life.
    So she stretched out on the