Prologue

Ask me my three favorite things and the answers are so easy they roll off my tongue: hitting a homerun for my softball league, drawing a killer cartoon panel, and—oh yeah—making a woman come so hard she sees stars.

Not gonna lie. That last one is my favorite by about a mile. Giving a woman a sheet-grabbing, toe-curling, mind-blowing orgasm is pretty much the Best Thing Ever.

A woman’s climax is like summer break, Christmas morning, and a vacation in Fiji all rolled together in one fantastic package of window-shattering bliss. Hell, if we could harness the beauty and energy from women coming, we could probably power cities, stop global warming, and bring about world peace. The female orgasm is basically the manifestation of everything good in the world. Especially when I deliver them, and I’ve given thousands upon thousands. I’m like a superhero of pleasure, a good-deed doer, the once-upon-a-shy-guy-now-a-stud, and my mission is to dispense as many climaxes to my lovers as possible.

How have I managed to achieve this amazing feat? Simple. I’m both a student and a master of the art of giving Os. I consider myself an expert because—in the interest of full disclosure here—I’m completely, one hundred percent obsessed with a woman’s enjoyment between the sheets. Getting her off is the name of the game, and if you can’t get that job done, you should get the hell out of the bedroom.

But, hey, I’m also humble enough to admit I’m still a learner. Because there’s always something new to discover with a woman.

Does she want it soft, hard, fast, light, rough? Does she like it with teeth, toys, my cock, my tongue, my fingers? Does she crave a little something extra, like a feather, a vibrator, or a combination of the above? Every woman is different, and every path to her pleasure is its own erotic journey with so many fantastic stops to make along the way. I take mental notes, study her cues, and always get out and do the fieldwork.

I suppose that makes me the Magellan of the female orgasm. A true explorer, venturing forth, fearless and ready at any moment to map the terrain of her pleasure until she cries out in rapture.

Fine, some might say I have an addiction. But really, is it a bad thing that I love to make the woman I’m with feel good? If that makes me a guy with a one-track mind, then I’m guilty as fucking charged. I’ll freely admit that when I meet a woman I’m into, I picture in seconds what she looks like coming, how she sounds, how I want to send her soaring.

The trouble is, there’s one woman I just can’t go there with, even though lately my brain desperately wants to figure out how to drive her wild. It’s been an epic battle, and I’ve had to keep her in a special drawer, sealed and locked, the key thrown away, because she is the definition of hands off.

Which sucks royally because she’s about to make things even harder with the words that come out of her mouth.

1

They say men have sex on the brain 99.99 percent of the time. You’re not going to catch me trying to dispute that.

Why would I? It’s pretty much dead-on accurate, especially when you consider the remaining 0.01 percent of brainpower is tirelessly dedicated to finding the remote.

In my case though—and I suppose, in my defense—sex is part of my job.

And so is schmoozing and signing autographs. Ergo, here I am at An Open Book, a cool bookstore on the Upper West Side. When this signing shindig started a few hours ago, a long line of fans snaked out the door. The event my network set up is almost over, so the line is winding down. The crowd has been fifty-five to forty-five in favor of the fairer sex, which is absolutely nothing I’m going to complain about, especially since my fans were pretty much all dudes several years ago.

Some still are. Like this guy.

“My favorite episode is based on that one,” a squeaky-voiced, messy-haired, awkward teenager says, as he points to a panel that features Mister Orgasm rescuing a dozen busty beauties from a remote island where they’d been deprived of sex for far too long. The upshot? Only a cartoonish caped crusader could replenish their depleted stores of pleasure, which had dwindled to terrifyingly low levels.

I shudder at the thought of what those women must have gone through before the hero arrived to save the day.

“Yeah. That one does rock,” I say, flashing the kid a quick grin and then nodding seriously. “Mister Orgasm did a great service for the ladies, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” the kid says, with wide, earnest eyes. “He helped them so much.”

It’s weird, because he’s probably sixteen, and there’s a part of me that thinks why the fuck are you watching my raunchy TV show? But on the other hand, I get it. When I was his age, I didn’t have a clue about girls either. Which probably explains why I started drawing The Adventures of Mister Orgasm, the once online cartoon, now late-night television sensation, which includes the storyline about the aforementioned act of good citizenship performed by the titular hero.

Titular.

I said titular.

In my head.

Anyway, that had definitely been a popular episode, and one of the reasons my network packaged up some of my old strips into this graphic novel by yours truly, Nick Hammer. Special edition and all, like the embossed gold stamp on the cover says.

“Can you sign it to Ray?” he asks, and as I raise the black Sharpie, I catch a flash of gold out of the corner of my eye, then a hand in a pocket.

Oh, shit.

I think I know what the woman lined up behind Ray just did.

I finish signing and hand him the book. “Go forth and give pleasure, Ray,” I tell him, as if it’s a mantra. I knock fists with him, and he stares briefly at his hand afterward, as if he’s been blessed by a master.