by Sierra Rose
“You. Just you. Anywhere. Any way,” Britt admitted.
“Any way? So on a bed of cabbage leaves, surrounded by caterpillars?”
“Yuck! You’re creative in the bad way. That’s an image I didn’t want in my mind.”
“What about covered in sushi? Or hotel shampoo?”
“Actually my high school fantasy was to have a guy rub Bath and Body Works Plumeria lotion all over my body.”
“Any guy or one in particular?” he teased.
“Justin Timberlake, okay? He could bring sexy back for me anytime!” she laughed, hand over her mouth.
“That is one racy fantasy, there, Britt. You and some whitebread boy band singer and flowery lotion. Wild shit.”
“I know! But you can’t imagine how much I thought of that.”
“I’m concerned though. First of all, I’m not nearly blond enough to fulfill that fantasy and I’ll have to change my music stylistically. But my real concern is, if that had ever come true and you and old JT got down with the Plumeria, what if he called your name and you wondered if he was thinking of Britney Spears?”
“You’re giving me credit for thinking the scenario through logically. I was fifteen. All I was interested in was the basics.”
“So you seem to have loosened up about talking to me at work. My question is, how many people overheard that and how many of them are going to get you plumeria lotion as a gag gift tomorrow?”
“Shut up,” she said, head popping up over the partitions of her cube and looking left and right for eavesdroppers. “I think I’m safe. Everyone’s deeply engrossed in their paperwork.”
“Call me when you get home, okay?”
“It’ll be six in the morning where you are. You’ll be asleep.”
“So wake me up. I’d rather be with you than not with you.”
“I’ll call you,” she said. “Bye.”
Britt spent the rest of the day distracted, humming to herself happily. As soon as the clock rolled over to five, she was on her way to the parking lot and hopping in the Nissan. The Nissan that had been the setting for one of her more recent and decidedly more mature fantasies...involving Jack but with no Plumeria lotion in sight.
Back in her apartment, she kicked off her shoes, poured herself a glass of red and dialed him up.
“Hey, Jack,” she said in what she hoped was a sexy voice.
“Good morning, Britt.”
“It’s nighttime here.”
“Okay, good night. My internal clock is so screwed up. By the time I get it straightened out, it’ll be time to fly home and change times again.”
“I can’t wait until you get back. I promised you some kick ass margaritas.”
“I don’t drink margaritas.”
“I’ll buy you a whiskey sour, then.”
“You’ve got a good memory if you remember that.”
“I remember everything about you.”
“Really....so who was the guitarist I talked about—”
“Kenny Wayne Shepard.” She interrupted, laughing.
“Very good. On to the bonus round then. What about the major risk of being the front man for my band?”
“Being a human shield for the drummer and getting hit with dirty underpants thrown at the stage!”
“And you win!”
“What do I win?”
“Hmmm...I don’t have any Plumeria body lotion to offer. I guess I could sing you some Cry Me a River.”
“You know that song?”
“I may know how to play it on the guitar. My tastes were not always so sophisticated as they are now. I was in high school, too, you know.”
“This may be the most attractive you’ve ever been to me, Jack,” she teased.
“I can do better,” he said, his voice low.
“You’re always saying that,” Britt replied flirtatiously.
“And I always impress you, don’t I?” he challenged.
She smiled as she took a sip of her wine. “You always impress me.”
“Since you won Jack trivia, I think I should reward you.”
“I know you should, but what’s the prize? You’re not here to give me what I really want.”
“I may not be there, but I can give you what you really want anyway, Britt. If you think distance is an insurmountable obstacle, you don’t know me nearly as well as you think you do.”
She laughed. “Look, I know you’re well endowed but we’re talking thousands of miles. You can’t reach.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I want you to listen to me and do exactly what I say. Can you do that?”
“I think so. What are you going to tell me to do?”
“Just stay with me here, okay, Britt. I want you to take your hair down. I know you wore it up because you always do. Are you taking it down?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“You’re lying. I can tell.”
“Ugh, how could you tell? Is there a web cam somewhere in my apartment? Did you plant a camera?” she joked, unpinning her hair. “Fine, my hair’s down now.”
“No, in answer to your impertinent question, I did not place any surveillance devices on or near your property. I’m just perceptive and I can tell when you’re lying.”
“Oh you can, can you?” she asked.
“Definitely. Now go get a glass of wine.”
“I have one right here.”
“Then finish it and get another one.”
“I haven’t eaten,” she protested.
“You can eat later. This is more important,” he insisted.
Britt muttered under her breath about him being bossy, but she poured more wine in her glass.
“Now go get in bed.”
Chapter 2
Are you in bed yet? Jack asked.
“I am not drinking red wine anywhere near my sheets,” she laughed. “They’re white!”
“Okay, so be fussy. Take a drink, set it down across the room, far far away from your precious sheets,” he chuckled and she complied.
“Okay. I’m on the bed.”
“IN the bed,” he corrected. “Clothes off.”
“Uh, no,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’ve never had phone sex. This is embarrassing. I don’t think I want to participate.”
“Give me a chance. If you want to quit, we’ll quit. I’m betting you won’t want to quit.”
“Glad to see you still don’t have a confidence problem,” she said wryly.
“Trust me. Take off your clothes.”
“Fine, but if I want to quit you have to sing Cry Me a River. All of it.”
“Deal,” he agreed easily.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Are your clothes off?”
“Yes,” she admitted, wriggling under the covers self-consciously even though she lived alone.
The sheets felt crisp and cool against her bare skin. She bit her lip, feeling wanton just thinking that.
“Get your vibrator.”
“I—”
“Don’t pretend you don’t have one,” he said saucily.
“Ugh. Do you know everything?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do know everything. Now get your vibrator.”
Britt fumbled in her drawer for a second and found it.
“Ready.”
“Now lay it aside for the moment and just run your fingers through your hair. Rub your scalp the way I do,” he instructed.
Britt rubbed her head, feeling both silly and a little relieved that this was so simple. She was comfortable combing her hand through her own hair. This was fine. Not embarrassing. Not something from a cheap porno. Just smoothing her hair. Totally g-rated.
“And run your fingers down your neck on one side. Across your collarbone. Back again. Do that a few times,” he said patiently. “Trail your fingers lightly down between your breasts, all the way down to your belly button and then up your side. Brush just the side of your breast but don’t do anything else yet.”
Britt was
surprised at how good it felt just rubbing up against the side of her own breast. She wanted to go straight for the nipple, but she held back because he told her to and she had agreed that he’d be in charge of this process, whatever it was. She waited for him to say something else and absently traced up and down her sternum again, running her fingers over the top of her breast and around the side teasingly. It tickled slightly, gave her a shiver.
“Now put me on speaker.”
“Um, why?”
“Because you’re going to need both hands here in a minute,” he countered and she changed him to speaker, putting the phone on the pillow next to hers. “Britt, I want you to cup both your breasts in your hands and start massaging them, stroking them, moving in toward the nipples. Pull back the covers and watch them peak and harden. Then, when they’re tight and hard, tug at them with the tips of your fingers.”
Just hearing him say that, give those instructions, shot a bolt of desire down her stomach and between her legs. She followed directions, biting her lip at the restraint it took to wait until her nipples were visibly pebbled, elongating and ready. She tugged and pinched them, turning her head and shutting her eyes, wishing he were there, that these were his hands, then his mouth on her nipples.
“Don’t stop. Keep pulling and rubbing, Britt. For me. Pretend it’s me. Just hear my voice and be my hands, touch yourself the way I need to touch you right now. I need you so much. This is all we can have right now, so make it good. I want this to be good for you. Keep going,” he said, his voice almost pleading. “Now run one hand down your stomach and start stroking your thighs. Tease yourself. Don’t go straight for the prize,” he said.
Britt’s hips jerked as she stroked up the inside of her thigh, stopping short of touching where she wanted to. She touched her thighs, welcoming the equal mix of excitement and frustration. When he told her to, she rubbed her fingers along the outside of her folds, not stroking in earnest, not reaching for the nub that would give her such release, just teasing, wickedly slow and erotic.
“Imagine my mouth at your ear, whispering, licking. Imagine my hand on your breast, touching you lightly now, then suddenly rougher. Imagine my other hand reaching between your legs...you know how, thrusting my fingers into you, thickly, deeply until you clench around them. Do that again and again and start to build it. Then when you need it, get your vibrator and start it on your stomach, then run it down lower and lower, along your thighs, don’t hurry,” he instructed and she followed along, panting, licking her lips, her mouth going dry with desire.
Britt rolled the vibrator down her belly and thighs, brought it back up to the spot where she needed it. Her tongue was pressed to her upper lip, her eyes shut, concentrating, reaching, reaching for it until the climax rolled over her so fast and hard that she groaned aloud with its force. Shudders rocked her body and she curled onto her side, pulling the covers up to fight the chill and loneliness.
“Britt, I’m with you. I’m right here,” his voice came.
“Gosh, I wish you were,” she said. “That just made me miss you worse.”
“I’m sorry, babe.”
“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever said you were sorry for anything. And this is nothing you should have to apologize for. You have this amazing career where you, like, invent software and have to teach people to use it. And you travel for that.”
“I’m a guitarist. I’m a graphic designer, and I do some software stuff too. I’m a jack of all trades.”
“You’re versatile. You’re multi-talented. I so wish you were here. Right this second. I would kiss you.”
“Where?”
“Right here. In bed,” she said.
“I mean, where would you kiss me?” he challenged.
“The spot right below your ear, the one that makes your pulse kick up about twelve notches.”
“Ah, that place. Yes,” he said, a little breathless.
“Are you....?”
“Yes. Talk to me. I want it to be you.”
“I want it to be me, too,” she confessed. “If you were here, I’d kiss you in bed, below your ear. I’d lay my head on your chest to hear your beating heart. I’d wrap my arms around you and pull you up on top of me and tell you how I need you right now. I need you filling me up, making me feel alive and—visible and real. Before you, I felt like I disappeared sometimes. But you saw me, you just looked at me like I was something, you know? And it made me crazy from the first day. I was never this—-outgoing, I guess, or daring or naughty. I never wanted to be. It was all just a mess that I looked down on, like I was above it. When really, I never knew I wanted that. When I spent the night with you, when I took you home the night Kevin dumped me, it...this sounds so cheesy so I’m just going to say it...awakened something, a thirst in me that I couldn’t turn off, I couldn’t stop wanting you all the time.”
“So when you saw me at the retirement party and ate two pieces of cake was it because you wanted me?”
“It was pretty good cake, but mainly yes, I was using food as a substitute for sex. Even buttercream frosting isn’t that good. Nothing in my life has ever felt as good as you do when you touch me. It’s like your touching me, not just some girl, not just any lover, but me in particular. There is nothing more intoxicating, for me at least, than being seen by you and being close to you that way.”
Britt wiped away tears, glad for the first time that he wasn’t right there beside her in the flesh, so he couldn’t see them. She had been unprepared to have such deep feelings for him so quickly. When he said on the phone that he was falling for her, she had been astounded, but it had almost validated what she already felt for Jack. It scared her, to have her happiness and even her focus so tied up in another person and so swiftly. She had fallen hard and it was terrifying. She wanted to go take a shower, be off the phone and away from him so he couldn’t hear what was in her voice, in her thoughts or her heart. She wanted to self-protect, to take it back. She hadn’t meant to say so much about the connection she felt.
Britt got up and washed her face and hands, leaving her phone there, with Jack on speaker, whispering intimate things. She walked out on him. When she returned in a fresh nightgown, he was still there, saying her name with increasing urgency.
“I’m here,” Britt said reluctantly, hands clasped in her lap as if she were at a job interview, suddenly formal and decorous.
“Where’d you go?”
“It’s okay, babe. I’m back.”
“I need you here,” he said. “I’m almost there. Just talk to me.” Jack’s voice was coercing, low and intimate and she almost, almost wanted to do anything he asked. But it had been too intimate, too personal. She had to withdraw or she’d lose herself, she was sure. This guy, this gorgeous, rich guy wasn’t likely to be serious about her. He probably just wanted to amuse himself until he got back to his real life and the legions of stunning supermodels and singers who would be much more in his league. She had to be a lark, a distraction and nothing more. Why else would he want her, an insecure accountant at his father’s new business? Because she drank too many margaritas and hooked up with him? She had a feeling that hardly made her one of a kind.
She was panicking. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart was racing. Everything was spinning. She needed air...quick.
“I’m getting another call,” she lied. “I need to take it. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Then she hung up on him before he could call her out on lying, on panicking and running from him any way she could.
Britt sat on her bed, staring at her phone, wondering what she’d done...unable to decide what made her more ashamed, the phone sex or the way she cut him off and avoided returning the favor. Too much emotion, too many feelings always made her uncomfortable. Ever since college when she’d fallen for the wrong guy and ended up the butt of every joke in her sorority for having ever believed that athletic, blond Mack Houston wanted her. There had been a bet and she had been at the center of it, an ugly notion about getting the most uptight
girl in the house to cut loose. Mack had won the two hundred dollars, which was all her virginity had been worth when it was all said and done. Ever since then, she’d been afraid that any guy who wanted to be with her might be playing a trick, biding his time, waiting to hurt her for a laugh.
It was part of why she had been with Kevin, she realized that now. He seemed safe. He seemed like he wouldn’t attract a lot of attention from the opposite sex...dependable and ordinary as he was. That is until he started cheating on her with someone called Corinne and dumped her at their anniversary dinner. That had been unexpected but, in a way, a self-fulfilling prophecy. If she believed she wasn’t worth wanting, she’d only attract people who weren’t worth having. By settling for him, she’d thought she was safe. Instead, their breakup had plunged her into a one-night stand with Jack Fitzsimmons, the man who stole her breath and seemed to take over her every thought. She couldn’t quite believe the things he said to her. She couldn’t trust him and now she could see how deep her feelings ran for him. She had summoned catastrophe.
She tossed and turned all night, until her alarm went off and she dragged her weary, conflicted self up to face the day. As happy as she’d been the evening before when she came home, she was just as miserable now. He couldn’t possibly reciprocate her feelings. She had been intimate with him, all the way, since the night they met, giving herself up too easily until she now had no idea how to get her heart back. His casual assurance, his pretty words and his ability to persuade her to do absolutely anything...they could be the ruin of her. He could be the ruin of her.
Chapter 3
Britt was determined to act normal—focused, breezy, not at all pining away for the biggest mistake she’d probably ever made. She was thankful no one knew about their involvement. It was difficult enough without Marj making cracks about Britt and the boss’s son. So she went to work and did her job and congratulated herself on acting perfectly ordinary. That night, she listened to the two voicemails he had left her and she decided to text back. No reason to be unfriendly or needlessly dramatic. Just disengage a little at a time before it was too late and she was head over heels for a man so far out of her league.
