by Skyler Andra
Battlefield Love
Operation Cupid #1
Skyler Andra
Darkfire © Copyright 2018 Skyler Andra
Cover art by Covers by Christian
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher/author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Thanks
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
About Skyler Andra
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Chapter 1
“So what are you wearing, gorgeous?” the desperate, scratchy voice asked on the other end of the line.
I glanced down at my tattered pajama bottoms and my old high school T-shirt, the smiling badger mascot faded to nearly nothing in the six years since high school. Definitely not sexy, and not the kind of outfit that would keep this guy on the line. Cradling the ancient phone headset between my ear and shoulder, I flexed my fingers. Time to bring out my creative side.
“Well,” I said in a voice pitched at least an octave above my natural speaking timbre, “black see-through lacy panties and a bra.” I threw in a giggle for effect. “Is that silly? I was just waiting for someone to call and I’ve been dying to tell them about it.”
The man on the other end of my ancient landline assured me that it wasn’t silly at all, and I watched the seconds on the call tick by with the patience of the damned.
“So are you really a redhead?” he asked, accompanied by some suggestive heavy breathing. “I think redheads are the sexiest women out there…”
Again I giggled, twining a strand of my decidedly dark brown ponytail around my finger. Years ago it had been red when I’d gone through an artsy phase, but that turned my naturally chestnut hair to straw, so I’d grown it out and cut the crimson off.
“Of course I am, honey!” I replied, stretching the phone cord back and forth. “A deep red, like Jessica Chastain.”
At this news, he sighed and groaned as if it pleased him.
Wanting to keep him on the line as long as possible—hey, a girl had to eat—I added, “My skin burns like you wouldn’t believe if I end up in the sun too long…”
I launched into a story about being caught skinny-dipping on the shores of the lake and getting burned in all sorts of unlikely places.
The guy’s breathing quickened, and he listened for a little while before he interrupted me. “Tell me about your tits.”
I squeezed the handset and pulled it away for a second. One of the things I hated about this job was being interrupted when it disturbed my flow. But…it was this chump’s dime, or rather, his two-ninety-nine a minute, so I’d let it slide.
“Are they big?” he demanded to know.
My curves were cute enough in real life, even if I had a tiny bit of a pot belly, and my hourglass was definitely on the latter part of the hour. Although my actual bra size, a small C-cup, would have made him hang up on me, so I gave him the stock answer. In my experience it hit the spot for all these perverts.
“Forty-two double D,” I answered in a flirty manner.
I got away with talking about having a plus-sized model’s proportions for a little while, and when the dude had a firm picture in his head of someone who wasn’t me, but whom we were both willing to pretend was me, we got to why he called.
“Oh, baby, oh, baby,” he panted. “That’s right, that’s what I want, ugh, give it to me…”
Six months ago I’d lost my reception job at the dentist’s office and needed money to fund my way through college. I really wasn’t sure what I’d expected when I’d applied for an ad for a sensual voice actress. I mean, I’m not an idiot. I had some idea. But what I hadn’t expected was what it did to my voice after three hours on the phone. After all the moaning, whining and groaning I did on the phone, my throat felt raw and dry. I managed to quickly sneak a sip of the lemon water I kept on my desk before replying to him.
“Oooh, oooh, that’s just amazing!” I purred. “You’re amazing, baby, so good, soooooo good.”
I glanced at my desk for inspiration, where I kept a pair of high heels I’d picked up for thirty bucks, for guys who wanted to imagine that I lived in stilettos, suspenders and stockings. A Hello Kitty belt stretched across the desk, for guys who wanted to imagine getting smacked, and you’d be surprised how many actually called for that. Then there was the jar of Vaseline for…you can use your imagination.
“Oh, you’re amazing,” I groaned for my caller, desperate for another sip of my lemon water to soothe my sore throat. “It feels so good. That’s right—do me right!”
Thank god the apartment walls were fairly thick and prevented any noise from my apartment filtering through to my neighbors. It was bad enough when sweet, old Mrs. Kistler next door frowned at me every time the mailman deliver a Victoria’s Secret catalog to my mailbox. Imagine if she found out what I really did besides my cover story of a virtual assistant. I’d rather not give her a heart attack and endanger the delivery of warm, fresh and delicious gingersnap cookies she sometimes baked for me.
Back on the phone, the guy rose to a climax, his voice getting high and slightly braying.
I lifted my voice in conjunction to encourage him. “Oooh, do it to me, do it to me, just like that!”
Yes, it was repetitive and silly, but it paid the bills a hell of a lot better than the dentist office.
I tugged my headset a little farther from my ear when my client howled, then grunted his satisfaction with my services. Thank god. I had been on the phone for almost thirty minutes and began to worry that my voice was going to give out. As he panted on the other end, I snuck another sip of lemon water and wondered how long I would need to work for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow was Sunday, and if I made enough cash to clear rent and groceries, I could go walking along the lake.
I managed a tired giggle and cooed at my client, “Oh my god, that was…”
“Shut up. I’m done with you.” He hung up, as I’d even care, and I rolled my eyes at the beeping on the other end.
It was amazing how weird men got after they came. Of course, that was just in phone sex land. My in-person experience with people after sex, or indeed, even people during sex was distressingly limited. It made my j
ob like a million times funnier, and I’d explain the irony to someone if I had anyone I could talk to about it.
I didn’t even get a break to grab a lozenge for my throat when the next call came through, the peals of the phone demanding to be answered. The tag flashing on the screen told me what each client had asked for. Usually they ranged from the straightforward big boobs and small waist to the kinky spanking and pretending to be tied up and in need of rescue or to the seriously odd smoking and sneezing. The worst and most unhelpful descriptions from my employer was plain old ‘sexy,’ and I’d have to fudge my way through it to figure out what the guy liked.
By all accounts, the next guy was going to be a breeze, when in his words, he wanted to be utterly dominated. On went my heels, and I strutted around my apartment in my pajamas, barking orders that he may or may not have been following, and telling him I owned every part of him. Like the last call, this was another long one, but I was glad when he hung up abruptly after someone called out in the background. Thank the stars too, because I was actually running out of ways to say “you are a dirty, filthy pig, undeserving of my attention.” In actual fact, I thought pigs were pretty cute, but no one asked me anything when they were just after one thing.
Saturday nights were always crazy busy, and I took another three calls, two hang-ups mid-call, and one man who wanted to talk about getting dressed up as if he were getting ready for a ball in the eighteen hundreds.
“Pretend you’re my strict female tailor,” he urged.
Whoa. Now that was a first. This one had me frantic and sweating to find out what clothes from that era looked like. Quickly I snatched my laptop, searching the internet, and a stream of results came back. For just a moment, I was thankful for all the corny historical romances I had watched. All my efforts kept the guy on the phone for another hour at least, as I talked to him sternly about making sure his cravat was neatly knotted, his shoes had a proper shine, and his waistcoat was appropriate to his station.
“That was wonderful,” he said, effusively grateful for my work. “I’ll be calling you again.”
“Have a good night,” I said, genuinely meaning it when I told him, and he disconnected the call.
Okay, that was one for the books, I thought with a grin. I had no idea when I would ever need to know how to dress a Victorian gentleman again, but now I did.
I took off my phone handset, hoping to hang up my heels and end the night on a good note, when another call came through. I frowned at the empty tag for a moment.
“That’s new,” I mumbled to myself, never having seen one come in like that before.
After my amazing effort tonight, I definitely had enough money for the week, but sure, why not? If I couldn’t figure it out, then it was no big loss.
I accepted the call, saying, “Hey honey. How are you doing tonight?”
“Cut that out right now,” the dark voice snapped. “I want to talk to you.”
I faked a laugh even as my finger hovered over the disconnect button. People have a lot of negative things to say about phone sex work, but the beauty of it was, unlike every other job I’d worked, I didn’t need to take anyone’s shit. Sure, some guys were strange or demanded freakish crap, but if I didn’t feel like handling it, I could cut the call.
“Well, you called the right girl,” I said in my doesn’t-take-shit voice, hoping that was what he wanted to hear. “What do you want to talk about?”
There was a laugh on the other end of the line that made a shiver run up my spine.
“Love,” he said, his voice holding a harsh edge. “I want to talk about love.”
Great. Not one of these jaded creeps. “Okay. What do you think about love?”
I started pulling up suicide hotlines and mental health support numbers just in case. It didn’t happen too often, but sometimes someone called in who needed a lot more than help getting off. Sometimes people called in because there was no one else they could talk to or because they couldn’t talk to anyone else in their lives about whatever bugged them.
“Love is pain,” the man snarled. “It’s a darkness that doesn’t end. A canyon where you can shout for a million years, and all you hear back is an echo, your own voice that you mistake for someone else’s.”
Whoa. Poetic, but very dark and creepy.
“Sounds like you’ve had a rough time there.” I tried to use a soothing voice to calm his hostility, but all it did was provoke a laugh on the other end of the line.
“You have no idea.” There was something brittle in his tone, like he’d been burned one too many times by a woman. “Tell me what you think about love.” It was a command, not a suggestion.
I knew what I should say to make him feel better. But no one likes complete agreement. Everyone likes it when the person they’re talking to matches their viewpoints. The right thing to do would have been to rephrase what he’d said, but I was reluctant to for some reason, and somehow, I ended up telling him something like the truth.
“I think… love is an accident,” I started, unable to stop it from spilling out. “Exciting. Fun. But it’s overrated, isn’t it? What’s that line from that old movie, ‘biochemically no different from eating large quantities of chocolate’? I think love isn’t… well, maybe it’s not for me.”
The man on the other end of the line chuckled in a dark way, and it struck me how very unfriendly his manner was.
“Not for you, huh…promising, I suppose,” he said, sounding a little less grim. “What do you think of people who fall in love?”
“Unwise,” I said promptly. “I want more control than that. Love is being vulnerable. I hate the idea of being that vulnerable.”
God, what was I saying? My eyes flew to the disconnect button, and my finger hovered over it. I probably should have used it before. Hell, I should definitely use it now. This was getting weirdly personal. I was letting it get that way, and it was time for me to bail before I admitted anything stupid. For some reason, I didn’t.
“Have you been hurt, Locke?” the man asked, and I picked up the distinct hint of gloating in his tone.
My insides iced over. Startled, I almost dropped the receiver from my hands going weak.
“How did you know my name?” I asked, my voice ragged.
Inside I cursed myself. What I should have done was giggle it off, asked him what he was calling me, in an attempt to bluff him. But my name in the mouth of an anonymous stranger had shocked me to the core.
“I know a lot of things about you, Locke.” The way he said my name held a sharp and sinister edge. “Now tell me what hurt you.”
I should have been scared, but instead I got angry. Fiery heat flooded through me. I’d always had a little bit of a temper, and more than once, it had cropped up to make a bad situation worse. This looked like it was going to be one of those situations.
“Nothing hurt me, asshole,” I said. “And you’re not going to either. This is annoying and dumb, and if you think you’re going to scare me, you got another think coming. Where the hell did you get my name?”
“I know many—”
No. Stop right there, pal. If he was going to go off on some super-villain spiel, I wasn’t listening no matter how much I was getting paid for it.
I slammed the disconnect button, along with the receiver. That call had left me antsy even, and as I shut down the program that let me receive my calls, I put away the props I used for sound effects. For a long moment, I felt his laughter scratching along my spine and rattling inside my head. My whole body shook, and I leapt to my feet. I paced the floorboards of my living room. What in the actual fuck had just happened? After a few deep breaths, my nerves settled, and sense asserted itself again. I was not letting some pervert get the better of me.
Tomorrow, none of this crap. I’d go and walk around the lake, pretend to be a normal girl, maybe grab some lunch downtown. Forget all about this.
I was just beginning to breathe normally again, and then the phone rang. It wasn’t my landline, which
was really used only for work. It was my smartphone in my bag hanging on the wall.
My heart began to pound like mad. What if it was that creep calling back? He’d known my name, so maybe he knew my personal number, too.
With shaking hands, I retrieved my phone, and I blinked when I saw a number listed as ten lots of sevens. It had to be a glitch. A blocked number. Someone calling me from a weird location. Whoever it was, I wasn’t prepared to answer because there was really no one that would be calling me. My friends had fallen away to real lives and loves, my parents were long gone, and I’d paid my landlord rent.
Determined to ignore it, I sat on the edge of my futon until the call ended. Immediately, it started again. Fuck. That spark of temper surged inside me again, burning me all over. Was that dick trying to scare me again? Trying to piss me off? I’d never done well with being scared or angry, and that more than anything else made me answer the phone.
I snatched up the phone, answering it. “What the hell do you want?”
There was a pause from the other end of the line, and then that creepy laugh came through again. This time, instead of making me afraid, it made me even angrier. A snap of energy crackled across my skin.
“Oh my god,” I yelled. “Stop laughing like a scary movie villain! No one is impressed!”
I started cursing him out, and after spending a year waitressing at a Serbian restaurant surrounded by guys who got really creative when someone pissed them off, believe me when I said that I knew how to cuss.
I probably could have kept going for longer, but I had just spent five hours panting, moaning and gasping into the phone. I trailed off, and somehow, the man on the other end of the line hadn’t hung up. I wondered for a moment if he was just going to start laughing again, and I prepared to scream down the line.
