Talking about a dull suburban childhood really doesn’t seem like a sign.
He had a point there. Or, at least, enough of one that she almost accepted it.
And then tutted at him through her phone as she remembered the rest.
No, probably not. But everything else apart from that did. The knowing each other, medieval peasant, sexy pottery stuff really fits the bill.
Come on. Flirting requires more than just talk.
Oh, suddenly you’re an expert on the subject?
I know enough. I know you need gestures.
She almost went with something innocent, in return.
Almost, almost, almost. The sentence yeah you’re probably right spooled out from beneath her fingertips, and then just sat there, ready to be sent.
But then she thought about all the things he’d texted her.
She scrolled back up through them, just to check it wasn’t her imagination.
Before she just went for it.
Maybe I’m making them.
And lingering looks.
I’m definitely doing that.
What about body language?
If you saw my body now, you’d be pretty clear on what it was saying.
It wasn’t a shock when he stopped replying, this time. But it was about a hundred times more annoying. He was the one who’d set the tone of their conversations—she’d just let him. Yet, somehow, here she was, in the near darkness, with a silent phone in her lap.
In fact, the phone was so silent that when it suddenly rang she almost screamed. She came pretty close to hurling it across the room. She had to calm herself down before she could answer, just so he wouldn’t think it was him who’d gotten her all out of breath.
“Well, this is the very last thing I expected you to do,” she said, as breezily as she could. And then she heard that voice, and breezy immediately started to slip away.
“I didn’t just want to cut off in the middle of a conversation.”
“Yeah, but talking like this is probably going to be a lot worse than texting.”
“Nothing could be worse than texting. I thought it would be safe, and instead, it just feels like I’ve been freed to say whatever I want. Do you know how close I came to asking you what your body was doing? The answer is very,” he said.
And suddenly, she was very glad he couldn’t see her right now. His voice kind of dipped on that last word, and when it did, her toes actually curled. She had to fan herself with one hand.
But she managed to keep her voice somewhat under control.
At the very least, she kept some amusement in it. “And you think calling me is going to stop that happening?”
“I did when I hit your number. Now, I have my doubts.”
“You should. Because the urge to say is getting bigger by the second.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to do my best to dissuade you.”
“You can try, I suppose.”
She could almost hear him mulling it over.
And it didn’t take much to picture, either.
That look to the heavens. The way he ran a hand through his hair.
Then finally, finally, “Yesterday, I found a dead rat under my sink.”
Though unfortunately for him, it didn’t quite hit the mark.
“That was a good effort. But the words are still on the tip of my tongue.”
“Fine. So maybe I should tell you about the documentary I watched on soil erosion.”
“Go ahead. Just hearing your voice say those words is enough to get me started,” she said, and the best part was: she didn’t even have to lie. He said soil the way most people said sex. The tip of his tongue just seemed to caress it.
But he wasn’t having any of it. “Then I’ll be completely silent.”
“So I can hear nothing but your breathing?”
“Yeah. But the breathing is perfectly ordinary.”
“It doesn’t sound ordinary now. God knows where it’ll be when I start telling you all about the teeth I’ve sunk into my lower lip and the hands I’m currently pretending are yours.”
“If you want to really pretend they’re mine you should be clenching your fists so tight you can feel your pulse beating in the middle of them. And then, once you’ve got that down, try hitting yourself in the thigh until you stop any desire that tries to get a hold of you.”
Now it was her turn to fall silent. Though possibly fall silent was the wrong term.
It felt much more like someone had just ripped any and all words right out of her.
Suddenly, all she could do was picture him, like that.
Picture him, so desperate to restrain himself.
And when she did finally speak, she knew she sounded stunned.
“Is that really what you’re doing right now?”
“I’m gonna have a bruise the size of a grapefruit tomorrow,” he said.
Then somehow she just couldn’t help herself.
“Oh fuck, that’s so hot. Oh, my god that’s the hottest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You can’t be serious. Lydia, tell me you’re not serious.”
“I would, but I’m too busy picturing you seething with repressed lust.”
“I’m hardly seething. I just want to punch myself a lot, and I feel sort of like I’m wearing twelve invisible sweaters and talking is getting kind of hard, and oh Jesus, yeah, I see it now. I see what you’re saying.”
She nodded firmly at nothing. Though, she was pretty sure that firmness showed in her voice. “Great. So now you can describe it in full to me.”
“I just did. And now I want to take it all back.”
“Why? Nothing can happen here.”
“Things are already happening.”
She pictured his fist again, thumping into his thigh.
Her own hand, now somehow almost covering her breast.
But it just wasn’t enough to suggest they should stop.
It wasn’t anywhere near enough.
“Yeah, but none of them can ever include physical contact between us, Isaac. You’re not going to accidentally fall dick first into my vagina. I can’t fling my clit at your face.”
“True, but you can say it. You can say crazy bullshit like that and still make me go out of my mind—simply because the word clit was in there. It was there and I heard your voice curl around the word, and now all I can think about is what it would be like if you did some sane version of that. If you pushed my face between your legs or climbed up until your pussy was right there, right against my mouth and tongue, and oh fuck, fuck.” She heard sounds following the cursing. Like maybe he was banging his phone against something. Then a second later, “I have to hang up.”
Just like that. I have to hang up.
After those words.
“Don’t you dare hang—”
“I’m sorry honey but I can’t control myself with you.”
“I don’t need you to control yourself. I need you to—”
“You don’t need me to do anything. You’ll be fine, I promise,” he said, and that was pretty much her limit. Just hearing that one word: promise.
Like he was her kindly babysitter sending her off to school.
She simply couldn’t let him carry on like this.
“Not if I die of unfulfilled desire, Isaac. Goddamn it, are you really going to do this to me again? I’m shaking so hard my teeth are rattling in my head. If I get any hotter I’m going to melt through the bed. And I know, I know I could let you go now and just make myself come and then pretend everything is cool, but oh my god, it would be so much sweeter if you let me hear you while I do.”
Silence, then. Enough of it that she was sure she’d gone too far.
That he’d hung up, just like he’d said.
Then he spoke, and she breathed out again.
“I think it would be sweet, too, honey.”
“Then why the fuck can’t you just—”
“Because I don’t know how much of that feeling is for yo
u, to give something to you, and how much of it is for myself. How much of it is just this selfish desire to hear what happens when I talk dirty to you. If it was seventy/thirty I think I could go with it and still live with myself. But the truth is, it isn’t even close. It’s fifty/fifty at best. And that’s not good enough.”
Now it was her turn to be silent.
And when she could finally summon words, they were shaky. “Jesus, Isaac. Only to you, the most amazing man to ever exist outside of my imagination, could fifty/fifty be not good enough. I’ve been with guys where I’ve prayed for fifty/fifty. Where fifty/fifty seemed like an impossible dream that you might have to use wizardry to achieve. There have been times I’ve settled for ten percent, for fuck’s sake, and you think half is bad?”
“No.” He paused, and she could practically hear him considering his words. She could see his expression, when he did it. The way his gaze always seemed to search the empty air for answers. Then, slowly, “I think…I think no one has ever seen me the way you do.”
“I don’t know why. You never make it difficult.”
“Not even when I’m refusing to do this with you?”
“Especially when you’re refusing to do this with me. Because as much as I hate it, I understand why you’re doing it so fucking deeply that I will never forget it. It will probably be my last memory on my death bed—that time Isaac Morales was so fundamentally kind and decent that he thought twenty percent of extra wanting was way too much,” she said, then waited for his silence. She expected his silence, for that.
But none came.
“If I was there, I would kiss you.”
“Well, that is definitely a start.”
“It would only be a start if it was on the lips, honey. Where I’m thinking of kissing you is more like the place most people save for last.”
She almost just went ahead and replied.
Then what he’d said sank in, and all she could do was gasp.
Much to his consternation. “Was that too much?”
“Good god, no. No.”
“A little more, then?”
“Yes please,” she said, and sort of cringed at the simple eagerness of her words.
Though, man, was she ever glad she’d gone with them when he replied.
“Like me easing your panties down.”
“That is definitely the kind of thing I had in mind.”
“And maybe the back of my hand trailing over your thighs.”
“To be honest, my thighs seem like the tamest place you could touch, after the things you’ve just said and described.”
“Not if my goal is persuading you to spread them.”
She came very close to just moaning, at that.
Though, she could hardly blame herself.
Somehow, him saying spread was the sexiest fucking thing in the world. It sent a hot rush of pleasure straight to her pussy—so strong and thick that she couldn’t resist.
She had to do exactly what he’d suggested.
And when she finally spoke, her voice was shaking. “Oh goddamn, that was good.”
“Good enough to do it, in this imaginary scenario?”
“It was done the second you told me to spread.”
“You say that like you actually might have.”
“Because I did. I had to. I had to,” she said.
Then immediately wanted to take it back.
Fantasy was fine, but what if real was too much?
It felt like too much.
Until he replied.
Oh, holy fuck when he replied.
“And will you stroke your clit, when I tell you my tongue is sliding over it?” he asked, in the same calm, collected summer breeze voice as always. Like it was nothing. Like it didn’t take hold of all of her most sensitive parts, and squeeze until she wanted to scream.
She only just managed to control herself long enough to answer.
And even then, her words sounded more like a sigh of pleasure.
“I think I would have to be made of stone to not.”
“Good. So, go ahead. Slide a finger through your slit.”
“You want me to…you…okay. Okay,” she said.
Though, man, it was not as easy as she expected to actually do it. For a start, it had been a while. In fact, she couldn’t quite remember the last time she’d had the urge to masturbate at all. She was rusty, and it showed.
But it was the shaking that really slowed her down.
It was so bad, by this point, that she could hardly get her panties down. Twice she almost dropped the phone, as she shoved and worked them down her legs. And when she finally managed, she couldn’t just touch herself.
She had to steady her right hand with her left, as she eased her fingers through her slippery folds. She had to be careful, oh so careful.
But lord, when she finally found her swollen clit…
It was so good she couldn’t stop her sigh of delight.
Not that he minded in the least.
“Now tell me, are you slick?” he asked.
As if he really wanted to know.
“Fuck, yes. Yes. Insanely so.”
“Insanely isn’t really a good descriptor.”
“Ohhhh, Jesus you want to know more?”
“To be honest, I would have thought that was a given.”
“It is. But hearing you pretty much ask for details…” she said, then couldn’t do anything but trail off into a moan. The pleasure was too intense to keep doing things like form words and think about things rationally. There was just her gloriously slick pussy and the amazing feeling of her clit swelling beneath her fingertips, and then, oh then…
She was going to come. She was going to come that fast.
Months of nothing and she was just there that easy.
And, oh god, it was so good. It was impossibly, unbelievably good. It arced through her in a way she couldn’t ever remember it being, hard enough that it made her actually buck on the bed. It made her sob with joy and relief against her arm, so loud she knew he would hear it. She knew he would hear everything she said too—all the filthy things that poured out of her in the moment, like I want and to come and all over your cock.
Though, she couldn’t care about that. She didn’t care about that.
Or at least, she didn’t until she was deep into the aftermath.
Then she realized with a jolt: she might have just experienced some kind of sexual renaissance. But while she was doing that, he had gone quiet.
Terribly, ominously, deathly quiet.
And that only meant one thing.
“Okay, I know I went way too far then but please, please do not hang up on me,” she babbled, the second the idea that he was about to occurred. She even thought she heard the disconnect sound, in her still dazed and discombobulated state.
Then she heard him, she heard him.
Sweet as anything. Sweeter even than her orgasm.
“I had no intention of hanging up on you, honey. Not now. Not after that.”
“Does that…does that mean you liked hearing me say those things?”
“At the very least, I know how strong your affection for me is.”
“Think you could probably call it a little more than affection.”
“Well, I was going to go with lust but that kind of edged into bragging.”
She laughed at that. Though, it was more relief than anything that made her do it.
He had not only stayed on the line—he was also still willing to be himself with her.
To be funny, in that deliciously dry and self-deprecating way.
“Nobody would think you were bragging about how much I want to fuck you after I spent half an hour having an orgasm because you said soil erosion.”
“I said more than that.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Almost. Not enough,” he said.
And oh, that was music to her ears.
“There is no not enough.”
“Yeah. I think I k
now that, now.”
“So what do you want to do?”
She imagined many things in the silence that followed. We should talk on the phone more or we could start the meet ups again or even just I don’t know.
But he didn’t go with any of them. He waited just long enough for her to get to the edge of her seat, and then he said in his most casual voice:
“Take you out to dinner, honey. I want to take you out to dinner.”
Chapter Ten
She had absolutely no idea why he chose the diner for their date. The whole place looked like it had been recently condemned. Part of the tin can roof was tilting at an odd angle; she was pretty sure it leaked. The front door would not stay shut—instead it flapped in the wind like forgotten laundry.
And the inside was even worse. Every booth in the place was shedding stuff or peeling plastic, or both at the same time. The floor was sticky, the fluorescent lights bathed everything in a sickly glow, the waitress had a cigarette jutting out from between her mean lips. It was honestly hard to tell if you were supposed to dine, or die at the start of a horror movie. She was pretty sure this was where they’d filmed Diner Slasher.
But he didn’t appear to notice. In fact, he seemed almost pleased with himself.
Then, once they were in their death trap of a booth, the reason dawned on her:
He had wanted a venue that discouraged sexy feelings.
That was his purpose here, quite obviously.
And by god, he had outdone himself. She couldn’t even touch her leg against his—whatever held the table in place was in the way. And there was no way to reach across to take his hand. The table top was so filthy she feared resting her arms on it. All she could do was look and talk, but even they were restricted.
He had raised his menu the second they sat, so she couldn’t see anything but faded pictures of pies and burgers. And though the juke in the corner was playing pretty quietly, the music coming out of it sounded like pennies caught in a blender. It screeched and moaned until it was all she could hear or think about. For a minute, she just sat there, trying to work out if it was Bono singing or a robot slowly being strangled.
Only after it ended could she say anything.
And she did not hold back.
“Did you…did you bring me here because it kills sex?”
Never Better: A Dark Obsession Novel Page 10
