“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.