Settling on the sofa, head cradled by a satin pillow, she put on the headset and plugged it into the phone. She preferred the headset to Bluetooth because it didn’t suddenly run out of juice—so to speak—at a critical moment.
Then it was midnight. She came alive at midnight. The phone rang at twelve-o-one.
“Hello, this is Helen. What can I do for you tonight?” she purred.
“I wanna ram my cock in your mouth. Take it all, bitch.”
God, some men were so unimaginative. They went straight for the climax instead of enjoying the journey.
She moaned for him. “Oh baby, you’re so big. Give it to me. Mmmm. Come to Mamma, big boy.”
They said she had a voice that could make a man come in two seconds flat. This one climaxed in less. Or maybe his problem was premature ejaculation. She didn’t know and didn’t care. She clicked off and waited.
Another call. Another voice. Virtually the same words, once she got him going. She waited for something more, someone more. While there was power in listening to men groan and moan, listening to them come merely from the sound of her voice, the fantasy was missing and the feeling that they wanted her, only her, no one but her. Only one voice gave her that sense.
A sound came from the kitchen. Kitty-Kat jumping from the floor to the counter to the top of the refrigerator. She almost got up to shoo him away, but the phone rang again.
Two more calls. Short. To the point. One wanted her to be an underage teenage hitchhiker; the other pretended she was his wife whom he’d discovered in the bedroom sucking the mailman’s cock. Her body had picked up the rhythm, the hum of sex. Now she craved one particular man, one special phone call. And she waited.
He didn’t disappoint her.
“I thought about you all night, Helen,” he murmured in his deep sexy rasp.
Achilles to her Helen of Troy. She’d chosen the name because she’d wanted the face and the body of a woman who’d launched a thousand ships. He was her poet, her romantic. He’d touched her core from that first call over a year ago. They’d long since passed the need for role-playing.
“What are you wearing, Helen?”
“That black garter belt you love, stockings, my black lace bra.”
He moaned. “I want to be inside you. Now.”
She undid the tie of her robe, then ran her fingers across her sensitized nipples. “Do you want me to touch myself?”
“Tell me what it feels like.” His voice was a low groan across the phone line, followed by a buzz and a crackle.
“You’re not on a cell phone, are you?” She didn’t mind if anyone listened in most of the time, but not with him. He was hers alone.
“No. Squeeze your nipples for me. Pinch them.”
She did, lightly, rewarding him with a moan.
“Spread your legs.”
“Oh yes, for you.” Her hand trailed across her stomach, through the nest of hair between her thighs.
“Are you wet?”
“So wet.” She was dripping.
“Put a finger inside yourself. Does it feel good?”
Her only answer was a deep hum she knew he could hear.
“Come for me. I want to hear you come.”
It didn’t take much. She moved her damp finger over her clitoris, whispered his name, and felt her orgasm build. She came with a bucking of her hips against her hand. She cried out, heard his indrawn breath, and knew he wanted her as much as she did him.
“I want to see you, Helen. Now. Tonight.”
A tendril of fear skittered across her scalp leaving a trail of cold in its wake. “You know we can’t do that.”
“I can’t stand it anymore. No one has to know.”
“It’s better this way.” On the phone. Anonymous. Safe.
“Helen, please, I must see you.”
This was an old argument, one they’d been having more and more often. Part excitement, part fear, his desire to meet her fueled her fantasy-lover dreams.
Some things, however, were best left in dreamland. Her Achilles was one of them. “No, it’s not possible.”
“Helen.” His voice changed. Stronger. Angrier perhaps. “I know where you live.”
She clutched her robe to her neck. Oh God. No. He couldn’t.
“You live in a garden, don’t you?” His voice became almost sing-song. “That’s it, my love, you live on Garden Street.”
She yanked the headset off, grabbed the phone off the table, and threw it against the wall with more speed, strength, and agility than she’d used in the last decade.
She flopped back against the pillows and covered her face with her hands. Oh God. He knew where she lived. He’d see what she looked like. Then he’d leave ...
A noise behind her. Like Kitty-Kat paws on the plush carpet. No. Much heavier th—
The first blow knocked her unconscious.
The second crushed her skull.
*
Max Starr cradled the cell phone to her ear. “Now don’t get pissed, okay, but ... I saw another murder in a vision.”
Homicide Detective DeWitt Quentin Long sighed across the airwaves. “Dammit, Max, that’s not an excuse to get out of meeting my mother tonight.”