“Tell me what to do,” I whispered.
His breathing was hard and I heard the shift and squeal of a chair, like he was turning, or leaning back.
“God, you’re good, baby.”
I didn’t give a shit what he thought as long as this feeling was filling my body. “Please,” I whispered.
Again, that groan. “Slide your fingers down between your legs.”
My fingers slipped under the plain pink cotton of my underwear and I whimpered when the pressure of my hand made the ache worse. Sharper somehow.
“I like that sound you made,” he said.
“What next?”
“Cup yourself in your hand, your fingers low…you feel yourself there?”
“Yes. I’m…I’m wet. Hot.”
Dylan swore.
“Good, baby. Now take those fingers down between your lips, just keep following your wetness until your finger slips…”
I gasped. “Inside.”
“Yes.”
“Oh God.” I closed my eyes, sliding my finger out slowly and then back in. I lifted my knees up, arched my hips so I could get more of my finger inside, but somehow, as good as that felt, there was something entirely unsatisfying about it. “It’s not—”
“Use two fingers.”
I did and immediately the pressure inside was fuller…better. My fingers slipped and slid, buried between my legs. I felt the muscles of my channel against the skin of my hand in a way I never had before.
“You know where your clit is?” he asked.
“Yes.” Entirely in theory.
“Slip your thumb up to the top of your *—”
Oh God, that word. That filthy word…“Say that again.”
“Thumb?”
Impossibly, a wild gust of laughter blew through me. My fingers inside my body and I was laughing. He laughed too, and it was a whole new layer of connection.
But then somehow in the same breath, we both sobered.
“Pussy, baby. Slide your thumb to the top of your *.”
I did what he asked, so hard and so fast that when my thumb brushed my clit, I cried out.
“There you go,” he breathed, sounding somehow satisfied. “Work it with your thumb.”
“It…it hurts, a little.”
“Good hurt or bad hurt?”
“There’s no good hurt,” I told him, my voice harsher than I’d intended. Good hurt. What an oxymoron. My thumb lifted from the kernel between my legs that was so sensitive right now I could barely stand to touch it.
His silence went on for a long time, long enough that I pulled my fingers from my body. The breeze over my body was not cool—it was cold.
I crossed an arm over my chest as if he could see me.
“Dylan?”
“You’re not playing, are you? This isn’t some hot virgin kink game with you?”
“Sure it is,” I said, trying to sound coy or something, not like my lungs were being crushed by failure and embarrassment. “You don’t like it?”
“Don’t lie.” His voice was harder than it had been and I responded instinctively.
“Not…really. No.”
“You’ve really never done this?”
Virgin kink. My entire awful, sad, and lonely sexual experience could be summed up as virgin kink?
I sat up, breathless and embarrassed again. My body’s humming, its ache and throb—the slick heat between my legs, on the top of my thighs—shameful more than pleasurable.
“Never mind,” I stammered. “Forget it. Forget everything.”
“Layla, stop. Don’t hang up.”
I didn’t hang up, but I didn’t say anything, either.
“Are you there?” he asked.
After a long moment, I said, “Yes.”
“Did that feel good, that stuff you were doing?”
“Yes.” It came out as a sob. My body felt combustible. My emotions impossibly wild. Totally out of control. I wanted to hit and scream and cry.
“It’s gonna go somewhere, baby. I promise. All those feelings, it’s going to get better and better. Let me…let me tell you what to do.”
“Are you…going to laugh at me?”
“Laugh? I’m the fucking luckiest man on the planet tonight. The only thing I’m going to do is help you come.”