Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
F eeling not unlike a horny dude, Tori jumped into the driver’s side of her Jeep and shifted her underwear. After nearly an hour of making out on Mia’s couch so hard that her face was numb, desire had glued the fabric to her body.
She drove home with the windows down, hoping the balmy breeze would cool her off. In early August, the nights were just as hot as the days, but even the surface of the sun would feel cooler than the heat raging in Tori’s body. She tried, very hard, not to think about how badly she wanted to do more than kiss Mia.
Don’t be greedy, she told herself as she navigated through Midtown—and the usual tourist chaos—on her way home. If someone had told her weeks ago that she’d be making out with Mia, she wouldn’t have asked, That’s it?
If Mia were ready for more, she’d say so. Tori wasn’t going to be the one to take things further. Plus, it wasn’t like kissing her wasn’t excruciatingly hot. Hot and incredible and enough. She shifted in her seat again and focused on the road.
As soon as she punched the code into her front door, she texted Mia to let her know she was home. Her phone rang a minute later.
“Hi,” Mia said, sounding a little breathless.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tori chuckled and kicked off her shoes by the entrance.
“Nothing, I just got out of the shower. Did you know that cold shower advice is bullshit?”
Tori finished pulling off her shirt on her way to her bathroom upstairs and fumbled with the phone. She must have misheard.
“What?” Tori swallowed, throat suddenly dry.
Mia hesitated. “Does kissing not turn you on?” She sounded so unsure. “Or are you not feeling?—”
“Oh my God. Are you kidding?” Tori took her stairs two at a time and pulled her shorts off when she reached her bedroom. “I’m so turned on I was heading straight for the shower.”
“Spoiler alert. It doesn’t work,” Mia joked, but there was a real frustrated edge under the jest.
“Did you really take a cold shower?” Tori dropped her voice at the same time that she sat on the corner of her bed.
“Yeah,” Mia replied, voice just as soft. “Is that embarrassing?”
“No.” Tori gripped her own thigh like that might redirect the pulse of hunger warming her skin. “It’s really hot.”
“Yeah?” Mia said in a way that made Tori picture her cheeks brightening. “You’re not just saying that?”
Tori shifted her weight, grabbing the edge of the mattress when she moved back. The friction of the contact made her want to grind against it. To chase relief anywhere she could. “Trust me. You’re, um, not alone.” Her stomach fluttered with insecurity. She wasn’t sure how direct to be—how upfront with what she wanted.
Mia paused like she was workshopping her response. Like she was also awkward and unsure from the newness of it all when it was dressed in the trappings of the familiar.
“At least you can do something about it.” Her voice was gentle, like lips grazing Tori’s neck.
“I’m pretty sure you can too,” Tori replied, heart racing at the image of Mia arching off the bed.
Mia’s laugh sounded too much like a groan. “I didn’t exactly think about packing my vibrator, Tori.”
Tori swallowed hard when a toy entered her mental image. Jesus. Old habits told her to cut the fantasy off at the knees. To stop herself from objectifying Mia. But she was tired and her grip on self-control slipped.
“I’m pretty sure people have been getting off before batteries were invented.” Tori tried to keep her tone light, but there was no hiding her desire.
“Yeah, um. I’ve just… I guess I’ve never taken the manual option,” she replied after a beat. “Maybe I should tell you so you know what you’re in for. I mean, assuming we… Well… Whatever. It takes me a really long time to have an orgasm. And sometimes it doesn’t happen at all, so I just fake it.”
Tori furrowed her brows, unsure where to start. “Fake it? Why?” She also wanted to ask how her ex didn’t know the difference between real and performance, but withheld her judgment.
“To put the other person out of their misery?”
Tori’s eyes snapped open. “You should never feel pressured to fake it. If it’s just not going to happen, you can say so. It’s not always about getting to the finish line.” She wished they were having this conversation in person. That she could reach out for her. “And trust me, I sincerely doubt it’s a chore for your partner,” she added instead of saying that her jaw could fall off and she still wouldn’t want to stop.
“What if you get tired and you’re like come on already?—”
“I wouldn’t?—”
“You don’t know that?—”
“Yes, I do,” Tori vowed. “I promise. Even if we just kissed forever?—”
“If we just kiss forever, I’m going to die, Tori,” she said so seriously, Tori believed her.
“Die?” Tori breathed, eyes closing again. “If the situation is that dire, maybe you should consider doing something about it.” Her pulse raced like she was stepping out onto the ledge of a cliff.
A heart-pounding, sanity-snatching moment later, Mia responded with a whispered, “How would you do it?”
Clutching the edge of the mattress, Tori’s body ignited. She barely remembered how to speak but managed to ask, “Where are you right now?”
“On my bed,” Mia replied quietly. “In a towel.”
Fuck . Tori’s mouth went dry while the rest of her got wetter. “I’d lie back.”
She couldn’t stop picturing Mia. Couldn’t help imagining what it was like to inhale the scent of her skin after the shower. To hook a careless finger in the soft cotton and open her towel. To reveal every inch of her slowly. After waiting so long, she wanted the torment of deliberate discovery.
“I’d close my eyes,” Tori said when hers slipped closed as if she might see Mia if she just focused hard enough.
The sound of sheets rustling and the bed squeaking had the same effect of hot wax dripping over Tori’s skin. It made her ache for more. Made her wish she was in Mia’s room. That her lips were on hers while she arched into her.
“I don’t always want direct contact right away.” Tori moistened her lips, trying to remember how to breathe without hyperventilating. “I might, um, press my hand between my thighs over the towel.”
Mia’s tiny inhale into the phone was an earthquake rumbling through Tori’s core. It was the perspiration gathering at the small of her back. She crossed her legs to snuff out her pounding desire, but the contact only made it worse.
“Then what?”
The smoky gravel in Mia’s voice painted a vivid picture: Mia sprawled out on her bed, thighs parted, fingers pressing against the rough material. Tori wasn’t going to survive this phone call.
Mia’s breath filtered through the speaker, deep but uneven. Savoring the taste of Mia’s kiss on her lips, Tori imagined dropping to her knees at the foot of her bed.
“This is honestly so much easier with a vibrator,” Mia complained before swallowing an unfairly sexy whine.
Tori bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from saying that she’d be happy to take over. That she’d drive at the speed of light to crawl between her thighs and replace Mia’s fingers with her tongue.
“Go under the towel,” Tori said, her racing pulse and growing desire making her tone more demanding than she’d intended.
Mia cursed, sending a new rush of need thrumming hard through Tori. She rocked forward, wishing she could just relieve the painful ache, and then she could focus on Mia.
“Who knew I’d like being told what to do?” Mia gasped and then groaned. “Fuck. I’ve never been wet like this.”
It was Tori’s turn to curse. She gripped the top of her thigh as hard as she wanted to grab Mia, the way she wanted to slip her hands under the backs of Mia’s legs and pull her to the edge of the bed in a single possessive move. To watch Mia’s sinful fingers until Tori couldn’t resist running her tongue up her dripping wet center and taking every drop for herself.
“Do you like that?” Mia’s feigned innocence signaled that she wasn’t as unsure as she had been a few minutes earlier. “Knowing that you did this to me?”
“Gather it with your fingers.” Tori’s lust took control of her mouth. “Spread it over your clit,” she said, voice steady despite the throbbing at her core.
Mia cursed again. She was on the verge of panting when she said, “I guess I really do like being on the other side of bossy.”
“I want you to use your middle finger and make the lightest circles over the very tip of your clit.” Tori released her tortured quad and let her hand fall between her thighs. “Do it so lightly that you can barely feel it.”
Mia replied with a long, slow exhale that Tori felt against her throat. Unable to resist, she pressed her own fingers to the damp fabric of her underwear.
“Lighter than that,” Tori said when Mia moaned.
“I thought the point was to come,” Mia complained, sheets rustling like she’d kicked them off, or maybe she’d gotten rid of the towel.
“If you’re not going to do it my way, why am I on the phone?” Tori kept her voice even and authoritative even as she started grinding against her own fingers.
“Fuck, I love when you talk to me like that,” Mia moaned and Tori was sure that she was touching herself however the hell she wanted rather than how Tori instructed.
“If you’re not going to listen, I’m hanging up,” Tori lied because she was high on this game and completely out of her body. There wasn’t a force in existence that could make her end this call, but Mia didn’t know that.
“Okay,” she panted in response. “Okay,” she repeated more clearly. “I’m doing it lightly.”
“Dip your finger inside, just to get more?—”
Mia’s sudden moan echoed in Tori’s core. Tori’s hips jerked forward in response, desperate to find relief on their own.
“I’m so fucking sensitive,” Mia said like she was trying to apologize but got lost in the ecstasy of her own touch. “If I had a?—”
“Stop thinking about that.” Tori slowed her own grinding to claw her way back to control. “Go back to your clit and do it how I told you.”
“Fuck, Tori. You’re killing me,” Mia all but cried.
And then there was nothing but Mia’s breaths over the phone. They were quick and ragged and pained, like Mia was trying to quiet herself and couldn’t. They hit Tori’s ear like whispers dragged across bare skin. Like teeth sinking into her neck.
Each of Mia’s breaths came faster than the last—halting and raw. She had Tori at her mercy with nothing but the sound of her voice. As her body arched toward the sound, Tori’s chest rose and fell to match Mia’s rhythm.
Tori clenched her thighs around her hand to slow herself down, but she couldn’t stop. Mia’s moans and breaths and whispered pleas were tattooed on Tori’s spine, branded on her skin, etched into her marrow.
Need building more quickly than Tori could rein it in, she rubbed her clit through the drenched fabric of her underwear. She wasn’t anywhere close to the spot that usually worked, but she barely needed any contact. She was racing toward an orgasm at a breakneck pace. Lungs burning and muscles tense, her desire roared as it stretched to the point of snapping.
“A little more pressure,” Tori groaned, giving away that she was teetering on the edge.
“You sound so good,” Mia managed like it took Herculean effort to form words. “I want to… Fuck, Tori. I want to,” she panted as if she were begging for her life. Pleading turned into frustration before Tori could race to the finish. “But I just can’t.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” Tori pulled her hand away even as her core pounded with the sharp pain of having stopped at the worst possible moment. She stifled the discomfort and opened her eyes.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m on these antidepressants?—”
“Mia, you don’t have to explain.” Tori dropped backward on the bed, head spinning and chest burning. “And you sure as hell don’t have to apologize.” She pushed her hair out of her face.
“I didn’t want to disappoint you,” she said in a voice too gentle to be so devastating.
“You could never,” Tori swore, wishing she could pull Mia into her arms and show her. “That was so unbelievably hot.”
“Even though I couldn’t?—”
“Did you not hear me the first time?” Tori did her best to bring back her dominant tone, even though it was hard to access with the heat of the moment gone.
Mia breathed a chuckle. “I really did like that, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” Tori teased.
“Is it super needy and pathetic to ask you to stay on the phone with me?” Mia asked when she’d caught her breath.
“Do you mind if I take you into the shower with me?” Tori grinned when she stood on wobbly legs.
Mia cursed. “You play dirty, Victoria.”
Yanking off her ruined underwear, Tori chuckled. “Do you have better ways to play?”