13 Rules For Fantastic Phone Sex (The Sterlings #1)

Chapter 1 – Rule #1 Never sound bored, unless they’re into that.

CHAPTER ONE

KAITLIN

“Kait, I’m so close.”

His desperation amuses me. I’m teasing him, making him beg for it, and he loves it.

“I need to come.”

“Absolutely not. I’m going to give you one fingertip.

I’m going to touch the head, around and around, slowly.

” He’s going to earn it, every moan and gasp, one minute at a time.

“I decide when you get off. This. Cock. Is. My. Property.” I make a throaty noise, a sexy “mmm” that could be mistaken for pleasure.

“You’re so hard for me. You are going to scream my name, you’ll beg me—”

He’s moaning, louder.

He’s mine, my plaything, wrapped around my little finger. And just when things are getting interesting, he is very prematurely saying, “Oh yes, yes! I’m going to come!”

Well, fuck me running, Scooby-Doo.

I hit the Mute button so he can’t hear me giggle. I should have seen that coming, pardon the pun. Chester was a little too excitable for my slow tease and prolonged torment plan.

“Uh, thanks, Kait, you’re the best. I hope you have a good weekend.”

“Bye, Ches. Talk soon.”

Some guys don’t say goodbye; they hang up. My guys would never. They’re the ones who call back over and over. They stumble into my orbit and don’t want to reach escape velocity. If I remember your cat’s name or that you do triathlons, you’re probably part of my inner caller circle.

I’m a professional phone sex operator. I’m amazing at my job, according to people who would know. I’m single, so I have no other practical application for my sexual creativity. I talk about fantastic sex for a living and sleep alone—which is completely unfair.

Horny men with discretionary income await, so I move on. I was hoping to make Chester’s call so long that the next guy in line would fall asleep and forget about me. I’m not that lucky.

It’s already been a long night, and my shift is barely getting started. The phones are ringing off the hook, and every call has been something wild. It’s like a parade of horny perverts, and I’m the pied piper of orgasms, playing my—ahem—flute from my tiny cubby for the next several hours.

After running this business on a shoestring out of our apartment for the first few years, Jessica, Anastascia, and I finally broke down and bought an actual dedicated space.

Between nosy neighbors, busybody moms dropping by randomly, every delivery person in a five-mile radius not being able to look any of us in the eye, and a real live stalker, it was time.

And despite my cheap-ass ways, I’ve never regretted it.

Real estate is a good investment, right?

Besides, you can’t put a price on privacy.

Working from home is still an option, and I take calls from the comfort of my couch sometimes, but for the most part, it’s an office the size of a small changing room, a Formica countertop for a desk, and the chair of my dreams. Well.

One of the chairs of one of my dreams. The other is my reading chair at home.

When my parents asked what I wanted for my graduation present, the only thing I could think of was a vintage chair I had been salivating over online, and my parents kindly obliged.

I’m a sucker for a squishy, comfy chair.

I work from 6:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m., longer shifts on weekends.

On a rough night like this, naughty carbs are essential.

Warm, gooey, smells-like-your-chubby-grandma’s-house cookies always hit the spot.

With a side order of caffeine, because a full-time fake-orgasms-on-demand job takes a toll on the mental state as much as the vocal cords—a fact I suspect many women understand.

I place an order for delivery and settle in.

Paul, my next caller, has a membership. He gets two hours a month, and those hours accumulate. He went out of the country for work six weeks ago, and I’ve been dreading his return ever since. Now he has four hours available to talk about fucking zombies. Literally fucking zombies.

He says he likes me because I’m “creative and have a mind like a screenwriter.” He actually likes me because I never sound bored.

That’s rule number one: never sound bored (unless they’re into that).

Some of the financial domination guys love being told how boring they are and that they need to pay extra to compensate.

I try to yawn a lot on those calls. They love it.

The 13 Rules For Fantastic Phone Sex started when we switched from hourly to base plus productivity.

It’s a list of my recommendations for ways to make more money on the phones here at phone sex headquarters.

At least that’s how it started. My motivation was simple.

Keep the guys I like on the phone for a long time so I didn’t have to talk to jerks.

But I started adding things that were purely for my mental health, like never, ever look up one of these guys on social media.

I did it once, and then every time I had to talk to the guy—and he called a lot—it was all ick all the time.

It’s so much harder to get them off nausea-free if you find out they say terrible things about women, or their hair is greasy from too few showers, or they have a voice for radio.

And don’t get me started on outspoken political views.

Anyway, what started as me providing helpful hints to my fellow phone ho compadres turned into a somewhat unusual collection of rules that are not necessarily corporate policy, but anyone who wants to make a lot of money here would be wise to follow along.

There are only two real rules around here you wouldn’t find at a normal job: No Outside Contact.

Double underline. Ever. Immediate termination if you do it, and we always find out because men can’t keep their mouths shut.

They always tattle. It never fails. Men cannot be trusted.

And the corollary: Do not share personal information that allows you to be identified.

Either can put everyone’s safety in jeopardy, but they usually go hand in hand.

If you have outside contact, the guy can follow the naughty birdy back to the nest. Besides, who wants to talk to one of these guys for free when you can make money? Not me. And eww. Seriously.

I digress. After six weeks of zombie abstinence, Paul wants some sort of heartfelt Oscar-winning saga about the secret lives of star-crossed zombie lovers who evade decapitation. I anticipated it being fast and easy with him pent-up after going away so long. I was so wrong.

After grad school, I’ll find some normal guy who isn’t excited by zombie sex, and I will practice my sexual knowledge on his willing body.

Nothing against zombies; they just aren’t my jam.

There’s an exotic variety of sex sounds as I pass the nine other tiny rooms that line the hallway. Tonight, it’s like a Best Buy with every TV in the place playing a different type of porn. A cacophony of sex. An orchestra of orgasms.

What a ridiculous way to pay the bills.

Jessica Hunter—my BFF since I was twelve and, now, fourteen years later, my roommate and business partner—is working the desk, juggling phones and running the credit cards. She’s Jessica at home and Hunter at work.

We ask everyone to choose a fake name here at Unlimited Creative Consulting, LLC, but I was bad at it, and Jessica doesn’t give a fuck, which is why I get to be Kait here and Kaitlin everywhere else. Everyone assumes that we use fake names, and that’s good enough.

Hunter is kind of a hot name. It makes me think of a sexy role-playing thing where I’m being chased by hot guys at their forest estate, and whichever one catches me first gets to inflict great pleasure upon me for hours with the help of his muscular friends who, sadly, lost their clothing in the woods.

Alas, I’m not one of God’s favored children.

My parents are social workers, so no dice on the mansion. We were a used car with mediocre gas mileage, hand-me-downs, and leftovers family, so no private forest either. It’s a sadness, but hope springs eternal.

Hunter and I are second shifters, while Ana works daylight hours, handling the office work most days. She used to be a workaholic like us, but she’s cut back on the overtime now that she’s pregnant. She’s not showing, but she’s having twins, so that will change soon.

Anastascia was two years ahead of us in high school.

She was working as an accountant and taking MBA classes when she and Jess ended up in the same finance class at Ohio State.

Jess was doing phone sex for a local service, and we were flabbergasted by the insane profit margin—even with the obscene cost of advertising—and had been talking about trying our hand at the business for months.

So when Jess and I daydreamed aloud about starting our own phone sex service when Ana was over eating pizza—I mean, studying—poof, the rest is history.

“Coffee?” Hunter asks.

“No, thank you. If I have any more coffee, I’m going to be doing calls from the bathroom.”

“How did it go with Zombie Paul?”

“His dick fell off inside me.”

Hunter smothers a dry heave with her free hand. “Why did I even ask?”

“For reasons I don’t understand, it got him off, so at least there’s that.”

“Better you than me.” Her laugh hangs in that middle ground between amused and disgusted. I can’t blame her.

“After that encounter, I deserve some cookies.”

“After hearing about it, I deserve some too.” She has to pause to take a call, and I tune out for a minute. When she hangs up, she says, “I deserve some for this entire night. The phones have been batshit since I got here.”

“That’s why I have arranged for the delivery of not one, not two, but twenty-four delectable cookies. They will arrive warm to tempt our bellies.”

Hunter narrows her eyes, but she smiles too. “That almost makes up for the nightmare fuel you dropped on me.”

“Hey, you asked. You should know better.” We all should, really. If this job has taught us anything, it’s that some things are best not shared.

“Fair. I’m kind of shocked that you spent money.”