Chapter 3 – Rule #2 Never hang up until they run out of minutes, especially if they fall asleep.
CHAPTER THREE
KAITLIN
“Yes, baby, harder, yes!” I screech. He likes it when I’m loud. “Puck me harder, puck me dead!”
I’m pretending to get railed by a hockey player, bent over the bleachers, and it’s fun as long as I forget hockey players stink. When they’re all sweaty and geared up, they sniff like the before part of a Febreze commercial until they get out of their gear.
“Puck me, baby, puck me!” Creative license is the spice of life. “You’re so pucking good, baby, give me all of your stick.”
I almost say nothing but net, but I’m pretty sure that’s a different sport.
“Oh, oh, oohhhhhhh, Chet, you are pucking wonderful. Pucking elite!”
I’m dusting my bookshelf and making our living room smell like lemon spray while coming up with pucking euphemisms. Look at me being uber productive.
I rock.
Then I hear it. The ding-dong of the doorbell.
Puck me running, Scooby-Doo.
It’s our tax documents. I’ve been waiting all day to sign for them, but I didn’t, fuck, I didn’t think I’d be mid-fake orgasm when they arrived.
I could not answer. Puck! We have to sign tonight before midnight; Jess and Ana are coming over for a carryout-and-sign-things dinner tonight. It’s a tradition.
I have to answer.
I have to answer.
I open the door, and of course, it’s the really attractive UPS man who would absolutely be my type any other day of the week. Any other time of day. Just not now. Tall, dark hair, blue-eyed, handsome. Muscular but not jacked. Grrrrrr.
I put my finger to my lips and point to my phone as he starts to ask for my signature, but still, he jumps back as I let out an unexpected feral wail of fake pleasure. To be fair, I’m wearing earbuds, not holding the phone to my ear.
“Yes, take me, take me hard, make me lose control.” I point at the earbuds. As if that explains anything. “You puck me so good.”
UPS man is a bit baffled, with a smidgen of intrigue, or perhaps he’s afraid of how intrigued he may be.
I point at my phone and silently mouth, “Phone sex,” like Captain Obvious’s dumber and more obvious sister. He nods back. We pretend this is normal.
He stands there with his signing pad electronic thingie but forgets to offer it to me. I take it from him, along with the fake pen.
“Puck, that’s so good, right there, baby.”
Maybe it’s weird for him because I’m saying naked things, but I’m wearing running tights and a sweatshirt, and shoes and socks. And a messy bun with a paintbrush jammed in it.
Chet makes everything worse when he says, “Hey, let’s do some anal.”
I feel obligated to respond, “You know I love it in my butt, baby. Do me in my ass. I need it.”
Hotty deliveryman’s jaw is now hanging open. Pretty sure it’s my fault.
“It’s so big. Do you think it will fit?”
I hand back his little electronic signing pad thingie and give him a thumbs-up and a silent “Good?”
He looks like a confused puppy, including baffled head tilt, as he watches me get ready to have another verbal orgasm.
Chet insists we come together, and he’s losing his mind, so I kinda have to do what I have to do. Now. On my doorstep. In front of the hot deliveryman.
Oh hell.
“Oh my god, it’s so pucking good. I’m coming. Right now. I’m pucking coming!” I let it out, loud, with a shriek for authenticity, thankful none of our neighbors are around.
Mr. Gorgeous finally shakes it off and gives me a silent thumbs-up in return and hands over the envelope, scratching his head. I’m pretty sure I’ve scarred him for life. Either that or he’ll start sending me packages himself so he can get another look, no idea which.
“Bye, baby.”
I’m talking to Chet, but the cute deliveryman turns around and gives me a fat wink and waves as he heads down the stairs.
I don’t even blush about these things anymore. Fancy that.
A few hours later, our apartment is sparkling clean, my paycheck is a few hundred bucks richer, the day is young, and I’ve only terrorized one deliveryman.
A couple of blowjobs, some sexy times with a werewolf with a biting problem, and a gang bang done around folding laundry and scrubbing every surface that can be scrubbed might not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but I can’t complain.
I put on a kettle, and I’m setting up my easel to work on a painting for my CCAD class when I get another call from the office.
“Kaitlin, remind me,” Jessica says, her tone a little smug, which is rarely a good thing. “Was the bet fifty dollars if Henry Sterling called back in ten days or two weeks?”
Ugh. I’m not a betting girl. I won’t let go of two pennies if I have a choice about it.
There’s a reason I still eat instant ramen, despite being well out of the starving student tax bracket.
But the odds of someone sweet and polite calling again were zero in this case, and that felt like free money.
“Fourteen days. Tonight at 2:00 a.m., specifically, your money is mine. Feel free to make your concession speech now.”
“Back at ya, babe. Repeat after me, ‘Jessica Hunter is always right.’”
“Hardly,” I say. “There is no chance I’m saying that.”
“He’s on the phone, asking for you now, so it’s enough for me to take your money and know that I’m 100 percent correct.”
I hate the waste, but I’m oddly pleased to be wrong. As soon as the thought rolls through my brain, a wave of panic rips through me. Am I hallucinating right now? Delighted to lose fifty bucks because it means I get to talk to a caller? Nonsense.
“I’ll call you back once he’s set up, if it’s safe to assume you’ll speak to him?”
“Happy to.” And I am. Quite. Must be part of the hallucination.
“Remember this one thing: you’re going to have to think of a better story to tell the grandkids. You’ll scar them for life if you tell them Grandma and Grandpa met while having phone sex.” She laughs, cracking herself up. “Henry and Kaitlin sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
“Whatever. I’m not meeting the love of my life doing phone sex.”
I pour a cup of tea, lapsang souchong. It’s a smoked black tea, so it kind of smells like campfire with a slug of cream and sugar. I grab my cup, find the matching saucer, and head to my favorite chair.
I like my job. It’s lucrative, and the three of us work well together.
People hate call centers and voicemail mazes, yet that’s how most phone sex businesses are run.
I was convinced that phones being answered by real humans would be a winner.
Add a brainy idea by Hunter, “Let’s make it feel like matchmaking and ask them what kind of woman they’re looking for,” and we were killing it.
“Hey, Kait.” Relief washes over me with those two short words, along with a tiny bolt of lightning when he says my name, all rough and scratchy. Just as hot and exhausted as last time, but that baritone rumble does a body good.
“Hi, Henry. I’m so glad to hear from you.” I was convinced this wouldn’t happen. Surprise.
“I thought this time I’d reach out early and maybe get one whole night’s sleep. I slept so well after we talked last time. I was worried you wouldn’t be available.”
“Henry, it’s just after six in the afternoon. There are reasons why you might have difficulty falling asleep right now.”
“I’m in Ireland, so I’m five hours ahead of you. It’s dark out, and I haven’t slept well since we spoke. I have a big meeting tomorrow, and I’m desperate to catch up a bit. I’d do anything for a full eight, so I wanted to see if you would work your magic again.”
“Ireland again?”
“I’m a lawyer for a pharmaceutical company based here. We do most things via Skype and Zoom, but I’m an M&A specialist, and on occasion, I need to be in the room.” I google M&A. Mergers and acquisitions. Fancy.
“Do you like it there?”
“I do, here in Dublin and more specifically, here at this hotel. I stay at the same place every time, the Dean in Dublin, which feels like a second home. All of the rooms have record players or Wi-Fi speakers.” He’s settling into bed, a rustle of linens telegraphing his movements.
“As a kid, I spent a lot of time in Ireland—my grandparents are about an hour outside of the city. If we weren’t in school, we were in Ireland.
It was really important to my grandparents that we knew how to speak Irish Gaelic, even though it’s really not commonly spoken. ”
“Dad is Irish or Mom?”
“Both. They were both raised here.” Thank god Henry has an American accent. I might expire from sheer endorphin overload if he had an Irish accent on top of that sex bomb voice of his.
“Does that mean black hair and blue eyes, or are you a ginger?”
“All of us have black hair, and my eyes are green-blue, but my driver’s license says green.”
Be still my slutty little heart. “Black hair, blue-green eyes, and?”
“I’m twenty-nine for another month, six one, and one hundred and eighty pounds, give or take a large holiday meal or a long run, on the leaner side, not bulky, but not skinny. I try to keep my hair short because it gets unruly with curls if I don’t.”
I’d bet on a nice booty, all that running. “You said all of us. Are you one of eleventyseven kids?”
“We’re Irish Catholic, but only so far as my parents forgot what birth control is. There are seven of us. Declan, Llewellyn, Schuyler and Killian are twins, Lachlan, me, and, last but not least, Saoirse.”
“You guys won the awesome name lottery. As a Kait, I’m officially jealous.”
“We all have two middle names too. My parents have a thing for ridiculous names.”
“I like Henry. A lot. Henry.” I say it low and slow like he does. Henrrrrrry. Like you’d say mmmmmm when eating something delicious. “What are your middle names?”
He mumbles something I don’t catch but doesn’t answer the question. I move on—harassing him won’t make him want to call back.
“So, gorgeous, grown-up job—you’re a catch. Add in ‘speak to an adult’ and ‘respectful and polite,’ and you are unicorn city, baby.”
“I’m a unicorn?”
“Yep. You did something no one else has ever done: you asked to speak to an adult.” Barely legal is usually the ask. Men. Ugh.