49
Katie
I had “talked” to a lot of guys over the last seven years. I was good at it, obviously. You had to be. Plus, I wrote a lot
of highly explicit sex scenes. And sure, I’d experienced my fair share of FaceTime orgasms and late-night dick pics, but one
thing I had never, ever done was lay in my bed with my body flushed and my mind mushed while a nearly twenty-eight-year-old
man I could see from my own window listened to me breathe over a goddamn walkie-talkie.
“Do you do this a lot?” I said. I was still in my dress, and my room was dim. My skin, still covered in salt and sweat from
our long, hot day.
“Do what, Katie?” he said in a voice that was too low and too slow to indicate he did not.
“This,” I said, because we were playing a game. Because it felt good. Because blood was rushing from my heart to my hands
to between my flexing, restless legs, and I didn’t want it to stop. I didn’t ever want it to stop—not any of it. This night,
the weekend, our summer. The way it felt when the words he muttered were only for me.
“It’s different with you.” His voice was thick and gravelly, and it wasn’t just the distortion. It was more guttural, more
of a growl. I inhaled, drawing a long, slow line where the lace of my underwear turned to bare and bothered skin. Remembering
his hands, right there. Working through the frill. Working through the water.
“Why’s that?” I said.
There was silence for a moment. And then, the whisper of static. And then, him.
“Because you drive me crazy. Because when I look at you . . .”
I whimpered. I was still pushing that lace down my hips, exactly like he’d shown me. Exactly like I knew he would.
“Are you in bed?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you wish I was there?”
“Yes.”
I exhaled, inching the fabric a little lower. My hips were rising, and I was staring at the ceiling, letting the echo of his
answer hover in the air. Letting it linger there, letting it cling to my damp and stirring skin. I raked my fingers through
the dew. “What would you do to me? If I was?”
Quiet for a moment.
“Tyler?”
Another pause.
“I’d slide your dress up your hips with my nose. I’d kiss whatever I found along the way. I’d take my time.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d keep my mouth on you. My hands and my mouth. My tongue. My teeth. I’d be gentle, but I would not let
you go. I want you to know that, Katie. That I would not let you go. That I would touch you and kiss you and lick you and
bite you, and I would hold you down and I would make you scream, but I would be gentle, and I would not let you go.”
I forgot to respond. I was too busy closing my eyes, lifting my dress, licking my fingertips, dragging the moisture down my breasts. Every word he’d said, low and warm and liquid inside of me. I dropped my hand back beneath the lace and stifled my own gasp.
“Are you touching yourself, Katie?”
“Yes,” I said.
A pause.
“Do you wish it was me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I could do that for you, you know. You don’t have to pretend. I’m right here.”
I breathed. I breathed, and I drew damp, lazy circles onto myself, and I turned his words over, and I imagined him taking
over for me. I imagined him peeling back my sheets and spreading my legs and making slick, easy work of me, and I tried to
breathe.
“I could come upstairs right now,” he said. “I could do everything I said. I could get on my knees.”
“I know. And I want you to. I want that so bad. But I want all of you. How are you going to give me all of you?”
He was quiet for a minute.
“I think I just need a little time. I’m sorry. I want to keep talking to you like this. I really do. I’m so fucking tired
of holding myself back—of not giving you everything you need. I want to show you what you do to me. How badly I want you.
All the things I’m dying to do to you. You’re all I think about, all the time. I think about crawling into your bed. I think
about pinning you down and learning your body and kissing you hard and fucking you slow. I think about looking in your eyes
and watching it happen, about finally hearing you say my name. How you’ll feel and taste and sound. I just . . .”
“I’ll wait for you,” I said.
More quiet.
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Tyler,” I said, tugging down my dress, slipping out of bed, and walking toward my window. He was already standing behind
his own window, hand pressed against the glass, looking up at me from the cottage. He tilted his head. I pushed my palm against
my pane and did the same. “I’ve always been waiting for you.”