10. Jessica #2
The muscles in his arms shifted and bunched under his skin as he worked the wrench, the tendons standing out, the veins thick and raised.
He gripped the wrench and leaned into the post, and his hips shifted with the effort.
The denim pulled across his thighs, and my mouth went dry.
Actually dry. I had to swallow twice. And between my legs, there was a pulse.
Heavy. Liquid. The kind that makes you press your thighs together and shift your weight and grip whatever you're holding tighter.
My clipboard dug into my ribs. Those hands on my hips instead of a post. That mouth on my neck instead of —
He straightened. Rolled his shoulders. Wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, and the t-shirt rode up.
I caught a strip of stomach — tan, flat, the V-cut of muscle that disappeared into his jeans — and my clit throbbed once, hard, like a second heartbeat, and I turned around and walked away before my body did something our friendship couldn't survive.
I drove home with the windows down and my hands tight on the wheel. The warm air whipped my hair, and I tried to think about vendor invoices. The speaker system. Anything that wasn't related to Hunter.
But my body wasn't interested in vendor invoices. My body had launched a hostile takeover of every rational system I had, and the new mission statement was Hunter. His hands, his mouth, the way he said my name, how his lips felt on my skin.
The apartment door closed behind me. I locked it. Dropped my bag. Kicked off my heels. The hum between my hips had been building since the barn, and it was done waiting.
I made it to the bedroom. Barely.
The dress came off over my head, and I fell onto the bed in my underwear. he sheets were cool against my overheated skin, and my hand was already reaching for the nightstand drawer.
The rabbit vibrator was bright pink. Bobbie had bought it for me for my twenty-fifth birthday because I'd been, in his words, "so perpetually horny it's affecting your decision-making.” It was large and thick and obscene, and I had never once in five years of owning it felt anything but gratitude for Bobbie Chen's commitment to my clarity.
I shoved my underwear down my legs, and closed my eyes.
I didn't need a warm-up. My body had been doing that since the catering station — the barn, the wrench, the white t-shirt, his mouth on my forehead, baby — and I was so wet the first touch of the vibrator against my clit made me jolt like I'd been shocked.
I pressed it flat against myself, and the buzz hummed through my pelvis and up into my stomach.
My back arched off the mattress, and behind my eyelids, it wasn't the vibrator, it was Hunter.
His hands. His mouth. The focus he gave to everything — complete, unhurried, devastating in its patience — turned entirely on me.
His callused fingers tracing up my inner thighs.
His breath hot against my skin. The way he'd take his time because he never rushed anything in his life.
The thought of that patience applied to the space between my legs made my hips rock against the toy, and a low groan tear from my throat.
I slid it lower. Pressed the tip against my entrance and pushed it in — slow, thick, the stretch of it making my breath stutter.
I pictured Hunter’s cock filling me instead.
He was above me, his eyes on mine. His jaw set the way it set when he was concentrating.
I could still hear the way he said my name in the workshop.
Low and rough, when the fury was underneath, except now the fury was something else entirely.
My hand found a rhythm — deep, steady strokes that mirrored the way I wanted him to take me. I imagined him here, on top of me, with my hands pinned above my head while he took his time with me as if he’d been wanting this as much and as long as I had.
I could hear the sounds he'd make — low, satisfied grunts in the crook of my neck where he rested his head. The sound of a man who derived enormous pleasure from taking a woman apart and was in absolutely no hurry to finish the job.
The pressure built. Coiled. Tightened into something molten and urgent, low in my belly.
My hand moved faster. The toy hit deeper.
The vibrator buzzed against my clit, and the orgasm was right there — right there at the edge, shimmering, a breath away.
And when it broke, it broke hard. My back bowed off the mattress.
My thighs clamped together. My head tilted back on the pillows.
“Hunt,” I cried out as I came, one hand fisted in my sheets while the other worked me through the long, shuddering pulses that left me gasping and trembling and wrecked on my back with the toy still buzzing against oversensitive skin.
I switched it off. Pulled it out. Lay there. Breathing. The ceiling was blank. White. Offering nothing. My skin was damp. My legs were still trembling. And the ache underneath all of it hadn't moved an inch.
The orgasm had been spectacular. Bobbie's gift had done its job with distinction. And none of it — not one shuddering, gasping second of it — had been what I actually wanted. What I wanted was Hunter’s weight above me.
His breath against my neck. The real sound of my name in his real mouth.
Not a fantasy constructed from fence posts and white cotton.
The man. And no amount of silicone was going to bridge that gap.
I reached for my phone. Almost called Bobbie. Put it back down. An update that included the words fake boyfriend and vibrator-assisted orgasm would break him permanently, and he'd be on a plane to Texas by morning to stage an intervention.
I pulled the covers up. The clarity that comes after — the merciless, post-orgasm kind that strips every lie — settled over me like cold water.
I wanted my best friend. I wanted the lie to be real.
His hands on my body in public. His name in my mouth in private.
The distance between fake and real shrinking every day.
And the worst part — the part that made me press my face into the pillow and groan — was that I wasn't sure I wanted to stop it.
The pillow smelled like clean cotton. Not like him. Not like sawdust and the warm skin at his throat. The difference between this pillow and that body was the difference between surviving and living, and I was beginning to suspect I'd been doing the wrong one for a very long time.
One of us was going to crack. And lying in my bed with the taste of his name still between my teeth, I was running out of reasons to keep the wall standing.