All the words got stuck behind her tongue and wouldn’t shake loose. Instead, her heart pounded uselessly and she tasted adrenaline.
“Do you follow the advice you give your students? You told me the first time we talked that you tell them they should be in a committed relationship or marriage before they have sex.”
She tried to keep her breath under control, even as heat gathered between her legs. “Not always.”
“Oh, yeah?”
They might have been talking about the circumstances under which she believed it was prudent to carry an umbrella and wear rain boots; his voice was that steady. She wished desperately to see his face.
“I don’t see anything wrong with a little frolicking among consenting adults.”
Oh, God, she sounded like a granny. Or—a sex-ed teacher.
“Was that what we were doing at the party? Frolicking?”
He, on the other hand, had managed to make frolicking sound like a new sex technique, filthy and forbidden. Her nipples tightened. “I think that was foreplay to frolicking.”
“Yeah? If that was foreplay, the actual frolicking might kill me.”
More heat, low and dark in her belly. She leaned back on the couch and slid her palm down and rubbed it experimentally over the seam of her jeans. She was damp and hot there, and her body clenched at the contact. “Is this foreplay, too?”
“Like phone-sex foreplay?”
“Yeah.” She flattened her hand, a slow, easy back and forth, just enough friction to keep the buzz up.
“How do you distinguish foreplay from the main event in phone sex?”
She tried to keep her breathing even. “I don’t know. Good question. I guess the foreplay stops when you start touching yourself.”
“Nora?”
“Uh-huh?”
“The foreplay was over when you said the word ‘foreplay.’ At least on this end of the phone.”
“Um,” she said, because her brain was concerned with single syllables at the moment, like want and now. “Here, too.”
“I warn you, I’m not particularly good at this. Dirty talk.”
“Whatever you’re doing is working for me.” She raised her hips a little to meet the slow I’m-pretending-I’m-not-really-doing-this flirtation of her hand with the crotch of her jeans.
“What are you wearing?”
“Jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt over a long-sleeved T-shirt.” Silence.
“I killed your libido,” she said.
“No. I was trying too hard to be funny, and my brain got knotted up.”
“What were you going to say, before you started thinking about trying to be funny?”
“ ‘That’s more for me to take off you, then.’ ”
He might not be good with words, but apparently it didn’t take many words, or particularly flowery ones, on his part to get her going. Possibly it was his voice, which even in wry reporting had this way of edging under her defenses.
“Here’s a better question,” she said. “What do you wish I were wearing?”
“Oh, God, I don’t know. Something skimpy I could tear off you with my teeth.”
She was having trouble breathing, the muscles tightening in a cascade down her chest and belly to pull up in a sharp ache between her legs. Her hand worked a little faster, following the lead set by her quickening breath. “Do you know that kind of underwear that looks sort of like shorts, but they’re really, really short, with lots of lace? They’re called boy shorts?”
“Yeah. You would look really hot in those.”
“Red,” she told him. “And a matching lace bra.”
“It would be a big waste, though, because if I were there I would get you out of them as soon as possible.”
“I wish you were here,” she said.
“I wish I were, too. If I were there, I’d—” His voice trailed off, low and rough, wrapping around her core and tugging.
“You don’t suck at dirty talk,” she said.
“That wasn’t dirty.”
“It was so dirty. It was full of sex stuff you didn’t say but were thinking.”
He made a sound, an aborted groan.
“The trick is to say it out loud,” she instructed. “Finish the sentence.”
“If I were there, I’d—”
But again he stopped, and she had to picture it for herself. If he were here, she’d want him to lie on top of her and fit the bulge in his jeans to the notch between her thighs, and then she’d show him the exact speed and pressure she wanted…
“Or, you know, don’t finish the sentence,” she offered. “Just keep saying that, because it’s working fine for me.”