“You said that before. What exactly does that mean, ‘It’s working fine for me’?”
“It means,” she said, “it’s making me really wet.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the phone, but she didn’t assume it spelled doom, possibly because she could hear him breathing. Hard.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Lying on my back. Hand between my legs. Rubbing.”
A rough exhalation in her ear. “I’m standing in my kitchen,” he said, the words jagged. “I should get the hell out of here.”
“Are there a lot of windows?”
“No.”
“So … what’s the problem?”
“I’m standing in my kitchen with an epic hard-on—”
“Keep going.” She’d gone from damp to wet through her jeans.
He hesitated.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to make you self-conscious. You were doing great. I’ve got my hand over my jeans. The friction is amazing. Sometimes it’s better this way than under my jeans. I don’t think I could stop even if you ordered me to, it feels that good.”
He groaned in earnest. “Fuck, Nora.”
“So, you’re standing in your kitchen with an epic hard-on, and now you’re going to …” she prompted.
“I’m unbuttoning my jeans and unzipping them.”
“And?”
“I’ve got my hand on my dick, which has not been this hard since New Year’s Eve.” Her next breath came as an audible half moan.
“It’s harder now. That was a good noise.”
She made another one, not entirely voluntarily. She was rubbing her palm harder over herself, and the rush of tingly heat was rapidly getting demanding. “Miles?” she said.
“Uh-huh?”
“I’m going to come embarrassingly fast.”
There was no phonetic equivalent for the sound he made then. All the vowel sounds had been forced out of it.
“But keep talking,” she instructed.
“Uh. I—” A rush of breath at his end, and she arched her back to press harder against her hand.
“Do you use your fist? Or rub?”
“Fist. Nora—”
“Do you think you could make yourself come really soon? Like, if I tell you when I’m about to—”
“Holy fuck, Nora, the hard part is not coming right fucking now.” It was a torrent of stuttered words and breath.
“I love it when you say ‘fuck,’ ” she said, and then she lost control of the sensation. Her orgasm slammed her like something gathering up her thighs and pussy and womb and chest and brain in its throbbing, pulsing, totally possessive grip, and she heard herself yelling, “Oh, now, Miles, now, now, now, now, ohhhhhhhh.”
All she could hear at the other end of the phone was his strangled cry, but she knew, and she could picture the ropy white strands of his cum spilling over his fist, his face in ecstatic anguish.
It was a long time before either of them spoke, long enough that she had time to worry that he would be ashamed or regretful.
“It turns out that the kitchen is a very convenient place to be,” he said finally. “Paper towels, water, et cetera.”
She laughed, relief and release as fine and welcome as the orgasm had been. She felt … awake, alive, thoroughly drained of tension. “I hope you feel as good as I feel right now.”
“How do we measure that?”
“There should be some Richter-like scale for orgasms.”
“Out of ten?”
“Sure.”
“Nine. And I’m rounding down because I’m sure that if I’d been buried in you to the hilt, I would need some additional headroom on the scale. No pun intended.”
Coming had apparently relaxed him enough to make him downright gregarious in the dirty-talk department. Buried in you to the hilt. “Nine sounds about right.” Though it would be better if she could put her arms around him right now. Bury her face in his shirt. Rub against his thigh for these last few aftershocks.
Next time.
Where had that thought come from, and what was she supposed to do with it? He lived in Cleveland. She lived in Boston. There was no easy way to have a date, no easy way to make there be a next time, or at least not a next time with cuddling and shared afterglow.
“So what are you doing this weekend? While I’m retiling my kitchen?” He sounded calm and contented and not at all eager to run away from her, and that made her feel better. He could be coming up with a thousand different excuses to cut the conversation short, now that he’d gotten his rocks off.
“Grading lab reports. Cleaning my apartment. Buying new running shoes.”