I want her. I…need her. She’s mine. Thinking about her makes my body itch for a completely different reason. Besides, contractually, for another seven fucks, she belongs to me.
I own her.
So I dial the number.
The ringing echoes six times, then clicks.
I hear her breathing, but she doesn’t say anything. Not for several seconds. “Uh…hello?” The acute trepidation in her voice reminds me that I’m not the only one with secrets in this game. Whatever demons she’s battling consume her just as mine do.
Common ground feels…good.
“Elly.” Saying her name soothes another layer of the hell circle.
She exhales softly in surprise. “Quinn? I wasn’t expecting you to call.”
“You prefer me to remain in your head?”
“I…no. I mean, all your texts were sent in the middle of the night. I thought I wouldn’t hear from you till later. Not that I expected to hear from you, of course. I mean…” She stumbles to a halt.#p#分页标题#e#
I’m lying back on the sofa without realizing I’ve moved. My hand is resting on my, thankfully, no longer roiling stomach. The blackness is still churning, but I no longer want to crawl out of my skin. “Midnight is twenty minutes away. We can continue this conversation then. Will I still be in your head?”
“Umm, maybe,” she answers. I catch a ghost of a smile in her voice. Or it could be in my razed imagination.
“Maybe is not good for me. Keep talking. I prefer not take the chance that I might not be come midnight.”
“Do you like me in your head, Quinn?” she asked softly.
My teeth grit for a second. “More than is good for you.”
A short inhalation. “Why isn’t it good for me?”
I simply laugh.
“Do I amuse you?” Her sexy voice is stiff with growing affront.
“You do a lot of things to me, Elly, and you know it. Isn’t that why you responded to my text? Isn’t that why you’re at the end of the phone right now, when your instincts scream at you to run?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replies. “Why am I in your head?” she blurts.
Because I spent far too many nights when I wasn’t fucking you, watching you sleep. Wanting to drag you into my cracks.
“Because you see me. You know you should be afraid, but you don’t run.”
“Quinn…are you okay?”
Same question, different version of the woman whose last name I don’t even know.
“Tell me your name.”
This time the inhalation is sharper. “What?”
“What’s Elly short for?”
She stays silent for a long time. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she eventually says.
“For you to tell me your name? You don’t think you can trust me?”
She laughs. “The guy who tells me to run? What do you think?”
“I think you shouldn’t trust me. But I want to know anyway. Eleanor.”
“No.”
“Eloise. Ella. Arabella. Petronella. Mariella.”
“No.”
“Hmm, I’m running out of options. Elephant.”
Her husky laugh washes over me. “Wow. Elephant. Really?”
“Tell me. Is Elly even your name?”
Her laughter stops. “Yes,” she says.
“And it’s short for?”
“Why do you want to know, Quinn?” Her voice is just above a murmur.
“I want to see you.”
“No, you don’t. You want me to run.”
I let my eyes drift shut. “I want both.”
“That’s impossible.”
“That word doesn’t exist for me.” Never has, never will.
“It does for me.”
“Then you shouldn’t have called.”
“I can hang up now.”
“You called. That door is shut. There’s no going back from that.”
“And the only way forward is?”
An alien need pounds through me. “Let me see you. Are you done with your thing?”
She hesitates a beat. “No. Not yet.” Her voice has changed. There’s reluctance in there. And excitement.
My cock stirs. “You owe me, Elly.”
She breathes out again. “I know, but this thing I’m doing…it’s complicated.”
“Complicated is if you’re shackled to a wall in a dungeon in an underground castle somewhere in the South China Sea. Are you?”#p#分页标题#e#
“No, not exactly.”
“You’re shackled to a wall in a dungeon in New York?”
“I’m not shackled anywhere. But I’m locked into something.”
“Something that prevents you from having dinner with me?”