* * *
“Hello?” I answered when it rang, trying to play it cool this time.
“Oh, I’m glad I caught you this time! I missed talking to you last night, baby.”
“Me too,” I said. “So much.”
She gave a breathless laugh. “I was hoping you’d call me, actually, whenever you got in.”
“I didn’t want to wake you up.”
There was a pause. “I was so tired, but I didn’t end up sleeping until later. Not until I took care of things.”
My dick perked up, the idiot.
“What things?” I really hadn’t meant that to come out low and suggestive.
“I touched myself,” she said, and my heart stopped for a second. Apparently my dick knew better than my brain sometimes—who knew? “I guess I’m so used to getting it every day, and I had to get myself off.”
“Yeah?” I managed to croak.
“I thought about you.”
My hand flew to my crotch, but didn’t touch. Just hovered over it like some sort of goddamned levitation trick because up it went, imagining Melissa touching herself.
“What did you think about?”
“I imagined you. Remember that time we played the principal’s office? I had on those high heels, patent black leather. I made you lick them.”
“Oh shit.”
“And then you got paddled. While I had you jerk yourself off.”
“Melissa!”
“And to make sure you learned your lesson I had you write lines. Pity we didn’t have a chalkboard. You had to write them on yourself with a black marker: I will not touch myself during class. I will not touch myself during class. I don’t think the ink came out for days.”
I was rubbing myself through my pants, bucking up into my own hand, when she said, “Stop that.”
I froze.
“Didn’t I tell you not to come?”
“I didn’t,” I protested quickly.
“That’s not attitude I hear, is it?”
I bit my lip. “No, ma’am.”
“You aren’t to come. You aren’t to touch yourself except to wash and piss. Understood?”
I snatched my hand away, sat on it. My hips rocked futilely in the air, finding no friction, none. “Yes, ma’am,” came out as a whisper.
“Now,” she said. “Tell me about your day. How’s the new secretary working out?”
* * *
On the fourth day, I kept to my usual schedule. I sat down for breakfast, even though the other chair was empty. I went to work during my normal work hours, ignored Bambi’s contradiction of slacker and seductress, and returned home at the usual time. I puttered around the house, doing laundry and cooking for one. All the things we would do together, but instead I did them alone.
The loneliness was less acute now, more like a dull ache. Even my horniness was muted, more like longing. Before she left, I had thought my desire had taken a nosedive. Now I wondered if it had been a natural smoothing out.
When I first met Melissa, I was out of my mind with lust for her. Her beauty, her willingness to explore my long-repressed kinks, the excitement of a new relationship and infatuation-fueled sex frenzy.
Now I loved her. I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life. I still adored her body, enjoyed our play, but the urgency had dimmed. The taint of hopelessness, the fear that I’d never find it, was gone. Because I had found it; I had her.
Or at least I did. Now she was gone, and the impact of her absence made it clear that what I felt before was nothing at all. I was embarrassed to even have thought it was a problem.
Was it possible I had been so stupid as to mistake contentedness for boredom?
Never mind. I hadn’t broken anything yet. She’d be back in two days. I could make it up to her, even though she’d hopefully never known and never would. I would reaffirm my love to her, exercise my lust for her.
It was still too early for her to call, so I flipped on the TV. I’d found some unfamiliar sitcom to bide the time when the telephone rang. Not the home phone, but a strange number on my cell.
“Melissa?”
“No. Is this Mr. Tripp? Wyle Tripp?”
I turned off the TV, sat up straighter. “Yes, that’s me. Who’s speaking?”
It turned out to be one of those people with a first name, a middle name, and a hyphenated last name, who worked for the temp agency. Apparently there had been a complaint filed against me by a certain Babette Franks for creating a hostile work environment.
Since I actually paid the agency, too much money at that, the guy was polite but firm. The agency was forced to stop working with me. Liability, he explained, a hint of apology peeking through the solemnity.
“Hell,” I said.