“It feels good.” I was lost for a moment in the cold and heat of it. The strange vulnerable thrill of it.

“Yeah? Tell me.”

I swallowed. Oh God. I didn’t have the guts for this one.

“It’s been hot for days, hasn’t it?” he asked, as if he knew I’d hit a limit. “And that breeze just cools down all that sweat. Makes you almost cold in places.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Good girl.”

I shouldn’t like those words. I wasn’t his good girl. I wasn’t anyone’s. But my eyes fluttered shut and I lifted my fingers to my nipple. For just a second. It was hot and hard. Burning, nearly. And then I put my hand down on the quilt beside my hip.

But I couldn’t quite stop the hitch in my breath.

He made a sound—that sound—again. Something had turned him on.

“What else do you want to be brave about?” he asked.

“I’d like to eat dessert for breakfast one day.”

His laughter was dark and rich like brownie batter and I wanted to eat a bowl of it. Of him.

“That’s an easy one,” he said.

Not if you’re me. Not if you were raised by my mom.

“I want to give a man a blow job.”

The silence on the other end pounded.

“You haven’t done that?” he asked.

“No.”

“Jesus, how old are you?”

“Twenty-four. How old are you?” God, I hadn’t thought to ask.

“Twenty-nine.”

“We could be lying,” I said. “Both of us.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’ll never lie to you.”

I couldn’t make him the same promises—I had, after all, lied about my name, about staying away from Ben. About being totally naked. I wasn’t ready to tell him the truth.

Or willing to.

“I’m not lying about my age,” I said.

“Are you a virgin?”

“No.” Those memories, cold and uncomfortable, terrifying and sad, were in my brain’s front hall closet too. “Just…not experienced.”

“Has a man ever gone down on you?”

I shook my head, my mouth dry, words gone, but then I realized he couldn’t see me.

“No,” I said.

“Did that happen in your dirty book?”

“Yes.”

“It turned you on.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you called me?”

Oh my God. “Yes,” I breathed, and he groaned.

Sex with Hoyt had been awful on a bunch of levels and the memories spilled, uncontrolled, out from where I’d tried to hide them. At the beginning, before I knew better, I’d asked him once if he’d like that…like me to put his penis in my mouth.

He smacked me right off the bed.

Whores talk like that, he’d said.

I closed my eyes, my arms lifting to cover my breasts, an old awful embarrassment filling me right to the top, pushing away all my excitement. Tears burned behind my eyes.

I can’t do this. This isn’t me. This isn’t for me.

I opened my mouth to tell him I’d made a mistake. I never should have tried this, no matter how bad I wanted it.

“You’re missing out on one of life’s great pleasures, Layla,” he said.

My eyes sprang open at the fake name.

My cousin’s name.

I’m not me. This isn’t me, having this conversation.

I’m Layla. And Layla isn’t embarrassed. Layla doesn’t give a shit what some asshole like Hoyt thinks about her. Layla’s probably had phone sex half a million times.

Recommitted, I cleared my throat. “I’ve never been skinny-dipping.”

“Well, now you’re killing me.”

“There’s a swimming pond here. Maybe I’ll try it.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“What about you?” I asked. “What—”

“Hold on now, we’re not done with you.”

“Oh.” I flushed at the attention, the focus this man put on me. It was uncomfortable, but I forced myself to take it. Absorb it. So different from Hoyt’s mercurial, violent focus.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked.

“It would be weird if I said no after all this, wouldn’t it?”

“Are you touching yourself?”

“What, like…masturbating?” I shrieked. Actually shrieked. So impossibly not cool, Annie.

“Not necessarily.”

“Then…what are you talking about?” I asked.

“Just touching. Just feeling your skin. Your body.”

“No. I’m not doing that.” I’d never done that.

“Put your hand over your belly, spread out your fingers as wide as you can.”

I did what he asked, the tips of my fingers touching the edge of my panties. My thumb and pinky brushed the small indentions next to my hips that were somehow ticklish and directly attached to the ache between my legs. The skin there was so soft. The hair on my stomach white-blond and fine. I’d never noticed that before.

I ran my palm over my skin and then the back of my hand, from hip bone to hip bone.

I couldn’t stop my gasp at the electric sensation.

“You doing it?”

“Yes.”

“Now take that hand and slide it up your stomach, your chest, to your throat. Trace your collarbone.”

“I don’t…” My collarbone? Really?

“This is why you called me, baby. Let me do my job.”

I was panting—which I’m sure he could hear, but I didn’t care. I did what he asked, tracing the top and bottom edges of the delicate fluted bone.

“Touch your lips. Go real slow with your thumb. How does that feel?”

“Good. All of it…feels so good.” My lips were chapped, and somehow even that skin was attached to the ache between my legs because I was dying. Restless and achy and hurting.

“Lick the tips of your fingers. Feel your tongue.”

It was surreal, these parts of my body that seemed so pedestrian, so bland and normal every other moment of my life, but right now…they were electric. The air I breathed, the skin on my body—my entire self—was electric.

“Do it, baby.”

“Do what?”

“Slip your fingers between your legs.”

“I don’t…” I closed my eyes and moaned. There was too much happening inside of me—too many things. Desire and embarrassment. A terrible, sharp sense of my own ridiculousness.

“You don’t what?”

“I don’t…I just…I’ve never—” How could I explain my life to this man? The extreme temperatures I’d endured that left nothing…nothing for me. There was not a moment of my day spent on anything but appeasing first my mother and then my husband.

“You’ve never…?” he asked.

Once, I thought, but the memory was a bad one. Sour and awful. Terrible and unfinished; I couldn’t even count it.

“Never.”

“Oh, fuck, baby, I don’t even care if this is some kind of game you’re playing. I’m in. Whatever it is, I’m so fucking in.”

“It’s not a game.”

“Okay,” he said, and I could tell he still didn’t believe me. And God, wasn’t that easier? Wasn’t it easier if he thought I was worldly and experienced enough to think of this dirty little phone sex game to play with a stranger?

“Are you?” I asked.

“What?”

“Touching yourself?”

His low chuckle sizzled from my ear over my body. “No, this one is about you.”

About me. Oh God, why did that even turn me on?

Nothing good had been about me. Ever.

“Tell me what to do,” I whispered.

His breathing was hard and I heard the shift and squeal of a chair, like he was turning, or leaning back.

“God, you’re good, baby.”

I didn’t give a shit what he thought as long as this feeling was filling my body. “Please,” I whispered.

Again, that groan. “Slide your fingers down between your legs.”

My fingers slipped under the plain pink cotton of my underwear and I whimpered when the pressure of my hand made the ache worse. Sharper somehow.

“I like that sound you made,” he said.

“What next?”

“Cup yourself in your hand, your fingers low…you feel yourself there?”

“Yes. I’m…I’m wet. Hot.”

Dylan swore.

“Good, baby. Now take those fingers down between your lips, just keep following your wetness until your finger slips…”

I gasped. “Inside.”

“Yes.”

“Oh God.” I closed my eyes, sliding my finger out slowly and then back in. I lifted my knees up, arched my hips so I could get more of my finger inside, but somehow, as good as that felt, there was something entirely unsatisfying about it. “It’s not—”