“Use two fingers.”

I did and immediately the pressure inside was fuller…better. My fingers slipped and slid, buried between my legs. I felt the muscles of my channel against the skin of my hand in a way I never had before.

“You know where your clit is?” he asked.

“Yes.” Entirely in theory.

“Slip your thumb up to the top of your pussy—”

Oh God, that word. That filthy word…“Say that again.”

“Thumb?”

Impossibly, a wild gust of laughter blew through me. My fingers inside my body and I was laughing. He laughed too, and it was a whole new layer of connection.

But then somehow in the same breath, we both sobered.

“Pussy, baby. Slide your thumb to the top of your pussy.”

I did what he asked, so hard and so fast that when my thumb brushed my clit, I cried out.

“There you go,” he breathed, sounding somehow satisfied. “Work it with your thumb.”

“It…it hurts, a little.”

“Good hurt or bad hurt?”

“There’s no good hurt,” I told him, my voice harsher than I’d intended. Good hurt. What an oxymoron. My thumb lifted from the kernel between my legs that was so sensitive right now I could barely stand to touch it.

His silence went on for a long time, long enough that I pulled my fingers from my body. The breeze over my body was not cool—it was cold.

I crossed an arm over my chest as if he could see me.

“Dylan?”

“You’re not playing, are you? This isn’t some hot virgin kink game with you?”

“Sure it is,” I said, trying to sound coy or something, not like my lungs were being crushed by failure and embarrassment. “You don’t like it?”

“Don’t lie.” His voice was harder than it had been and I responded instinctively.

“Not…really. No.”

“You’ve really never done this?”

Virgin kink. My entire awful, sad, and lonely sexual experience could be summed up as virgin kink?

I sat up, breathless and embarrassed again. My body’s humming, its ache and throb—the slick heat between my legs, on the top of my thighs—shameful more than pleasurable.

“Never mind,” I stammered. “Forget it. Forget everything.”

“Layla, stop. Don’t hang up.”

I didn’t hang up, but I didn’t say anything, either.

“Are you there?” he asked.

After a long moment, I said, “Yes.”

“Did that feel good, that stuff you were doing?”

“Yes.” It came out as a sob. My body felt combustible. My emotions impossibly wild. Totally out of control. I wanted to hit and scream and cry.

“It’s gonna go somewhere, baby. I promise. All those feelings, it’s going to get better and better. Let me…let me tell you what to do.”

“Are you…going to laugh at me?”

“Laugh? I’m the fucking luckiest man on the planet tonight. The only thing I’m going to do is help you come.”

I flopped back down on the bed.

“Put the phone on the pillow beside your ear,” he said. “I want you to use two hands.”

“This sounds advanced,” I whispered.

His chuckle was sexy and warm, and I smiled at the sound of it.

“Brush the palm of your hand over your nipple.”

I did it and it felt good, but in a watered-down kind of way, considering what my body had been feeling a few seconds ago.

“That’s…not enough.”

“Are your nipples hard?”

“Very.”

“I want you to pinch them.”

“Pinch?”

“Good pain, trust me, baby.”

I pinched my nipples. Hard and then harder until I felt the strange pleasure-pain of it ricochet in my body. I rolled them slightly between my fingers until the lust and heat and desire roared back through me.

A choked gasp slipped out of me.

“There we go. You want to come?”

“God. Yes.”

“Roll over on your stomach.”

I did, fumbling slightly with the phone, until I was on my belly and could still hear him.

“Grind your pussy against the mattress. It’ll make your clit—”

He didn’t have to finish his instructions before I was doing it, so ready to have this happen. To have all of this panicky, edgy sensation tearing through me—do something. Go somewhere.

“Oh God,” I muttered, lifting myself up on my palms slightly to get the pressure exactly right between my legs. Back and forth. Up and down. It was all the right pressure without hurting.

“You got it?”

“Yes, God…I want…”

“More?”

“Please.”

“Put your two fingers in your mouth, the ones you had buried in your pussy.”

I did what he asked. I could feel my fingers shaking against my lips.

“You can taste yourself, can’t you?” he asked. “Salty and earthy. Best fucking taste in the world.”

It was different. And strange. Tangy.

“Now put them back between your legs.”

“Inside?”

“Inside. But go slow.”

I lifted my hips and slipped my fingers under my panties again. I bypassed my clit, traced the edges of my lips, until I found the entrance of my body. Wet. Waiting.

“One finger at a time,” he said. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

I laughed.

“What?”

“I…want it so much it seems impossible to hurt myself, you know?”

“Like you could do anything to yourself right now and it would feel good?”

“Something…something like that.”

“Push that finger inside,” he said, his voice low and dark, and I closed my eyes and did what he told me to do.

But then I couldn’t get the grinding pressure right against my clit so I used my other hand, to push against my vulva, mashing my clit.

“Ahh!” I cried. “Ahhh, fuck. Oh God.”

“Tell me.”

I braced my forehead against the mattress. “There’s some kind of weird pulsing thing happening on the bottom of my foot,” I told him, not even caring how ridiculous I sounded. “And my nipples…oh God, they’re smashed against my quilt and it’s rough. It’s so rough. And my fingers…”

“Yeah?”

“My fingers feel so good in my body. So good.”

“Go, baby, make yourself come.”

It took a while, a few minutes anyway, and I thought at one point I might just give up or ask him what was wrong with me, but then I slipped my fingers down to directly touch my clitoris and everything changed. All of it.

Bold, I squeezed it between my fingers and there was an explosion behind my clit, behind my eyes. In my head. Every muscle along my back spasmed and jerked and I had to pull my fingers away because it hurt again, but I kept grinding myself against the mattress and the explosion went on and on.

Until it faded away, leaving me sweating and panting and utterly changed.

I lifted my head from where I’d buried it and looked around for the phone, which I’d knocked from the pillow to the edge of the mattress.

Now what? I thought, trying to catch my breath. I had no idea how long that took. What he might have heard.

A hot wave of mortification practically lifted my skin right off my body. I was light-headed with shock at what I’d done. At how far that had gone.

Despite wanting it, despite manufacturing the moment, despite actually doing it—the reality was too much. Like my body had traveled far too fast for the rest of me and now I was yanking it ruthlessly back.

Without checking to hear if he was there, without saying thank you. Without any of that.

Cowardly, ashamed and buzzing, I hung up.

And I quickly turned off the power and threw the phone in the drawer.

This was dangerous on every level. That man—Dylan—undoubtedly knew where I was. He could find me. He could find me.

God, I couldn’t think of that an hour ago?

Quickly, I flew off the bed and went to check the locks on my door. And then made sure the windows were closed. So that not even fresh air could find me. I turned off all the lights, pulled the blinds until the moonlight was filtered and dim.

Mom caught me when I was ten, rubbing myself on the edge of a chair. She took me right to church. Every day after chores. I didn’t go to school for the week. I prayed for forgiveness in the church, in my pastor’s office. Under my mom’s careful eye and the pastor’s terrifying sermons about hell, I prayed those feelings right out.