“Yes.”

He sighed and that was it. Just a sigh and then silence. And I didn’t know how to fill it. All I knew, really, was to keep my head down and work. I’d done one audacious thing in my life, and that was steal three thousand dollars from my husband and run out in the middle of the night.

And that night—with Dylan. That had been pretty audacious. So two, I guess.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Fine.” My voice was shrill. Strange. And I closed my eyes, praying for some kind of map in this situation. For that voiceless instinct to rise up and lead me out of these terrible, dark woods. But the instinct must have been taking a nap, because it was silent. “I’m fine.”

Memories of that night landed like sparks from a fire against my skin.

The brush of my thumb across my hip bone.

The chapped skin of my lips.

The way the bottom of my foot felt hot.

The quilt against my nipples.

The way I’d felt…for a while there…like I could do anything to myself and it would feel good.

Good. What a ridiculous understatement.

For a while there I’d craved everything. Anything.

The things in the half-read book, the things those girls did in those trucks at the truck stop. The things his voice alluded to.

I wanted all of it. And with equal force I wanted to not want any of it.

“I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.”

“I turned off the phone.”

“You embarrassed?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“That’s bullshit, you know. You shouldn’t feel bad about anything that feels that good.”

“I think that’s easy for you to say.”

“It’s easy for you too. Just say it.”

Laughter humphed out of me.

“You’re twenty-four years old. How come you never touched yourself like that before?”

“It’s complicated.” Understatement of the century.

“What kind of complicated?”

“The kind I’m not going to talk about it,” I snapped, and then winced. But I had no intention of telling him who I really was. What my life was really like.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I just…”

“Don’t want to spill your guts to a stranger? I get it. We all have secrets.”

Of course, immediately, I wanted to know his.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “For the other night. Really. Thank you. That was—”

“Good for me too. Until the end when you hung up.”

“Sorry.”

“It was pretty intense.”

“It’s not…I’m not…virgin kink. Or whatever.”

I’m just me.

“No shit,” he said. “You might be all the kinks.”

There was a delicious amount of respect in his words. And that respect delighted me.

“I appreciate you texting me.”

“I want you to call me again,” he said.

“To tell you about Ben?”

“Right now I don’t give a shit about Ben. I want you to call me so I can listen to you come again.”

My breath clogged in my throat. And those random sparks of desire, they coalesced into something big. Bigger even than my body.

“All right.”

“But Layla?”

“Yeah?”

“We are going to do this my way.”

“What does that mean?” Why did that thrill me somehow? Currents sizzled up my legs.

“It means there’s no embarrassment over what we do. None. The second you think about embarrassment or shame, forget it. Because it’s pointless.”

“But—”

“Tell me you understand that.”

“I don’t like bossy men,” I said, avoiding the question because really he was asking the impossible. I would try not to be embarrassed. I would work really hard at that, but he couldn’t make the feeling go away just by demanding it.

“No?”

“No,” I answered because I did like this. Because I was contrary and full of opposing forces. And he seemed impervious to these swipes I took at him. Seemed in fact to like it.

He chuckled, proving that he appreciated my claws, and it was just too much. I curled over onto my side, tucking my knees up, holding the thrill between my legs.

“You liked me the other night. You called me when you wanted to come, Layla. I think you like me fine.”

“I don’t want to be…controlled.”

“You can hang up whenever you want. Say the word and this is over. But if you want to keep going, it’s my rules.”

I clutched the phone in my hand.

“Yes or no, Layla?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl. Now, you won’t call me again until you eat dessert for breakfast and go skinny-dipping.”

“Are you joking?” Skinny-dipping and dessert for breakfast? What the hell was this?

“Do those things,” he said. “And then call me. And Layla?”

“What?” I sounded extra angry with him and I was rewarded with that half-groan of his that reverberated down low into my belly, sending all this desire and itchy, angry lust into hyperdrive.

“Hurry.”

And then he hung up.

—

I put the phone back in the drawer and like I was testing the waters, waiting for some kind of protest, or someone to tell me to stop, I eased my hand under my tank top and spread out my fingers over my belly, making the heat coil under my skin.

I wanted to wrench everything out of me that was left over from my old life. The voices, the fear, the guilt and shame—I wanted it all gone. Like the garbage I was clearing out of the campground.

Feeling defiant—rebellious, more like Layla than I had the other night—I jumped off the bed and made sure my door was locked and all my curtains and blinds were shut. In the bedroom I kept the windows open for air.

I took off my shirt and then my shorts, but I left on my underwear. The last of my clean ones. They were a little too small. A pair—blue, with little white flowers on them—that I’d had forever, since I was sixteen, maybe? The elastic bit into the skin of my butt and the front dipped real low, to the point that some of the hair between my legs peeked out. Slipping my hand down low, I felt the wide patch of moisture from my body, and as I traced its edges, it got wider. Wetter.

I slipped one finger past the sharp elastic, pulling the other side harder against my skin, which made me gasp and pull it tighter, until the elastic brushed up against my clit.

“Oh my God,” I breathed and then, experimenting, I pulled both sides of my underwear down between my lips and I nearly shot off the bed. Carefully, I used the pressure, slow and driving, sharp and fast, to find out what I liked better.

And the truth was—I liked it all. Even the touches that didn’t add to the stone-rolling-downhill of orgasm, I liked. The side trip of my fingers against the skin of my leg. The act of pushing my hair—sweaty and damp—off my face. The lift of one arm up and over my head.

It was as if my body—which had seemed my entire life to be stupid and heavy, an entity to be pushed and smacked, a blind and dumb creature made only for work, its only skill a certain kind of stillness, a trick of getting smaller so as not to be seen—had been transformed.

No, not transformed. Not really.

It was as if I’d found buried beneath the skin a secret wisdom. A dark knowledge.

Like it had just been waiting for me to find it.

I came, minutes later on my stomach, my pillow between my teeth. Part of my underwear—a sly little instrument of pleasure—in my fist, the rest of it buried between my legs.

Huffing for breath, I pulled the blue cotton with the white flowers off my body. It was wet. Totally wet. My hand, too.

I laughed, delighted and embarrassed. Horrified and pleased. Exhausted and exhilarated.

As I rolled sideways on the bed, stray sparks shot up from my pussy, from where I’d crossed my legs, giving my clit a sort of thick pressure.

Oh God. Again?

I put my head down, my fingers eased between my legs.

Again.