“Yeah?”
“Wishing I hadn’t just gone back to sleep last night. Feels like a wasted opportunity.”
The line falls into a tiny pool of silence. “You’re in bed thinking about me,” he says, half question, half realization.
His tone has changed, dropped, quieted. And in an instant my body is awake. “I am. Where are you?”
“Walking to a car,” he says. “One place to the next.” Another pause and then a playful, “Are you wearing anything?”
I look down at the terry cloth twisted around my midsection. “I finished up work and then showered, thinking I’d climb into bed for ten minutes. So,” I say, “I’m half wearing a towel.”
“And nothing underneath?”
My hand slides up over my stomach. Tight anticipation builds under my palm. “No.”
I can just hear his quiet groan over the sound of him walking, the clatter of a cart.
“Are you alone?” I ask.
“For now. Walking out to the back of the building to meet my driver.”
“Ah.” I bite my bottom lip, imagining his long, purposeful strides as he moves down a hallway, along a back alley to a private car. I remember what he put on this morning: black trousers, a simple white button-down shirt. Three-quarters asleep, I’d watched him check his reflection in the mirror, hands in pockets, hands out.
“When you’re alone,” he begins, breaking into my thoughts, “alone and… turned on… what do you think about?”
I grin, and my cheeks heat. “Really?”
“Really.”
I close my eyes, thinking. “I haven’t really done that in a while.”
“Then think about me,” he prompts quietly. And then adds, “Tell me about the time you liked the most.”
“That is an impossible request.”
“Pick one. Don’t think.”
His full mouth flashes in my mind. “The first hotel room in LA.”
“Why that one?” I can hear his smile, like he already knows the answer.
My hand slips over my breast. I was still a little mad at him, full of heat and sharp edges. I remember his kiss on the swell of my breast, the way he groaned. The wet, placating circle of his tongue on the peak. And then the obliterating heat of his lips trailing down my body. “You put your mouth on me.”
I hear another man’s voice greeting him and then a car door closes. “In the car now,” he says quietly. Formally. “You’ll need to walk me through this from here on out.”
My hand stills on my breast. “I—” I open my eyes, blink up at the ceiling. “You want me to get myself off while you just listen?”
“Yes.”
Heat floods my cheeks. “I don’t usually talk.”
“I honestly can’t tell you how thrilled I am about this collaboration,” he says with a laugh in his voice.
“Shit.” I laugh into the phone. “You’re serious?”
“Very much so.”
I swallow audibly. “I feel a little self-conscious.”
“That’s fine,” he says. “Take your time.”
Am I doing this? I close my eyes, letting the calm resonance of his voice bring me to a place where I can begin to pretend my hand is him, that he’s not in a car somewhere, listening to my every sound.
“Do you remember how I sat on your lap that day?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“I made you stay still so I could kiss you all over your face.” He hums in acknowledgment. “I think I wanted to convince myself you were real.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And you let me. But you slid your hands up under my shirt.”
He pauses. “I recall.”
“I love the way your big hands hold me.”
“Hold what part, specifically.”
“My breasts.”
“That’s right.” His voice is so measured and professional and somehow it makes my skin heat.
“You rolled over onto me,” I say, teasing the peak. “You love my chest.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
He clears his throat. Right.
But then he answers anyway. “It’s the ideal proportion.”
I laugh into the phone. “That sounded porny. I bet the driver is listening now.”
“I doubt it.” Alec laughs quietly. “Go ahead.”
“You like the taste of my skin?”
A deceptively even: “Very much.”
My hand moves lower. “I wish you were here kissing me.”