She let the phone fall onto the bed and swept her skirt past her thighs and over her hips. She had to pat around to find her cell and then she rushed it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“God, that sounded good…I could hear the cloth moving up your body. I want you to start with your thighs. Go there first. Keep the stockings on and stroke your way up.”
The hose acted as a conductor of her touch, magnifying the sensation just as his voice did.
“Remember me doing that,” he said in a dark voice. “Remember.”
“Yes, oh, yes…”
She was panting so hard in anticipation, she nearly missed him growclass="underline" “I wish I could smell you.”
“Higher?” she said.
“No.” As his name left her lips in protest, he laughed the way a lover did, soft and low, with both satisfaction and promise. “Go up the outside of your thigh to your hip and around the back and then down again.”
She did as he asked and he talked her through the caresses: “I loved being with you. I can’t wait to go there again. You know what I’m doing?”
“What?”
“Licking my lips. Because I’m thinking of me kissing my way over your thighs and then running my tongue up and down where I’m dying to be.” She moaned his name again and was rewarded. “Go down there, Ehlena. On top of the stockings. Go where I want to be.”
As she did, she felt all the heat they’d generated through the thin nylon, and her sex responded by welling up even more.
“Take them off,” he said. “The stockings. Take them off and keep them with you.”
Ehlena put down the phone again and didn’t care if she ran the hell out of the hose as she stripped them from her legs. Scrambling for the cell, she barely got it in range before she was demanding what was next.
“Slip your hand under your panties. And tell me what you find.”
There was a pause. “Oh, God…I’m wet.”
When Rehvenge moaned this time, she wondered if he was erect: She’d seen that he was capable of that, but then, impotence didn’t mean that you couldn’t get hard. It just meant that for whatever reason you couldn’t finish.
Christ, she wished she could lay some commands on him, ones that were consistent with whatever sexual level he could function at. She just didn’t know how far to take it.
“Stroke yourself and know it’s me,” he growled. “That’s my hand.”
She did as he asked and orgasmed hard, sprawling all over her bed, his name leaving her lips in as quiet an explosion as possible.
“Get rid of the panties.”
Roger that, she thought as she yanked them down her thighs and ditched them God only knew where.
She lay back down, looking forward to doing that again when he said, “Can you hold the phone against your ear with your shoulder?”
“Yes.” Screw it; if he wanted her to turn herself into a vampire pretzel she was on board with the plan.
“Take the stockings between both hands, stretch them out taut, then run them in between your legs front to back.”
She laughed with an erotic edge, then said sweetly, “You want me to work myself against them, do you?”
His breath shot into her ear. “Fuck, yes.”
“Dirty male.”
“A tongue bath from you might clean me up. What do you say?”
“Yes.”
“I love that word on your lips.” As she laughed, he said, “So what are you waiting for, Ehlena? You need to put those stockings to good use.”
She cradled the cell phone in her neck, found a good position for it, and then, feeling like a harlot and loving it, she took her white stockings, rolled onto her side, and threaded the nylon length between her legs.
“Nice and tight,” he said, panting.
She gasped at the contact, the hard, smooth line diving into her sex in all the right places.
“Move yourself against it,” Rehvenge said with satisfaction. “Let me hear how good it feels.”
She did exactly that, the stockings getting saturated and warming to match her core. She kept at it, riding the sensations and his stream of words until she came over and over: In the dark, with her eyes closed and his voice in her ear, it was almost as good as being with him.
When she was limp and lying in a heap, her breath laboring but in a very good way, she cuddled around the phone.
“You are so beautiful,” he said softly.
“Only because you make me that way.”
“Oh, you’re so wrong about that.” His voice dropped. “Will you come and see me earlier tonight? I can’t wait until four.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“When.”
“I’ll be with my mother and family here until about ten. Come then?”
“Yes.”
“I have that meeting, but we’ll get well over an hour of privacy.”
“Perfect.”
There was a long pause, one that she had the alarming sense might well have been filled with I love you on both sides if they’d had the courage.
“Sleep well,” he breathed.
“You, too, if you can. And listen, if you can’t sleep, call me. I’m here.”
“I will. Promise.”
There was another stretch of quiet, as if each were waiting for the other to hang up first.
Ehlena laughed, even though the idea of letting him go made her heart ache. “Okay, on the count of three. One, two-”
“Wait.”
“What?”
He didn’t answer for the longest time. “I don’t want to get off the phone.”
She closed her eyes. “I feel the same way.”
Rehvenge released a breath, low and slow. “Thank you. For staying on with me.”
The word that came to mind didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and she wasn’t sure why she spoke it, but she did:
“Always.”
“If you want, you can close your eyes and imagine me next to you. Holding you.”
“I will do just that.”
“Good. Sleep well.” He was the one who ended the call.
As Ehlena took the phone away from her ear and hit the end button, the keypad lit up, glowing bright blue. The thing was warm from where she’d held it for so long, and she smoothed her thumb over the flat screen.
Always. She wanted to be there for him always.
The keypad went dark, the light extinguished with a finality that made her panicky. But she could still call him, couldn’t she? It would look pathetic and needy, but he remained on the planet even though he wasn’t on her phone.
The potential for the call was there.
God, his mother had died today. And of all the people in his life who he could have passed the hours with, he had chosen her.
Pulling the sheets and the duvet up her legs, Ehlena curled herself around the phone, cradled it close, and passed out.
THIRTY-NINE
Marking time in the crappy ranch he’d decided to use as a drug house, Lash sat upright on a chair that in his old life he wouldn’t have allowed his rottweiler to take a shit on. The thing was a Barcalounger, a cheap, fat padded POS that unfortunately was comfortable as fuck.
Not exactly the throne he was going for, but a damn good place to park his ass.
On the other side of his open laptop, the room beyond was fourteen by fourteen and decorated in low-income can’t-afford-replacements, the sofas worn at the arms, the picture of a faded Jesus Christ hanging cockeyed, the stains on the pale carpet small and round-thus suggesting cat piss.
Mr. D was out cold with his back against the front door, gun in his hand, cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes. Two other lessers were parked in the archways of the room, each propped up against a jamb with their legs stretched out.
Grady was over on the couch, a Domino’s Pizza box open beside him with nothing but grease spots and stripes of cheese in a spoke pattern left on the white cardboard. He’d eaten an entire large Mighty Meaty by himself and was now reading a day-old Caldwell Courier Journal.