“Slow,” the voice instructs, as if he truly can see my actions. “Start slow. Slide your fingers over your clit. Just tease it. Feel how hard it is. Feel how sensitive and swollen it’s getting. But don’t rush. You don’t get to come just yet.”
I bite my lower lip, circling lightly, letting him direct me.
“Love it when you start to breathe hard,” he says. His voice drops lower, like it has a natural growling quality to it. The register is utterly filthy. “Makes me imagine how wet you are. How soft you’d feel if I had my hand between those thighs instead. Makes me hard.”
My hips jerk as my arousal grows.
“Spread those legs wider,” he murmurs. “Yeah…just like that. Oh, yeah. You’re so wet. Let me talk you through this. Let me make you come apart with nothing but my voice.”
I pretend he’s sitting next to me on the bed, watching my fingers as they work. There’s a safety in doing this by myself, with no one else’s hands on my body. But I can imagine the intensity in his eyes, even as they morph into Jackal’s.
“I want you to imagine my mouth there. My tongue on your clit. My fingers inside you. Slow, at first, then deeper. Do it. Dip your fingers deep in that wetness for me.”
My body is like the touchpaper of a firework that’s been lit.
“Mmm. Yeah. Just like that. Roll those hips if you need to, baby.”
I start to rock against my own hand as feelings and sensations take over rational thought. I feel how wet I am. How tightly I hug my own fingers.
“Good girl. Fuck, you’re doing so well.”
My breath breaks into gasps. An orgasm is in reach.
“Let yourself go,” he whispers. “Come for me. Right now. I want to hear it. Want to see it. Give it to me.”
My orgasm hits in an overwhelming wave, and my whole body clenches around it. “God, yes,” I gasp, my breath catching on a moan.
“That’s it, sweetheart. You did so damn good.”
I lie still, my chest rising and falling, my fingers still inside me, the aftershocks shivering through me.
“Good girl. Now, go enjoy the rest of your day like the badass you are, sweetheart.”
I pat around on the cover for my phone and press stop with my free hand. And, goddamn, I’m buying that app.
My phone tells me it’s a little after eight. I don’t have to be at work until noon. And as my imaginary lover instructed, I do feel a little more like a badass.
I guess it’s okay to love myself in the way I wish someone would love me.
With a smile on my face, I get cleaned up and eat some granola and berries while studying the living room. Maybe if I could get the kitchen, my bedroom, the living room, and one bathroom done, it would feel more like my own home.
Yesterday evening, I listed some of Nanna’s furniture for sale on a local buy-and-sell site. And I applied for a bank loan for the roof.
“And today, you got yourself off to the hottest voice known to man.”
I’m calling it progress.
Given I’m feeling Herculean, I decide to do a trip to the dump with some of the things that are garbage. I begin to drag them to my car. A wooden chair with a broken leg. The coffee pot that hasn’t been used for so long, there’s rust and mold on it. A lamp that threw sparks when I plugged it in.
The trips become mind-numbing. Out the door, down the porch steps, line up alongside the car, back up the steps.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
After about thirteen journeys back and forth, I realize this is going to take two car trips. Once I start loading the hatchback of my small car, I realize it might need four or five. I thought there might be room for the cracked mirror on top of the cushions from the sofa that bloomed dust when I touched them, but noamount of bracing my foot against the bumper to gain leverage is working.
And I’m grunting and sweaty like I’m back in bed with my audio-boyfriend.
“That’s not gonna fit,” Garrett says. He’s standing at the edge of my driveway, arms crossed, black hoodie pulled tight across his chest.
