“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