Inside I’m ancient. I totally got that. Maybe that’s why this thing we were doing worked. Because we were ancient on the inside.
“But what we’re doing…this is all this is. All it’s ever going to be.”
“How do I know you’re not building fantasies around me?”
“Oh, I am,” he laughed. “I’ll be thinking of you and a stripper swimming later on tonight. But a man’s got to have rules, and I know nothing comes out of breaking them.”
Nothing comes of fantasies.
“I know.” Because I’m lying to you and you might be lying to me, and I’m breaking every rule there is because I’m married. “But I still want you to touch yourself tonight.”
He was silent for a long time, as if he were sizing up the reality from his side. God, he might be married too. And he said he wouldn’t lie—but he could have been lying. “Okay.”
“I want you to do it right now.” I bit my lip, incredulous at my boldness.
I heard the clink of a belt, the loud undoing of a zipper.
The connection between us buzzed and I wondered if he was waiting for me to tell him what to do—like he’d done the other night.
Good lord, if he was waiting for that, this would take forever.
“I don’t…Tell me what you’re doing,” I whispered.
“Where’s your hand, baby?”
“Between my legs.”
“Good. Keep it there, but don’t come…”
“What?”
“Not till I tell you. Not until I let you. You feel yourself about to come, you pull your hand away.”
Sweat broke out across my body. Between my legs I was wetter than ever. “Okay.”
“Say yes.”
“Yes,” I swallowed. “Yes, Dylan.”
“You been doing this all week?” he asked. “Touching yourself.”
“Yes.”
“You figured some stuff out? Shit you like?”
“Yes.”
“Details, baby. You need to give me details.”
“I used my underwear the other day, between my legs. It hurt a little—”
“Good hurt?”
“Yes. Good hurt. I got so wet. So…it was all down my legs and my underwear was soaked.” His groaning laugh made the hair stand up on my body. “Now, you tell me.”
“I’ve been hard all day thinking about you,” he said.
I doubted that was true, but whatever. It was hot.
“And it’s quiet here now. Quiet and dark, and I got you in my ear and my cock in my fist.”
My breath shuddered in my throat.
“You like that word?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I stroke myself slow, because that’s how I like it. Hard and slow. Bottom to tip.”
I whimpered, closing my eyes, imagining it as best I could, a dirty movie on the back of my eyelids, gathered from bits and pieces. The book. That one time when I was sixteen with my cousin in town. Dylan’s voice.
“I got come leaking out the tip, and I smear it all over my cock…”
Again that word. I pulled my fingers away from my body, the tension in my belly, between my legs, about to explode.
“I go faster,” he said, his breath sawing in my ear. And I could hear his movements. The click and squeal of the chair maybe. The slap of his skin.
“Tell me,” I whispered. The lake of bitterness and anger was gone, replaced by a desire for everything. A hunger for it all. I felt empty and wide open to the world. Waiting for experience to fill me up. To satiate me.
“I gotta slow down,” he moaned.
“No,” I said, reaching for myself again because I could feel the orgasm coming, touching myself or not.
“Stop, Layla.”
I pulled my hands away. “Come on,” I moaned.
“No, let’s slow down for a second.”
I growled at him but he only laughed, panting a little.
“How many men you slept with?”
“Why?”
“Cause we’re taking a break…slowing shit down.”
“One.”
“One man?”
“Yes.”
“Other than that dirty book of yours, you ever watch any porn?”
“Oh my God,” I laughed, trying to imagine how that would even work. How or where I would find it, much less watch it. “No. No porn.”
“What’s the naughtiest, dirtiest thing you’ve ever seen in real life?”
I barely had to think; the memory was right there. Plugged in like it had been waiting.
“My cousin…” Shit, I was already using Layla’s name. “Annie. My cousin Annie and my aunt came to visit my mom and me on the farm. And I think…maybe because my aunt was there, Mom let me take my cousin into town for ice cream. She never, ever let me go into town by myself.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen.” It was a year before Mom got sick. Hoyt had just been