A small hum sounds from the streetlight outside my house, but I know it’ll be nothing but a sound machine for my sleep soon. I sigh heavily, slinking my body down into the mattress more and forcing my shoulders down and away from my chin.
The tension I’m carrying within my muscles makes them feel spring-loaded.
In fact, I’m fairly confident I could launch the space shuttle if someone set it atop one of them and told me to let her rip.
Even with the Advil PM, I’m feeling dangerously restless. I need something to reset my system. Something to send me into a sleep the likes of which I haven’t had in far too long.
I need an orgasm.
I slide a hand in between my legs cautiously, curiously. I haven’t touched myself—no one has touched me—in six months. The truth is, it hasn’t even been a consideration.
I haven’t felt sexy. I haven’t felt wanton. I haven’t felt any drive or libido whatsoever.
And yet, one day with Jake Brent, and you’re searching for an orgasm.
I close my eyes and try to shut out the annoying voice in my head. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It’s not Jake—it’s just time.
Still, the annoying, pesky little voice has him in my head now, and without trying, his face comes to mind as I slide a finger inside myself.
Oh boy, this is all kinds of wrong.
Yet it feels so right.
I slide my finger out and back in again, and the sensory memory of the feel of his hands on my hips as we danced tonight triggers like a movie in my mind. I slip my finger out again, soaked and wet now from quite a bit of excitement, and circle it around my clit.
I see Jake’s smile as he looks down at me, and I let myself have that one. It’s not a big deal. He’s just fresh in my mind. Nothing more.
Imaginary Jake leans down over me, touching his lips to mine, and my back leaves the bed as a wave of pleasure crashes over me. I circle my finger again, stroking at the bundle of nerves, and a low hum starts in the back of my throat.
It feels good. Too good.
But I can’t think about anything other than coming now. I need it so badly. I need the release of tension. The return to myself. I lick my lips as I reach for sweet relief, but there’s a block of some sort in my mind. Something that’s keeping me from cresting the hill into heaven.
I grab my phone from the nightstand beside me and scroll through my photos to find the one I took of Jake ripping around the motocross track. I can’t use it for the article, obviously, but I couldn’t help but take it. Just…for myself.
Release rebuilds quickly, taking over my muscles and allowing my eyes to shut again. I can feel it coming, feel how overwhelming it’s going to be, and I moan aloud. So loud that I actually think I’ve set off an alarm of some sort when my phone starts to ring.
Shit.
I pick it up from its place on the pillow beside me, clicking the button to turn off the ringer and finally dive off the cliff I’m so precariously at the edge of when my dad’s voice comes over the speaker.
“Holley?”
Ahhhhhhhh! What did I do?
I scramble for the phone, trying like hell to hang it up, but fail miserably, only raising the volume. “Holley?”
“Dad,” I say, my voice breathy and frustratingly weak.
I wrestle the phone up and in front of my face, concentrating hard to try to end the call when the camera engages, and my dad’s face pops up on the screen.
Sweet Jesus! How am I FaceTiming my dad right now?!
Completely unsure of what my dad could be looking at that moment, I do the only thing I can think of. I yell. First, in a shrieking, indecipherable kind of way, and then in a way that forms actual words as my dad starts to freak out because I’m freaking out.
“Dad, close your eyes!” I scream. “For the love of God, close your eyes!”
“What in the—”
“Close your eyes!” I screech at an ungodly pitch.
“Okay, okay!” he yells back. “I closed ’em! Can’t see a goddamn thing, I swear. Can’t see a goddamn thing at all!”
I finally find the button to hang up the call and sag back into the bed like a rag doll. My whole body is sweaty, and I’m fairly certain those are