“I’m not getting into that with you. I’m saying, stop contacting the company.”
“How about if I pass along praise for a job well done?”
“I guess there’s no harm in saying that you’re happy with Hello Morning’s amazing service.”
“Especially since my wake-up-call girl has agreed to dinner. She knows I need more of her than her sexy, raspy voice.”
That’s my best disguise, I realize. The pre-allergy-medicine voice. “That had better not be a quid pro quo, because it’s so not happening.”
“It’ll happen,” he says. “You’ll keep calling me. And you’ll keep thinking about me after. How dirty and good I can make things for you. You know who I am. You’ll say yes.”
“I think the only reason you want me to go out with you is because I said no. Everything’s too easy for you. And suddenly you come across the one woman who seems immune to your charms. So you’ve decided to seduce me at all costs. Seduce the wake-up-call girl.”
“I already seduced the wake-up-call girl.” He lowers his voice the way I like. “Now I need to taste her.”
Lust swells through me, infusing my cells with a warm, heavy glow.
“I need to have you under me,” he continues. “I need you to talk to me just like this while I fuck you senseless.”
“Are we approaching the savage animal portion of the call?”
“We could be so good together.”
I should be hanging up. I should be remembering why I’m annoyed with him. Instead, I’m thinking, could we be good together?
“Put us on FaceTime.”
“I can’t.”
“Do it,” he says in a tone I like too much.
“I’m not that kind of wake-up-call girl. No vid. No texts. No sexting.”
He lowers his voice. “I want to see you. Any part of you.”
“No go.”
“If you had me on FaceTime,” he says, “you’d be able to see me up close, and you’d see that I have a scar on the left side of my lower lip.”
The sexy scar. I swallow. “And?”
“Are you lying down? Lie back.”
“Now you’re commanding me?” I slide my hand over my belly. My belly. That’s all. Then I turn onto my back.
“You can’t see my scar that well, but when you touch it, there’s a little edge to it.”
“What’s it from?”
“Boyhood fight that split open my lip. My point is, can you imagine how it would feel on your nipple? My stiff tongue. My soft lips. And then this little edge. You’d like the way it feels. I would make you enjoy it. With that fucking attitude of yours, you need to be made to feel everything.”
“Oh,” I say as my hand wanders down to my sex.
“Or maybe,” he continues, “…maybe I kiss you and let you feel the scar first, before I put you in a trance of pleasure with my tongue. What do you think? Which one do you think would be best?”
“I don’t know which one would be best.” I slide my hand up my belly, under the fabric this time. “Maybe we need to get a debate team to take up the question.”
He snorts softly. “Trust me, you’ll want to decide for yourself.” He pauses. Then, “There it is.”
“What?”
“Clothes shifting. The slide of skin against skin. Where is your hand right now?”
I hesitate. Then, “My stomach,” I tell him, “sliding slowly up to caress the silky skin beneath my breast.”
He sucks in a breath.
“And now onto my nipple,” I whisper. “Sliding over it.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Pebbly. Rough.”
He growls, and the compliment in his voice is impossible to miss. “Down now. We’re doing this,” he says. “Are you with me?”
I slide my hand down under the elastic in my pj pants. “We’re doing it.”
He lets out this shuddery breath. Things feel heated. Wild.
“How wet are you? Tell the truth.”
“Pretty damn wet,” I whisper. Because some things I’ll give him. “You know I am.”
“I know, baby,” he says. “Start with a line between your legs—trace a nice heavy line. Nice and slow. Up and down. Don’t speed up until I tell you.”
“I can’t believe you’re telling me how to masturbate.”
“I’m an arrogant control freak. You’re going to hate me even more soon enough. Even as you crave me.”
“Yeah?” I breathe.
“I can’t wait to get my fingers between your legs. I can’t wait to own that pretty little pussy of yours. Really own it in a way you never can. My fingers are a lot bigger than yours. Big and heavy,” he says. “I’ll have to work to be gentle with you. Because being gentle, once I get my hands on you, it’ll be furthest from my mind.”
“Right,” I breathe.
“Even with me being gentle, you’ll be able to feel the ragged energy in my touch. It’s dangerous as hell how bad I want you. How savage I want to be with you.”
“Uhng…yes,” I say.
I hear him shudder out a breath. “Don’t screw around, now. Get onto the target. Find it and feel it. Are you there?”
“I’m there.”
“That’s what you can never hide from me. Feel it?”
“Yes.”
“Slide over it. Slow and hard. No mercy. Don’t lose contact. I wouldn’t. I’d keep you going. Just enough. Just perfect.”
I slide the tip of my finger up through my folds. Everything feels heightened. My skin is too tight. The sounds of the city are incredibly distinct. The pillow is perfectly cool under my cheek. “And you’d be wearing your lab coat.”
A silence. Then, “I’d be wearing my lab coat. Of course I would. I’d strip you naked, but I’d have my lab coat on over my suit.”
I slide my finger up and down my clit. I want him to tell me more things to do.
“How does it feel?”
“Intense. Close.” I’ve never been so turned on. I suddenly want FaceTime on. I want to connect with him. I want him to text me a picture of himself right now. I want to see him. I want to kiss him.
“It was always going to happen,” he breathes. “I was always going to have you. But I don’t have enough of you. I close my hand over your top, fragile and silky. You’re shivering under me, knowing what I’m about to do.”
“Oh my god,” I say. The clothes ripping.
“You know,” he says.
“You can be hard if you want.”
“I can’t be any other way with you. I yank the fabric, tear it down the middle.”
I close my eyes, speeding up. Mr. Drummond, ripping my clothes, so desperate for my pussy. “Yeah.”
“It hurts a little when I rip it, because of how hard I have to yank, but you like it. Because this is way too real. I’m ripping your pj pants, destroying your panties. I have your nipple in my lips before you can stop me.”
“Ungh,” I breathe, getting my other hand into the act, fingers scissoring over my nipple. Am I really doing this?
“How hard?” he asks. “Tell me. I always make you tell me everything.”
“Medium hard,” I whisper. “A tiny bit of pain. Just enough to surprise me. No more.” I pinch my nipple.
“Like that,” he whispers.
“Like that,” I say, enjoying our dirty mind meld. Like he knows where my hands are. “Yes.”
“I’m back at your clothes, pulling them off you. I don’t give a shit, I have to get you naked for what I’m going to do to you, how I’m going to use your body. The cool air hits your skin. You’re quivering below me. Of course, I haven’t even bothered to take off my lab coat.”
“Because you’re an asshole.”
“An asshole who has you totally bared and exposed under him. And I can’t believe how beautiful you are like that. I’m doing you how I want.”
“And I’m into it, but a little angry, still,” I say.
He hisses out a breath. I love that we’re co-creating
this. And that he’s as into it as I am. Is he touching himself? He seems so focused on me, it’s hard to tell.
“You can’t believe you’d fuck somebody like me, because you hate me a little bit, but it’s what you need. My lab coat hangs open over you, and sometimes it grazes your skin. I’m the asshole who is going crazy to fuck you.”
“Like some savage,” I say.
“I’ll make you beg, just because I can. Then I’ll make you come until you cry. Because I’m the asshole who makes it good for you. Get on your back. Get your legs wider,” he says.
I do it. I do everything he says, there in the dark of my room. “Right here.”
“Not yet,” he whispers. “I’m not done with you. Not done kissing your pretty cunt. You can feel my scar so acutely. You squirm around, but I clamp my rough hands down on your silky thighs. Press you open to me. So good.”
“Yes,” I say.
“I can hear you breathing, I know you feel it. Now listen—two fingers now. Go a little harder than you normally would. That’s me, taking a good long lick. Again.”
I do it again. Shudder.
“You’re almost gone. You’re trying to hold it together, but you can’t. This asshole you disdain has utter and complete control of you.”
I’m panting. Going with it.
“You’re close, Seven.” His voice winds around me, warm and rough. “So fucking close.”
I’m shamelessly panting, breath sawing in and out.
Without warning, my orgasm explodes over me. I’m a cluster of stars, spinning into space. Overflowing with feeling.
“Yeah,” he rumbles next to my ear. “Come for me. I’m slowing down. Stringing it out for you…that’s it.” He’s panting, too. “Goddamn, you’re hot. So hot and dirty.”
I close my eyes, floating. I slow my finger over my throbbing sex. Wake-up-call girl: best gig ever!
“I would kiss you right now,” he whispers.
“You would?” I ask, sleepy and contented.
“I love kissing you. You’re unlike any woman I’ve ever met, and it drives me wild.”
I smile. Floating.
“I get you nice and close to me now. You’re soft to me now, and you’ll let me do anything. So I pull you close.” He pauses. “Maybe I put you a little bit under me. I don’t squish you, but I know you like to feel me.”
“Yeah.”
“Your skin is warm, and there’s a sheen of sweat on your forehead. A drugged look in your eyes. You’re floppy as a rag doll. That’s what I do to you.”
I slide my palm over my cheek. There’s a sheen of sweat pretty much everywhere on me. Damp skin cooling in the crisp morning.
How did I let him take over like this? What am I doing?
“I feel…” I don’t know how to finish the sentence. Maybe vulnerable. A little bit confused.
There’s a silence; then he says, “Yeah.”
“I don’t know what this is,” I confess.
“Me, either.”
And I wish he was with me more than ever. A little bit on me, like he says. It would be nice.
What if I told him? Told all?
A tiny alarm clangs in the back of my head. You told all to Mason.
My pulse races. “I should go.”
“Wait,” he says.
I sit up, shaking off the last of the sexy sparkle. “What?”
“I hope I haven’t made you miss your next call.”
I smile, alone in the dark. I whisper, “Nothing would make you happier.”
“Here’s what I don’t get. It sounded like you were all booked up,” he says. “Yet here you are on an extended chat.”
I smile and roll over. He’s still wondering how I am with other clients. Did he not believe me when I reassured him? “Maybe I book this long with all of them.”
He grumbles, and I smile.
“Kidding. I don’t.”
“Let me ask you,” he says. “Why are you a wake-up-call girl? Surely this can’t be what you want with your life.”
“You think being a wake-up-call girl is too lowly?”
“I think you’re more ambitious than that.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Don’t I? I know you said something outrageous during our first call. You were coloring outside the lines. Experimenting. Or maybe it was an accident. I sometimes think that. I don’t know why you said it, but you did, and then you went with it. Followed where it led. That’s what a creative, ambitious person does. She tries different angles. Turns accidents into advantages. It makes me think you’re used to running your own show. Not doing a job a machine could do. You make things happen. You have a strong will. Yet you have integrity, too.”
“Integrity. My goodness.”
“If you didn’t have integrity, I think you would’ve taken me up on dinner. Or tried to squeeze me for money by now.”
“Maybe I’m playing the long game. Maybe I’m just that good.”
“You’re not working me. No, I’d know if you were working me. What’s more, you don’t take shit from me. You’re capable and you stick up for yourself. So what are you doing making wake-up calls? That’s what I keep asking myself.”
I twist around to my elbows, stunned. It’s as if Mr. Drummond knows me better after a few calls than Mason ever did.
Mason always acted like my bakery’s success was due to luck and location, and he sometimes had me buying it. As if building relationships and managing a crew and finding ways to help people create fun experiences through cookies didn’t qualify as hard work.
Also, the whole ironically frosted craft cookie thing came out of experimenting. Running with things.
“Aren’t you observant.”
“I’m a scientist. Observant is part of the job description. Still, what I can’t figure out is why you get so nervous when I set my sights on Hello Morning. Why do you care so deeply about a job you’re so utterly overqualified for? As if it’s a lifeline.”
“Do you analyze everyone like this?”
“Just you,” he says.
Something warms inside me. Because I love having his focus on me. Though he’s wrong about one thing—I don’t stick up for myself. Or at least, I didn’t stick up for myself when I was with Mason.
Though when I think about it, I do stick up for myself where Mr. Drummond is concerned.
I find that I like who I am on these calls with Mr. Drummond. As if I’m a more ideal version of myself. A more genuine version.
“For a moment, I thought maybe you’re homebound, somehow, or maybe caring for somebody,” he says. “But homebound or not, with your communication abilities and apparent control over your schedule, you’d be doing something that pays better. Sometimes I wonder whether you’re on the run or hiding. That would give you time on your hands, and also explain why you won’t go to dinner with me.”
I laugh. “And we’re back to that, folks! The most baffling question of all.”
“It is the most baffling question.”
I snort.
“Then I think to myself, are you in trouble?” His voice goes hard. “Is somebody threatening you?”
“Your imagination is definitely running wild now,” I say, even as shivers slide over me. What else will he get right? This is why they pay you the big bucks, I add.
“Answer me. Do you feel unsafe? Is your boss at Hello Morning the problem? Is it a boyfriend? A husband? An ex? If you’re feeling unsafe, you should tell me. You really, really should tell me.”
“Drummond—”
“I can be persuasive.” His voice has taken on a dark edge.
I’m imagining his stern, powerful self turned out at the world on my behalf. To Lenny and his guy. But it’s not for me. I can’t have him. Anyway, controlling men “helping” me is how I got into this mess.
“I’m not feeling unsafe,” I say. Which is technically true. At the moment.
“You promise?”
“Promise,” I say.
If I don’t get my
bonus, that’ll all change, of course.
“All right.”
“Just stop trying to contact Hello Morning, okay? And FYI, my boss at Hello Morning is a woman, and she’s absolutely awesome. Promise you will only have praise for me and my service. Or even better, leave it alone. Listen to me for real here. The fastest way to ensure you never hear from me ever again is to get involved in my life.”
He’s silent.
“I’m pretty freaking capable, don’t forget,” I add. “Things are under control over here. Stop being so serious. This is just a wake-up call.”
He’s silent for a bit, and I wonder whether he’s thinking what I’m thinking—that it’s not just a wake-up call.
He says, “I’m not serious, I’m realistic. People frequently confuse the two.”
“Realistic, then.”
“I see things for what they are. No candy coating.”
“What’s wrong with candy coating?”
“It’s a lie.”
“I’m guessing you don’t like jelly beans, then.”
“I don’t mind candy coating on candy. It’s everywhere else that it annoys me. Family pictures at Christmas. The smile on the barista taking your order…”
“What, you hate kindness?”
“Kindness is just another survival strategy.”
“Oh my god. That is such a sad thing to think.”
“Realistic is not sad.”
“You know what you need?”
“You at dinner?”
“No, you need some baby goat videos in your life. That’s what I’m getting here.”
“Baby goat videos? Is that a thing now?”
I snort. “Yes, and you so need them.” Of course he wouldn’t be on social media. I turn over. I should go. But I want to stay. I could stay on this call forever.
“Tell me something else,” he says. “Something small.” The way he asks, I think he feels the same as me. Needing to go. Wanting to stay. “Is there a man in your life? A significant other?”
“That’s not small, that’s invasive.”
“I have a code,” he says. “I don’t go for other guys’ women.”
My heart skips a beat. “Nobody’s going for anybody here. We’re voices on the phone,” I say.
“We’re more,” he says.
“Now who’s candy coating?”
“Tell me you feel it,” he says.
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