The photo was of a very handsome man in uniform. Navy. Ivy had lived in D.C. for long enough, seen enough men in uniform to be able to pick out the branch of military by sight of the person in question’s dress. She was partial to the Navy uniforms. Or maybe just this guy in his Navy uniform, dress blues bringing out his deep blue eyes. A grin lit up his entire face. His all-American good looks were framed by cropped brown hair. His broad shoulders and muscles were outlined perfectly in that uniform Ivy delighted in guessing at.
Ivy noticed he’d included a message underneath. She’d been so distracted by the photo, she hadn’t seen it.
“My name’s Cole Hardcastle, and I’d love to chat with you,” it read. Simple. Clean. No “hey” or lurid advances. Straightforward and seemingly respectful.
Ivy wasn’t sure what made her do it. She wasn’t going to get paid for responding to the message. The window for that had passed hours ago.
Chalking it up to latent patriotism, or maybe those blue eyes paired with that grin, she typed a quick response and hit send.
Chapter 4
Cole
The missed texts on Cole’s phone, once he’d plugged it in and started recharging it, were so ridiculous that it was like a complicated piece of performance art. Choruses of variations on “where the fuck are you, asshole?” filled his inbox. Cole wished he had memories about where he’d disappeared to and why, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it. He just felt a slight twinge of guilt that his buddies had been worried.
“You better be hiding! I’m going to kick your ass when I find you!” Jason had texted at some point, and Cole snorted a laugh. He guessed only some of his friends had been worried. Jason had just been amused and pissed.
But then there was this text. The last of them. Sent only about an hour ago.
“Hey, sexy. It’s Ivy, from last night. How are you doing this morning?”
Ivy? That’s right, Jason had said something about an Ivy who wanted to talk to him.
Cole scoured his brain. Had me met an Ivy last night? He’d met plenty of women. Each and every one of them beautiful, if his mind remembered correctly. But Ivy was such a unique name that he thought he would’ve remembered.
Names could be tough. He’d forgive himself. He tried holding snapshots of the women he could remember from last night up like flashcards against the name. Ivy. Ivy? There was no real way of telling. The women last night had all been beautiful. That much he knew.
What he didn’t know was which of them had been Ivy. And he wasn’t about to start guessing now. Not when he apparently had made enough of an impression to warrant a morning-after text.
Had they kissed? Had he been especially charming? Had Jason put her up to this?
Whoever Ivy was, she’d implied that there had been a last night with her that Cole should’ve remembered. The last thing he was about to do was ask her who she was and how he knew her. That would ruin whatever this conversation was going to shape up to be.
He thought for a couple of long seconds, thumbs hovering over his phone screen, before typing a response. “Hungover. Still in bed. How are you?”
There. That should be…sufficient. Or something. At least it didn’t reveal that he was a complete jerk who couldn’t keep track of the women he met.
His phone pinged. Ivy had texted back awfully quickly for someone who’d texted him an hour ago.
“What a coincidence,” she’d typed. “I’m in bed, too. Barely slept at all last night.”
Cole wet his lips. “Not hungover, too, I hope.” Something about the idea of lying in bed with someone—separated by God only knew how many miles, but connected on the phone—was strangely erotic.
“Just tired,” she sent back. “Looking for something to help me go to sleep. Mind’s still awake.”
Cole’s lips quirked upward in a smile. “I know how that goes. Body’s ready, but the brain needs a little more convincing.”
“Maybe you could help.”
He couldn’t explain how such a simple sentence could make his heart pound the way it was. “Whatever you need,” he typed. “Tell me.” He had a few suggestions, himself, but he didn’t want to push. Not if this wasn’t what he thought it was. He couldn’t make that mistake.
The next text, though, relieved him of all of his doubts.
“I think I’d press my body up against yours,” Ivy typed. “Wrap my legs around your thigh.”
They were doing this, then. Cole’s cock leapt to attention. “I bet you’d try to rub yourself against me, wouldn’t you? Leave a wet spot.”
“You know me so well,” she agreed. “You wouldn’t make me do that, would you? You’d take care of me.”
Fuck, yes, he would.
Cole shifted in the bed, the sheets causing enough friction against his erection to make him shudder. “I’d open you up with my fingers,” he typed. “First one, then two. I have big hands. I don’t think you could handle three. Will you be wet for me?”
“Already am,” Ivy confirmed. “If you want me wetter, you’re just going to have to use your mouth. That tongue of yours.”
“Yours,” he sent back, correcting her. “My tongue is yours. Made for tasting you. I’ll fuck you with this tongue. Make you come on it.”
“Please. I need you. I need that big cock inside of me. It’s the only way I can come.”
“Then it’s yours, too, baby. I’m going to fuck you wide open. Make you beg. Make you scream.”
“Yes. Please. All I can do is hang on. You’re so deep inside of me. You fill me all the way up.”
Cole stroked himself from root to tip, boxers pushed down his legs, willing it to be so. He didn’t care that he didn’t even know what Ivy looked like. She sounded amazing.
Closing his eyes, he imagined she’d feel amazing, too, her body replacing his closed fist around his length. Cole took a brief, cursed break from attending to himself to type a message back to Ivy.
“You’re so tight for me,” he wrote. “I can barely move inside of you, but I’m thrusting. Mouth on your tits. Hand in your hair. Won’t stop for anything.”
He was leaking pre-cum, and that just made it even more real. He was so close to coming in earnest that he could practically see it, as real as the icon on his phone indicating that Ivy was typing back. For a brief second, he wondered what she looked like—he wished he had some recollection from the night before. Somehow, though, that didn’t matter. It was enough to imagine the sensation of her, the idea of her engulfing him. He was swept up in the fantasy. Carried away by it.
“I’m so close,” Ivy replied. “You’re hitting all the right spots. So good for me. You going to come with me, Cole? I’m going to come so hard.”
And just like that, as if she’d had a magic button, a secret password to his cock, Cole was coming, vision going white, every muscle in his body tensed up and then completely and utterly relaxed. Fuck. His dazed mind could only manage that. He’d never come so hard in his life, let alone on his own hand.
He panted, in disbelief, surveying the mess he’d made. It was like he was young again, jerking off in bed, unsure of what to do to keep things in relative control.
Because that’s what Ivy had made him do. Absolutely lose control. A woman he couldn’t remember meeting last night had sent him careening into sensation overload just from a string of texts. He browsed back over them, shaking his head, wondering if there might be a chance he was still dreaming.
Cole reached for a tissue from the box on his bedside table and realized that his headache was fading. He wasn’t sure if it was the pair of aspirin he’d downed dry or the force of the orgasm forcing the pain from his head.
If she could make him come this hard remotely, through a bunch of words on his phone, what could she do in person? What would it be like, meeting her?
The prospect made his mouth dry with equal parts anxiety and anticipation. If she’d cared about him that much, to text him this morning after meeting him last night, maybe he had a chance. He wanted to m
eet her, he decided. Wanted to experience the power of her in person.
It was with this in mind, and a certain gratitude, that Cole texted Ivy again.
“I just came so hard it turned my day around,” he typed. “Can I thank you by taking you out to dinner tonight?”
He sent it, and waited. And waited. And waited.
Cole grimaced, his fingers twitching. If only there was a way to take that text back, to remove it from her phone. To go back in time and stop himself from sending it. Was it too much, too soon? Maybe Ivy had only wanted to mess around, to have fun. Yeah, dinner was too much.
He poised his thumbs over the keyboard, intent on sending another text message to deflect the dinner invitation, when the icon that indicated she was typing a response popped up.
Cole waited, holding his breath, wondering what she was going to say. Was she going to let him down easily? Make some kind of excuse about being busy on a Monday night?
“I’d love to have dinner with you,” her message read. “Name the time and place, and I’ll be there.”
Cole grinned. Yeah, his day was really looking up.
Chapter 5
Ivy
Ivy leaned closer to the mirror to smooth the red lipstick over her lips, thinking, for some reason, about when she’d first joined Whisper Line. She’d submitted a brief online application, then had a phone interview with a supervisor. After leaping that hurdle, she’d corresponded, via text, with one of the operators to learn more about the ins and outs of the job.
“All it really comes down to is how good you are at faking it,” that girl had said. “How long you’re able to keep the illusion going. Hell, I’m usually watching TV while I’m working. You get really, really good at multitasking.”
And though Ivy couldn’t say she watched a lot of TV, she had been very interested in a job that allowed her to work on her own terms, earning money when and where she wanted to, instead of having to show up somewhere on someone else’s time and schedule. School kept her so busy, but she’d needed a way to pay rent and manage her finances.
She loved working for Whisper Line when she had the time, usually at home, after classes and homework were through. Ivy had always had a healthy sexual appetite, and even if she didn’t have time to date with her busy schedule, she didn’t so much as pretend to be turned on when she texted with guys looking to get it off. She actually was. This was as much of a job as it was an outlet for her own desires.
Still, she hadn’t ever had an interaction as intense as the one with Cole, not in her three-year history with Whisper Line. She might think about the suggestions her clients sent to her later, while she was in bed, playing with her vibrator. But this was the first time she’d been in the moment, right there with somebody, fingers twisting against her clit, orgasm ripping through her body like she hadn’t had one in weeks.
And that’s why she’d dug through her closet, found a dress she’d only worn a couple of times before, actually made an attempt to style her hair into soft waves, and was carefully applying makeup.
Ivy had never met any of her contacts from Whisper Line in public before. Not even the ones who’d wanted to meet. Especially not them. She’d earned more than her fair share of admirers during her tenure at Whisper Line, and there had never been a single one she’d wanted to carry on with in person.
She had various ways of shutting them down. Mostly true things about her being too busy to have a real boyfriend. Other times, lines about wanting to preserve the magic and the mystery of not knowing each other’s true identities. Something about their time over text being more romantic that way. And then there had been all these admissions, men eager to tell her who they were, like their names would impress her.
She rarely recognized the names. And when she did, she wasn’t impressed. It just made her a little sad that even someone rich and famous couldn’t manage to find love in a more traditional manner.
So Ivy paused, pressing her lips together, looking at herself in the mirror. “What are you doing?” she whispered. Maybe she could simply chalk this up to her rewarding herself for another semester of med school in the bag. Treating herself. Wasn’t that how her dad had put it?
Of course, he probably wouldn’t have said anything at all if he’d suspected that she might meet up with a strange but sexy new guy as a way to treat herself to the summer that lay ahead.
It was just a dinner date. At a bar. The longer Ivy stayed here, overanalyzing her hair, makeup, and outfit, the more she’d overthink it. She grabbed her purse and phone and left, hailing a taxi a few blocks from her apartment.
She was a little early, but she glanced across the crowded bar and spotted him immediately. Cole stood out, tall, bulky, and muscular—the white button-down shirt he was wearing straining to cover him. He was, if possible, even more handsome in person than in the photo he’d sent, and that was a beautiful thing. Ivy was plenty familiar with the phenomenon of men in person not matching the photos they selected to represent themselves on online dating sites.
In the split second of an instant, she saw the future. She could probably blame it on the way her body reacted to him, the minute tightening of her nipples beneath the material of her dress. The sudden, sharp pulse of want between her legs. But something in her knew that they were going to end up in bed together at the end of the night. It was as inevitable as breathing. All she knew was that she was really, really looking forward to it. Her vibrator was good and all, but nothing measured up to the real thing.
Ivy slipped through the crowd, wondering what other expectations of hers Cole Hardcastle was prepared to surpass.
“Hi, Cole,” she said, sidling up to him, feeling her cheeks heat up as he turned and aimed that grin at her. How did anyone have a right to be just so good looking? She fought the urge to fan herself. It would be over the top, even if her face was hot.
Those blue eyes all but picked her apart, though she pressed her legs together when he groaned in a low voice. “I would’ve thought for sure I’d remember meeting someone like you.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You must be Ivy,” he said quickly, extending his hand. “I don’t know where my manners are. It’s nice to see you.”
She smiled at the gesture before taking his hand. “I think we could have at least a hug, given what we did this morning,” she suggested.
Cole laughed. “All right. I agree. Sorry for being so formal.”
“You’re fine. It was sweet, really. Old-fashioned.”
Ivy couldn’t help the small squeak she made as Cole wrapped those strong arms around her. Each of those biceps was nearly the size of her head. He bent down to murmur in her ear, lips brushing her cheek on the way down.
“If you think good manners are old-fashioned, then let me take a moment to apologize on behalf of my gender.” He straightened, those blue eyes serious and in true danger of making Ivy melt on the spot. “I’d consider it an honor to have the opportunity to treat you right.”
She had the sneaking suspicion that she was getting in over her head with this—that Cole was a really, genuinely nice guy—but she plunged forward anyway.
“You can start by getting me a beer,” she said, smiling. “If you can get the bartender’s attention. This place is awfully crowded for a Monday, isn’t it?”
“Mondays are the best days to come here,” he said, reaching his huge arm out over the crowd and waving down the bartender with his paw of a hand. “The whole ‘case of the Mondays’ thing? The beginning of the work week? Not a thing here. They always book awesome bands, plus they have a wings special. You like wings, right?”
“Who doesn’t like wings?” Ivy countered. “Because those are the people you have to watch out for.”
Cole laughed, throwing his head back, and she joined him. He had such an infectious laugh that it was impossible not to. She already liked him. How was that possible? She might’ve been biased. It was easy to like handsome men with enormous muscles. And the fact that she hadn’t da
ted anyone since the beginning of medical school.
“So, what do you do?” he asked, and Ivy cocked her head at him. “You know. Case of the Mondays? Where do you work?”
“You mean, besides the obvious?” she purred.
He didn’t react how she thought he should. He blinked rapidly at her, then shook his head and laughed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There are a few blank spots in my memory from last night, and you telling me about yourself seems to be one of them. Wish it wasn’t.”
Ivy pursed her lips, considering this development. Cole was obviously under the impression that they’d seen each other and spoken last night. She wasn’t sure what to do. Because when it came down to what she “did,” it was phone sex.
He seemed so all-American, she didn’t want to shock him like that. And she didn’t want to drive him away.
Even though Ivy couldn’t come up with a scenario in which he didn’t understand that he’d texted a phone sex agency last night and gotten her, she made a snap decision.
“I’m in med school,” she said. “Just took my last final of the semester this morning.”
“That’s amazing,” Cole exclaimed, handing Ivy her beer, and she felt strangely guilty. “You’re going to be a doctor.”
“In a year more of school. And following a residency. If all goes according to plan.”
“Here’s to it all going according to plan, then,” he said, clinking his bottle against hers. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” It wasn’t a lie. She really was going to become a doctor. Why did Ivy feel like a complete imposter? It was just that, right now, she was making that goal possible by being a phone sex operator. “And you’re in the Navy.”
“I’m a Navy SEAL,” Cole clarified. “And you probably think I’m a complete asshole.”
Ivy huffed a laugh. “That’s the last thing I think, believe me.”
“Oh, we’re buzzing.” He held out an electronic disk that blinked red lights. “Table’s ready.”
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