Page 97 of Josephine and Clay

I don’t bother to hide my face, or the panting, or the tremor in my hand as I prop the phone on my chest and let him look.

My knees are up, sheets tangled around my thighs, hand still buried exactly where it was when I hit accept. His face fills the phone, hungry, almost bruised with wanting.

“Show me,” he says.

I slide my hand out, slick with it, and push my shorts down just far enough to make it real. My clit is swollen, blushing dark against the rest of me. I circle it once, slow, and he blinks, swallowing hard.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” he says, and I’m torn between wanting to laugh at him and wanting to sob, because I want him to look at me and see every atomic particle of the need that’s burning me alive.

“You’re hard,” I say, all pretense gone, and he shifts, adjusting the phone, one of his hands visible and moving beneath the frame of the camera, no ambiguity to what he’s doing.

“I’ve been hard for you all fucking night,” he says, and I can see the muscle jump in his jaw, knuckles whitening as his hand works.

I bring my fingers up to my lips, shiny and trembling, and suck them clean. His eyes follow, pupils blown so wide there’s almost no blue left.

“Christ,” he says, almost a groan, “do that again.”

So I do. Twice.

The second time's meaner, teeth on knuckle, tongue lingering, and I watch the moment it breaks him open, the way he shudders and bites out my name, and there’s a surge of pride, so much it almost feels like hope, sharp and giddy and stupid. He wants me like this. Wants me so bad it hurts.

“Go on,” he says. “Come for me, Jo.”

He’s got me that easily.

Like I was always going to fall for him the second he asked.

My hips jerk up, and I can’t manage a coherent sound, just something desperate and breathless, and the orgasm rips through me so hard my vision goes white at the edges. My legs kick out, knees knocking the phone, and I ride it as long as my body lets me, his face blurry on the screen and his name on my lips like a plea.

When it ebbs, there’s a rush of something else.

Relief hits first. Then the ache follows right behind it.

I want him here.

I want his arms around me, the weight and warmth of him, the kind of comfort he somehow gives without trying.

My eyes flutter open, and I’m grinning like an idiot, chest heaving, fingers still curled. Clay’s expression is a tangle of relief and want, all barriers dropped. He says my name again, like it’s the only thing he knows how to say.

It doesn’t feel casual. Not even close.

I watch his hand pump out the last of it, rough and rapt, phone jostling as his grip shudders. The sound he makes is raw. My name again, pitched somewhere between prayer and curse. I want to touch him. Want to be the one making him fall apart, not just the reason he’s doing it alone.

I almost say that. But then I remember myself, remember the line I’ve promised not to cross.

I soak in the aftermath a little longer, his breath slowing on the other end of the call, my own heartbeat leveling out.

We’re two people with too much distance between us and too much want pretending that doesn’t mean anything.

“You’re a menace,” he murmurs, fingers loose, satisfaction radiating off of him in great humid waves. “Wish you didn’t have to hang up.”

There’s a laugh caught somewhere in his throat, but mostly it’s longing, stretched so thin it’s almost tender.

I hesitate. For some reason I don’t want to lose the connection. I want to listen to the background: the clack of ancient air conditioning, the faint noise of the TV in another room, the echo of whatever loneliness keeps him up at this hour with only me for company.

I want to let him watch me burning bliss in the aftermath, the trouble he’s made. The silence is comfortable, or as near as I get to it.

Finally, he says: “You going to sleep now?”