The phone vibrates in short staccato and mutes her music. Karen shifts in the bath, sets her paperback on the tiles. The lock screen lights up.
Pete C. now
-> Can you talk?
Her eyebrow lifts. Her mouth slants in a smirk. She unlocks the phone with a damp thumb and replies:
Kinda busy. <-
->Work?
She stretches her legs, watches her knees sink under lavender-milk water. It’s warm and her skin is pink and cream. The writers’ room would have been torture today with an hour of sleep and sore muscles. Last night, and twice this morning, was work enough. Karen taps an answer.
Recovering : ) <-
He doesn’t respond. Frank types with one finger and his tongue behind his teeth. She might celebrate a few birthdays waiting on the next message. Karen closes the screen. Water swirls under her thigh when she lifts one foot into the air. Her shin is smooth. Last night he caught her heel in one large hand and pressed kisses to her leg in a heated trail. Thumb in the hollow of her ankle, his teeth in the flesh of her knee. A memory of the small sounds he made draws goosebumps on her skin.
Karen leads a stray hand over her bare breast, along her side, to the ridge of her hip. The marks he left are the shape and shade of rose petals. She remembers the heat of his tongue – the soft pop as he released each reddened mouthful. The well-deep look of want he painted on every inch of her. She lifts the phone to her nose and types another reply:
Remembering. <-
She opens the camera. Her legs are miles long onscreen, and evidence of his mouth punctuates the acres of pale, wet skin. Karen touches her knees together and brings her shape into frame. Remembering his earthy murmurs as he applied teeth and tongue with soft precision, Karen sighs. Tucks her fingertips into her folds.
The phone camera animates an iris closure and mimics the sound of an aperture. It offers her a still that is practically a monochrome: lean pink legs, pale violet water, white enamel tub. A trail of rose petals pressed into her skin and her wrist submerged at the crux of her thighs.
Before she can second guess herself, Karen hits send.
She waits. He’s typing something. She’s beginning to wonder just what he’s trying to say when the writing icon disappears. She recalls the hiss of his breath in her ear; remembers how he gripped the meat of her waist and brought them both together in a driving syncopation. He couldn’t be shocked today to see so much of her. He’d had it all in the darkness and the dawn.
A photo surfaces in the thread. The shot is angled from chest-height, the camera resting just below his breastbone. She recognizes the lean planes of Frank’s stomach, knitted with hard muscle and pocked with silver scars. She had kissed each in turn. A familiar hand, tendons and veins woven under thick knuckles, rests against the low swell of his abdomen.
A second photo: the same angle; his hand wrapped firmly around the root of his cock. It is heavy in his palm and rises thick, hard, and smooth. She realizes her mouth is open and her breath is coming fast.
-> Me too.
Her phone lights up in her hand and his name (or, a name, anyway) flashes onscreen. There is a red button and a green button.
“Hey.”
Frank’s voice is hoarse and a little uneven. She can hear open-mouthed, broken breathing and wonders if he can hear it in her own.
“Hi.”
He sighs, the end of his breath going ragged as he whispers, “I – I can’t sleep.”
She thumbs the hard nub of her clit and bites her lip against the electric thrill it delivers. They’re both exhausted but starving for each other. She wishes he hadn’t left this morning after coffee and toast (made barefoot in her kitchenette); after he’d kissed her until she mewled and let her body soften into his touch. She wants him here in the water with her, stroking her where she’s sore and wanting.
“Mm, I can’t forget.”
He makes a sharp sound in the back of his throat. She knows he’s taken himself in hand again.
“Are you thinking of me,” she asks softly.
“Yeah – ah – touching you.”
“How?”
There is a seized, heady groan on the line. She imagines him reclined in white sheets, long legs spread wide as he strokes himself from head to base and back again. She thinks of his wide upper lip with its shallow Cupid’s bow, rich enough to feast on. Karen sinks a bit further below the waterline and remembers the sweat on his skin.
“I’m – ah, god – licking your neck. You taste like honey.”
Karen sucks her lower lip tight against her teeth and grins. “Is that what I taste like?”
“Yeah. I’d crawl a mile for it.”
Heat lights in her belly. Karen lifts her hand, bath-warm, to palm her breast; catches one puckered nipple between her fingertips and pinches lightly. The sensation draws a small cry. He laughs, knows what this call is doing to her. There is a pause, and she can hear him turn in his bed.
“You get sweeter the farther I go. I loved you in my mouth.” He grunts against unseen pressure: “So soft. Could eat you up.”
Karen writhes, recalling just how he’d savored her body. Her breath grows harsh as she works at herself. There’s an edge now to her touch. The phone slips from her ear briefly.
“But you did.”
“I did. Can’t wait to do it again.”
“Can I have you tonight?”
“You can have me now.”
Her memory flickers between Frank’s open-mouthed kisses on her belly; Frank’s eyes squeezing shut as he sank into her; the sound of his hips meeting her open thighs and the ache as he filled her again and again. Karen slips down to chin-level in the bath and buries her fingers where she’s most sensitive.
“I wish you were here,” she gasps softly, rocking into her palm with her phone clenched tight.
Frank chuckles again, dark and rich. “That right? I can come over?”
“You – you can come – “ she’s losing control and spiraling up, up, up.
“I will. I will. Karen, can I put my mouth on you again? Can I make you – “
She doesn’t answer. Karen clamps her thighs tight over her wrist as she spills into orgasm. Frank’s sticks-and-stones growl is tender in her ear as she cries his name over and over. He shouts hoarsely, voice melting in to a long sigh. They breathe together over the crackling connection. Her bath is cooling fast.
“Can I come over?”
“Hurry up.”