Page 18 of Heavy Hitter

“Your hands,” she says immediately. “Your arms.” She swallows. “How I wanted to take you back to my hotel room.”

“And then what?”

“You know what.”

“I do,” he agrees, “but I want to hear you say it.”

“Say what, exactly?” Lacey fires back before she can stop herself, feeling brave and wild alone here in the dark. “That I wanted you to fuck me?”

“I—” Jimmy makes a low sound, not quite a cough. “Yeah, sweetheart,” he admits. “That’s about it.”

“Well,” she says, pleased with herself. Her whole body feels like it’s on fire. “That’s what I wanted.”

“That’s what I wanted, too.”

“Do you still want to?”

“Of course I do.”

“How bad?”

“Bad.”

“Good.” Lacey forces herself to breathe normally. She never talked to Toby like this. Or maybe, like, once in all the time they were together, on his birthday or something. But he’s got an unshakable quality to him, Jimmy Hodges, a fundamental unshockability that makes her want to take him by surprise. It’s the same reason she suggested the two of them leave the club the other night: because she knew he wasn’t expecting her to do it in a million years, and she wanted to see the look on his face when she asked him.

“Are you—I mean,” Lacey says, then tries again. “Like, right now, are you—”

“Yeah,” Jimmy confesses. It sounds like he’s forcing himself to breathe normally, too. “I am.”

Right away she pictures it: his bare chest and the trail of dark hair underneath his navel, his hand wrapped tight around himself. Lacey has never in her entire life been able to fathom why a person would ever want to receive a picture of a guy’s junk via text message, but she sort of understands it right this second. Not enough to ask for one, to be clear. But, like. Just for a second, she can imagine the appeal. “Okay,” she says, sliding her hand down inside her underwear, her own skin smooth and warm beneath her palm. “Me too.”

Jimmy groans. “How?”

Lacey squeezes her eyes shut. “However you tell me to.”

“Oh, fuck.” He laughs again, disbelieving. He sounds so sincere. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a pause, then: “Okay, sweetheart,” he says softly. “Here’s what you’re going to do.”

He’s specific, Jimmy Hodges. He takes his time. It’s a trip, the thrill of following his directions as scrupulously as she can: slipping out of her clothes until she’s naked under the covers, cupping her breasts with both hands. “How’s that?” he asks as she reaches between her legs and rubs with two fingers, his voice all grit and gravel three thousand miles away. “That working for you over there?”

“It’s working,” Lacey gasps—bucking up into her own touch, chasing the build of it. “It’s good.”

“Good,” Jimmy echoes. “I think the real thing would be better, but we’ll make do.”

“Tell me,” Lacey manages, “what the real thing would be like.”

That surprises him; she can hear it. “You are something else, you know that?” he asks quietly, but then he tells her that, too: how he’d lay her out on his mattress and lick her all over, all the ways he’d fuck her until she came. She’s worried he’s going to expect her to return the favor—she feels shy suddenly, same as she felt the other night in the bathroom, how she can’t quite believe the things he makes her want to do—but all at once Jimmy sucks in a breath on the other end of the phone. “Lacey, honey,” he says, and his voice is so urgent. “Are you close?”

Lacey slides her fingers inside herself, curling them the same way he did the other night in the bathroom. “Yeah,” she manages, her hips coming clean up off the bed. “I’m close.”

“That’s a girl,” he says. “You gonna let me hear you?”

And—yes, actually. She is. Lacey keens as the feeling of it bursts inside her, waves and waves of warm, syrupy pleasure radiating out all over her body. Jimmy growls into her ear, low and vulnerable; fuck, but Lacey wants to see his face.

“Was that—” she asks when she can talk again. “I mean, did you just—”

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