Page 67 of When We Are Complete

The response is a shot of fire straight to my veins. I type out another response: “Quiet isn’t always bad. Sometimes it lets you hear other things.”

“Like what?” he shoots back, almost immediately.

“Like the sound of my heart racing thinking about you lying in that cold bed all alone. What I’d do to warm you up.”

A pause. Anticipation prickles my skin.

“Kelly, if you’re trying to get me worked up, it’s working.”

“Good.” I bite my lip, images of him, strong hands and broad shoulders, flashing through my mind. “What would you do if you were here?”

His reply comes fast. “I’d kiss you. Slow at first, then harder. Starting with your mouth and working my way down.”

My breath catches, my own hand trailing down my body. “What else?”

“I would touch you all over,” he writes. “I want to start at your collarbone and trace my fingers down to your breasts, teasing your nipples until they’re hard.”

My hand drifts down to my chest, my fingers mimicking his movements as I imagine him kneeling between my legs, leaning over me. I can practically feel his hands on me, the rough pad of his thumb grazing my skin.

Another message: “Then I’d trail my fingers down to your stomach, before moving lower, trailing over your hips and down to your thighs.”

I spread my legs, imagining his hands on me. My fingers move lower, sliding inside my panties.

“I’d spend so much time exploring you,” he writes. “I’d kiss and lick every inch of your body, savoring the taste of your skin.”

I’m so wet, my body responding to his words as if he were really here with me. I slide my fingers lower, rubbing small circles over my sensitive nub, pleasure spooling inside me.

“I’d tease you with my tongue,” he writes. “Flicking it over your clit, sucking it until you’re begging for more.”

I can practically hear the need in his words, the desire that mirrors my own. I rub myself harder, my fingers slipping through my wetness as I chase my own release.

“I want to make you come,” he writes. “I want to hear you moan my name as you lose yourself in pleasure.”

“Are you touching yourself?” I write, reckless and needy.

“Fuck, yes. Are you?”

“Yesss...”

I imagine his calloused hands running up and down his hard shaft, thinking of me. Heat coils tighter, a crescendo building within me.

“Come for me, Kel.”

Reading his message, I shatter, waves of release crashing over me. Through half-lidded eyes glazed with satisfaction, I type out a message.

“I want you here with me,” I write. “I want your hands on me, your body against mine. I want you inside me for real.”

“Soon,” he writes. “Soon we’ll be together. And when we are, I promise you, it will be worth the wait.”

“I love you.”

“Love you, too, beautiful.”

The afterglow hasn’t worn off, and I’m floating somewhere between satisfaction and sleep, all thoughts of the festival mercifully vanquished, when the vibration of my phone cuts through the silence, and I scramble to find it in the tangle of sheets. “Jake?”

“Kelly, sorry to call so late.” I’m instantly awake at the sound of his voice. There’s no heat in his tone, just a seriousness that sparks my worry. “Patrick just called me.”

I sit up straighter, the fog of pleasure completely gone. “What’s wrong?”

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