First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)

by B.K. Borison

“If you don’t want me to kiss you, tell me now.” “I thought we said we weren’t going to do that again,” she breathes. “I’m an idiot,” I tell her and she laughs. My nose bumps hers in the dark. “I thought once would be enough.” “It wasn’t?”

“It wasn’t enough for me either.” She shifts and I wrap my arms around her like I wanted to, my hand moving up her spine in a firm stroke. “We should probably kiss each other some more. Maybe two times will be enough.” “I don’t think two times will be enough,” I murmur.

“I wondered—” She presses out a sweet sigh and rocks her hips against my thigh, an unconscious motion, an afterthought, chasing the friction. She stops herself with two fists in the back of my shirt. “No one told you to stop.” I grip her ass and help her move again, a slow, thorough grind against my leg. She shudders in my arms. “Keep talking,” I growl. “Tell me.” “I wondered how you might touch me. If you were there,”

“I’m—” She laughs a little bit, breathless and winded. “I’m having so much fun right now.” I brush my lips against the tip of her ear. “Do you think I could make you come like this?” Her hips stutter and jump, then grind harder. “To be fair, I think I’m doing most of the work.”

“That’s rude of me.” She exhales slowly. “It really is.” I let my thumb trace the heavy curve of her breast. Her skin is so warm. “I should probably help.” “Yes, please,”

“Could you—” She arches her back and I drag my thumb across her nipple, an answer to the rest of that question. She nods, frantic. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s nice.” I drag my teeth along her jaw. “Nice,” I huff. I trace another wide circle with my thumb. “Nothing I want to do to you is very nice, Lucie.” “Okay, we’ll use a different word,”

“What word should we use?” I can think of fifteen, right off the top of my head. Incredible, unbelievable, perfect. Soft. Warm. Too much. Not enough. Fucking overwhelming. “Nice,” she says with a laugh that wheezes out of her.

I’m an expert on the soundtrack of Lucie, but I think these sounds might be my favorite. The music Lucie makes when she’s chasing her orgasm against my thigh, both of her hands twisted through my hair, her mouth open against my shoulder.

“Are you wet, Lucie?” The question bursts out of me, borderline accusing. I’m not being very nice right now. Not nice at all. She nods and I grunt, taking her response like a sucker punch. “Then, no. I can’t touch you a little bit. Because if I feel how wet you are for me, I’m going to fuck you in this closet.”

“You don’t want—” “Lucie.” I stamp a kiss over her lips. “Want isn’t the issue. Of course I want. I’ve been wanting. But I need to go sit in a booth with you for a couple of hours, and I won’t be able to if we do anything else in this tiny closet.” I lean forward and brush another gentle kiss against her mouth. “Maybe we can have more fun later.”

Lucie Stone: I talked to Skee-Ball guy again. He called the other night. Aiden Valentine: [coughing] Did, um, did he? Lucie Stone: He did. Aiden Valentine: I guess he had a good time, then. Lucie Stone: It certainly seems that way.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the station?” she asks, and I have to drag my eyes up from that tiny zipper. I want to dip two fingers into the opening of her uniform and tug her to me until we’re plastered together knee to neck.

When she’s finished, she meets me on the sidewalk, pink-cheeked with a spot of grease on her nose. I wipe it away with my thumb and she smiles. I feel like I’ve swallowed an entire swarm of bees. I add it to my list of ridiculous symptoms.

She tries to make conversation on the way to the shop, but I’m busy trying to figure out how to exist in the space next to her. I keep thinking I’ll have a handle on myself the next time I see her and I never do.

“Because of the closet. Because I kissed you and I want to kiss you again. And because I’ve been sitting over here trying to figure out how to hide the fact that I have a pineapple pizza on my lap, but it feels fairly obvious.”

“You have a pineapple pizza?” I nod, annoyed with myself. “I do.” “You said pineapple on pizza is disgusting.” “It is.” “Then why do you have it?” “Because you said it was your favorite,” I admit. “And I want your favorite to be my favorite.”

“You are comically distressed about the pineapple pizza.” “Because it’s embarrassing.” “It’s not.” Her smile spreads wider. “It’s adorable.” “Please stop calling me adorable.” “Cute,” she adds. I groan and collapse back to my side of the bench seat. She shuffles closer and rests her chin against my shoulder. “You’re still crushing on me.” I look at her out of the corner of my eye. “Obviously.”

“Hopefully.” She laughs, and I wish I could wrap myself in the sound. Carry it around with me for whenever I’m feeling hollow and defeated.

Comment from Balti-Moron96: I don’t want to listen to Piano Concerto in F, I want to listen to Aiden flirt with Lucie.

I’ve always liked the way Aiden looks at me, but it’s like the closet unlocked a different part of him. Or gave him permission for something else, I don’t know. He’s been looking at me like he’s at the very edge of his control. Like he’d like nothing more than to press me up against the nearest flat surface.

“I figured we could eat the pizza here,” he says carefully, eyes flicking toward me and away again. He’s acting like he’s just presented me with a pipe bomb, not a…poorly constructed fort in the middle of his living room. He nods toward the mess of cushions and haphazardly thrown blankets. Now I know what he was doing with his seven minutes. He was collecting every spare blanket and a beach towel—if the blue sea turtles are any indication—to create a makeshift tent. “Like a picnic,” I breathe. I look up at him and grin. “You remember what I said.”

“You like my mouth on you, Lucie?”

“I guess it’s—” I have to swallow down my groan when he drags his teeth along the inside of my elbow. “I guess it’s good.”

“I want you to kiss me until I can’t breathe.” I hesitate and then decide to be fully transparent. Honest. Just like he’s always encouraged. “And then I want you to press me down into this very nice couch fort and make me come. More than once, if possible. That’s never happened for me before, and I’d like to give it a go.” His eyes are impossibly dark. “Give it a go?” I nod. “If you don’t mind.”

I flex my fingers against her ass and guide her against me, doing my best to work a series of marks along her neck. I hope the next time she slips into her coveralls at the shop, my bruise is right above her collar. I hope she sees it every time she looks in the mirror. I hope other people see it. I’m possessive of this woman that I don’t get to keep.

“What do you want?” I laugh against her skin. “When it comes to you, Lucie”—I suck at the dip between her collarbones—“there’s not much I don’t want.”

For the first time, I entertain the possibility that Lucie might want me as much as I want her. Ridiculous as it sounds.

“It’s never been like that for me.” “Like what?”

“Desperate,” she says, a hiccup of a gasp. “Needy. You touched me like you didn’t care what I thought and I—I liked it.”

“I want you to watch me, yeah?” I tug her underwear down until it’s dangling off one knee, just out of the way enough for me to get where I want. I’m too impatient to arrange her any other way. “Watch me make you come.”

She tastes so fucking good. I might stay here all night. See how many times I can make her come with my mouth and fingers. Figure out every way she likes it. Burn myself into her the way she’s burned into me.

I let her take what she needs from me, grinding my hips down into the cushions in a rhythm to match, aching to find relief. Next time, I want her above me. Knees on either side of my head. Pressing me down into the cushions while she rides my face. Or maybe bent over the side of the couch. My hands holding her wide, eating her from behind.

“I fucked my fist and thought about doing exactly what I’m doing right now.”

“I stood in that closet with my hand around my cock and thought about what would have happened if I slipped my hand in your pants like I wanted to. How much you would have let me get away with. I destroyed a fundraising T-shirt. Had to bury it in the bathroom trash can beneath sixteen thousand sheets of paper towels. And it still didn’t help.”

“What didn’t help?” “I still went back into that booth wanting you. I can’t stop.” It comes out of me like a confession, like an apology. I’m not sure I’d stop wanting her if I could. I like this feeling too much. Like I’m basking in the sunlight she throws off.

She traces the line of the necklace I never take off and affection wars with the lust roaring through my bloodstream. I told her I wear it for good luck and right now it feels like I’m having the best luck. Like every wish I’ve never been brave enough to ask for has come true.

“The bra wasn’t especially sexy.” She winces. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t expecting you.” Same, I want to say. You came out of nowhere and knocked me flat on my ass. I know she means tonight, but I mean all those weeks ago.

“The bra was plenty sexy.” It was sexy because it was Lucie. No frills. Wonderfully authentic. Plus, it goes nicely with the mechanic / tow truck fantasy I’m slowly piecing together in my mind

I’ve never had anyone look at me the way Lucie does, like the want is tangled up with the comfort and the affection.

“I’m trying to regain motor function,” I tell her honestly. I’m trying to memorize you.

“You need mouth to mouth?” she rasps. I grin into the little divot beside her lips. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

“Condom,” I grind out from between clenched teeth. “Get a condom. Please.” “So polite,” she says, fumbling with the box. My hands squeeze. “I’m about to be really rude, to be honest.” She tears the wrapper with her teeth and rolls the condom over me. “I can take it,”

“This doesn’t feel rude at all,” she whispers into my ear. Her hand traces a meandering path down my spine, over my ass. She urges me forward. “This feels very nice, actually.”

“The pizza is fine.” “You’ve had, like, four slices.” Five, but I don’t intend to point that out. This is the closest I’ve ever come to a perfect moment in my life. Lucie with her leg draped over mine, pale skin wrapped in white sheets, confiscating the toppings of my pizza.

Aiden bent me over the vanity in his bathroom after our shared shower this morning and threaded his fingers through my hair, angling my head up so I could watch us in the fogged-up mirror.

The first thing he did when he woke up was smile at me. Then he rolled me on my stomach, pressed my knees wide, and made me see stars.

“Now I’d like to kiss you before I have to sit in a booth with you for three hours thinking about all the noises you made at my house the other night. Is that all right?” I nod dumbly. “Yes. That is, uh, acceptable.” I can feel his laugh catch in his chest. The way his ribs expand under the force of it. “Great. Come here.”

“I missed you,” I tell him quietly, my cheeks flaming beneath the confession. He did all sorts of absurd things to my body the other night, but this is what I’m blushing over. I’m a ridiculous human being. “That’s probably not the right thing to say, but I—I missed you.”

“If that’s not the right thing to say, then I don’t want the right thing,” he tells me. “I missed you too.”

“We knew the show would be temporary, but other things don’t have to be. I’m leaving Heartstrings, Aiden. I’m not leaving—” You, I almost say. But a sudden burst of shyness wraps its fingers around my neck and squeezes. I swallow around it. “You’re stuck with me,” I try to joke.