“Phone sex,” she clarified.
Heat raced through him, but he was hard-pressed to determine if the increase in tempo was arousal or embarrassment. “Yeah.”
“Relax,” she cooed into the phone. “I haven’t either.”
Her confession stilled his hand. He squeezed his dick hard, torn between the need to hold off the mounting pressure building inside him or to hold on to his hard-on. Suddenly, he was in the midst of a situation with the potential to top Mari’s defection on the humiliation meter. “You said you did,” he accused.
“I said I got off while talking to you,” Millie clarified. “I don’t think it counts as phone sex if the other person doesn’t know what’s happening.”
Still gripping his dick in one hand, he smashed the phone to his ear with his bicep and covered his eyes with his forearm. “Is this happening?”
“Ty?”
“Hmm?”
“I meant what I said earlier. I’m going to climb you like a damn tree. Now, talk to me in your sexy seducer voice,” she demanded. “Tell me what you think about when you think about me.”
The sultry promise in her tone assuaged any qualms he had. He began to stroke himself again, his palm growing damp with sweat as he picked up speed. “Everything. I think of everything.”
Her breath whispered through the phone. Soft, swift pants. She was every bit as worked up as he was. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“I wanna see you naked,” he growled.
“Do better.”
“Is your skin pale all over?”
“Yes. Some places even more.”
“God, I want to see me on you. You on me.” He licked his palm, then started to fuck his fist in earnest. “I want to wrap myself around you. You know the necklace thing your friend Avery always wears? The black-and-white one?”
“Yin and yang,” she whispered.
“Sounds stupid and corny, but that’s how I see us. You and me.” Closing his eyes, he confessed the one thing he’d tried to keep locked down since the day he first set eyes on Millie Jensen. “The first time I saw you, I recognized you. Not your face, but you. All I could think was, ‘Yes, there you are.’”
She moaned so softly, he might have missed it if he wasn’t pressing the phone to his ear hard enough to make it ache. He knew she came because something in the silence clicked for him. The same comfortable intimacy enveloped them when he’d spoken of his trip to Greece all those years ago. They’d found the silence of acceptance. And as much as he relished that millisecond of blank space, something primal stirred deep inside him. Something that demanded he make her declare her release. Own it. And acknowledge the man who’d helped get her off.
“Did you come, sweet Millie?”
His own breathing grew rough and ragged, filling the heavy air between them. She gave a moan he interpreted as a yes. The smallness of her climax tore at him with a force equal to the eruption building inside him. He hated the thought of her holding back anything. Not with him. Not when they had come so far.
“When I see you, I’m gonna make you scream.” Tightening the ring of his thumb and forefinger, he thrust his hips up to meet each punishing stroke. “I’m going to make love to you so slow and sweet, you’ll beg me for more. I’ll fuck you so hard, the neighbors will wonder if they should call 911.”
Millie laughed at the last bit, but he was beyond serious.
“Are you listening to me? I’m gonna…arruh.” He gasped as the climax ripped through him, drawing up from his balls and bursting from the head of his dick with a force he hadn’t known in years. “Coming,” he growled into the phone. “Oh, fuck me, I’m…”
“I’d love to,” she purred.
Her whisper kicked him the over the cliff. For the next minute, he was in free fall. His hand, slick with his own spunk, moved of its own accord. He stared down at his dick in wonder. Like he was twelve and enamored with beating off all over again. His thoughts tumbled over one another. Only two things kept him grounded—the smooth face of his phone practically implanted in his ear and the joyous ease of Millie’s soft exhalations.
He grimaced with a mixture of pride and distaste as he released his dick and groped for the towel trapped beneath him. Gaze locked on the ceiling over the bed. Not his bed. Not his place. And Millie wasn’t his woman. Yet.
Grabbing the discarded towel, he cleaned himself up as much as he could be bothered. His heart thrummed against his breastbone, beating harder than when he ran wind sprints with his team. A smile curved his mouth as he pulled the phone away from his ear, switched to speaker, and lowered the volume to minimize the chances of his father overhearing through the condo’s paper-thin walls.
Resting his hand over his heart, he drew in a bracing breath. “This was great, but let’s not do it again.”
“No?”
He caught her disappointment, but her reluctance strengthened his resolve. Sort of. “It’s not that I don’t want you. Trust me, my right hand and I have been spending a lot of quality time together lately.” He forced a laugh but sobered quickly. “But as much as I want you, I don’t want our every call to be some kind of…” He trailed off, searching for the right word.
“Foreplay?”
“Yes.” The second the word was out, he realized he’d chosen incorrectly. “No. I mean, this is all sort of foreplay, right?”
“I guess one could call whatever this is foreplay,” she conceded.
“I don’t want to make our conversations all about sex, because I don’t think our relationship is all about sex.”
A long silence followed. This time, he was pretty sure she wasn’t pausing for pleasure.
“Ty, you’re in a really weird place right now, and I—”
He had to cut her off. “Don’t.” He took a shaky breath. “Can’t we just…let it be for
