Ride: A Bad Boy Romance (17 page)

“Shit, Lula-Mae,” he finally says, his voice still far away. Then there’s another noise, and suddenly his voice is closer.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Did you drop the phone?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s laughing.

“What happened?” I ask. I start to giggle along with him.

“Nothing,” he says quickly.

“Jackson,” I say.

“I need to clean off my kitchen table is all,” he says.

I dissolve into giggles, one hand still between my legs.

“Gross,” I say.

“Your fault,” he says.

“I didn’t say
come on your kitchen table
,” I say.

“Yeah, but you said the stuff that made it happen,” he says. “I kinda got taken by surprise.”

“You’ve never masturbated before?” I tease, blushing a little.

I don’t know why I’m blushing. I’m pretty sure I just said some pretty filthy things, and that was fine.

There’s a pause.

“I came pretty hard,” he finally says. “You should talk dirty more often.”

“I’ve never had phone sex before,” I admit.

“Well, you did great for a phone sex virgin,” he says, his voice low and slow. “As my kitchen table can attest.”

“Ew,” I say again.

“Once we got past
tell me more about that
, anyway,” he teases.

We talk for another hour. He tells me about his parents, about his sister and his nephews, about the magazine release surprise party. I tell him about Sasha and Dani, my roommates, about how I found the perfect pair of mittens, and how I saw a rat glaring out at me from a frozen, old jack-o-lantern.

When we hang up it’s past midnight, but I lay awake in my bed for a while.

I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t think there’s any possible way it can work out, and I have no idea how to take a first step.

But I’m happy.

* * *

W
e start texting each other
. I wake up the next morning to see he’s already sent a picture of the sunrise over a long, flat horizon. I text him back a picture of a cup of coffee.

J
ackson
: Not a morning person?

Me: Ugh.

I
t keeps
up all day the next two days, these light, flirty, fun texts. He sends me pictures of his nephews, his tractor, and his favorite goat, Flossie. I send my subway stop, my roommates, and the window from my apartment.

After a day or two, I realize: this is how we’re sharing each other’s lives. I can’t meet Flossie in person, but he can show me. When I say
getting on the subway
, now he knows where I am.

Two days after the phone sex, I get package and a postcard. The postcard has a picture of huge, stark, rugged mountains and says YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK on it.

The back says:

W
e can be pen pals
, too.

Jackson

P.S. I live clear across the state from Yellowstone, but the gas station had this in stock anyway.

A
s I’m standing there reading
it, Sasha comes out into our tiny living room and looks from the postcard to the box and back.

“That’s the hot cowboy,” she says.

“Nosy,” I say.

“You’re pen pals?” she says. “Do you know about Skype?”

“It’s a dumb joke,” I say.

“So he’s sending you postcards and you’re texting him all day,” she says.

Dani comes out of her room too.

“What’s this about the hot cowboy?” she asks, grinning.

“
Now
you’re ganging up on me,” I say, laughing.

“Got any naked pictures of him?” Sasha asks, getting out a box of cereal.

“
No
,” I say.

I wish I did, but I really don’t.

I put the postcard on the table and grab my keys to tear open the cardboard box. It’s from Amazon, and I open the outer box to reveal a smaller, smooth white box inside.

Dani looks at it and just starts laughing. I frown, because I thought it was a new camera strap.

On the side of the stark white box is a very tasteful picture of a large purple vibrator.

Dani and Sasha are both staring at me, giggling, but I’m just confused. I look at the address on the outside of the box, wondering if I just awkwardly opened a package that was for a neighbor, but it’s to me.

“Why do you look so confused?” Sasha finally asks, pouring milk over her cereal and trying not to giggle.

“Because I didn’t order a fancy vibrator,” I say.

Dani leans forward and snags the packing slip out of the box.

Then she read it and grins.

“What,” I say. I reach out and try to snatch it from her, but she waves it away. She hands it to Sasha, and Sasha starts grinning.

I suddenly have the feeling I know who the vibrator is from.

It’s from someone who
goddamn knows
that I have roommates, because I sent him a picture of my roommates
yesterday
.

I turn ten shades of red and probably every other color too.

“It’s from Jackson?” I manage to ask.

“There’s a message, too,” Sasha says.

“Please no,” I say.

She laughs.

“It just says, enjoy, wink emoji, talk to you soon, Jackson.”

Thank
god
.

“Okay,” I say, trying to figure out how to keep this situation cool. “Well, okay, neat, I’ll just put this in my room, I guess.”

“Mae,” says Sasha. “That model’s gonna take a couple hours to charge.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“What? I know stuff,” she says. “Anyway, you’ve got time to come back and tell us the truth about you and the sexy cowboy.”

“With details,” says Dani.

I plug the vibrator in, come back, and tell them. I skip a lot of the details.

* * *

T
he next day
, my agent Janice calls. She wants me to shoot stills for a TV show that’s filming in New York, and it’s grueling. It’s four eighteen-hour days in a row, but the pay is good and I like working, so I take it. I text Jackson behind-the-scenes photos and loopy selfies at dawn. He texts back about getting ready for the World Championships in Vegas.

I’m kind of nervous about them. At least in Wyoming, there’s no other women around, sitting on his lap and feeding him shots and making out with him. It’s all wholesome farm stuff and a small town.

I finish the last day of shooting at nine in the morning. While I’m on the subway with no signal, I get a phone call from Janice.

Sports Weekly
wants to send me to Vegas to shoot the Rodeo World Championship. I sprint aboveground and call her back.

“Hi, this is—”

“Yes!” I shout.

I
haven’t talked
to Mae in four days. She’s texted me and I’ve texted back, and I know she’s busy working crazy eighteen-hour days, but it’s weird how I
miss
her.

It snows, just a dusting, and I send her a picture of my trailer. I send her a picture of my mom’s apple pie.

I get a postcard of a trash barge that says New York City on it. The back says:

T
his is
the realest post card I could find, pen pal.

Mae

I
stick
it to my mini fridge like a dork.

I look at house listings in Wyoming. For real houses that aren’t on my parents’ ranch, because I’ve finally got the urge to have something real and not temporary.

Besides, if Mae ever visits, she can’t visit me
here
. This trailer is barely fit for me, a bachelor who’s on the road most of the year. This is not a trailer fit for female eyes.

I’m tinkering with an old tractor when Mae calls. It’s weird that she’s calling me in the middle of the morning, so I get a little nervous.

“Hey,” I say.

“I’m so tired I think I might be psychotic, but I’m coming to the rodeo thing in Vegas,” she says.

I stand up with surprise.

“You are?” I say.

“I am,” she says. “
Sports Weekly
asked me to shoot it.”

“So you’re working it,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says.

I can hear traffic behind her. She must be outside. I wonder what that means, exactly, but I also can’t stop grinning. I get to see her again. In one week.

“Congrats,” I say. “They hired you back, they must have liked your work.”

And not found out about us
, I think.

“They said they did,” she says. She sounds happy but dead tired. “Look, I have to go to sleep or I think I might pass out in the street, but I wanted to let you know I’m gonna be there.”

I hear her unlocking her door, and then the noise of the street fades.

“I’m really excited to see you again,” she says, softly.

“Not as excited as I am,” I say.

We hang up so she can sleep, and I just stand in our tractor shed and stare out the door at the patchy white on the ground outside.

One week. In a week, I get to see her.

I abandon the tractor and go make some plans.

* * *

S
he calls me that night
. I’m lying in my bed reading a book, but I keep having to read the same paragraph over and over again. I practically throw it across the trailer when my phone goes off with a video chat.

I grin. I
like
our video chats.

She’s sitting at her desk, using her laptop, wearing an oversized t-shirt. I hold mine over my head.

“Hey,” she says.

“You awake now?” I ask.

“Finally, yeah,” she says. “Sorry I was out of it this morning.”

“You’re coming to Vegas, though,” I say.

“For work,” she says. Her blue eyes look steadily into the camera on her phone. She swallows. “I think we should figure something out.”

“Like getting a suite at the Mandalay Bay?” I ask, grinning up at my phone.

She frowns.

“
Sports Weekly
put us at the Wynn,” she says.

“Most of the cowboys are staying by the convention center,” I say. “Mandalay Bay is clear at the opposite end of the strip.”

Comprehension breaks over her face slowly, and then she laughs.

“So we’re not gonna run into anyone,” she says, her eyes sparkling.

“No one at all,” I say. “I can even go full incognito and ditch the hat and the boots if I have to.”

“What a sacrifice,” she teases.

“I’ll barely know who I am anymore,” I say.

“Do you even own regular shoes?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.

I think I do. If I don’t, I’ll get some.

“With no boots, no hats, and a plaid shirt you’ll just look like some hipster,” Mae teases. “You’re a dime a dozen in Brooklyn.”

“I
know
that’s not true,” I say.

“Maybe I shouldn’t even bother going to Vegas,” she says, leaning forward in her chair.

“I
promise
to make it worth your while,” I say. “The suite’s got a view of the strip. I splurged.”

“That’s what you got a suite for?” she asks.

Now she’s grinning wickedly and I’m getting hard, fast. She’s been working so much that I haven’t even spoken with her in four days and we haven’t had phone sex for longer than that.

“The view of the city is a bonus,” I say. “It’s mostly so you can scream as loud as you want.”

I stand up and move to my kitchen table. No, it’s not the ideal spot for jerking off, but it’s got the best video chat setup. I already
said
this trailer wasn’t fit for women.

“I only scream as loud as you make me,” she says.

Mae leans back and I can see her nipples poking at her t-shirt.

“Then you’re gonna be screaming a
lot
,” I say.

Her eyes slide to one side, and she pulls one leg onto her chair.

“I know I said thanks for the gift,” she says slyly. “But I haven’t thanked you
properly
.”

“What gift is that?” I ask.

“The postcard,” she says. “So here goes: thank you for the postcard.”

“Tease,” I say.

“It’s a very nice postcard,” she says.

Then she leans forward.

“My roommates went out tonight,” she says.

“So you’re alone there?” I ask.

She nods, then blushes.

“They kind of found out that we’re... having a thing, actually,” she says.

“You told them?” I ask.

“Well, we text each other fifty times a day,” Mae says. “Oh, and you
mailed me a vibrator without telling me
, and I opened it in front of them.”

That honestly hadn’t occurred to me.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Well, now they know why I won’t give them the hot cowboy’s phone number,” she says.

“Am I the hot cowboy?” I ask.

She laughs.

“Of course,” she says, laughing. “I had to listen to my friends talk about how hard they’d bang you when your article came out.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“The consensus was ‘pretty hard,’” she says.

“They can get in line,” I say. I lean back against the wall of my gross trailer. “You like the present?”

“I haven’t tried it yet,” she says. “It seemed impolite to send it on its maiden voyage by myself.”

“I think maiden is the wrong term,” I say, and Mae giggles.

She holds it up in front of the camera. It’s silicone, long and thick, phallic but not exactly shaped like a dick. Toward the base it’s got a branch that sticks out at an angle.

The branch is for the clit. The reviews assured me it was
very
effective.

“This is stupid,” I say. “But I’m a little jealous of that thing right now.”

She lifts her eyebrows. The picture on the camera shakes a little, and then the view is her bed. In another second she’s on it, sideways, naked.

“It gets to make you come tonight and I don’t,” I say.

She rolls onto her side.

“I don’t get wet riding the subway and thinking about the things I want to do to the vibrator,” she says, her voice low and confessional.

I grin.

“What do you think about when you ride the subway?” I ask.

“Partly about work,” she says. “And partly about how much I miss wrapping my legs around you.”

“I miss you wrapping your legs around me too,” I say. “And the noise you make when I kiss your neck.”

“Take your shirt off,” she murmurs. “You’re sexy and I want to look at you.”

I do it, and she smiles.

“Do you want to know a secret?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“I had a dream about giving you a blowjob, and when I woke up I was so turned on I had to masturbate before I could go back to sleep,” she says.

My cock strains at my pants, and for a moment I’m worried about the zipper. I slide my palm against my erection, breathing deep, trying to control myself.

“I also had a dream about the next time I see you,” she says. “When I know I won’t be able to control myself for long, so I wear a skirt with no panties.”

“And?” I ask.

I undo my pants, breathing hard. I can see her look at it, and she rolls onto her back and takes her nipples in both hands.

“And the second we’re alone, I get on top of you and ride your cock,” she says. “Wait, no. That’s not a dream, that’s a fantasy.”

I grab the base of my cock and pull it out, then adjust the camera to make sure she can see it. I’m rock hard, practically on the verge of exploding. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I jerk off these days. I’m so frustrated that thirty minutes later, I’m hard again.

Mae looks at it and smiles, and I give it one slow, hard stroke. Her eyes light up.

“Do it again,” she says, and she slides a hand down her belly, over her hips, to her mound, her eyes still on me.

God, I love how much she likes watching me.

I stroke my cock again and groan. Her hand moves further down and starts moving. She sighs, tilting her head back and closing her eyes.

It’s insanely sexy, and it’s almost physically painful that I’m not there. More than anything, I want her body beneath mine, writhing. Saying my name.

She opens her eyes and looks at me.

“I wish you were here,” she says, her fingers still circling her clit.

“I wish I was there too,” I say. “You feel a whole lot better than my hand.”

She moves and then the vibrator is in her hand. She turns it on and flicks her eyes to the screen, then moves it down her body touches it to one nipple.

Mae squeals and then starts giggling.

“Sorry,” she says. “That actually just tickles.”

Then she moves it between her legs. She holds her breath and bites her lip, and touches it very carefully to herself. After a few seconds, she exhales, half-moaning as she circles her clit with the tip of the vibrator.

“I haven’t had one of these in a while,” she says. “I forgot how fun they are.”

“Now I
am
jealous,” I say.

“Maybe you should be,” she says, rolling her hips again. “You don’t vibrate.”

She bends one knee and tilts her body so she’s facing the camera just a little more, and then she looks at me through half-closed eyes.

“What now?” she asks. “Your present, your show.”

I take a deep breath and take my hand off my cock as my balls clench. I’m within seconds of firing.

“Oh, come on,” Mae says, her voice low and breathy. “You’re getting to watch something good.”

God
damn
.

“Turn the vibration off,” I say.

“You’re no fun.”

“I thought it was my show,” I tell her.

I grab the side of my kitchen table so I don’t put my hand back on my cock. Mae clicks the vibration off, but keeps sliding it along her clit in a circle.

“Still feels good,” she says. Then she smiles and looks at me confessionally. “Jackson, I’m so horny everything feels good.”

“Put it against your pussy and turn it on low,” I say. “Don’t touch your clit.”

She does. I watch her toes curl as she moans, her hips rolling.

“Don’t put it in,” I say.

“Are you torturing me?” she asks.

“Just a little,” I say.

I’m leaking pre-cum like a faucet, and I just watch her, breathing hard as she rubs herself.

“Do I ever get to put it in?” she finally asks.

“Turn it off first,” I say. “And go slow.”

She turns it off but plunges it halfway inside her with a long, loud moan.

“I said
slow
,” I say.

“I tried,” she gasps, as she pulls it out. “I can’t have you, I can’t have your vibrator...”

This time she takes the whole thing, and as she does she arches her back again and
groans
, a long, low animal sound from somewhere deep in her throat.

I put my hand on my cock again and swallow, hard, watching as she fucks herself. Her face is flushed bright red and her eyes are half-closed and watching me, on the screen.

It takes a second before I realize she’s matching her rhythm to mine.

“You’re pretending I’m fucking you,” I say.

“What else am I gonna do with this?” she murmurs. “Of course I’m pretending it’s you. I’m pretending you’re here and you’ve got my knees over your shoulders like you did that first night.”

“The night my cock made you nervous?”

She laughs.

“I got over
that
,” she says.

She’s still fucking herself with the vibrator in the same rhythm I’m stroking my dick, and it’s a terrible substitute for actually getting to fuck her but it’s probably the second best thing.

“Turn it on,” I say.

She does.

Her back arches and she squeezes her eyes shut, her other hand grabbing the bedspread in a fist.

“Oh
shit
,” she gasps. “God, Jackson, I’m gonna come.”

Now I’m matching my strokes to hers instead of the other way around as she works the vibrator, her whole body a vision of ecstasy. She’s moaning loud enough to wake up her neighbors for sure.

“Jackson,” she gasps.