“I feel guilty, Jess.”
“What about, sweetie?” she crouches down in front of me, giving me her undivided attention.
“I feel as though I’m abandoning you all. Every year for God only knows how long, I have spent Christmas day with you and your family. They’re the closest thing to a family I have,” I shake my head absentminded. “I don’t want them to think they mean nothing to me just because someone else came along.” I hang my head feeling a cataract of shame sweeping me clear off my feet.
“Sweetie, they don’t think that. They love you like another daughter. They’re happy for you, and you haven’t left them in the lurch, you gave them notice that you won’t be there this year.” She pushes my hair back so it tumbles behind my shoulders. “If anything, feel sorry for me, I’ve got to manage on my own with Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Twit,” we snicker at her nicknames for her twin younger brothers.
“I just don’t like breaking tradition.”
“Sweetie, when you close your eyes and consider your future, do you see Hayden?” her smooth tone is laced with solemnity.
“He’s always at my side.”
“Well, there’s your answer. You have to break traditions to make way for the new ones.”
Smiling tightlipped, she draws me into a protective embrace, and soothingly sways us side-to-side. “Come on now, Sammy,” releasing me, she holds me at arm’s length. “Enough of all this––” she points back and forth, drawing an invisible line between both glassy looking eyes, that gives refuge to a river of tears, “––and make yourself handy; coffee, please.”
At 8:30 p.m., my cell startles me with its loud vibration, as it glides effortlessly over the coffee table, directly opposite me, and the first bar of Songbird resonates through the speaker, informing me that Hayden is on the other end of the line.
Reaching forward, I seize the handset, and press the green button.
“Hey, beautiful,” the deep, intoxicating sound of Hayden’s voice, travels through my body, reawakening my senses.
“Hey, you,” I reply coyly and sink back into the cool, leather couch. I place one of the crimson, velvet cushions in my lap.
“Did I catch you at a bad time? Are you busy?”
“No, I’m just relaxing. Jessie decided that we needed more baubles for the tree, so we have been adding them onto the ever growing mass.” Jessie playfully swats my leg, before pushing herself from the seat, and heads to the kitchen. “Have you put yours up today?”
“You know I don’t put anything up until Christmas Eve. And that is kind of the reason I am ringing actually. I was hoping that you could come with me tomorrow, help pick one out and dress it––”
“So there is something that Hayden Wentworth will dress?” I tease.
“If I had my way, beautiful, you would never be dressed, let alone me dressing you.” He sighs exuberantly down the speaker, and I swear I can feel his breath sweep across my cheek. “Nope. Never. I need my easy access.” I hear the upturn of his mouth as he smiles, and I giggle at his failed attempt of a serious tone.
Deciding to play him at his own game, I rasp, “Isn’t the act of undressing just as exciting? Surrendering to either the hidden animal inside all of us, and rip the clothing off with our teeth; being overpowered by carnality and feelings for each other that you need to have that skin on skin connection, before you explode. Or the tender, savoring ways we divest each item before making love.” Deafened by his silence, an impish grin of triumph splays across my features, I nip the side of my lower lip.
“Samantha, you’re killing me. I am rock hard.” Hearing the intensity in his voice, as he reveals his body’s reaction to me, even over the phone, sends shivers through my body, and a niggling, delicious tightening at my core reminds me of my emptiness. A surge of need and desperation radiates through my body like the heat of malt-whiskey through your chest.
“Back to the topic in hand,”––I reach up to recover the large glass of wine, which Jessie hands to me and take a mouthful.
“I wish I was in your hand,” he counters, his voice dripping with unadulterated, passionate, sexual resolve.
My throat seals shut. Unable to push the alcohol down, it remains swimming around my mouth, bloating my cheeks like a rodent filling its pouches.
Finally, I swallow the crisp, golden liquid. “I would love to help you, Hayden on both of those bids, but as for the tree––” I idly remember what Jessie said about making way for new customs. “It could be a start of a tradition for us,” I mutter tenderly and a sigh of relief or exasperation is emitted from the other end of the handset. Concerned, I ask, “Are you okay, honey?”
“Do you realize how happy you make me, Samantha? I am so lucky to have you. I’m never going to let you go.”
“Good, because I don’t want you to let me go; this is the start of forever for us, Hayden,” I continue with an over exaggerated air, “You are my knight in shining armor. You rescued me from myself, freed me from my locked tower. And you love me like a––”
“Queen, I love you like a Queen, Samantha. You are my Queen. I worship the ground you walk on…I worship you.” We both remain quiet for a beat, as the gravity of his words pulls us down from my hyperbole. “I’ll pick you up at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow. We can go and have a late lunch and then pick up a tree.”
“That sounds fantastic. I will see you tomorrow, then.”
“I love you, beautiful.”
“I love you too, Hayden.”
More than I could ever possibly show.
“Dream of me,” I mutter and I swear I hear white noise down the line for a brief second. Hayden gives into a weighted sigh.
Dammit,
I scold myself. “I mean…happy dreams, Hayden…have happy, passionate dreams about yours truly…not––”
“I know what you meant, beautiful. And I will most certainly try. Goodnight, Sam,” he murmurs before hanging up.
As Jessie sets her wine glass on the coffee table and lowers herself into the creaking leather couch, I press the handset to my chest, against my heart. Her focus shifts from the piece of technology that rests over my left breast, to my face.
“It’s nice to see you like this, Sammy.” She supports her hand on my knee whilst gazing at me with tightening eyes and mounting, model-worthy cheekbones.
My brow creases in my state of confusion and embarrassment. “Like what?”
She pushes herself to the edge of the couch, recovers her glass of golden liquid and flops back into the leather. Scrutinizing me from over the brim of the glass, she concludes, “Deliriously happy, full of life, and in love.”
HAYDEN
One ring…two rings…three…
“Hello,” A heavy, rasping voice echoes down the speaker.
“Samantha?”
“Hayden...what are you…its 11:30 p.m.” She sounds mildly frustrated, and my awareness of her defensive, although bemused tone, in addition with overhearing hastened ruffling on the opposite end of the receiver, prompts my edginess.
And try as I might, I can’t quell the growing derisive whisper in my mind, the one that provokes angst and mistrust.
Ruffling, scuffling, heavy strained breaths…Hayden, boy; I don’t even need to sow those seeds. I wonder who he is. Who is the mystery man pressing her into her mattress; the man who’s rolling hips was responsible for her laborious breaths?
“What are you doing?” my voice trembles and loiters in my throat; my body is thrashed by the rush of adrenaline and devastation as Samantha’s squeaky, breathy response is reiterated in my mind.
Does she do this often when you spend nights apart? That means there must be at least six, maybe eight cocks that have graced your darling, Samantha. Well, she needs a real man on occasion, smoothing his dark, oily hair that lies plastered to his head, his lips curl and black circled eyes widen with spine-chilling effect.
“I was…oh, God this is embarrassing.”
Seething, I pull away from the leather headboard and perch myself onto the edge of the bed, setting my feet firmly on the floor. “For the love of God, Samantha, don’t make me have to come to you and find out for myself. I mean it, what the fuck were you doing?”
“I was thinking of you in that black silk shirt you wore on Thanksgiving,” she murmurs seeming somewhat discomfited.
“Huh?”
“Oh, for God sake, Hayden––I was masturbating,” she gushes and I can’t restrain my chuckle of relief as I hang my head. “Don’t tell me you honestly thought I was…” she hums wounded and offended, yet she maintains an appeasing tone.
“It’s not me that thought it, beautiful; it’s the narking person that I’m trying to evict from my mind. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I rang so late, I just needed to hear your voice. I’ll let you sleep. Goodnight, beautiful. I love you.”
“Wait,” she calls, effectively ceasing my intention of ending the call. “You interrupted me, Hayden. The least you could do is stay and…”
Oh, no. She can’t possibly be suggesting…
“Samantha, in my thirty-one years, you are the third person I have had sex with and I was nervous about that. Phone sex? I don’t do that…I wouldn’t know where to start.” I sense that familiar knot of unease forming in the pit of my stomach.
“I’ll tell you a secret…I haven’t either. But so what, Hayden, it’s something new. If we fuck it up, then we can look back on this in fifty years’ time and laugh about it.”
Smiling through sheer embarrassment, I push myself back against the bedhead and cross my legs at the ankles. Feeling both doubtful yet swayed, I sigh under the influence of her voice.
“So, shall I wear the lilac negligée you bought for me in New York?” she alludes in her low and velvet-soft tone, then mutely awaits my answer.
Throwing my head back heavily against the board behind me, I close my eyes and remember the way the silk clung to her body, skimming over her curves, the way her breasts sat perfectly in the laced-cups tantalizing me with the visible darkened hue of her nipples.
Ultimately finding the ability to speak through the inducement of my visual, I mutter “Yes,” my sexual needs betrayed within the low, husky tenor of my voice.
“Do you remember how it felt, Hayden, to feel the silk between your fingers as you caressed my body through it?”
The air hisses through my teeth and catches in my throat as her voice affords me with recollections of an array of sensations: my hand floating up and over the diaphanous material that screened her delectable body, dipping under the risqué slit that practically graced her hip bone, and the way the floral-laced gauze grazed my tongue as I licked the peaking flesh and drew her nipple into my mouth while still in its containment.
Detecting a straining in my hips and crotch, I force a swallow. “I remember.”
And then, we’re graced with an elephant in the room as silence invades, an undisturbed silence, which neither of us has the confidence to obliterate in our phone sex impasse.
“Um…Hayden?” Samantha whispers with profound diffidence. “I’m not sure what to say next.”
Unthinking, I release an expected chuckle. But immediately regret my insolence upon hearing Samantha’s affronted gasp reverberating down the handset.
“Baby, I’m sorry,” I apologize.
“Baby? I like that. The way you said it makes my body tingle.”
Quietness lays thick, heavy and stifling on the phone line once more, but is soon broken as a rich exhale leaves her chest and travels down the speaker as she clears her throat.
“I liked the way you slipped your hand up the length of my leg and sunk your fingers into the soft flesh of my behind,” she breathes coquettishly.
Shutting my eyes, I trace the waistband of my shorts, relishing the visual that she incites alongside her seductive, breathy narration. I had no idea that hearing ones softly spoken, grating voice could arouse me so fucking much.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m tracing my inner thigh with my fingertips. What are you doing?” she quizzes, losing any remnant of innocence that was only a moment ago, weaved through her seducing tone.
“Fighting not to sink my hand into my shorts,” I groan bursting with impatience.
“Do it. Pretend it’s my hand toying with your waistband before slipping under it.”
I acquiesce and lower my hand inside the material.
Overhearing a muffled plucking noise, Samantha hisses painfully.
“Are you, okay?”
“Hold on, I’m trying to get my bra off,” she reprises.
I wait patiently for her to retrieve the handset, although my fingertips throb and ache at the overriding stillness on the opposite end of the line. Her breath mitigates the pine and the moment burns again.
“I’m touching my breasts, so soft and supple…” her enriched, sultry voice lingers over the connection. “My nipples are so hard. Are you hard for me, Hayden?”
“God yes, I’m always hard for you, Samantha,” I respond without a nuance of hesitation.
I relax further, listening to the depths of her fluctuating breaths and picture her teeth biting and scraping at that lower, delicious pink lip as she listens to my voice and soft pants, seducing her senses, not just her body. I wrap my hand around my straining length and begin stroking myself at a pleasurable pace while continuing to heed to my lovers voice.
“Good. What would you do to me if I was with you now?”
“I’d have you stood in front of me baby, but facing away. I’d snake my arms around your waist and take your pussy in my hand.”
“Oh, God yes…tell me more,” she breathes heavily down the speaker, followed by a moan so guttural that my cock strains harder against my palm.
I seal my eyes. “I’d…slowly stroke your pussy lips before teasing your clit in the way you love. Your back would arch as I kiss your neck and almost make you come. Then I’d slide my finger into your tight, wet cunt.” I’m rewarded with a cry that has me silently contemplating if Jessie can hear Samantha’s private activities.
Not wanting to lose the rhythm of my confidence, I continue.
“Slip a finger inside of yourself, baby. Tell me how you feel.”
“Ah…” I hear her tipping her head back and envision her tilting her pelvis upward to meet her hand. “God, Hayden, I’m so wet for you right now. I wish you were lying beside me. I wish it was you inside me and not just my fingers,” she purrs. “You always reach places I can’t.”