Page 41 of The Devil Wears Nada

“Touch yourself, baby,” I say, unpacking my own hard cock from my sweatpants. “Slower. Like that. Open yourself. I want to see your clit.”

She does what I tell her like it’s a dance and she flows, parting herself and rolling her hips for deeper access. I imagine she can see me and how hard I am, and how badly I’d like to fuck her. She’s like an angel—no, more like a goddess—because she’s perfection, and tonight, if only for one measly painfully short hour, is all mine.

"Tell me, KindRegards," she breathes. "What you'd do. If you were here with me."

"If I were there," I say, "I wouldn't touch you. Not for a while. I'd sit on the edge of that bed and make you tell me exactly what you wanted, out loud, in words, until you couldn't stand the sound of your own voice asking for it."

Her breath catches. "That's mean."

"You want mean tonight. Say it."

A pause, and then that low laugh, already coming apart at the edges. "You’re right. I want mean tonight."

"Good. Hands flat on your thighs. Don't move them until I say." I wait until the only thing I hear is the sound of her breathing. "Now. I'd start at your knees. Kiss my way up slow enough that you'd try to push my head where you wanted it, but I wouldn't let you. I'd hold your hips down and make you wait."

"KindRegards—" It comes out of her frayed.

"How long do you think you'd last," I say, "before you begged?"

"Not long." She laughs. "God. Not long at all."

"Then do it for me. Slow. Show me what you'd want my hands doing."

And I hear it start, the shift of the sheets, the change in her breathing, a small helpless sound that has none of the show in it. That's the one that gets me. Not Diablo playing to a room. Her. My girl from the office.

"Keep talking," I tell her, my own hand working now, keeping time with everything I can hear. "Don't clean it up. Tell me all of it."

So she does and in a filthy and breathless voice comes a running whisper of everything she wishes I was doing to her instead of her own hand. Her voice climbs and starts to break, and I can hear the exact second she loses the thread of her sentence.

"That's it," I say. "Just like that. Now slide a finger inside and pump. Don't you dare stop."

I’m working myself, matching her rhythm through the laptop screen, and I’m watching the real fucking thing. I know the difference now. The hitch in her voice, the way her thighs start to shake, the fact that she's forgotten to be Diablo about it. And knowing that I did that, that I'm the one who virtually fucked her tonight, that it's my name on her lips, has me gripping myself hard enough to hurt.

When she goes, she goes with a broken little cry of, “God yes, I wish you were here to fuck me, yes, yes, yes…" That's what finishes me, and I follow her right over the edge, silent, forehead dropped to the edge of the desk, spilling into my own fist like a kid half my age.

For a while, there's nothing but breathing, hers and mine.

"Wow." She laughs, soft and spent. "You really were in a mood."

"Yeah." My voice is shot.

She yawns. "I gotta sign off, KindRegards. Sleepy time."

And this is the part where the decent man tells her the truth. Where I type it or say it and let the whole thing come down.

But I don't.

I say, “Good night baby,” and sit there at home, sated, at least for the moment, and stupidly happy. I think, I cannot blow up her life and mine ten seconds after that. No chance.

Tomorrow. I'll tell her tomorrow, to her face, as Theo, and take whatever's coming.

Am I annoyed with myself for wanting her more than I want to do the right thing? I don’t know. Maybe. But I've spent a week finding out exactly how far gone I am on this woman, and I already know the honest answer about myself. I'll take one more hour of her over the high road ten times out of ten. I'm not going to pretend to be better than I am at one in the morning while I’m still imagining what she smells and tastes like.

So I let myself have this, one more night of being the man she thinks I am.

Tomorrow, she gets the real one, ready or not.

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