Page 101 of Take Her

The car’s turning onto her block

Sable informed me.

“Shit.” I ducked back into my apartment so I could call Lia in privacy. She picked up at once.

“I’m all packed!” she chirped, and I put her on speakerphone so I could see her through one of my cameras. I got a vision of an empty bedroom, and then she came flying in, smiling and waving at me, with a massive duffle bag on her shoulder.

“How many books are in that thing?” I asked her, trying to soften the upcoming blow.

“The right amount,” she said, laughing and rolling her eyes at me. “What’s up?”

And while I’d wanted to fuck her before in the abstract, if I could have right now I would have stepped straight through my phone screen. She was agonizingly gorgeous. Half her hair was up—enough for me to mess up—half her hair was down—enough for me to pull on—and she was in an innocent blue strapless-with-sleeves number that I would have pulled her breasts out of in no time to make them jiggle for me. I realized I hadn’t gotten the chance to see her expression when I pulled her nipples between my lips and lightly bit them with my teeth yet.

Goddammit.

“Rhaim?” she asked. I heard worry tinge her voice and hated it. “What’s going on?”

“I have to cancel on you tonight, little girl.”

I watched her delicate face fall. “Why?”

“I can’t tell you. But it’s important.”

“More important than me?” she asked.

“I know,” I said. “I can hardly believe it either.” I looked around my apartment, into the bedroom where there was a chain with a collar and a lock artfully displayed on the bed, and saw that a white petal had fallen from one of the bouquets. “I promise I will make it up to you.”

She took a step nearer to the camera. “Are you okay?” she asked, turning my phrase back on me.

I didn’t like the thought of her worrying about me.

It brought up too many painful memories.

Whoever is driving that thing is parked halfway down her block.

Sable’s text popped up and I read it quickly.

“I’m fine, moth, truly. But I need to go.”

“Will you call me later?”

That was something I could promise—and maybe then I could salvage things. Thirty-six hours with her wouldn’t be as glorious as a full forty-eight, but I’d take what I could get.

“Absolutely,” I swore, then hung up, grabbed a hoodie, and ran for my door.

43

LIA

“Jessica’s having my baby.”

“You don’t have to live with her to be a dad.”

“If you think that’s true—you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

—Caleb, from One of a Thousand Wishes by A. R. McGeorge

My pussy was starting to lose faith in the rest of my body.