That she heard a lot. A record company exec had once deemed her voice “smoky, X-rated perfection” when he’d heard her demo. At the time, she hadn’t considered how inappropriate it’d been for a grown man to tell a fifteen-year-old kid that. But her raspy voice had gotten her the gig then, and it’d gotten her this one now. Though, admittedly, the bar wasn’t set quite as high for this current one.
“I’m gonna give it to you so hard, Sasha,” Stefan ground out. “I can feel your hot mouth closing around me.”
Oakley donned oven mitts and leaned down to pull out the tray of brownies. The smell of chocolate and the heat of the oven hit her with full force. She inhaled deeply. “Mmm, that’s so good. I could just lick up every last bit.”
“Yeah,” he panted, the sound of his slick, pumping fist obscenely clear through the receiver. “That’s right. Show me how much you want it.”
There you go, Steve, you go on and get your money’s worth. Oakley set the tray of brownies on a trivet and tugged off the mitts. Her stomach rumbled. She’d stayed up late enough that her body was looking for dinner number two. But these weren’t for her.
She glanced toward the darkened hallway and the stairs beyond. Well, maybe one little corner piece wouldn’t be missed. She cut a small square and dipped her fingers in to grab it. But as she lifted the brownie, her knuckles grazed the searing hot pan.
“Ah, shit!” she hissed, jerking her hand back.
“Oh, yeah, let me hear it,” Stefan said on a moan. “Come with me, baby.”
Oakley shook out her hand, sucking air through her teeth, and tried to keep the pain out of her voice. Her phone companion thought she was mid-orgasm. She threw in an oh, oh, oh and ran to the sink to plunge her fist into the dishwater she’d drawn to soak the mixing bowl.
Stefan made choked sounds as he reached his own release. In another world, maybe it could’ve been an erotic moment. She’d talked a guy into an orgasm. He was calling her name. But the name was fake and so was the talk. And though she held nothing against the guys who called—they helped her pay the bills—her libido had long ago crawled into a dark corner to die a peaceful death. Even if she imagined the guy on the other end of the line looked like Johnny Depp or Justin Timberlake or something, she couldn’t drum up one ounce of interest.
Stefan panted heavy, wet breaths right against her ear, resuming his resemblance to a Saint Bernard. Maybe she should offer him a “good boy” or a Milk-Bone.
“That was amazing,” she said, using her husky, after-sex voice as she soaked her hand in the water. “Thank you, Stefan.”
Panting. Panting. That was the only response.
Then a tight, high sound—whistling.
No. Wheezing.
Uh-oh. “Stefan? Are you okay?”
Those squeaking breaths continued for a few seconds, then: “Yes . . . I’m . . . fine.”
He didn’t sound fine. “Stefan, if you’re having an asthma attack or chest pains or something, you need to call for help.”
“Can’t . . .” He gave a ragged cough. “My wife . . . can’t know . . . I’m down here this late. She’ll know I’m up . . .”
He coughed again.
Jesus Christ. Oakley shook the water off her hand. “What’s she going to think when she finds you dead in the basement? Hang up the phone and dial 911.”
“I—”
“Stu?” a sharp voice said in the background. “What are you doing down here? Stu?”
“Oh, shit,” Stefan/Stu said between wheezes.
The dial tone buzzed in Oakley’s ear a second later.
She pulled off the wireless headset and sagged against the fridge, exhaling a long breath. Okay. It would be all right. Stu’s wife might kill him when she found him with the phone to his ear and his underwear around his ankles, but at least the guy wouldn’t die of a heart attack on Oakley’s watch.
She could handle a lot of stuff—callers threw all kinds of bizarre shit at her—but she couldn’t be responsible for helping kill one. It was bad enough that she’d just contributed to strife in another marriage.
Gold star for her.
It shouldn’t bother her. The guys who called were grown men making a conscious decision to seek out paid phone sex. She was simply the tool of choice. Another night, they might download porn and watch a dirty movie instead. If she’d learned anything during her year of doing this job, it was that it wasn’t personal. She had a job to do. The callers needed a faceless someone to fill in for their fantasy that night. The relationship was purely transactional. And hell, she’d been used for free by enough men in her past. Now she was at least paid for it and not getting emotionally annihilated in the process. But, still, sometimes she felt like the drug dealer, giving addicts easy access to their vice.
She rolled her shoulders, trying to shrug off the stress of the call, and dug a tube of antibiotic ointment out of the junk drawer to slather on her burned knuckles. It was past two and she really needed to get to bed, but there was no way she’d be able to sleep after that burst of adrenaline from the call.