swipes of his tongue. There, right where the skin was silky and smooth. He’d lick and probe and make her cry out his name.
Laurie swiped a thumb over the controls, dialing it up higher and higher, placing the tip at the very top of her clit. Ooh, right there, where the thumping vibrations pressed and retreated, the light was growing closer and closer. Shimmering and undulating, building to a beautiful—
Nothing. A beautiful nothing.
“No!”
The sound of her shout startled her almost as much as the complete cessation of her satisfaction had. Laurie frantically tapped the buttons. A weak death rattle was all she coaxed out of it. “Ugh! No, no, noooo—”
She pressed again. The purple one gave one last, lame shudder, then nothing.
A rechargeable vibrator was awesome for the environment, but damn it, could they not make some kind of warning sensor so a girl knew when it was about to die? If she’d been keyed up before…
“Fuck!” Frantic and restless, knowing she’d never be able to finish what she’d started, not without the purple one’s mighty vibrations, she flung it on the bedside table.
No, she’d need something else to make it happen. Someone else . Someone like the mysterious and taciturn Grant Everton.
Laurie turned her head at a thud. Crud. Must’ve tossed the vibe a little too hard and it had careened off the nightstand onto the floor. She tried to muster enough energy to hope it hadn’t bounced under her bed. She would have cleaned the sucker anyway, but she didn’t relish a trip to dust-bunny land to retrieve it.
Bracing one hand on the floor, she lifted the hem of the dust ruffle. Blood returned to her head in a painful whoosh after being so recently and futilely pooled in other places. Nope. No personal pleasure object in sight. Not that she could see much. Dang it. She’d have to get the flashlight.
Righting herself again, more blood whooshed and flushed through her sluggish system.
But it wasn’t enough. There was no way she could walk to the kitchen and get the flashlight. It was just too far. And she was just too frustrated.
It was almost more than she could bear to get on her hands and knees and search under her bed. Would the night never cool off?
The light of her phone’s flashlight app didn’t make the purple one magically appear under her bed. Or between the nightstand and the wall. Or anywhere in her bedroom at all.
She sat back on her heels and surveyed her bedroom. “Where could it have gone?”
A swish and flick of silver drew her eye to the window. Mr. Rochester was perched regally on the windowsill, surveying the backyard he wasn’t allowed in anymore, and most unconcerned with his mistress’ abject distress. “You’re totally useless as an attack cat and for search and rescue. Remind me again why I feed you?” His tail swished in aggravation and he jumped down from the window.
Grant’s dog was losing its mind in the backyard. Yipping and running through all kinds of doggie vocalizations. She’d probably found a possum. Super. Now Laurie would have to make a call to animal control in the—
Oh no. It couldn’t have.
Laurie looked to the bed and tried to mentally chart the trajectory of the silicone. Aerospace engineering wasn’t her forte, but that one summer she’d bilked her cousins out of all their spending money playing ping-pong, and she bet if the purple one had hit just there, it might have bounced riiiiiight through the, “Oh no. No no no no—”
The press of the windowsill against her bare breasts registered a moment before a low chuckle vibrated in her ear.
With a gasp, and a flail of heretofore unimaginable proportions, Laurie managed to drop her cell-phone-slash-flashlight to the deck below and skin her left breast on the way back inside.
She sat panting underneath the window casing, rubbing absently at the abraded flesh. She was sweating in earnest now and, dang it, that stung.
No. She’d imagined it. There was absolutely no way
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