When he typed, his hands were shaking slightly.
You can have it all, Jane.
And do you think we should have sex with each other?
He could barely respond.
Do you want to?
You know, I think I do.
Jonny didn’t move or breathe. He was normally a visual person, but the fantasy that filled his mind wasn’t just a picture. It was a full-body imagining of what it would feel like to have Jane’s smooth, bare skin against his. How her breasts and hips would feel under his hands, the gasp she would make as he touched her. The weight of her leg twined around his as they lay together. A soft giggle in his ear. Her mouth, soft as petals, her little hands stroking up his back. And the wet, tight heat inside her.
He groaned aloud.
Tell me one more thing, Jonny, just for information, and then I’ll leave you in peace for now. What’s your wildest fantasy?
He was being driven insane by desire and he typed furiously, without slowing down to let his brain think about what he was communicating.
We can’t wait for dinner to be over. We get up and leave together and when we’re outside, in the cool spring air, we immediately touch each other. We slide our hands inside each other’s clothing and we touch whatever skin we can, kissing and exploring and not caring about the other people walking past us in the evening. Our clothes are in the way but that’s exciting, too, because every touch promises even more.
He pressed ‘send’ and kept on typing without a break.
And we’re laughing, Jane, and we hail a taxi and go to the closest possible place where we fall through the door and pull our clothes aside, don’t even bother to take them off, and have the hottest sex in the world up against the nearest wall.
As he typed he felt it. Jane’s impatient hands on his belt, pushing aside his trousers and taking hold of his erection. Him pressing her against the wall, holding her there while she wrapped her legs around his waist and he nudged aside her dress and suckled her breast, hard. Her strangled cry of pleasure. How their bodies would thrust together and how they would climax with a noise half of ecstasy, half of amazed amusement.
And then we would spend the rest of the night taking it slow, exploring, talking. Sharing and getting to know each other again.
He took a long, shaky breath, and looked back at what he had typed.
It took a moment for his eyes to focus, and then the impact of his words registered in his brain.
He’d just had cyber sex with Jane.
He lifted his hand to his mouth and bit the side of his finger. His heartbeat throbbed almost painfully even in this little piece of him. Inside his boxers, his penis was like a rod of red-hot iron, pulsing and insistent and wanting to rob him of every single bit of his intellect and conscience and modesty.
What had he just done?
She’d asked for his fantasy. Not what he’d actually planned on doing this evening, which was having a terrific date and seeing how they felt about each other. Not what he thought was probably best for them to do, which was talk about how she felt about her break-up and decide to take it easy until she very definitely wasn’t on the rebound.
No. She’d asked for his wildest fantasy and he’d given it to her, including groping in public and sex up against a wall.
And she was probably about to give him the internet equivalent of a slap in the face.
He shifted in his seat again, intensely uncomfortable. She wasn’t replying. Maybe she was too disgusted. Maybe she was so angry she was waiting to meet him in person before she slapped him.
Maybe she was as turned on as he was.
His laptop dinged.
Thanks, Jonny. Talk to you soon.
Jonny jumped up and paced the hotel room. He couldn’t walk quite as he normally did because his hard-on was becoming distinctly bothersome.
Thanks? What did that mean? Thanks, but no thanks? Thanks for showing me what you’re really like, you lech? Thanks for giving me evidence I can take to the police?
Thanks for the fantasy, you hot stud, it was exactly what I was thinking myself, and I’ll be ripping my clothes off as soon as we get to that wall?
Jonny had always liked the internet and the freedom it gave you to meet new people, discover things, and make contact in a way that had never been possible before.
Now, he could see its downside. What was the point of a mode of communication that didn’t allow you to see the person you were talking to? That relied on words rather than tone of voice, electronic representations rather than bodies?
He checked his watch. Half an hour, and he’d know what Jane meant by ‘Thanks’.
CHAPTER THREE
JANE asked the cab to stop at the end of the street so she could walk to the restaurant and cool down a little bit.
As she walked Jane plucked at the neckline of her dress, lower than she was used to. She’d bought it for a Pearce Grey cocktail party a year ago, and never worn it because at the last minute she’d decided that a suit would be more professional. But tonight she’d dug it out, on Jonny’s advice.
Jonny’s advice. Her stomach spiralled as she thought about following it. Imagine grabbing Jay and pulling him into a cab, with the full intention of having frantic sex with him as soon as they got to her flat. This beautiful, perfect man.
Her legs swished against each other as she walked in her high heels, arousing her even more. Meeting Jay this afternoon, and then Jonny’s unexpected words on the laptop, had conjured up images in her head that were almost shockingly explicit. She wouldn’t quite have expected it of Jonny, not something so blatantly sexy. But then again, in the past, their online relationship had been a little flirty, but mostly friendly. She’d made it clear she had a fiancé.
For all she knew, Jonathan Cole was a sex god in real life, or at least he had the imagination of one. Maybe he had a steady stream of women who were turned on by computer geniuses in glasses, and he was doing them all up against a variety of walls all over the north of England.
The thought made her smile, and it also made a twinge of jealousy tickle deep in her chest. Because Jonny’s words had struck something in her, had interested her more than just anybody’s sexual fantasy would’ve done.
It was an insight into Jonny she’d never had before … and also an insight into her own desires. Every single thing he had described had sounded exciting and perfect and right, even though she’d never done anything like that before.
And it bothered her a little bit that he might be describing his experience with someone else. Even though she fully intended to experience it with someone else, too.
Jane paused at the door of the wine bar where she’d arranged to meet Jay before dinner, and took a deep breath. It was very difficult to believe she had a date with a male model, and even more difficult to believe that she planned to seduce him, if she could.
She pushed open the door. The bar was crowded, but she spotted him immediately, as if she had been programmed to find him.
He wore a stylish dark suit and a patterned white shirt, open at the collar. His brown hair was short and casually styled. He’d shaved and without a shadow of a beard his jaw was even stronger and more defined, emphasising