My Clocking In System

Less than a minute later, before the phone even rang, another photo landed. Ding.

He opened it immediately. She was out of the bathroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed in the background, one bare foot resting on the frame, the other flat on the floor. Her legs were parted wide open.

She had pulled plain cotton knickers on in the rush, and she hadn’t dried off. The bathwater had soaked straight through.

The weak light caught the dampness, turning the cotton transparent, creating a dark, heavy line right down the middle, molding perfectly against the swollen shape of her cunt.

A thick streak of water ran down the inside of her pale thigh.

Her free hand rested low on her stomach, pale fingers already slipped beneath the elastic waistband, waiting.

The incoming call screen overtook the photo. He answered before the first ring finished.

"Are you in bed?"

"I’m in bed." Rustle. Swish.

The heavy noise of a duvet dragged over sheets.

Thud. The phone went down onto a pillow right beside her head. Her voice came in closer, stripped of the echo.

He could hear the rush of air through her nose, the wet parting of her lips. "You’re on speaker. And you’re going to talk, because it’s not the pictures I want, it’s your voice, so don’t you dare go quiet on me."

"Take them off."

"Oh." Sshk. A sudden shift of fabric sliding down skin, and a small, hitched moan. "Done."

"Where are your hands?"

"One on my tits. Pinching my nipple. Where do you want the other one?"

"Nowhere yet."

"Danny..." It was a whine, desperate, wet, and impatient.

"Nowhere yet. You’ve had ten minutes of nothing in a cold bath, so we’re doing this properly." He spoke low, his mouth brushing the microphone. His own heart hammered relentlessly.

He gripped himself through his jeans, adjusting his hard length. "Sunday morning. When I had you on your side. Do you remember what I did first?"

A trembling breath came through the speaker.

"Yes."

"What?"

"You just... you got your arm round me. Round the front. And held me there."

"Before that."

"You..." She stopped, breathing catching. "You didn’t do anything. That’s what fucking did me in. You had me pulled back against you and you didn’t move, for ages, and I couldn’t get you to."

"That’s right."

"Danny, Jesus, that is not fair."

"Put your hand flat on your bare stomach. Don’t go anywhere near your cunt yet."

"God." Rustle. The duvet shifted violently. "Right. Done."

"Now think about my mouth on the back of your neck." He shut his eyes completely, standing in the middle of his sterile, million-pound kitchen, utterly consumed by a woman miles away spreading her legs in a damp flat.

"That bit under your hair where you go quiet," he murmured, a steady, hypnotic rumble. "That’s where I’d be. And you’d be pushing back into me, grinding your wet ass down on my cock, trying to get me to do something, and I wouldn’t."

"Mmh... fuck." A soft, desperate noise vibrated through the line.

"Two fingers. Down on your clit. Slow. And I mean slow, Jodie, because if you go fast now you’ll waste it."

"Ah."

The sound was immediate. Schlick. Slick. He heard all of it. Her breath broke up, losing its rhythm.

Then came the unmistakable wet, sloppy sound of her fingers sliding against her soaking cunt, a heavy friction she had stopped trying to keep quiet. Squeak. The mattress springs groaned as her hips bucked under the duvet.

"That’s it," he commanded, pacing his words to the rhythm he wanted. "Same as Sunday. Slow circles. You don’t get to speed up, because I wouldn’t have let you."

"You didn’t let me."

"No."

"I begged you and you wouldn’t and I was..." Her voice spiked upward before dropping into a heavy moan. "Ah! Fuck. Say something else. Please. Just keep going."

"You’d have my whole arm across you. Pinning you down." He stared blindly at the darkness beyond the glass.

"Your back against my chest and you feel the whole of me behind you, my cock hard against your slit, nowhere for you to go."

His voice dropped, vibrating with raw authority. "And I’ve got you exactly where I want you, and then I sink inside. I’m in you all the way, stretching you full, and I’m not going any faster no matter how hard you beg."

"Danny." It was a sob.

"Faster now. Rub it hard."

"Ah! Ah, God, yes!" Schlick-schlick-schlick. The wet, sliding friction doubled in speed, reckless and sloppy.

"That’s it. Don’t stop. Come for me."

"I’m... it’s... ah!" She stopped making words. It was just breath with shape to it, a rising tide of sound. He caught every ragged gasp, every frantic shift of the sheets.

"Go on, Jodie."

"Say my name again."

"Jodie."

"Again, fuck!"

"Jodie."

She came with the phone on the pillow right next to her face. It was a rising, keening scream that crested and shattered into a dozen fractured gasps, dropping into heavy, exhausted panting.

As the last wave rolled through her, she let out one small, shuddering "Oh..." a sound so raw he knew it would echo in his head at seven the next morning while standing up a ladder covered in plaster dust.

Nothing but the sound of her chest heaving against the microphone.

He stood in silence, listening to the erratic thud of her heart slow down.

"Right," she said eventually, voice muffled into the damp cotton of her pillow. "I’ve gone deaf in one ear."

A slow smile broke across his face. "You all right?"

"No. I’m ruined, my fingers are sticky, and I’m up at half six." Rustle. She rolled over. "That’s your fault. All of it."

"I’ll take it."

"You’d better." Her words were slurring, slack and slow as the adrenaline crashed. "Danny."

"What."

"Four o’clock. Outside the shop."

"Four o’clock."

"And you’re not going anywhere after."

"I’m not going anywhere after."

"Good." A massive yawn tore through her sentence. "Go and eat your cold noodles, you sad man."

"Night, Jodie."

"Night, Danny Flynn."

Click.

The line dropped, plunging the kitchen back into ringing silence. The sudden absence of her breathing made the vast space feel twice as large.

He stood for a long while, the chill of the glass windows finally pressing in. He looked down at the plastic container on the island. The noodles were stone cold, the pork fat congealing.

He wasn’t hungry anymore. Snap. He pressed the lid back onto the container. The built-in fridge was the size of a wardrobe, but taking five steps to put it away felt like entirely too much effort.

Eighteen hours.

He looked at the digital clock on the oven display. Eighteen hours until four o’clock tomorrow.

The bedroom was through the double oak doors. The room was massive, bigger than his old flat at Pembury.

No curtains on the windows, entirely by choice at forty floors up, there was absolutely nothing across from you but the bruised purple sky of the London night, and the slow, rhythmic red pulse of the crane light going on and off.

He stripped his clothes off in the dark, tossing his jeans and sweater onto an armchair, and climbed into the enormous bed naked. He got in on the left third of it, precisely two feet from the edge, lying on his side, sliding one heavy arm under the cold pillow.

He closed his eyes, mapping out the next day.

She’ll come out of the warehouse doors, doing her coat up, her face tight and exhausted, already bitching about whatever Steve did. She’ll walk over to the bike, get on the back, wrap her arms around me, and I’ll feel her chin settle onto my shoulder right through the thick leather of the helmet.

He let out a long, slow breath, the tension draining out of his shoulders.

The mental schedule for the week clicked through his mind. Errol on Monday. The floor man coming in Thursday. Keisha on Saturday morning.

Saturday night. Tablecloths.

Teacakes, he thought randomly, remembering what she liked with her horrendous tea. He’d have to buy teacakes for Sunday morning.

He was asleep before his mind even got to the thought of brown sauce.