Sexting the Limits (2 page)

bar. Which was strange—he hadn‟t been this attracted to a woman for a long time. He

got hit on at the bar a fair amount and sometimes he took a lady up on the offer, but

there was rarely a spark. Just physical pleasure. And sometimes he didn‟t even like the

woman in the cold light of day. Especially when they seemed more interested in living

out some sort of bartender-inspired fantasy, which happened more often than not.

Heaven help him if they already knew he owned the bar instead of just working there.

With effort, he forced his attraction aside and concentrated on the conversation. She

said she‟d been in on Friday but he didn‟t remember seeing her. He was seeing her

now, though. He was getting quite the eyeful as she took a seat at the bar across from

him.

“A root beer would be great,” she said.

He moved to pour both drinks and relished the hiss and sizzle as the carbonated

liquid hit the ice. He turned back to her in time to notice her stroking a hand down the

top of his bar. His breath got caught in his throat and he let out a strangled cough. She

looked and caught his startled face before he could regain his cool.

She blushed. “I was just admiring your bar. This is beautiful.”

“Thank you.” He placed the drinks before her and leaned on the bar himself, closer

than was necessary. “I put it together myself. Everything from pulling the wood, to the

plans, to making everything fit, to sanding and varnishing it.”

Grant felt himself coloring a little at her admiring glances. Woodworking was his

private hobby and he didn‟t share it with anyone. It was a solitary act for him. One that

had taken him years to perfect enough that he could make something sturdy and

beautiful enough to use in public. Part of being a bartender was that people were

always talking to him, pouring out their problems while he poured them drinks.

Woodworking was one of the only times when he was presented with problems he

could fix and the tools to do so. The fact that he wanted this woman to know about it, to

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Sexting the Limits

be as proud of what he had done as he was, was unprecedented. And a little alarming.

A change of subject was in order.

“What‟s your name?”

She shook her head and leaned over the bar, exposing a healthy amount of soft skin,

reaching out her hand for him to shake. “I‟m Celeste Benning.”

“Nice to meet you, Celeste Benning. I‟m Grant Morgan.” He took her small hand in

his and squeezed it tightly, feeling a tingle shoot up his arm before he disengaged from

her.

“Thanks for the drink,” she said as she grasped the mug with both hands and

tipped it up. She took a deep drink that made Grant swallow hard. When she pulled the

glass away, there was a thin line of foam on her upper lip. She laughed as she removed

it with her glistening pink tongue. Grant ached to lean across the bar and let his tongue

take over the job.

She smiled at him sheepishly. “Whenever I drink root beer I can still taste the root

beer floats my dad used to make me when I was young. It always makes me feel like a

little girl.”

Enchanted, he could only gesture to the back. “What does your phone look like?”

Her smile brightened and she sat up straighter on her barstool. “Do you think it

could be here? It‟s a red Blackberry, about this big.” She showed him with her hands.

“My background is a picture of me and my girlfriends.”

“No picture of your boyfriend?” He heard his voice ask the question as if from far

away.

“No boyfriend. It‟s just my friends and I on the background.”

“Let me take a look in the back.” He beat a hasty retreat to his office, where the lost-

and-found box was kept. He couldn‟t believe how tightly she was tying him up in

knots. He also couldn‟t believe it when he found a phone very much like the one that

she had described.

10

Remy Richard

Grant woke the phone up to reveal a bright white envelope with the words “text

messages waiting” printed across the screen. His interest was piqued. Under normal

circumstances, he‟d never stoop to snooping through a woman‟s private messages, but

he couldn‟t very well verify that the background was as she said if he couldn‟t see the

background. He certainly didn‟t want to send her home with the phone if it didn‟t

belong to her. So with that flimsy piece of reasoning, Grant began to scroll through her

messages. There was nothing interesting there except for the usual texts of friends

checking in and inviting her places. A couple of funny ones from someone named Mac

but other than that, nothing. Until he hit one from someone called David. A whole

string of them, in fact.

He could tell that they were meant to be racy but they were more like something

out of a nudie magazine than out of a woman‟s fantasies. They certainly weren‟t doing

anything for him. Imagining Celeste reading them and getting hot, though,
that
was

certainly doing it for him. Although he thought she deserved much better than what

this idiot was giving her for fantasies. He could do better with his eyes closed. He

imagined Celeste, with her eyes closed, following his directions as he told her how to

touch herself, please herself.

Grant quickly shook his head to clear the thoughts and then pressed the button to

clear the screen. Sure enough, with the waiting messages gone, a screen of bright,

smiling faces was revealed. Four women beamed out at him from a group picture.

Although they were all pretty, it was only Celeste‟s happy smile that made his heart

twinge a little and his pants even tighter than they already were.

With a sharp click, Grant closed the phone. Fantasies aside, he had been back in his

office for way too long now. He made his way back to the front of the bar in time to

catch Celeste slurping down the last of her root beer. He smiled as he held up her

phone.

“Is this what you‟re looking for?”

Celeste‟s eyes opened wide and she all but lunged for it. “My phone!”

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Sexting the Limits

Grant held it back, savoring her subtle scent. What
was
that? She smelled like cake.

“Not so fast. How am I supposed to know this is really your phone? I think we

should call it to make sure.” He walked over to the bar phone, which was used

primarily by customers to call a cab when they got a little too tipsy to make it home on

their own steam. “What‟s the number?”

Celeste rolled her eyes and recited the number for him to dial. Sure enough, the

phone on the bar began to buzz and shake.

She shot him a smug look. “Happy?”

Not yet, but he had plans to be in the near future. “I‟m thrilled. How about you?”

She held the phone close to her breasts and beamed that smile at him. “You would

not believe how happy I am.” She moved to get off her barstool before stopping to look

at him. “Who turned it in?”

Grant rolled his shoulder. “I have no idea—it was in the lost-and-found box. We

probably picked it up while we were cleaning that night.”

Celeste nodded and made her way to the door. “Grant, I can‟t say thank you

enough.”

He waved away her gratitude. “No need. In fact, come back in tomorrow night and

you can have some fun on the house.” He loaded his words with as much sexual

innuendo as he could without coming across as a lecher.

Celeste stared at him for a second as if trying to figure out how to take his words

and then gave him a small smile. “Maybe I will, Grant Morgan. Maybe I will.”

Grant‟s cock twitched. He couldn‟t wait.

12

Remy Richard

Celeste glanced at her phone again before turning back to the chore of fitting all of

the flotsam and jetsam that had come out of her dresser drawers back into it. She‟d

made quite a mess of things in her frantic search for her phone and she wanted to get at

least some of it put back together before she started her work week the next morning.

She couldn‟t seem to stop double-checking that her phone was still there. Add that to a

seeming inability to stop thinking about the mysterious bartender-slash-phone-savior

and she was having trouble getting much of anything organized, including her

thoughts.

She knew that she needed to snap out of it soon though. Her job as a administrative

assistant wasn‟t exactly physically taxing but she did need to be on the ball in the

morning. Naughty bartender-related thoughts weren‟t going to help. She kept

remembering the shape of his hands on the bar that he had made himself. The pride in

his voice as he had told her about it. The teasing glint in his eyes as he had made her

prove that the phone was actually hers. She wondered why she had never seen him

before.

The insistent buzzing of her phone on her dresser brought her out of her reverie.

She was expecting a call from her good friend Rory after the triumphant “phone found”

messages Celeste had left. Only it wasn‟t a phone call, it was a text. From a number

Celeste didn‟t recognize. She clicked the button to open the text message, sure that it

was going to be a wrong number, then hoping against hope that it wasn‟t after she read

it.

322-291-0508:
Hey, baby, I hope you’ve found your cell by now.

Celeste Benning:
I have. Who is this?

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Sexting the Limits

Celeste waited anxiously for the reply. She occupied her fingers, if not her mind, by

flipping through the magazine that rested on her nightstand.

322-291-0508:
Let’s just say that I’m an admirer. A secret one.

Enjoying the mystery, she typed as fast as her fingers could go.

Celeste Benning:
A friend who is a secret admirer or a stranger, stalker admirer?

322-291-0508:
How about an acquaintance who would like to be a lot more?

Celeste Benning:
An acquaintance who apparently has my phone number.

322-291-0508:
You gave it to me. You know me, you just don’t know how I feel

about you. Or what I want to do to you.

Celeste‟s heart started to beat rapidly. She tried to think of the people who knew

she‟d lost her phone, but that had been pretty much everyone. She had left dozens of

messages from Mac‟s phone, trying to find anyone who may have seen her cell. It could

be any one of her friends.

Celeste Benning:
And what do you want to do to me?

322-291-0508:
Everything. Well, everything that makes you feel good.

Celeste Benning:
Shoe shopping makes me feel good. What exactly are you

offering?

322-291-0508:
What you need…in bed. Sometimes a woman needs to be loved

sweet and slow and sometimes she needs it hard and fast.

322-291-0508:
I can deliver both and make you love every second.

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Remy Richard

Celeste tried to catch her breath as lurid images of making love exactly the way he

described dominated her imagination. The face of her mystery lover was a blur, though.

Celeste Benning:
Come on and tell me who this is.

322-291-0508:
Maybe tomorrow, sweet Celeste. Dream of me.

Celeste Benning:
That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say to me?

But there was no answer.

Celeste tossed her phone on the bed in frustration. Whether that was angry

frustration or more of a sexual nature was hard to say. Words had always been a turn-

on for her. It was so much of the reason that she‟d kept the only mildly warm sexts that

David had sent her. These texts, however, made everything feminine inside her stand

up and give a shout. His playful tone, innuendos and sexy words were doing

something to her that she‟d never felt before. Even in her real-life sexual experience,

she‟d never been so hot. Her hands drifted up her torso until they came into contact

with her nipples, which were pushing against her thin tank top. She pinched them

lightly and moaned at the slight touch.

When her phone buzzed again, Celeste started guiltily and her hands flew away

from her nipples. She laughed at her own paranoia and reached for the phone, hoping

that it was her mystery man again. No such luck though. It was Rory with the call

Celeste had been anticipating only a few minutes earlier.

“Hello.”

“Hey, girly. So I hear that the mystery of the missing phone is solved,” Rory said

with a smile in her voice.

Celeste perked up. “Where‟d you hear that?”

Rory laughed. “From you, genius. You left me like three messages about it.”

“Oh yeah. Sorry.”

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Sexting the Limits

“What‟s up? You sound weird,” Rory said.

Celeste sighed and transferred the phone to her other ear, settling back in the couch

cushions to get comfortable. “If I sound weird it‟s because I just got this weird text