“They’re nice. I like them.” Hannah sat at the kitchen counter and picked at the sandwich I bought for her.

“They’re marks, nothing more.” I sat next to her and pulled my sandwich over to me.

“Just because I’m good at numbers doesn’t mean I’m bad at people.” She gave me a hard look. “I could feel the energy between you and Willis. It definitely isn’t the sort of tension that exists between a con and a mark.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think I do.” She pinched off a tiny piece of bread from her hoagie and ate it. “I’ve seen Mom run enough cons, and now you, to get a sense of how it’s supposed to go. Getting finger-banged by the mark isn’t part of it.”

I choked on my sandwich to the point Hannah had to smack me on the back. Sputtering, I took a sip of water and calmed down. “You heard us?”

She shrugged. “You know these walls are thin as toilet paper.”

“That’s embarrassing.” I imagined Elias listening to us. Eek.

“Don’t change the subject. You’re into him.” She took another bird bite from her sandwich. “I think you’re falling for him.”

“That’s preposterous. You know this is just about doing a job.” I took a big swig of water to quell the tickle in my throat.

“For someone who can read people, you sure can’t read your own emotions.”

I pulled the pickle from my ham and cheese hoagie and tossed it onto Hannah’s paper plate. “You’re a shrink all of a sudden?”

She picked up the pickle and nibbled at it. “No. I just can tell that you’re crushing on him. More than crushing.”

“Please.” I rolled my eyes and bit into my sandwich. “He’s a paycheck.”

“Maybe we could change the plan.”

I swallowed, the food thick in my throat, and stared at the sliver of afternoon light shooting through the shutters. It lit up bits of dust swirling around the old apartment, a golden trail of dilapidation. I felt like the dust—unmoored, floating, worn out. “It’s too late to change it.”

“I could work for Pauly—”

“No.” I shook my head.

“I can make up the debt myself, okay? It would just take a few weeks of dealing for him at the big game. Or maybe I can just, I don’t know, stay over his shoulder and give him tips, you know?”

“That’s a one-way ticket to the Pine Barrens. Look what happened when he found out you were cheating him. If another one of those goons catches you, it’s all over.” I dropped my sandwich and turned to her. “You’re my responsibility. When Mom died, I swore I’d take care of you. I didn’t do a good job of it, and that’s why this happened.”

She tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, then took my hands. “You think this is your fault, but it isn’t. You were out in the world, making a future. I was here being stupid with asshole men and dumb schemes. I pulled you back into this shithole, right when you’d finally gotten free.”

“We’ll be free again.” I squeezed her hands. “Both of us. We have to stick to the plan. It’s the only way.”

She sighed and took a real bite of her pickle. “I just like Willis, is all.”

“So do I.” My emotions churned inside me, fizzing and popping. But it didn’t matter what I felt. This was about survival.

* * *

“Scarlet?”

“Yes.” I flumped back onto my bed and stared at the cracked ceiling.

“I’m glad you answered.” Willis’s smooth voice rolled through my ears, and reverberated throughout the rest of my body. How could one simple sentence send me into a tingly abyss?

“I didn’t have much of a choice.” I snuggled under my comforter and turned off the lamp. “You’re calling kind of late.”

“Were you waiting for the phone to ring?”

“No.” I may have been giving it sideways glances, but I certainly hadn’t been waiting for it to ring. Not at all.

“Sure you weren’t. I had a lot of blogging to catch up on. People are getting excited about the book’s release, so I have to keep the hype going with new content.”

“All work and no play for the bad girl of blogging?”

He laughed, the sound rich and thick. “Is that what we are? The bad girl of the blogosphere?”

He said we. But there was no “we.” Not now that my plan was solidified. I brushed off the dark thought and said, “With a name like Scarlet Rocket, how could she be anything else? Where did you come up with that, anyway?”

“You won’t believe me.”

I smiled. “Tell me.”

He sighed, and a shuffling noise came through the phone.

“What was that?”

“I was just getting into bed.”

“Oh.” A flash of memory from our night in bed together shot across my vision, and a spark of heat licked at the skin between my legs.

“Are you in bed?” His voice had dropped an octave, all the way down into the sex-on-a-stick range.

“Yes.” I rested my hand on my stomach. It wouldn’t go any lower. Not at all. “Now tell me where you came up with the name.”

“So… When I was younger, I had a thing for a particular porn star.”

A giggle shook me. “This is already getting good.”

“Her name was Scarlet. When I was about sixteen, she was it for me. The perfect ten.”

“So this Scarlet Rocket powered your teen fantasies.”

“Her last name wasn’t Rocket.”

“What was it?”

“She was a porn star from the seventies. She didn’t have a last name.”

“The seventies? I bet her bush was huuu—”

“I loved vintage porn. It was sort of nastier, I guess? I liked it because it was more real than the current stuff. It’s like I was a porn hipster or something. If I could have grown a porn ‘stache, I would have been all over it.”

I crowed with laughter at the mental image of him with a burly lip rug.

“Oh, come on. It’s not that funny.” He chuckled softly. “Okay, yes, it’s kind of funny.”

I took a deep breath to keep the giggles away. “That explains the Scarlet. What about the Rocket?”

“That’s a different story.” He cleared his throat.

“Don’t hold out on me now, Porn ‘Stache.”

“Tell you what. I’ll tell you where Rocket came from, if you tell me why you call me Sparky.”

“What if I call every guy Sparky?”

“You don’t.” He answered smugly. “I’ve made a study of you and how you interact with others. I’m the only Sparky.”

He was right, of course. I didn’t want to reveal my methods, but if that meant I got to find out where “Rocket” came from, I was game. “Fine. Now spill.”

“My very first high school girlfriend was a Catholic schoolgirl.”

I snorted. “You tell the best stories.”

“You ain’t heard nothing yet. So, we do some regular old teenage making out. Kissing in her parents’ basement, meeting up every weekend for the ever-escalating groping, stuff like that. After a focused effort on my part, she finally agreed to put it in her mouth.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it tickled my funny bone, and I had to work to stifle my laughter. “Yes, go on.”

“She’d never seen one before. Had no idea what she was in for. When I pulled my pants down—all nerves and excitement—she sat in front of me on her knees and lowered my tighty-whities. With the way her braces shined in the low light, it was easily the most erotic moment of my life.”

I burst out into a full-on cackle.

“She stared at it. Hard. Did I mention the braces gave her a slight slur? Have you ever heard Coach Lou Holtz talk?”

“No, but now I’ll have to Google it.”

“Yeah, you do that. Anyway, she stared for what seemed like forever. Not long enough to dull my teenage hormones. That stiffy wasn’t going anywhere, but she looked at it like it was a science experiment. ‘Touch it,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I want to. It looksh like a rocket.’”

“Oh my god. You named your fake female blogger after your dick?” I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow. I’d been pretending to be a porn star/dick for almost a month.

“Look, I’m still a guy. I can give some amazing advice and have enormous respect for women, but naming something after my dick is built into my DNA.”

I flopped onto my back and settled the phone back to my ear. “Ridiculous. Scarlet Rocket is a fever dream from your adolescent mind.”

“Pretty much.”

“Have you ever thought about coming out?”

“And telling everyone I’m a dude?”

“Yeah. You’re the most straight and narrow guy I’ve ever met, except for that one flaw. The one where you lie about who you really are. Doesn’t it eat at you?”

He paused for a long moment. “Sometimes I wish I could just be me out there, you know? Have a blog without the smoke and mirrors of Scarlet Rocket. But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s gotten so big now. So many women have trusted me with their secrets—”

“Is it really secret if everyone on the internet can read it?”

“Scarlet Rocket is becoming a household name. Willis Halloran is a nobody.”

The urge to touch him—to jump out of my bed and ride the creepy night subway just to get to him—rose inside me. “You aren’t a nobody to me. And I suspect if you came out as the real you, you’d be just as big of a hit. Maybe even bigger.”

“I don’t think so.” His discomfort telegraphed clearly over the phone. “Now, tell me about Sparky.”

I went along with the subject change. “Mine’s not as complicated and Freudian as yours.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want to get confused. Fess up.”

I pulled my knees up, suddenly—and oddly—shy. Telling the truth had always made me feel exposed, and this was no different. “When I first saw you at the gallery that night, you looked like a rumpled Clark Kent.”

“Yeah? Which one? Christopher Reeve? Please don’t say Dean Cain. Brandon Routha? Or, even better, Henry Cavill?”

“One, you’re a dork. Two, like the one from the movie where Superman flies backwards around the earth to make time go back.”

“Ugh.” His grunt was followed by a groan.

“What’s wrong with that Superman?”

“I mean, that’s good. That’s the Christopher Reeve version—a good looking man. But the whole ‘spinning the earth backwards to roll back time’ was the dumbest contrivance in the history of movies. I mean what were they thinking? If the earth stopped spinning, much less reversed its spin, life as we know it would completely end. Though, I admit, some in the comics world believe that what he was doing was flying faster than the speed of light to travel back in time, and the producers thought people wouldn’t understand that, which is why they added the earth reversing its rota—”

“Sparky?” Could he hear the smile in my voice?

“Yeah. Sorry, I do that sometimes. Please continue.”

“Thank you. When I saw you, I made the Superman connection. Superman’s name is Clark Kent, and you definitely had the glasses. But you were also awkward in the cutest sort of way, so my mind skipped to the only other Clark it knew—Clark Griswold from those National Lampoon movies. His wife always calls him Sparky.”

“Oh my god.” He laughed. “The only compliment higher than being likened to Superman is being likened to Chevy Chase. He’s the king of dry comedy. So funny.”

“I told you it was far simpler than your Scarlet Rocket name nonsense.”

“Maybe, but it was better. Thanks. I guess I can live with Sparky now.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Pleased with his response, I unfolded from my bunched-up position and relaxed. Maybe telling the truth wasn’t so bad after all…but only in small doses.

“So, what else should we discuss?”

I faked a yawn. “I think we’re done here, right? I mean, we talked on the phone and everything.”

“You seem to hate talking on the phone more than I do, which is a feat.”

I didn’t hate talking to him. Quite the opposite, but getting closer seemed like an even bigger mistake than the ones I’d already made. Talking to someone on the phone on purpose was just a step below matrimony on the commitment scale.

“What are you wearing?” His voice had an added gruff note that sparked all sorts of sexy thoughts.

“That’s not a question nice boys ask.”

“When did you get the impression that I’m a nice boy?”

“When I first saw you in your glasses.”

“I’m not wearing them.”

“Yeah?” I ran my fingertip along the elastic waist of my panties. “What else are you not wearing?”

“A shirt, pants, or boxers.”

“So you’re still into the tighty-whities?” I snickered.

“Oh, if we were in the same room, I’d gag that smart mouth.”

I had to ask. “With what?”

“With what I’m holding in my palm right now.”

Unf. I slid my fingers past the elastic and down to my clit. It was already pulsing, demanding satisfaction.

“I want you to touch yourself.”

I swirled my fingertip around my clit. “That would be inappropriate.”

“You’re already doing it. I can tell from the breathy way your voice sounds.”

“No it doesn’t.” So. Breathy.

His laugh was a low rumble. “Okay. Well, in that case, I’m going to tell you a little story. And you can continue not touching yourself while I talk, okay?”

I swallowed hard. “Okay. That’ll be easy.”

“Let’s get started. You’re in your bed, the blue comforter on top of you. You’re wearing a t-shirt—”

“Tank top.”

His low laugh washed over me again. “All right, a tank top. You can’t stop thinking about this handsome, funny, intelligent man you recently met. You throw off the comforter because you’re so hot. Just the thought of him turns you on—”

“Your pal Elias was nice and all, but I don’t think I’d go so far as to say the very thought of him turns me—”

“Smartass. Shh.”

“Okay, I’m quiet.” I threw the comforter off. After all, I was getting hot.

“Willis is on your mind, and you imagine how much you’d like him to be with you right now. In your imagination, nay, your fantasy, he walks into your room and sees you lying there, your hard nipples pressed against your tank top, your hand in your panties. I sit beside you and yank up your tank top. I take one nipple in my mouth, sucking it hard and palming your other tit as you writhe beneath me. I torture you, taking my time with each nipple. Biting the sides of your breasts, leaving my mark on your pale skin as you beg me for more.”

My breathing sped up, and I began rocking my hips slowly.

“I kiss down your stomach, then grab your panties and yank them off. You spread for me, your pussy pink and wet. Ready for my mouth.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t stop my little exclamation.

“I lick up your wet slit, getting your taste on my tongue, then press my mouth to your sweet pussy. You moan as I devour you, fucking you with my tongue, then licking your clit until your legs start to shake. Running your hands through my hair, you say my name—”

“Willis.” His name left my lips like a prayer.

“That’s right. I eat you until you’re at the edge, and then I stop.”

I groaned, my body drawn tighter than a bowstring.

“I kiss up to your mouth, and enjoy you while I rub my cock against your wet cunt.”

Another moan lofted out of me.

“I want you deep, as far as I can go. So I slam into you. No waiting, no time to adjust. Just all of me buried to the hilt in what I already know is the softest pussy I’ve ever felt.”

“Oh, my god, Willis.”

“Going easy on you isn’t an option. I pull back and fuck you hard, rough, just like you need it. Our skin slaps together. The neighbors get an earful as you moan and call my name. Each pounding thrust driving you higher as I give you all I’ve got. But it’s not enough. I want you every way I can get you. I pull out and flip you onto all fours, then shove into you. You grip the headboard as I pound you from behind and slap your pretty ass. My handprints will be there long after we’re finished. Your tits bounce with each impact, and I reach around you and stroke your clit. You push back onto me, riding me at my pace, making sure you get every inch.”

I gripped the sheets and kept stroking myself, everything in me focused on Willis.

His voice grew gravelly. “I can feel my load creeping up my shaft, and I want to give it all to you, every last fucking drop. But not until you’re coming, not until your hot, tight cunt is squeezing me just right. I fuck you wilder as my fingertips play your clit. You tense, your body at the brink, and you tell me you’re coming.”

“I’m coming.” I swirled my fingers around my nub as I tensed, then released in a flood of bliss. I called Willis’s name, not caring who heard.

“Fuck, yes.” He grunted low and deep, the masculine sound adding to the imagined soundtrack of our bodies slapping against each other. “Fuuuuck.”

I sank beneath the waves of pleasure, letting each wave roll over me until I was complete, every last bit of me relaxed and sated. My panting subsided, and once I could speak normally again, I asked, “Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“I rather enjoy Willis’s story time.”

He laughed. “Good, because we’ll have it again tomorrow night.”