The missed texts on Cole’s phone, once he’d plugged it in and started recharging it, were so ridiculous that it was like a complicated piece of performance art. Choruses of variations on “where the fuck are you, asshole?” filled his inbox. Cole wished he had memories about where he’d disappeared to and why, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it. He just felt a slight twinge of guilt that his buddies had been worried.

“You better be hiding! I’m going to kick your ass when I find you!” Jason had texted at some point, and Cole snorted a laugh. He guessed only some of his friends had been worried. Jason had just been amused and pissed.

But then there was this text. The last of them. Sent only about an hour ago.

“Hey, sexy. It’s Ivy, from last night. How are you doing this morning?”

Ivy? That’s right, Jason had said something about an Ivy who wanted to talk to him.

Cole scoured his brain. Had me met an Ivy last night? He’d met plenty of women. Each and every one of them beautiful, if his mind remembered correctly. But Ivy was such a unique name that he thought he would’ve remembered.

Names could be tough. He’d forgive himself. He tried holding snapshots of the women he could remember from last night up like flashcards against the name. Ivy. Ivy? There was no real way of telling. The women last night had all been beautiful. That much he knew.

What he didn’t know was which of them had been Ivy. And he wasn’t about to start guessing now. Not when he apparently had made enough of an impression to warrant a morning-after text.

Had they kissed? Had he been especially charming? Had Jason put her up to this?

Whoever Ivy was, she’d implied that there had been a last night with her that Cole should’ve remembered. The last thing he was about to do was ask her who she was and how he knew her. That would ruin whatever this conversation was going to shape up to be.

He thought for a couple of long seconds, thumbs hovering over his phone screen, before typing a response. “Hungover. Still in bed. How are you?”

There. That should be…sufficient. Or something. At least it didn’t reveal that he was a complete jerk who couldn’t keep track of the women he met.

His phone pinged. Ivy had texted back awfully quickly for someone who’d texted him an hour ago.

“What a coincidence,” she’d typed. “I’m in bed, too. Barely slept at all last night.”

Cole wet his lips. “Not hungover, too, I hope.” Something about the idea of lying in bed with someone—separated by God only knew how many miles, but connected on the phone—was strangely erotic.

“Just tired,” she sent back. “Looking for something to help me go to sleep. Mind’s still awake.”

Cole’s lips quirked upward in a smile. “I know how that goes. Body’s ready, but the brain needs a little more convincing.”

“Maybe you could help.”

He couldn’t explain how such a simple sentence could make his heart pound the way it was. “Whatever you need,” he typed. “Tell me.” He had a few suggestions, himself, but he didn’t want to push. Not if this wasn’t what he thought it was. He couldn’t make that mistake.

The next text, though, relieved him of all of his doubts.

“I think I’d press my body up against yours,” Ivy typed. “Wrap my legs around your thigh.”

They were doing this, then. Cole’s cock leapt to attention. “I bet you’d try to rub yourself against me, wouldn’t you? Leave a wet spot.”

“You know me so well,” she agreed. “You wouldn’t make me do that, would you? You’d take care of me.”

Fuck, yes, he would.

Cole shifted in the bed, the sheets causing enough friction against his erection to make him shudder. “I’d open you up with my fingers,” he typed. “First one, then two. I have big hands. I don’t think you could handle three. Will you be wet for me?”

“Already am,” Ivy confirmed. “If you want me wetter, you’re just going to have to use your mouth. That tongue of yours.”

“Yours,” he sent back, correcting her. “My tongue is yours. Made for tasting you. I’ll fuck you with this tongue. Make you come on it.”

“Please. I need you. I need that big cock inside of me. It’s the only way I can come.”

“Then it’s yours, too, baby. I’m going to fuck you wide open. Make you beg. Make you scream.”

“Yes. Please. All I can do is hang on. You’re so deep inside of me. You fill me all the way up.”

Cole stroked himself from root to tip, boxers pushed down his legs, willing it to be so. He didn’t care that he didn’t even know what Ivy looked like. She sounded amazing.

Closing his eyes, he imagined she’d feel amazing, too, her body replacing his closed fist around his length. Cole took a brief, cursed break from attending to himself to type a message back to Ivy.

“You’re so tight for me,” he wrote. “I can barely move inside of you, but I’m thrusting. Mouth on your tits. Hand in your hair. Won’t stop for anything.”

He was leaking pre-cum, and that just made it even more real. He was so close to coming in earnest that he could practically see it, as real as the icon on his phone indicating that Ivy was typing back. For a brief second, he wondered what she looked like—he wished he had some recollection from the night before. Somehow, though, that didn’t matter. It was enough to imagine the sensation of her, the idea of her engulfing him. He was swept up in the fantasy. Carried away by it.

“I’m so close,” Ivy replied. “You’re hitting all the right spots. So good for me. You going to come with me, Cole? I’m going to come so hard.”

And just like that, as if she’d had a magic button, a secret password to his cock, Cole was coming, vision going white, every muscle in his body tensed up and then completely and utterly relaxed. Fuck. His dazed mind could only manage that. He’d never come so hard in his life, let alone on his own hand.

He panted, in disbelief, surveying the mess he’d made. It was like he was young again, jerking off in bed, unsure of what to do to keep things in relative control.

Because that’s what Ivy had made him do. Absolutely lose control. A woman he couldn’t remember meeting last night had sent him careening into sensation overload just from a string of texts. He browsed back over them, shaking his head, wondering if there might be a chance he was still dreaming.

Cole reached for a tissue from the box on his bedside table and realized that his headache was fading. He wasn’t sure if it was the pair of aspirin he’d downed dry or the force of the orgasm forcing the pain from his head.

If she could make him come this hard remotely, through a bunch of words on his phone, what could she do in person? What would it be like, meeting her?

The prospect made his mouth dry with equal parts anxiety and anticipation. If she’d cared about him that much, to text him this morning after meeting him last night, maybe he had a chance. He wanted to meet her, he decided. Wanted to experience the power of her in person.

It was with this in mind, and a certain gratitude, that Cole texted Ivy again.

“I just came so hard it turned my day around,” he typed. “Can I thank you by taking you out to dinner tonight?”

He sent it, and waited. And waited. And waited.

Cole grimaced, his fingers twitching. If only there was a way to take that text back, to remove it from her phone. To go back in time and stop himself from sending it. Was it too much, too soon? Maybe Ivy had only wanted to mess around, to have fun. Yeah, dinner was too much.

He poised his thumbs over the keyboard, intent on sending another text message to deflect the dinner invitation, when the icon that indicated she was typing a response popped up.

Cole waited, holding his breath, wondering what she was going to say. Was she going to let him down easily? Make some kind of excuse about being busy on a Monday night?

“I’d love to have dinner with you,” her message read. “Name the time and place, and I’ll be there.”

Cole grinned. Yeah, his day was really looking up.