Chapter 3: Forbidden Phone Call
Her own bed felt foreign. The familiar contours of her mattress, the habitual dip in the center, seemed tuned to a different frequency now. Rio turned on her side, then her back, staring at the cracks in the plaster ceiling she’d memorized years ago. Every nerve felt exposed, raw. The echo of Agatha’s final “goodbye” rang in the silence, a clean, surgical cut that still bled.Four days.
Four days of pretending. Four days of nodding through Ellie’s excited recap of her mother’s visit, of forcing bites of pizza down her throat while Ellie chattered about the “new, softer side” of Agatha she’d seen at brunch. “She actually asked about my feelings about the semester,” Ellie had said, incredulous. “Instead of just my portfolio. It was wild.”
Wild. Rio had just smiled, a tight, practiced flex of her lips.
She skipped her afternoon seminar. The buzz of institutional lighting, the drone of a professor’s voice—it was intolerable. She needed silence, or failing that, a familiar chaos. She went home.
The house was quiet, sun streaming through the dusty living room window. Upstairs, she shut her bedroom door and leaned against it. The air smelled of her laundry, the lavender detergent, and underneath it, something else. A phantom scent of hotel soap and sex. It was in her head, of course. It was all in her fucking head.
She stripped off her jeans and t-shirt, standing in her bra and underwear. Her skin felt tight. She ran a hand over her stomach, down to the waistband of her panties. She was already damp. Just from thinking about it. Just from the memory of Agatha’s command, the sight of her own reflection wrecked in the hotel mirror.
This wasn't like before. It wasn't idle horniness. It was a need, specific and sharp, like a splinter dug deep. She needed to exorcise it. To fuck the memory out of her own body.
She lay back on her bed, the comforter rough against her bare shoulders. She closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her lids, the memories were HD, surround-sound.
Her own hand slipped into her underwear. Her fingers slid through her folds, already slick. She circled her clit once, a tease, and a low moan escaped her. She pressed two fingers inside herself. Not enough. She needed the stretch, the fullness she associated with her. With Agatha.
She sat up, rummaging in the top drawer of her nightstand. Past loose pens and old USB drives, her fingers closed around the cool silicone of her vibrator. A simple, smooth, purple one. Not sleek and black. Not from a hotel minibar. She turned it on. The familiar, medium-grade hum filled the quiet room.
She lay back again, pressing the head of the toy against her clit. The vibration was a direct wire to her nervous system. Her hips rocked against it, seeking a rhythm. She fucked herself with her own fingers while the vibrator buzzed, trying to recreate the dual sensation. It was good, it was fine, but it was a cheap imitation. She felt pathetic. Her own touch was just a reminder of her own solitude.
The knock on her door made her freeze, her hand still buried between her legs, the vibrator still humming.
“Rio? You in there?”
Ellie’s voice. Cheerful, muffled by the wood.
Panic, cold and slick, shot through her. “Yeah,” she called, her voice strangled. She yanked her hand free, fumbling for the vibrator’s switch. The sudden silence was louder than the buzz had been. “What’s up?”
“Phone call with Mom. It’s on speaker. She says she has a contact for that wetland internship you were asking about. Wants to talk to you. You decent?”
The world tilted. The blood drained from Rio’s face, then rushed back in a scalding wave. Agatha was on the phone.Right now. On the other side of this door.
“Uh… just… give me a sec. Pulling on pants.” Rio scrambled, heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She yanked her underwear up, grabbed her discarded jeans, and shoved her legs into them. She didn’t bother with a shirt. Her bra would have to do. She took two deep, ragged breaths, trying to steady the flush she knew was covering her chest, her neck.
She opened the door.
Ellie stood in the hallway, her phone held out in front of her like a little speakerpod. She was grinning. Rio forced her eyes to the device, to the little green call indicator. Agatha’s name was on the screen.
“Rio? Ellie said you were home.” Agatha’s voice came through, crisp, professional, utterly composed. The lawyer-architect-mother voice. The voice that had, mere nights ago, gasped obscenities into the hollow of Rio’s throat.
“Hi, Agatha.” Rio’s own voice sounded strange to her ears. Hoarse.
“Mom’s got a lead for you,” Ellie chimed in, flopping onto Rio’s unmade bed as if she owned it. “Some environmental law nonprofit she consulted for. They have a science liaison program.”
“That’s right,” Agatha continued, her tone smooth, informative. “The Selway Foundation. They’re based in Portland but have a research branch here. The director owes me a favor. I mentioned a promising environmental science senior with a particular interest in riparian zones. They’d like to see your resume.”
It was a generous offer. A real opportunity. Rio should have been elated, grateful. All she could think about was the taste of Agatha on her tongue. The way her professional demeanor was an obscene lie, a mask she wore while casually discussing Rio’s future.
“That’s… really amazing. Thank you,” Rio managed to say, leaning against her doorframe. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Don’t thank me yet. The interview process is rigorous. But I think you’d be a strong candidate.” A pause. A faint rustle, maybe Agatha shifting in her own office chair, hundreds of miles away. “Ellie tells me you’ve been buried in your thesis. I hope you’re taking some time for yourself.”
The double meaning wasn’t there. It couldn’t be. Ellie was listening. But Rio heard it anyway. Time for yourself. Her fingers, a few minutes ago, buried inside herself.
“Trying to,” Rio said, her gaze fixed on a wrinkle in her comforter.“Good. Balance is important.” Agatha’s voice softened, just a fraction. Just enough for Rio to notice the shift, the slight peeling back of the professional veneer to reveal the woman beneath. Or was she imagining it?
Ellie, oblivious, launched into a story about a disastrous critique in her sculpture class. Rio nodded along, giving half-hummed responses. Her entire consciousness was narrowed to the small speaker on the phone. She heard the cadence of Agatha’s laughter, a light, melodic sound that replied to Ellie’s joke. That same mouth.
Agatha asked a question about Rio’s thesis methodology. Rio answered, her words technical, precise, an autopilot response. As she spoke about sediment samples and hydrological models, her mind was unraveling. She remembered the pressure of Agatha’s knee between her legs. The possessive grip on her hip. The words, come all over my fingers.
A heat, slow and insistent, began to pool low in her belly again. It was sick. It was twisted. It was undeniable. Agatha’s voice, this calm, intelligent, maternal voice, was winding her tighter than the vibrator ever could.
She felt a bead of sweat trace a path down her spine. She was glad her jeans were on. Glad she was standing. She shifted her weight, the rough seam of the denim rubbing against her. A tiny, involuntary spark.
“...so I’ll email you the contact info, Rio,” Agatha was saying, wrapping up. “You should reach out by the end of the week.”
“I will. Thanks again.”
“Of course. Take care of yourself.” Another pause. A heartbeat of silence that stretched, thick with everything unsaid. “Bye, Ellie. Love you.”
“Love you, Mom!”
The call ended. Ellie bounced off the bed.“See? Told you she’s mellowing out. That internship could be huge for you.” She headed for the door, pausing to glance back. “You okay? You look… flushed.”
“Fine. Just warm.” Rio’s voice was barely a whisper.
The door clicked shut behind Ellie. Rio stood frozen in the center of her room. The silence now was a living thing, pulsing with the ghost of that voice. The professional lilt, the subtle care, the hidden, fucked-up current that ran directly from Agatha’s mouth to Rio’s cunt.
It was too much.
She didn't even bother taking her jeans off again. She unbuttoned them, shoved them down just past her hips. She fell back onto the bed, her underwear a flimsy barrier she ripped aside.
This time, her fingers weren't gentle. They were angry, desperate. She plunged two inside herself, curling them, seeking that spot that made her see stars. She was already so wet it was a mess. She pictured Agatha in a sleek office, in that cream suit, the phone to her ear, talking about internships while knowing, knowing, what she’d done to the girl on the other end of the line.
The image was enough. Rio’s back arched off the bed. She bit her own forearm to stifle the cry building in her throat. She fucked herself harder, her knuckles pounding against herself. She needed more. She needed the conquest, the violation, the way Agatha had taken her apart.
She grabbed the vibrator again, turned it to its highest setting. The buzz was a violent roar. She shoved it against her clit, holding it there with a punishing pressure. The sensations collided—the deep, internal stretch of her own fingers, the furious, electric stimulation on her clit. It was brutal. It was perfect.
She was close.So close. The coil in her gut tightened to a breaking point. In her mind, it wasn’t her own hand. It was Agatha’s. Agatha’s elegant, strong fingers were inside her, fucking her with that detached, focused intensity. Agatha’s voice was in her ear, but not the phone voice. The hotel voice. The raw, broken one.
Come for me, you dirty girl. Come all over my hand. Show me what I do to you.
The climax didn’t crest; it detonated. It was a white-hot sheet of lightning that tore through her, ripping a guttural, shattered sound from her chest. Her body seized, her thighs clamping around her own wrist, her hips jerking uncontrollably against the vibrator. Wave after wave of brutal pleasure racked her, leaving her trembling, emptied.
In the aftershock, as the tremors subsided, the name slipped out. A breathless, ruined sigh into the empty, lavender-scented air of her own bedroom.
“Agatha.”
Silence. Then the crushing, heavy weight of reality. The vibrator fell from her limp fingers onto the sheets. She lay there, jeans around her thighs, exposed, used by her own hand and a ghost. Outside her door, she could hear Ellie humming in the kitchen, the innocent, normal sound of a kettle whistling.
Rio covered her eyes with her arm. The scent of her own arousal was thick in the air. A secret, shameful confession. She had come, violently, to the sound of her roommate’s mother’s voice offering career advice.
She was in deep. And there was no one to pull her out.
And there was no one to pull her out.
The heavy quiet in her room was punctuated only by the distant, tinny sound of Ellie’s music through the floorboards. Rio lay there, slick and cooling, the ghost of Agatha’s voice still a physical ache between her legs. Her phone screen, dark on the nightstand, was a mute accusation.
She cleaned up with a weary, mechanical efficiency, wiping her fingers on an old t-shirt before balling it up and stuffing it deep into her laundry hamper. A burial. She tugged her jeans back up, the denim stiff and uncomfortable against her sensitized skin, then pulled a soft, faded university sweatshirt over her head. It smelled of fabric softener and her own loneliness.
For an hour, she tried to read the Selway Foundation’s website, the contact Agatha had provided glowing on her laptop screen like a sick joke. Her thesis data blurred into meaningless numbers. Every environmental impact statement began to sound like a legal brief. Like something Agatha would dissect.
Then, a vibration.
A short, sharp buzz against the wood of the nightstand.Not a call. A text.
Rio’s heart stopped, then slammed into a gallop. She reached for the phone slowly, as if it were a live wire. The screen lit up. The notification showed only the first line.
Unknown: I can’t stop thinking about your mouth. About how you tasted.
She didn’t need to see the rest to know. She unlocked the phone, her thumbprint shaking.The full message loaded.
Unknown: I can’t stop thinking about your mouth. About how you tasted. I’m at The Westin downtown. Room 1412. It’s a conference. I’m here until tomorrow afternoon.No greeting. No name. Just a statement of fact and a location. A command disguised as a confession. It was vintage Agatha. Cold, hot, and impossibly direct.
Rio’s breath hitched. She stared at the address of the hotel, a sleek, glass tower in the financial district. A different class of place entirely from the last two. A professional venue. A conference.
Rio: You’re back in the city?
The reply was instantaneous.
Agatha: Landed two hours ago. Checked in. Opened my briefcase. All I saw was you on your knees.
A fresh wave of heat, potent and humiliating, flooded Rio’s core. Her mind provided the image instantly: Agatha in a chic hotel room, surrounded by legal pads and a laptop, her elegant composure cracking as she typed that filthy sentence.
Rio: What about the conference?
Agatha: It starts in the morning. My night is empty.Come over. Let me fuck that memory out of both of us.
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a summoning. Rio’s fingers hovered over the screen. Every sensible cell in her body screamed to delete it, to block the number, to go downstairs and make pasta with Ellie and forget. The phantom scent of Agatha’s skin, the specific pressure of her teeth, drowned it all out.
Rio: I’ll be there in 40 minutes.
She didn’t wait for a reply.She moved. She tore off the sweatshirt and jeans, standing naked again in the center of her room. This time, the undressing was purposeful. She went to her closet, pushing past the flannels and band t-shirts. In the back, she found it: a simple, sleeveless black dress, cut just above the knee. It was sleek.It was subtle. It was nothing she’d ever wear to a campus bar.
She put it on, the fabric whispering against her skin.No bra. No underwear. The explicit emptiness underneath the dress was a secret, a promise, a capitulation. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror tacked to her door. The girl from the Velvet Sin was gone. In her place was someone older, someone complicit.
“Going out!” she called, her voice miraculously steady, as she passed the living room.
Ellie peeked out from the kitchen, a spoonful of yogurt raised. “Hot date? Is it Mystery Woman?”
“Something like that,” Rio said, slipping into her boots.
“Be safe!” Ellie shouted after her, laughter in her voice.
The cab ride was a blur of neon and streetlights. Rio sat on the edge of the back seat, her knees pressed together tightly. The rough vibration of the car’s engine traveled up through the seat and into her body, a constant, teasing thrum between her legs. She was already wet, the sheer folly of this making her feel delirious, powerful, and utterly stupid.
The Westin lobby was a cathedral of marble and muted light. The air smelled of money and discreet florals. Rio walked across the expanse of polished floor, her bootheels clicking a rapid, anxious tattoo. She didn’t look at the well-dressed people sipping cocktails in the lounge. She went straight to the elevator bank, pressed the button for the fourteenth floor.
The ascent was silent and swift. The hallway was hushed, carpeted in thick, navy blue pile. She found 1412. She stood before the dark wood door, her fist raised to knock. It swung inward before her knuckles made contact.
Agatha stood there, backlit by the soft glow of table lamps. She wore a hotel robe, crisp white terrycloth, belted tightly at her waist. Her dark hair was damp, curling slightly at the ends as if she’d just showered. She looked younger, and older, and completely exposed without her armor.
“You came,” she said, her voice low. It wasn’t a question. It was an observation laced with relief and triumph.
Rio stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind her, the sound final. The room was spacious, a suite. A leather briefcase lay open on the desk, files neatly stacked. Agatha’s conference badge rested beside it. The normalcy of it was bizarre.
“You texted,” Rio replied, echoing their bar exchange, her own voice sounding alien to her.
Agatha closed the distance in two strides. She didn’t kiss her. She grabbed a handful of Rio’s dark curls and yanked her head back, exposing her throat. Her other hand slid down Rio’s body, over the black dress, and cupped her between the legs. A rough, possessive grab.
“You’re bare,” Agatha breathed, her fingers pressing hard against the thin fabric. “You fucking came here with nothing on underneath.”
“You said to come over,” Rio gasped, the pressure of Agatha’s hand sending sharp bolts of need through her.
“I said to let me fuck you.” Agatha’s grip on her hair tightened. She leaned in, her mouth hovering a breath from Rio’s ear. “Get on the bed. On your hands and knees. I want to see that ass in the air. I want to see the cunt I dream about.”
Rio obeyed. The command was a key turning in a lock deep inside her. She walked to the large, impeccably made king bed and climbed onto it. The expensive linens were cool and smooth. She assumed the position, the black dress riding up her thighs, presenting herself. The vulnerability was absolute, and it made her pulse thunder in her ears.
She heard the rustle of the robe belt being undone. A moment of silence. Then Agatha’s hands were on her, spreading her open from behind. A cool, slick substance—lube from the hotel toiletry kit—drizzled over her opening.
“You’re so wet for me already,” Agatha murmured, her thumb circling Rio’s entrance, spreading the lube, mixing it with her own arousal. “You’re dripping. You’ve been thinking about this all week, haven’t you? Touching yourself to the sound of my voice.”
Before Rio could answer, Agatha pressed inside her. Not with fingers. With something larger, harder, smoother.
The toy. The sleek, black one from the other hotel. Agatha had brought it.
The stretch was immediate, intense. Rio cried out, her face pressing into the duvet as Agatha worked the thick silicone into her, inch by relentless inch. It was a colder, more impersonal violation than fingers, and it was exponentially more arousing.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” Agatha grunted, her own breathing becoming ragged. She seated the toy fully inside Rio, then began to move it. Slow, deep, punishing strokes that rubbed against every sensitive inner wall.
Rio moaned, a broken, continuous sound. Her hands fisted in the bedding. Each thrust was a claim. Agatha set a brutal, rhythmic pace, the only sounds the slick, filthy noise of penetration and their mingled, harsh breaths.
“This is what you needed, isn’t it?” Agatha panted, her free hand coming down in a sharp, stinging slap on Rio’s ass. The pain was bright, clarifying. “You needed to be filled up. Needed to be used. You’re just a greedy, empty little thing.”
The degradation, paired with the deep, physical satisfaction, unmoored Rio. She was close already, teetering on the edge. “Please,” she begged, the word muffled by the bed.
“Please what?”
“Please let me come.”
Agatha’s rhythm didn’t falter. She leaned over Rio’s back, her breasts pressing through the robe, her mouth at Rio’s ear. “Come then,” she snarled. “Come all over this fake cock. Show me how much you love being fucked like a whore.”
The permission, phrased as an insult, shattered her. Rio’s orgasm roared up from her toes, a convulsive, overwhelming tide that clenched violently around the invading toy. She screamed into the mattress, her vision tunneling, her body shaking uncontrollably as Agatha fucked her straight through it, extending the waves into a near-painful crest.
As the tremors began to subside, Agatha pulled the toy out with a wet, slick sound. Rio collapsed onto her side, spent, boneless. Agatha stood by the bed, the black silicone glistening in her hand. She looked down at Rio, her expression unreadable, her own need evidently unmet and urgent.
She dropped the toy on the nightstand. She untied her robe completely, letting it fall open. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Her body was sleek, strong, beautiful in the lamplight.
“My turn,” she said, her voice thick. “Get up. Sit on the edge of the bed.”
Rio pushed herself up, her limbs watery. She shuffled to the edge, her dress now a ruined ruck around her waist. Agatha approached, standing before her. She placed one foot on the bed beside Rio’s hip, opening herself.
“Use your mouth,” Agatha commanded, her fingers tangling in Rio’s hair again, guiding her forward. “Make me forget my own name.”
Rio didn’t hesitate. She buried her face in Agatha’s heat. She licked her open, a broad, flat stroke, then focused on her clit, sucking the stiff bud into her mouth. Agatha’s taste flooded her senses—musky, primal, uniquely hers. It was the antidote to the sterile hotel air.
“Yes, just like that,” Agatha moaned, her hips pushing forward, fucking Rio’s face. “Your tongue is fucking magic.”
Rio lost herself in the rhythm, in the giving. She slid two fingers inside Agatha, curling them, finding a spot that made Agatha’s knees buckle. She hooked her other arm around Agatha’s thigh, holding her in place as she ate her with a desperate, hungry focus. This was power, too. The power to unravel this composed, elegant woman.
Agatha’s pleas became a stream of fragmented, graphic praise. “Right there, yes, don’t stop, I’m gonna come all over your pretty face, you perfect fucking girl—”
Her climax hit hard. Agatha’s body went rigid, a taut bowstring, before shuddering violently. A guttural cry ripped from her throat, raw and unrestrained, as she pulsed against Rio’s mouth and fingers. Rio drank her in, relentless, until Agatha was pulling her away, oversensitive, collapsing onto the bed beside her.
They lay there in a heap of limbs and sweat-dampened fabrics, the only sound their ragged, slowing breath. The room smelled of sex and lube and expensive shampoo. Agatha’s conference badge gleamed on the desk, a silent judge.
After a long moment, Agatha shifted. She didn’t look at Rio. She stared at the ceiling. “This is unsustainable,” she said quietly, her lawyer’s voice returning, laced with exhaustion.
Rio’s stomach dropped. The post-float bliss evaporated. “I know.”
“I have a breakfast meeting at seven-thirty. With partners.” Agatha finally turned her head. Her eyes were hollow. “You should go.”
The dismissal was gentle, but it was absolute. It was the “goodbye” from the last hotel, but delivered from the same bed, with their fluids still cooling on their skin. Rio sat up. She smoothed her dress down, her movements robotic. She stood on unsteady legs, collected her boots, and carried them to the door. She didn’t look back.
In the elevator, she put her boots on. Her reflection in the polished doors was a mess: swollen lips, wild hair, a vacant stare. She walked through the opulent lobby, feeling every gaze upon her, knowing exactly what she looked like. Knowing exactly what she was.
Back in the cab, her phone buzzed in her small purse. She pulled it out, her heart a dull, painful thud. A new text.
Agatha: The Selway contact is Miranda Colson. Her email is mcolson@selwayfoundation.org. Mention my name.
It was a line thrown to a drowning person. A professional courtesy. A bone. It was also the only way Agatha knew how to say anything real. Rio clutched the phone, watching the city streets blur past, feeling more orphaned than she had in years.