Chapter 1: The Long-Distance Tease
The notification appeared on Mark’s phone during a lull between meetings. A simple, discreet icon. Julie's device is connected. He stared at it for a moment, leaning back in his ergonomic office chair. The Toronto office was quiet, all glass and muted grays.A world away.
A grin touched his lips. He tapped the icon, then the intensity slider. He dragged it slowly to the right.
Across the distance, in a pre-war building in the Marais, Julie jolted.
The sleek, obsidian device inside her, forgotten for a moment as she tidied the bedroom, suddenly came to life with a low, insistent hum. A wave of sensation, warm and building, crested through her. Her hand flew to the rumpled duvet, fingers clutching the linen.
“Oh, you bastard,” she breathed, but she was laughing, a soft, breathy sound lost in the percussive brush of a jazz snare from the living room.
She let go, sinking into the mattress. The chandelier above was a glittering, crystalline galaxy, each pendant catching the flicker of the dozen votive candles she’d lit earlier. The room smelled of her perfume, of spent matches, of them from a few hours ago—a frantic, happy reunion after twenty years. It had been a while since their week end in Amsterdam.“A pause,” he’d called it “Not an intermission.”
Now this. A digital ghost touch from five hundred miles away.
She opened the app on her own phone, the interface simple. A heartbeat icon pulsed softly. She typed, her thumb smudging the screen.
> Julie: Very sneaky. I was folding towels.
> Mark: Towels are boring. This is less boring.
> Julie: Confident.
> Mark: You’re there alone?
The vibration shifted, deepening from a hum to a resonant thrum. She arched off the bed, a gasp escaping her. Her body, so long accustomed to predictability, to the quiet, efficient solitude of her own hands or the frankly disappointing routine of her marriage, sang with the shock of it.This was different. This was someone else’s control. Someone else’s imagination.Mark’s.
She typed again, her focus splintering.
> Julie: You’re at work. This is deeply unprofessional.
> Mark: I’m innovating. Remote team building.
> Julie: What’s my KP objective?
> Mark: Let’s call it stakeholder satisfaction.
Another wave began, a slow build from nothing to a dizzying peak. It was intense, almost too much. The device was clever, capable of patterns—long, teasing rises, abrupt, punctuating pulses. He was exploring the settings. She bit her lip, the laughter gone, replaced by a concentrated, aching heat. The velvet drapes, the candlelight, the saxophone’s mournful cry from the other room—it all melted into a sensory blur around the single, blinding point of connection he commanded.
This was the irony, of course. The technology was a miracle. It could bridge countries. It could mimic intimacy with terrifying precision. Yet, as the artificial waves pulsed through her, forcing a trembling, breathless climax that echoed in the silent apartment, the hollow ache in her chest only widened. It was a proof of concept, highlighting the absence of the real thing. The weight of him. The whisper of his breath, not a text notification. The scratch of his stubble. The shared, silent collapse afterward.
The device quieted to a faint, post-coital purr.
She lay there, spent and strangely melancholy, staring at the chandelier. The app glowed on her screen.
> Mark: Well?
> Julie: Satisfied all relevant stakeholders.
> Mark: Good. Miss you.
She did.Terribly. The twenty years since they were teenagers, whispering fantasies to each other over dial-up connections, fell away. They’d been kids playing with fire online, and then life happened. Universities, careers, a marriage for her to a perfectly nice man whose touch never made her feel like this—known and unknown, safe and dangerous all at once. Divorce. And then, the pull of memories.
She threw her legs over the side of the bed, the cool parquet floor a shock to her soles. She padded to the window, pulling back the heavy drape. Paris glittered, wet and cold. A taxi honked on the rue de Rivoli.
This was insanity. She was thirty-eight. A rational adult. An accountant, for God’s sake. She ran spreadsheets, not toward cliff edges.
Her phone buzzed again. Not the app. A message.
> Mark: My dinner’s done. Useless. I just spent two hours thinking about the sound you make when you come.
> Julie: What sound?
> Mark: A sigh. Then you hold your breath. Then it comes from your throat. Like you’re surprised every time.
A warmth flooded her that had nothing to do with the device. He remembered.He listened.
She looked at the elegant, empty apartment. She looked at the bed, still holding the shape of her body. She thought of her tidy, quiet life, a life of careful projections and balanced ledgers. It all felt like a waiting room.
Her fingers flew across the screen, the decision solidifying as she typed it, a wild, exhilarating fear kicking in her chest.
> Julie: Can l Come?.
> Mark: ?
> Julie: I’ll visit you. You can work, i ll be a tourist during the day. Your slut at night. I need a real wave.Not a digital one.
She sent it. No overthinking. No pro-con list.
She stood at the window, watching the city lights blur, feeling the ghost of the vibration still humming in her blood, and for the first time in years, she felt entirely, terrifyingly awake. The chandelier’s reflection danced in the dark glass, a thousand points of fractured light, waiting to fall.
The chandelier’s reflection danced in the dark glass, a thousand points of fractured light, waiting to fall. Her phone stayed silent for three agonizing minutes. The jazz record ended with a final, fading note. In the sudden quiet, she could hear the frantic beat of her own heart. This was it. She’d scared him off. He’d see the desperation, the mid-life cliché, the divorcee flying across an ocean for a vibrator and a memory.
The buzz was violent. A video call request.
She fumbled, accepting, her face looming pale in the dark screen before she found the lamp switch.
Mark’s face filled her screen. He was in his car, the streetlights of Toronto washing over his sharp features in passing streaks. He looked exhilarated. “A week?”
“A week,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt.
“Make a list,” he said, his eyes gleaming with a dark, playful intensity. “Every tourist needs a bucket list. A week’s worth of depravity. I’ll guide you to it.”
A laugh burst out of her, nervous and thrilled. “A depravity bucket list.”
“We started one twenty years ago. Time to check some things off.” He shifted the phone, the camera jostling. “I’m pulling over. Text me your flight details the second you book it. Then start writing.”
The call ended. Julie stood in the center of her meticulously curated apartment, the silence now feeling potent, like the calm before a storm. She opened the notes app on her phone. The cursor blinked. A list. Her accountant’s mind wanted categories, columns, cost-benefit analysis. But her other mind, the one she’d kept locked in a dusty attic for two decades, whispered something else entirely.
The big day arrived wrapped in a brittle, gray Parisian dawn. She dressed with a focus she usually reserved for client audits. Practical, but not. A loose, cobalt-blue silk blouse. A charcoal pencil skirt that hugged her hips but was deceptively stretchy. Knee-high boots. No tights. The sleek black remote device was inserted with a clinical precision that belied the tremor in her hands. It sat inside her, a dormant promise.
The flights were a haze of stale air and bad movies. She drank two glasses of wine, thumbed through a novel she couldn’t comprehend, and watched the flight map, the little icon inching its way over the Atlantic. Every mundane interaction—the polite smile for the stewardess, the shuffle through customs—felt like a performance. She was playing Julie, successful accountant, tourist. Inside, she was a live wire, sparking with every thought of the list on her phone, a document she’d encrypted and hidden behind two folders named ‘Tax Deductions 2023.’
The plane bumped onto the tarmac in Toronto. The seatbelt sign dinged off. As the crowd began its urgent, shuffling stand, Julie opened the app. Her thumb hovered over the control. This was the line. On one side, the normal world of baggage claim and hired cars. On the other, his world.
She tapped ‘Connect.’ Seconds later, he slid the intensity to its lowest setting, a faint, almost teasing hum.It was enough. A secret smile touched her lips as she walked, a slight, purposeful roll in her hips syncing with the gentle pulse. She was announcing her arrival to him in a frequency only he could hear.
The arrivals hall was a cacophony of voices and rolling suitcases. She scanned the faces. And there he was. Leaning against a pillar, hands in the pockets of a dark wool coat.Mark. Older, lines at his eyes, his hair shorter but still untamed. He saw her. He picked his phone, and looking at her, increased the intensity of the vibration. She held her cart, taking it on in. His gaze traveled from her face down her body and back up, and his smile wasn’t one of simple greeting. It was a recognition, a hunter’s satisfaction.
She cleared custom hoping no one would notice. He pushed off the pillar and met her halfway, not giving her a chance to speak. He took her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing her cheeks, and kissed her. It was deep, consuming, and tasted of coffee and winter air. The vibrator hummed against his touch, a silent alarm.
He pulled back, his eyes dark. “You turned it on.”
“I landed,” she breathed.“I know. I felt it.” He took her rolling suitcase in one hand, her elbow in the other, guiding her with an irresistible force through the crowd. “Ready?”
Her body answered for her, a fresh, aching throb from the device. She just nodded, letting him lead her through the automatic doors into the shocking, cold slap of Canadian evening.
The parking garage was a concrete labyrinth, echoing with the sounds of engines and distant doors. He led her to a dark SUV, modern and anonymous. He popped the trunk, threw her suitcase in, and slammed it shut. The noise echoed sharply.Then he turned. In the dim, orange-tinted light of a safety lamp, his expression had shed all its earlier playfulness. It was stark. Hungry.
“Here,” she said, her voice low. It wasn’t a question. "The list. Item #1.
She didn’t guide him to the passenger door. She guided him to the front of the vehicle, the black hood cold under her splayed hands as she bent over it. The shock of the cold metal seeped through her silk blouse. She heard his zipper, the sound brutally efficient in the empty silence.No preparation. No patience. Just his hands on her hips, yanking the stretchy skirt up to her waist, the cool air hitting her skin. A single, rough adjustment of her underwear. The buzzing device pulled. Then the blunt, insistent pressure of him, and he was inside her in one firm, claiming push.
She cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the cavernous garage. The device was still humming, a bizarre counterpoint to the raw, unfiltered sensation of him filling her. This was nothing like the digital waves. This was immediate, overwhelming, a physics of friction and heat and the slight, painful grate of the hood’s seam against her cheek. He moved with a focused intensity, each thrust jolting her against the car, the metal groaning softly beneath them.
It was fast. It was brutal in its simplicity. It was everything the careful, considerate sex of her marriage had never been. This wasn’t about mutual satisfaction. This was about possession, about marking, about making a theory a brutal, undeniable fact.
He shuddered, his body locking against hers, a hot breath ghosting across the nape of her neck. For a moment, the only sounds were their ragged breathing and the distant hum of a ventilation system.
He slowly pulled away, helping her stand. Her legs were unsteady. She turned, leaning back against the hood, her skirt still rucked up, the reality of what they’d just done—in a public airport parking lot—crashing into her. She felt exposed, ravaged, and utterly, terrifyingly alive.
"Well. That wasn't on the list".
Mark tucked himself in, zipped up, his eyes never leaving hers. He reached out and smoothed a strand of hair from her forehead, his touch now incongruously tender. He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear.
“Welcome to Toronto,” he whispered, his voice rough. “You're not the only one with a list.”
He opened the passenger door for her. She slid in, the leather seat cold through her thin clothes. As he walked around to the driver’s side, she slowly, shakily, pulled her skirt down. The device, forgotten during the act, gave one last, faint pulse. She let out a choked laugh that was almost a sob. The city lights blurred past the window as he drove them out of the garage, and Julie realized she had no idea who she was anymore, and the sensation was more exhilarating than any climax.
Mark started the engine and looked at her "I never had a blow job when driving"