Seduce Me Tonight (27 page)

The addiction, and I really had to admit that after only a month of Word Games it had become an addiction, had now taken on a special place in my day-to-day life because I had an opponent who not only had a good vocabulary but understood the strategy of the game. It wasn’t always about big words. Big was good, of course, and using all of your letters garnered you extra points – but sometimes a short word would do even better.
Lick
, when placed strategically, could land you with thirty points or more. The same with
suck
. K is a nice letter. It can be used in so many deliciously naughty words. Unfortunately, Word Games wouldn’t allow me to play
fuck
or
dick
, but it was fine with
cock
. I played
cock
a lot. I love cock. In Word Games, I mean.

InkSlinger was fond of certain words, too. My
suck
became his
suckled
. He used the
l
in my
lick
for
nipples
and I used the
e
in
nipples
for
ecstasy
. We had both played
oh
and
yes
many times, taking advantage of triple letter scores for both the
h
and the
y
. Sometimes our game board looked more like a jumbled erotic story than a word game. I loved it. Sad to say, it was the only erotic thing about my life, which included teaching sixth graders at Willow Oaks Middle School about the American Revolution, coaching high-school girls’ softball after school and on the weekends and taking care of my parents’ two dogs while they were off on yet another of their exotic trips. And I had InkSlinger. I wasn’t so far gone that I was masturbating to our games, but waiting for him to reply and hearing the ‘beep’ of my phone was enough to make my breath quicken. And sometimes his words … well, they did have a certain affect on me.

We built on each other’s words, lining up tiles adjacent to each other in vertical, horizontal and perpendicular positions. The words were bad enough to ignite my fevered imagination –
tease
and
me
right there next to
stroke
and
lust
– but I started to imagine the tiles as bodies – his and mine – engaged in various sexual positions. It was ridiculous. It was sad. It was what kept me going through endless hours of grading history reports and endless nights going to bed alone.

I probably would’ve gone on like that for ever, or at least until summer came and I was free of my commitments and lonely enough to consider online dating, but then in the middle of a game I was winning, a little blue bubble popped up at the top of my screen. Apparently Word Games had a chat function I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe because there hadn’t ever been anyone I wanted to chat with before.

I opened the bubble and saw the first words from InkSlinger that were in an actual sentence.
Hey Lexigirl, I like playing with you.

Then,
The game, I mean.

I thought for a moment, wondering whether to further the tone of our games or let it drop. I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me; I could just find someone else to play with. Or not play at all. But it was rare to find someone who had a good vocabulary, a knack for strategy, a sense of humour and a dirty mind. Or maybe I was just projecting these qualities onto him because they were things that were important to me.

Thanks. I like playing with you too.
I like the way your mind works.

I started to amend it the way he had, make sure I was clear that I didn’t mean it in a suggestive way. But I did mean it in a suggestive way. And flirting with a stranger over a word game seemed about as innocuous as playing dirty Scrabble with co-workers. What was the harm?

What was the harm, indeed. It didn’t take long before we were messaging as much as we were gaming. It felt natural to play a word like
sexy
and then ask him how his day had been. We talked about work in general terms; I had no idea what he did besides something that involved writing and I just told him I was a teacher, but everything else was fair game. We messaged about movies and books and what we were going to do over the summer. I didn’t have plans other than
not work
, but his goals included renting a house in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and learning to surf.
But I have to keep working
, he messaged.

Like strangers meeting at a party, we kept the banter light and stayed away from politics and religion, though sex came up. And up, and up. While our games were fun and somewhat arousing but never enough to get me there, our messaging
did
fuel my fantasies. We danced on the line of propriety, pretending to be word geeks playing a game, but – for me at least – it was the most erotic chat I was getting in my life.

I’ve heard that you can tell how good someone is in bed by the way they dance
, he messaged.
But I think it’s by how well they use words.

I smiled.
A love of language makes for an inquisitive and passionate mind.

Oh, how I love your passion.

And so it went for another few weeks, with the conversations taking twists and turns but always staying somewhat anonymous. I was both content and frustrated with the situation. It was lovely to have someone like him around to entertain me while I was standing in line at the grocery store or post office, or when I couldn’t sleep at night, but chatting with him was like the first taste of a decadent piece of chocolate cake – I wanted more. Then one night he offered me more.

Feel like playing?
he messaged, after playing the word
strip
off of my word
poker.

We’re already playing.

A pause, and then:
Not what I meant.

I blushed, knowing exactly what he meant, and squirmed in my bed. How in the world could such an innocent flirtation arouse me? But arouse me it did.

I don’t know how to play
, I confessed.

We need to create a version of Strip Word Games.

I laughed out loud.
That’s too geeky for words.

So? Geeks are sexy.

Oh, hell, yes, they were. Or
he
was, anyway. Sexy with his wordplay. I wondered idly if it would translate to sexy in real life.

We seem to be a perfect match. Maybe we should meet up sometime and play in real life.

Whoa. Not what I expected, at all. It wasn’t creepy; I felt like I knew him, and I didn’t feel threatened. It was actually kind of flattering because I’d been thinking the same thing, but –

Yeah, I couldn’t think of a reason that it might be a bad thing to indulge his little fantasy, either.

That would be intriguing and probably explosive in a variety of ways.
I typed. But w
hat are the odds of us being anywhere close to each other?

The odds are pretty good. The random matches are based on geographic location. Didn’t you know that? Word Games wants word geeks to find each other!

Crap, I didn’t know that. I was having second thoughts about this game. But then …

OK, I’ll bite. Where are you?
I figured I was safe – basing a game on geographic locations could mean anything. The east coast was a geographic location, but that wouldn’t make meeting feasible. Or he could be four hours away in North Carolina since he’d mentioned renting a house in the Outer Banks. And I didn’t have to tell him where
I
was, right?

Just outside D.C., suburb called Willow Oaks.

Meep. We lived in the same neighbourhood. This game was a better GPS than the one in my car.

Are you going to tell me where you are, Lexigirl?

I closed the Word Games program without answering.

* * *

Like most addicts, I couldn’t stay away. I didn’t finish the game with InkSlinger and I ignored his requests to start a new game. I let Word Games match me up with other random players, always aware that these new strangers might live around the corner or next door. There was no temptation to flirt. Especially when I played the word
erotic
and my most recent opponent, with the uninspired name Luv_My_Kids, messaged me
That’s dirty!
and promptly quit the game. I longed for InkSlinger. Did it matter that he lived in the same neighbourhood I did? It wasn’t likely that some psycho would use Word Games to lure in his victim, right? I was being paranoid, watching too many episodes of
CSI
. And doing what my sister Valerie always accused me of doing – making excuses to be alone. But Valerie was the pretty, confident older sister; she could take her clothes off to model for a room full of strangers taking an art class, while I could barely speak in front of the Parent Teacher Association.

Late one night, about a week after I found out InkSlinger lived nearby, I logged back into the game and sent him a game request. From my tray of seven tiles, I made my first word.
Sorry
. Then I sent him a message.

It kind of freaked me out that you live so close. Sorry. It would be cool to meet. If you still want to.

He didn’t respond that night. But the next night, as I was just falling asleep, my phone beeped. He’d played
lovely
off of my
y
.

Whenever you’d like
, he messaged,
just let me know.

I took a deep breath. What the hell, right? Might as well take a leap of faith and see where it took me.

How about Thursday night?

It was Tuesday night, so Thursday seemed soon enough that I wouldn’t chicken out. It also wasn’t a traditional date night, so no undue pressure to make this blind date – if you could even call it that – into something more than two gamers meeting in real life. On the other hand, if we hit it off (what were the odds?), there was a chance of a real weekend date. I was proud of myself for this little logistical move.

Sure. Time? Place?

How about 8 o’clock? Do you know City Coffee in City Village?

Sure,
he messaged,
that works. I prefer a busy public place. Just in case you turn out to be a psycho.

Alone in my bed, I laughed out loud. InkSlinger might end up disappointing me in person, but here – confined to my phone – he was funny and charming and smart.

Fair enough. Good night, InkSlinger.

Call me Sam
, he messaged. And then he was gone.

* * *

Sam. Sam. Samuel. Or Sampson? Maybe just Sam. I hadn’t even told him my name, but his name was a mantra in my head for the next two days. We finished the game I had started with an apology – he beat me by 27 points – and had played a couple of new games since then. My favourite word so far had been
luscious
. He’d played it off of the
c
in
creamy
. I was pleased to see we’d slipped back to our usual suggestive word banter, though it still made me a little nervous. I didn’t know why – other than it felt like he knew more about me than I really wanted a stranger to know on a first date. Even if it wasn’t a date.

I kept going back and forth over that. I didn’t know anything about him. He could have a girlfriend. Be engaged. Or married. Or, hell, he could be seventeen and I could be breaking the law having sexual fantasies about some high-school kid who just had a good vocabulary. My nerves were getting the best of me. At my lunch break on Thursday, I hid in the teachers’ work room and opened Word Games on my phone.

Please tell me you’re at least eighteen.

I didn’t expect a response, but within a minute he messaged me.

I’m thirty-four. I’m single. I have a job. I pay taxes. I’m not a criminal. I’m normal, Lexigirl. OK?

Man, this guy was too good to be true. I laughed again.

‘What so funny?’ Catherine asked from the doorway. ‘And where’s Hannah?’

I played
crazy
in Word Games and closed the programme. ‘Hannah took the day off. Her substitute is losing her mind with those wild kids of hers. They won’t listen to anyone but Hannah.’

‘Hannah took the day off?’ Catherine looked flabbergasted. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

I laughed. ‘She’s horny.’

Hannah and her husband Aidan had been renewing their sexual vows, so to speak, after a long dry spell that had been broken when Catherine had volunteered to keep their almost-three-year-old twins one night last month. I’d been terribly jealous that she actually
had
someone to have sex with, though I couldn’t very well tell her that when she’d been complaining about how sex had gone out the window post-babies. In any case, I was now jealous she was actually getting it on during work hours – not that administration knew that. Hannah’s sick day was keeping her in bed all day, all right, but not for the reason the principal thought.

Catherine shook her head in mock surprise and offered me half of her sub. We ate and chatted for the next fifteen minutes, but my mind was on my sort-of-date with a guy named Sam, who was over eighteen and gainfully employed. I felt like I’d won the lottery, but I hadn’t seen the check yet to know exactly how much I’d won.

* * *

City Coffee was quiet on a Thursday night – though the barista behind the counter looked like she needed a break. I absentmindedly listened to her lamenting how short-staffed they were as she made my iced mocha. I’d been caught in traffic and was a couple of minutes late, so I’d cast a look around for Sam expecting to see someone who looked like an InkSlinger (whatever that looked like), but the only other people in the coffee shop were a fifty-something couple with their heads bent over a stack of travel guides and a cute young cop who appeared to be doing some paperwork. I wondered for half a minute if he could be Sam, though he didn’t look anywhere close to thirty-four, but then his radio chirped to life. He murmured something into the mike before collecting his paperwork and leaving without so much as a backward glance. OK, so Sam wasn’t a cop and he wasn’t one half of the travelling duo. I swirled my straw in my iced coffee and waited.