The only sound in the whole office is Corrine’s shoes on the tan hardwood floor. Their soft click, click, click seems like the heartbeat of this place. Corrine lets herself into her office while my phone vibrates on my desk. I pause there, watching as she disappears into her dimly lit space.
There are five messages. One from Amy asking where I am. The other four are from Jeremy. The first three say, in progressively urgent case:
dude.
Dude.
DUDE.
And the last one is classic Jeremy: Happy Birthday! Love you!
My desk drawer creaks as it opens and I drop my phone onto a stack of sticky notes. I drop my guilt in there, too, at not answering their texts. I try to tell myself that work is more important. But I’m not thinking of work right now. I’m thinking of her.
Taking the two steps to her door, I knock and step into the doorway.
“Corrine?” I ask. She leans on her hands over her desk, her head bowed. Somewhere between the door and her desk she’s taken her hair out of its bun and it falls over one shoulder.
“Corrine?”
She picks up the file sitting in front of her and slams it back down. A frustrated grunt escapes her, the sound so unlike anything I’ve ever heard come from her mouth and yet the only noise I could imagine her making in this moment. The cup of pens, the computer monitor shudder.
Stepping fully inside the room, I close the door behind me. The office seemed empty as we walked through it but just in case, no one should get to witness this. I can’t tell if she’s going to laugh or scream. From the look on her face, she doesn’t know either; it could be both.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she says, a little breathless.
I shake my head, unsure whether she means her anger here in her office or the bits and pieces of her meeting with Richard. Watching it left me with an unpleasant taste in my mouth, an uncomfortable feeling in my gut, and the notion that once again there was something more I should have done but didn’t.
“It’s fine,” I say, taking a few more steps into her office. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“Do you ever feel like no matter how hard you try you just...” She shakes her head, looking around the room like words will be written on the walls for her. “Can’t. You can’t win, you can’t get ahead?”
I can’t tell if she’s making fun of me and the dynamic we had up until recently. “Yes,” I say slowly. “I’m familiar with the feeling.”
She watches me silently, a look on her face that could be regret. She walks around the desk, stopping a few feet in front of me with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Did you ever just want to give up?”
“Yeah, sometimes I just wanted to walk out but...”
She takes a step closer, dropping her arms. She’s close enough to touch now, if I wanted. If she wanted. I could reach out and hold her hand. I could cover her hip with my palm; I could put it higher. Lower.
“But.” I meet her eyes. “But I know who I am. And I didn’t want to leave here without you knowing who I am either.”
She lifts her hand, hesitates. My whole body leans toward that hand.
She drops it, fisted back down at her side. But now here I am, a listing Italian tower, doing everything I can to not fall harder toward this woman.
“I’m glad I got to know who you are, too.”
Warmth, like pride, fills me. I check the lean.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asks. “Your birthday party?”
I shake my head. Who the fuck cares how old I am?
“I can stay.” I stop to clear the gravel from my voice. “If you need me?” Air has never felt so thick before. Another person’s breath on my lips has never tasted so sweet.
“What...what would I need you for?” she whispers.
The A/C starts up with a low hum, the only other sound in the room. She is somehow the only person I’ve ever met who’s this beautiful under fluorescent lighting.
“Anything.” I shake my head. I shrug, swallow. My heart batters my ribs. “Anything,” I say again.
She lifts her hand and now it’s like she’s done it one thousand times before. Wrapping her fingers one digit at a time, around my tie, she pulls me forward.
“I need you to do it again,” she whispers. Her gaze darts wildly between mine. Her pupils all black, leaving no room for her fiery, golden gaze. “If...if you want to.”
I swallow hard enough to be audible. “Do what?” I ask right before it comes back to me, the moment in the dugout, the taste of her skin on my lips, the smell of her on my clothes. “Oh. Kiss you?”
“No.” She blinks, tightens her fist. “Wesley. Fuck me,” she whispers.
A switch is flipped in my brain. I no longer hear the voice in my head blaring Warning, begging, Cease and desist: you cannot stand this close to your boss.
All I can hear is the pleading tone in her voice when she asks me to fuck her. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
My body clicks into autopilot, like somehow my arms and legs know what to do while I watch in amazement from the bleachers. Bending my knees, I lift her to my mouth. It’s probably the adrenaline talking but my arms have never felt stronger than with her in them. Her arms coil around my neck and we stumble forward until her ass meets the desk. I push her skirt up her legs and step between them, catching a glimpse of white lace. Her thighs are soft silk. She makes a shaky sound. My hands can’t stay in one place for long. I have to touch her all over, everywhere. I want all of her. Now.
She pushes at the lapels of my suit jacket and I rip it off, flinging it somewhere behind me. I pull at the buttons on her shirt but my fingers shake too much to get it open.
“Rip it?” she whispers in a shuddering, unsure gasp.
My fingers still and I meet her eyes. They’re huge and beautiful. “What?” I ask, even though I heard her perfectly.
“Rip it,” she says, surer now.
So I do.
The first button pops off and I stop at the sound of it pinging somewhere around the room. It is somehow the most erotic sound I’ve ever heard, sending a pulse through my cock. Pop, pop, pop, I pull until every button is gone and all that is left between me and the expanse of her smooth skin is a white silk bra. She tugs roughly at my belt as I rip down the cups. Her breasts are small and fucking perfect.
I want them in my mouth.
Her moan fills my ears as I tongue her nipple and fireworks explode in my brain at the taste of her skin on my lips. She reaches her hand into my boxers, pulling me out, and I gasp against her skin as she rubs her thumb along the tip of my cock, softly pulling my foreskin back. Her delicate hands make me feel fucking huge.
I make a fist in the crotch of her panties, already wet and slick, and pull them down her legs. She kicks them off the rest of the way and I watch as they flutter to the ground, landing half on my shoe, half on the floor.
My whole body stills. Except for my heart, which feels like its beats per minute are faster than a car. Corrine naked might be more than I can handle.
“Don’t stop, Wesley,” she says with just the slightest bit of desperation.
The room, this night, feels still, paused and unreal. “Are you sure?”
She nods, her eyes still too big in her face. The exposed parts of my body pucker with goose bumps; this is a horrible time for office AC.
I press my thumb to the corner of her mouth. “Corrine,” I say. The weight of what we’re about to do settles over me, making my limbs too heavy.
She blinks and for that moment I think she will be the reasonable one, the one to stop all this. But instead she leans forward, a smile curling up one side of her mouth, her breath tickling my collarbone. “I hope you fuck better than you order coffee,” she says, her voice teasing and light like I’ve never heard it before, and bites my neck.
She is a kaleidoscope. Constantly showing me a new version of herself, and each one blows my mind.
She can insult my coffee-ordering skills for the rest of my life as long as she bites me again. She licks the spot she bit, dragging her tongue to the stubble at my jaw.
My arousal pulses everywhere, in my cock, my thighs. In the straining of my abdomen, the tension in my back. My arousal lives in my fucking teeth. I press my hand to the center of her chest, pushing her back onto the desk, spreading her legs farther apart.
“Say it again,” I say hoarsely. “I need you to say it again.”
Her eyes dart between mine. “I want you to fuck me, Wesley. Now.”
I take myself in hand, and push into her. She arches, gasps. My heart slows to a singular thud. I might die. I’d be okay with that.
I’ve never felt anything like this before, this acute heat. Her body pulls at me, sucks me in.
Her lips, glistening and swollen, stretch around me. I want to make her feel what I’m feeling. So taut she can’t speak at all for fear of coming. Her hands tighten on my biceps as she kisses me, her tongue tracing the seam of my mouth, her teeth biting.
I pull away, thrusting slower and then hard again. “Good enough?” I growl.
But I really want to know: am I good enough for her? Good enough she’ll let me do this again and again?
Her hands scratch beneath my shirt. She feels so good it’s painful. I clench my teeth against the orgasm that tingles at the base of my spine.
I have never fucked like this before. This rough. This raw. I am wild for her, my heart close to stopping, my skin straining for hers. I know I need to slow down, calm down, make it good for her. So far I think she’s gotten by on the thrill, of something new and secret, something left unfinished.
But if I come before she does I can never show my face here again. I’ll have to quit my job. I’ll have to leave Boston.
It’s as if she’s trying to make me come faster than the speed of light. Her sounds, the way her tits bounce every single time I hit the end of her, the hunger in her eyes, the heat in her palm against my chest. Holding back physically hurts but my god, I never want it to stop.
I rub her clit in tight circles. Leave small biting kisses around her nipples. Gripping her thigh. I don’t want to leave my fingerprints behind on her skin but I can’t let go.
I can’t.
She wraps her legs around my ass. “Harder,” she commands, just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the rhythmic slap of our bodies.
I cup her cheek in my hand, holding my finger over her mouth. For a heartbeat, I’m distracted by how soft, how plump her lower lip is against the pad of my thumb.
She moans again, and I whisper, my heart in my throat, “Someone might hear.”
Her eyes widen. The acknowledgment that we might not be alone, that we could get caught, feels like a fuse lit inside her. She tightens around me, her clit pulsing against my fingers. Her nails bite into my skin as she cries out against my hand.
I try to ride out her orgasm but I can’t hold myself back anymore.
There is only her warmth, her softness, the sound her pussy makes when I move within her, her nails in my skin. She wrings me dry as I empty myself inside of her.
I think I need a glass of water.
I breathe her in, my open mouth against the skin of her throat. Her dark hair halos her face. Her eyes droop into exhaustion. Her lips are pink and flushed from my mouth and stubble. Because of me.
I did that to her.
The side of my mouth lifts as I press my lips to hers in a soft kiss, my breath blowing the hair off her face. She holds my cheek, keeping me there for a second longer. Her smile grows against my mouth. My whole body buzzes with the kind of exhaustion that only comes from being well used, and my heart won’t slow down yet but if she said we could fall asleep right here, I just might. I rest my forehead against hers and close my eyes.
Don’t say something stupid, I remind myself. Don’t.
“Wow.”
Damnit.
“I... I...” I want to kiss her again.
“Wesley,” she whispers.
I smile, lazily. When she calls me by my first name a fire lights in my chest. But I can’t bring myself to put together the words to tell her that yet. My hands run restlessly over her soft, soft skin. I press my mouth to that softness because I can’t stop. Because it’s all I can think about: how incredibly right this feels.
She pushes against me. Everything is sweaty and sticky wherever our skin touches.
“Wesley.” Her voice is different now. “Get off,” she hisses.
I meet her eyes, trying to reconcile the impatience in her tone, the sudden stiffness in her body, with what we just did. But she won’t meet my gaze. Her jaw clenches and unclenches in that familiar way.
Pushing up on my hands, I pull out of her, feel my come wet my skin, stain the front of my pants; hear the wet splatter on the floor, my shoes.
Fuck.
I stare down at my dick, hanging out of my pants as horror rises up in me.
“I... I’ve never had sex without a condom,” I mumble. I am cold and unsteady for a completely different reason from only minutes before. A sickening sense of panic weighs down my postorgasmic euphoria. Corrine stands, pulling the two halves of her shirt together, wrapping her arms around herself. She looks at the floor and I follow her gaze. We stare at her panties, still lying on my shoe.
“Neither have I,” she says, barely above a whisper.
“Are you okay?” I ask, putting my dick away and pulling my own shirt together.
She lifts her head, scowling. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
I rub my index finger back and forth over my brow. “It’s just that, that was...amazing. And then, now, you know.” I shrug. Now she’s freaking out.
“I’m on the pill. And I’m clean,” she says, almost defensively.
I nod, quickly. “Me, too,” I say. “I mean, I’m clean. I’m not on the pill. Obviously.”
She won’t look at me. With each passing second the silence pushes her further away, leaving me more and more alone. But I can’t bring myself to speak and I certainly can’t make myself walk out that door. This isn’t how I do things. This isn’t me. My hand tingles with the need to reach out to her, touch her skin, her hair. Offer her some sort of comfort. But maybe I just need the contact to comfort myself. I’m not sure she can give that to me.
“This was a mistake,” she says. The air leaves my chest in a rush. She could have just punched me in the chest instead.
Pressing her hand to her throat, where my lips were seconds ago, she swallows. “I regret... It was...inappropriate. I’m sorry.”
I hope my cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. Too many thoughts compete in my brain for precedence so I stand here, unspooled in her office. Doing nothing. Like the loser I’ve always known myself to be. Like a mistake.
“Mr. Chambers,” she says. Her voice is sharp and I blink up to her. “You’re dismissed.”
I can’t keep the flinch off my face. But her words do their job and get me moving. She opens her mouth but I shake my head. I can’t hear anything else she has to say right now. I don’t want this moment tainted any more than it has been.
I walk to the door, stopping with my hand on the stainless steel handle. The metal is cold and wrapping my hand around it freezes something inside of me. I turn back to her. Her face has changed, less remote, more scared.
“I don’t regret you, Corrine.”
Her face falls farther but I straighten. I won’t slouch or make myself smaller when I say this.
“And I’m not a mistake.”
My sister probably ordered the cake herself and got those ridiculously huge number balloons to announce our age to the general public. But I can’t bring myself to go see any of it. Even if I haven’t seen most of my friends for months, they’re still the people who know me best.
Especially Amy.
She’ll take one look at me and know that something is wrong, that I’ve done something I can’t take back.
I forgo my usual walk and take a cab home, going straight to the shower from the front door. My phone vibrates almost constantly in my pocket, filled with a mixture of Happy Birthday! and Dude, where are you? messages as my pants pool around my feet. I ignore them all as I turn on the hot water and take stock in the quickly fogging mirror, inventory the scratch marks down my chest, the bite mark on my collarbone. I can’t even remember when she did these things to me. I just know they felt good when they happened.
I rub my hand over a particularly red scratch across my nipple. I wonder if it could scar. I want it to. I want proof that this happened.
I step into the shower. Press my forehead against the tile and let the water wash over me, wash away her fingerprints, erase any evidence of her on my skin. But the water won’t let me forget her sounds, her sigh of relief, when I pushed into her. Even though I just finished fucking my boss half an hour ago and my head is a mess, my heart torn apart, I take myself in my hand and remember the feeling of my tongue on her skin, the taste of her, how her hair tickled, and her sweet, wet warmth.
When I come I’m still not satisfied.