THIS IS WHAT I WANT.

Your hands make circles around my ankles. They shackle me for but a moment before your fingertips move upward over the edge of bone, the dip and hollow of muscle and flesh. Over my calves and the prickly surface of my knees, where they linger to stroke the soft, smooth underside. Those untouched places. Your fingers linger there, seeking creases.

Your thumbs move up the sun-warmed flesh of my thighs, which I part for you beneath summer’s bright golden light. Like the breeze that twitches the ends of my hair, your fingers drift along my skin, moving higher.

This is what I want. You. Touching me.

You take the time to trace the faint white line, the place where once my flesh parted beneath the edge of a razor wielded by an unsteady hand. You don’t ask about this scar. You ask nothing, say nothing. You have no voice but that which I grant you…and so far I haven’t given you permission to speak.

You kneel in front of me, and this is where I like you. How I like you. On your knees, my body aligned for your worship and your hands smoothing a constant upward path.

This is what I want—your breath on my skin. Your fingers parting me. Your mouth finding the sweet, small pearl of my clitoris. I want your tongue there, and the pressure of your lips. I want you to lick me as I stand over you, you upon your knees.

I want you to worship me.

 

“Hold that elevator!” Eve Grant called across the lobby, already knowing it was a futile request. The elevator was super slow and had a cranky habit of stalling, forcing the employees of Digiquest to trudge up and down the stairs. Nobody was willing to contribute to a breakdown by stopping the doors once they were closing, not even at five to nine and knowing she was only hollering because if she had to wait for the elevator or take the stairs, she would be late clocking in.

Almost nobody.

A hand appeared at the last second, sliding between the slow-closing door and the wall. The elevator door bounced against it before grudgingly sliding back open. Eve grabbed up her bag and ran. Her sprint wasn’t dignified or graceful, but she wasn’t about to let the chance pass.

“Thanks,” she said as she hopped into the elevator just before the door closed, finally. “I appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

Lane DeMarco, six-foot-four of gorgeous and a half inch of fantastic, smiled at her. Eve automatically smiled in return. Lane’s smile was hard to resist.

Eve and Lane had been hired at the same time—she in customer service and he in IT. They’d been through the battlefield of employee orientation together and two years of office picnics and holiday parties, but it hadn’t made them anything more than acquaintances. He was just the sort of guy who’d flirt enough to flatter but not freak out, the kind who’d smile and hold the elevator for someone. Anyone. It didn’t make her special or anything.

Lane lifted an insulated cup to his lips and sipped. Watching his throat work as he swallowed was bad enough, but when his tongue slid out along his lips to swipe away the creamy coffee, she had to look away.

“That smells good,” she said about the coffee, because the only thing worse than making inane conversation was standing in awkward silence.

Where were her words when she needed them? Why could she speak to strangers online, share with them her most intimate secrets, yet she couldn’t do more than mumble with Lane? Why was he so…unattainable?

Lane swirled the liquid in the cup and sipped again. “It’s called a Mocha Mint. I got it from the new place next door, the Beanery. Have you tried it?”

“No.” Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she’d run out of the house without breakfast. Again. She really needed to get up earlier if she was going to blog before work. “I’ll have to check it out.”

The elevator dinged. One more floor to go. It actually might have been faster to take the stairs…but then she’d have missed out on the exquisite torture of riding up with Lane.

The door opened on their floor. Lane hung back to allow Eve to exit first, depriving her of the chance to ogle his ass. Shit. Was he ogling hers? Eve glanced over her shoulder, but found Lane’s gaze trained on her face. Was that better or worse? Worse, she decided, but not unexpected. Lane might be the star of most of her naughty online fantasies, but to him she was just another computer to fix.

As if he’d read her mind, he asked, “Are you still having that problem with your chat windows freezing up?”

“Oh, yeah.” She hadn’t forgotten about the support request she’d put in. Lane wasn’t the only IT guy on staff, but she’d been hoping he’d be the one to take the task.

“I’ll swing by in a bit to check it out, okay?”

She nodded and gave him a little wave as she watched him saunter away. Gah. He’s all that and a bag of chips.

In her pod, Eve tossed her bag onto the spare chair and shook her mouse to wake the computer, then logged in quickly, barely making it before the clock clicked from 9:00 a.m. to 9:01 a.m. and made her officially late. Her queue was already five customers deep, the blinking cursor an impatient reminder she was here to work, not fantasize about Lane DeMarco, no matter how tempting it was. Her fingers tapped away at the keys that would bring up the first customer from her queue. She had a minute or two of prewritten remarks to get through before she had to actually engage her mind.

Some poor sap was having a dickens of a time figuring out how to get his wireless devices to talk to one another, a problem so common Eve had no trouble solving it. She finished the chat with the last of the scripted phrases and logged off. Immediately, a new message window opened and she started all over. It was another easy chat with a simple solution. The faceless person on the other side of the Internet didn’t abuse emoticons or need the instructions repeated more than once, and Eve worked her way through the necessary steps without issue. Unfortunately, just before she inserted the text asking if she’d completed the chat to the customer’s satisfaction, the screen froze. She tried every key combination she knew and finally got it working again, but the customer had already logged off. Damn. It could mean a survey response of unsatisfactory for her, maybe, which wouldn’t look good on her performance statistics, but she didn’t have time to worry because the next window demanded her attention and she got back to work.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Four hours later her stomach still rumbled and she desperately needed a break. She hadn’t even had time to do more than take a peek or two at her blog. The comments were coming in fast and furious, but had to go unanswered, a fact that was killing her. She peeked again, satisfying herself with at least reading what people were saying before pushing away from the computer with a stretch. She headed to the restroom and then to the break room. The busy morning had kept her from pondering too much about what she’d write later tonight, but with the bathroom out of the way and a coffee and doughnut to fill the hole in her gut, Eve had time to think about what waited for her at home.

Most of the comments to her blog were one-liners or casual compliments. Praise for her writing or the ideas she’d presented. A fair number were from what she considered admirers—bloggers who got turned on by her entries and weren’t shy about telling her so. Every once in a while she even earned a “troll,” someone who commented with the sole purpose of insulting her or her readers and taunting them into a battle of words. Eve never engaged trolls, simply deleting their comments without reply.

Sometimes, though, she got something special. A fellow blogger, maybe, with similar tastes. Occasionally a particular comment turned into a spectacular dialogue and led her to places she hadn’t known she could go—or wanted to. Other times, someone new found her online persona and left a comment that led to another, and a friendship grew out of that small, random moment.

She sipped the bad coffee and nibbled the sugary doughnut on her way back to her pod. Her pulse leaped a little, thinking of what they’d said and what they’d say, how they’d react, her faceless admirers.

Her worshippers.

Some, she knew, like Puppetboy1241, would rave about this morning’s post. He always loved the ones in which she demanded homage. He’d already offered, privately, to be her slave not only online but in real life, too.

Well, not hers, precisely. Not Eve’s. He wanted to be slave to Eris Apparent, the name she blogged under. It was a tempting offer and one she might have considered but for one small reason. A simple, silly and ridiculous reason, Eve thought as she rounded the corner into her pod. She stopped short at the sight of her computer screen, which she’d left open to her queue but was now back at the log-in screen, and the Mocha Mint cup, steam still curling lazily from the top, sitting on her desk. An unattainable reason.

Lane DeMarco.

 

This is what I want.

You, surrounded by books. They teeter in towers ready to topple with a glance, and you’ve settled in the midst of them like a king looking over stacks of gold. Papers in piles make whispering noises when you shuffle them. The room smells of ink and paper. Of intellect.

You’re bent over the desk, scribbling furiously. Your glasses have slipped down to the end of your nose, and I know you’ll push them up when you think of it, but for now your tongue is caught between your teeth as you concentrate. Your pen scratches on the paper, creating worlds with words.

You’re lost to everything.

Except me.

I make no noise, but you lift your head anyway, as if you’ve scented me…and maybe you have. Among the smells of ink and paper, of dust, I carry the odor of roses, because that is how you imagined I would smell. I wear white, because that’s what you dreamed I would wear.

I’m the princess of every fairy tale you’ve ever read. The maiden in the tower, the sleeping beauty, the cinder-smudged waif waiting for her prince. I am your desire made flesh; my blood, the ink in your pen; my skin, the crumpled softness of your parchment.

You put down your pen. I glide to you on slippered feet, silent. There is room on your desk, when we make it. The sound of the books hitting the ground is very loud. Neither of us turns our head to see the destruction. All you want to see is me.

You reach for me. Your hands find all the places on my body you’ve spent long hours creating. You kiss me, soft and slow, and hold me as carefully as though I were built of glass.

I sigh, as you want me to, when you push me onto your desk and lift the silk of my skirt over my thighs. Your hands slide up my skin. Your mouth brushes the soft floss of my pubic curls and your thumbs part me to your gaze.

“You’re so beautiful.”

I have longed to hear your voice from your own mouth, to hear you say the words you’ve thus far only written. I like your voice. It’s low, deep. Rough like the rasp of a cat’s tongue. I shiver.

You kiss between my legs as sweetly as you did my mouth. I arch into your embrace when you slide your arms under my shoulders. Your mouth finds my throat. My fingers rake your back when you enter me; your cry of surprise urges one from my lips. You push into me, nevertheless, and fill me with heat and pleasure.

I was made to take pleasure from your touch, and I writhe under you as you thrust. I wrap my legs around your waist and hold you closer. Under my hands your shoulders tense.

Ecstasy fills me like water, overflowing. My body shakes. You hiss when I carve the evidence of my passion into your skin. You fuck me harder and we both surge into delight.

Later you stroke my hair as you murmur the litany of my many names. I am your princess, your waif, your creation. I am your desire made real.

 

Her latest blog entry had been live for only a few minutes before the first comment came. The rush of it swept through Eve all the way to her toes. There was nothing quite like the thrill of almost-instant feedback.

You’re brilliant.

“Thanks, Puppetboy,” she murmured, leaning back in her chair. It wasn’t the first time he’d said so.

Depeche Mode crooned at Eve from her speakers and she adjusted the volume as she refreshed her browser to reveal three more comments. Her e-mail program dinged at the same time, alerting her. She smiled, savoring it. She’d make poor Puppet wait for a reply while she read the others.

Eva had started blogging two years ago during a messy breakup with the man she’d been certain she was going to marry. Not because she was madly in love with him, though she had been, once upon a time. No, she’d been certain she would marry Brad because he loved her.

Or at least he had, once upon a time.

For Eve, the standard, once-a-week missionary position had ceased to satisfy, but Brad had been threatened by her suggestion they explore what he called “that kinky shit.” She’d long felt he didn’t really listen to her, but time and time again he’d proved it when she’d tried to interest him in something beyond the plain vanilla sex life they had.

She couldn’t pinpoint when she knew she no longer loved him, nor could she determine exactly the moment he stopped loving her. It would have made things so much easier if she could have. But no, convinced of the other’s esteem, both had struggled in the relationship for too long, until finally they not only no longer loved each other, she was pretty sure they’d hated each other. Because someone who cares about another person doesn’t try to hurt them over and over again just for fun, which was what it felt like Brad had been doing to her, and a person who loves another doesn’t shut that person out completely, the way she’d done to him.

Her first blog had served as a way to relieve some of the anxiety of the breakup, which had turned ugly not only emotionally but financially. When Brad discovered what he considered a betrayal of their intimate life, it had turned ugly physically, as well.

He’d only hit her once, mostly by accident because she got between him and the computer he was intent on smashing, but once was more than enough. Eve had kicked him in the nuts and told him to get the fuck out of her house and her life. She hadn’t heard from him since, and if there were times when her bed seemed vastly empty, there were more times when she considered the silence that greeted her every night the purest sort of blessing.

The experience with Brad had taught Eve the wisdom of using a different name online, however, and she’d chosen Eris Apparent as sort of a whim. The goddess of chaos had seemed a perfect namesake for the turmoil in her life at the time.

Her second blog wasn’t about her real life at all, but rather the life she imagined for herself. To her surprise, for Brad had done his best to convince her she was an anomaly, she was far from the only person blogging about sex. She’d discovered an entire community where she could, for the first time, be herself.

Or someone else.

Eris liked what Eve liked, but Eris was the one with the guts to put it out there for the world to see. Eris was the one who came up with the flirty, sexy responses or snappy comebacks. She was everything Eve was inside but hadn’t yet managed to bring to the surface. And also, frankly, Eris was Eve’s shield, saying and living the sorts of virtual experiences Eve was afraid to tackle in reality.

Three more replies materialized, all from regular readers. She granted Puppetboy some mercy and gave him a command or two she knew would send him into a frenzy of gratitude. Hell, truthfully, knowing that somewhere he was refreshing his browser as often as she was, hanging on her every word, was a huge turn-on. For Puppetboy, she was a goddess.

She traded a few back-and-forths with fellow sex blogger Lavender_whiskey, mostly good-natured taunts about the alternate uses for men’s ties. Lavender wrote more often about submission while Eve’s fantasies tended more toward being in charge, but both of them wrote about what they wanted.

She hadn’t done ninety percent of what she wrote about, but that didn’t matter. That was the point of fantasy, after all. It didn’t have to be practical. She’d grown to think of Eris as almost a different person. Someone bolder. Someone worshipped.

Loved.

She was getting ready to sign off for the night when one last comment came through. She didn’t recognize the user name, Tell_me, but there was nothing unusual about that. Through the wonder and glory of blog lists, Technorati and search engines, Eris’s blog got hundreds of hits a day.

I like what you want.

Tired and ready for sleep, she debated not bothering to reply, but it had become a point of pride with her that all comments, aside from the obvious flames, got an answer. She hated blogs that grandstanded and poked, demanding attention, but gave none in return. If you were going to blog-hop and pimp yourself, you should be prepared to reply to someone who took the time to leave a comment.

Thanks for stopping by, she typed. It was a mild answer, neither encouraging nor insulting.

It was past time for bed. She’d spent hours online, chatting and commenting and living her life as someone different, but her real life paid the bills, and her real-life body needed sleep. The ping of her e-mail stopped her in the doorway, and like any true addict, Eve gave in and checked “just one more time.” It was Tell_me again.

Do you really not care who I am? I think you do.

She paused, fingers on the keyboard, debating. Was this a troll, or a sincere question? Readers like Puppetboy never dared question her entries, but constant praise meant nothing without occasional criticism to temper it. And the use of I…

Eve hesitated. She wrote a sex blog. She didn’t cyberfuck strangers.

What makes you think I mean you?

Two minutes passed with agonizing slowness while she waited for the answer.

Because you said so.

She had to smile at that and admit it was true, at least as far as her word choice was concerned.

So who are you? She waited, tension coiled tight in her belly and had almost given up when the new comment appeared, the answer that would keep her up, tossing and turning, for most of the rest of the night.

I’m what you want.

 

“Thanks for the coffee.” There was no way for her not to say it, not with Lane holding the elevator door open for her yet again. “It was good.”

The door closed with a slow, dull thud, but the cranky elevator didn’t move. Lane punched the button for the fourth floor. The elevator shuddered slightly as a grinding noise came from above them and then lurched into its ascent.

“Was it what you wanted?” The question, asked so casually, wasn’t what made the breath catch in Eve’s throat.

No, that was from the look in Lane’s eyes.

“It was good,” she repeated, her voice gone whisper soft. Hoarse.

Lane smiled. “Good.”

If this was a story, she’d have pushed him back against the hazy mirrored wall and had her way with him…but this wasn’t one of her stories. Nothing ever was, that was the problem. Men—real men—inevitably disappointed, and dating someone she worked with?

Not a fantasy she’d ever had, not even in her blog.

She cut her gaze from his though she sensed his eyes on her until the elevator jerked to a reluctant stop and the doors creaked open. He reached to hold the door, which had a penchant for trying to trap people, and Eve stepped through with a murmured “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Lane said.

For one instant an image of Lane bending her over a smooth, polished desk filled Eve’s mind. Blood lifted to the surface of her skin, bringing heat. Her fingers would be spread. His hands would lift her skirt….

“Hey, Lane, I was looking for you!” Debbie Chambers, Eve’s pod neighbor, pounced. “I’ve got a problem with my computer. Can you come help me?”

Eve didn’t wait to see if Lane gave Debbie the same slow smile he’d given her. She walked off with a small wave, not looking back.

There was one major problem with that little scenario anyway, she thought as she slid into her chair and logged in. They worked at Digiquest, home to the typical office cubicle jungle. Nary a polished wooden desk to be found, even if it was what she wanted.

Was it what she wanted?

I am what you want.

For an instant, she heard the words from last night’s newfound admirer spoken in Lane’s voice. She knew how he’d sound, how his voice would dip low and gravelly, even though she’d never heard it that way. Her belly tightened and her fingers hovered over the keyboard, itching to open her blog. To see if Tell_me had commented again.

Surfing the Internet for personal use was officially forbidden, even though she knew many of her colleagues spent as much time online shopping, paying bills or chatting with their friends as they did on their queues. She’d never heard of anyone getting in trouble as long as they met their quotas and didn’t do something stupid, like download porn. She didn’t consider the stories she wrote as Eris Apparent porn, but they were certainly skirting the issue of what was or wasn’t work-safe.

The long, dull hours of fairly mindless work had always provided the perfect time for her to think of what she wanted to blog about. She often spent entire days locked deep in her fantasies, perfecting and honing the words she’d later use to describe her imaginary sensual exploits. Her blog was a beautiful addiction, the rush she got from writing and commenting as compelling as the ecstasy brought on by drugs or booze. The interlude this morning and the conversation with Lane in the elevator had merely amplified her desire, but with the problems her computer was having, she didn’t dare do anything about it.

It was a very, very long day.

By the time she got home, her body ached from tension caused by the hours of sexual fantasy. She had her entire entry plotted out, with no more than the most minor of changes needed to create the perfection she owed her readers. Hell…owed herself.

The computer screen flickered to life when she tapped the keyboard, waking from its sleep like a lover lifting his head from the pillow to greet her as she came home. The comparison gave her a moment’s pause, but only a moment’s. Her computer was more of a lover to her than any man had been in months. It certainly gave her more of what she needed in a partner. Always ready, always available, always faithful. She opened her browser, then her e-mail program, and smiled as the ping, ping, ping alerted her to a full in-box.

Twelve new comments and a few extra e-mails, too.

She savored the anticipation. Had he commented? Though the anonymity of the Internet meant it could have been a woman, she knew it was a he, a man. It had to be.

She deleted several messages offering to enlarge her penis and skimmed the comment notifications, none of them from him. But the second to last e-mail was from a user name she recognized.

She let out a breath she’d been unaware of holding.

“Well, hello,” she murmured as her fingers on the keys stroked open the message.

Two words only, but they hit her like a tsunami.

I’m waiting.

 

I should be angry by the time you come through the door, because you’re late. Instead, the waiting has only made me hungrier for you. I wait until you set down your briefcase, close the door, shrug out of the charcoal-gray jacket of your expensive suit. I wait as you hang it carefully, so it doesn’t rumple. When you reach to loosen the knot of the tie at your throat, I can’t wait any longer.

It makes a nice leash by which to lead you. A handle I can use to open you for me. I pull it, hard, silk fisted in my fingers, and your mouth comes down to meet mine.

You smell of cologne and newsprint, of expensive lunches and hostile takeovers. Your clothes cost more than some people’s car payments, and your body beneath them is sculpted from hours in the gym.

Do I care who you are behind your wide, smooth mahogany desk? Behind your contracts and your Montblanc pen? Do I care who you are in the office? No. Because you’re here now, and you’re mine, and that’s what matters to me.

“Take off your shirt, but leave the tie.”

Your look, quizzical, doesn’t stop you from obeying. You tug the knot harder, widen the loop and ease it from the prison of your collar. You strip yourself of pink linen and toss the shirt to the floor, careless with it in a way you were not with your jacket.

“And the pants.”

Oh, you enjoy this, and the pants are down around your ankles and kicked to the side in minutes. Socks come next, but I don’t tell you to take off your briefs. Not yet. I like to watch the shape of your cock beneath the soft, heather-gray cotton. I like to watch you get hard for me.

This is what I want, to be on my knees in front of you. I want to run my hand over your prick and watch your hips bump forward against my caress. I want to nuzzle the crisp, curling hairs of your thighs and inhale your scent. I want to close my eyes and bump at the front of your boxer briefs with my face, the way a cat will bump at its owner’s hand to encourage petting.

I wet the front of your briefs with my mouth, my breath hot and seeping through the fabric to cover you. I want to feel the outline of your erection with my lips and teeth and tongue blunted by the material. I want you to thread your fingers in my hair and tug to tip my head so I look up at your face.

I want to hear you say “Please,” as if my mouth on your cock is a gift you’re not certain you deserve.

I want to give it to you.

Down go the briefs, over your thighs, knees, calves, ankles. Now there is nothing between my mouth and your cock but desire, and soon enough not even that, because I engulf you.

That sound you make, that low, startled moan, never ceases to amaze and arouse me. I am on my knees before you and sucking your dick, my hand on your balls, and you whisper my name.

That is the gift you give me, the sound of my name in a rough rasp. You give me your need, your desire, your passion. You give me your ecstasy, too, the taste of you flooding my mouth.

I want to come with your cock lodged in my throat and your hands pulling my hair. I want to come to the sound of my name, shouted, and the pulse of your prick against my tongue.

 

Eve was almost late to work again, but this time she couldn’t blame the slow elevator. She’d stayed up too late the night before, replying to comments and e-mails from her mysterious new admirer. They’d both been online, his replies to her coming nearly as fast as instant messages.

She hadn’t been quite ready to offer that next level of communication, somehow more intimate than simple e-mails and yet not as personal as the telephone. The barrier of time between replies allowed her the luxury to think of what she wanted to say. It was easier to remain Eris when she could make each message almost a mini blog entry of its own, when she could take her time to form her words. Real-time conversation intimidated her.

She hadn’t signed off until that point in the night just before it would have made more sense to stay awake until morning. She’d fallen asleep almost at once despite the fever of blood pulsing in her veins and dreamed exquisitely of hands, mouths, tongues and cocks. She’d woken as orgasm rippled through her, twenty minutes after her alarm had rung unheard in the erotic landscapes of her dreams.

Today coffee wasn’t just a want, it was a physical need, and not poofy designer coffee, either. Eve gripped an industrial-size double espresso as she rounded the corner to her pod and stopped short.

“Morning.” Lane bent over her desk. “I’m here to fix your computer.”

His tie, patterned with a long, ceaseless stream of numbers, fell over her keyboard. She couldn’t stop staring at it. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him wear a tie before. “Oh.”

“Routine inspection.” Lane worked the mouse to bring up a scrambled bunch of files Eve couldn’t interpret. “Apparently management wants to replace some of this equipment, rebuild some of the databases. Yours was logged as one of the ones having trouble.”

Eve leaned against the padded wall of her pod. “Have you figured out why my chat connections keep dropping?”

“Let me bring up your directory.” Lane pointed to her monitor. “I’ll be able to figure out what’s going on from there.”

He straightened. Eve watched his fingers stroke the smooth material. Over the past two years she’d watched those hands dismember a hard drive and fly over a keyboard with the precision and genius of a piano virtuoso playing a concerto. Lane had very, very nice hands. Strong and nimble, yet gentle enough to coax a recalcitrant computer back from death or force it into submission.

Eve had spent hours thinking of Lane’s hands.

“Nice tie,” she said abruptly, when he caught her staring.

“It’s pi.”

“Pie?” Eve’s brow furrowed momentarily as she imagined cherry or blueberry, only after a moment realizing he meant the number. “Oh. Pi. I get it. Clever.”

Again Lane’s long fingers smoothed over the satiny material. “Yeah. I felt like wearing a tie today.”

“I like it,” Eve said.

Silence.

Lane smiled.

An inferno burned in her cheeks as Eve busied herself suddenly with a stack of paperwork. She’d never considered herself shy by any means, but she wore her lust for him in the quirk of her lips and flutter of her lashes. She didn’t want him to see it.

“Here’s your problem.” He pointed to her monitor. “Someone’s been playing around online.”

“It wasn’t me,” she said a second before his teasing smile told her he hadn’t meant her. “Must be the night shift.”

“I know. I can tell who it is,” he said with a lift of his chin at the long list of files. “The time they logged in, what sites they’re surfing. All of it.”

Eve thought of the day he’d brought her coffee and was very glad she’d resisted blogging at work over the past week. “The night shift must have a lot of free time.”

“Yeah.” Lane bent to peer at the screen. “And someone likes to hit the personals sites.”

“Is that what’s screwing up my computer?” Not that she cared, actually, because as long as her chat connections kept dropping she’d be paid to watch Lane work.

“Yep. But don’t worry. I can fix it.” He shot her another grin and heat flared again…this time, much lower down. “Just call me Dr. DeMarco.”

He was killing her. Absolutely killing, she thought as he bent back to work, fingers caressing her keyboard with as much intimacy as if he were touching her body.

And he didn’t even know it.

 

This is what I want.

The lines around your eyes and mouth should make you look haggard, but they only remind me of how beautiful you are. Even exhausted, rumpled, smelling of bad cafeteria coffee and clad in crumpled scrubs, you are lovely.

You lean over the desk to hand the charge nurse your clipboard. She smiles at you and bats her lashes, and I want to laugh. She thinks she has a chance at you, her own personal Dr. McDreamy, but she has no idea. Not a clue.

You are mine.

You are weary from hours on your feet, hours in the operating room. You’ve put on clean scrubs, but I know you want to shower and shave, sleep for a few hours, maybe grab another cup of disgusting coffee. I know that’s what you want, but instead you’ll have me.

You look up from your place on the hard cot they give the on-call staff to use when I close the door behind me. I lock it. When I smile, you smile, too.

I don’t ask you how long we have. At any moment the black box clipped to your waistband can bleat. People will need you. You fix them with your scalpel and your knowledge. At any moment someone could need you more than I do…but for now there is only me.

I don’t like the smells of antiseptic and despair that fill the air here, or the metallic scent of blood we can’t seem to escape. I miss your clean scent, soap and hot water, but there’s no time for that.

Your head tips back when I thread my fingers through your hair and pull, and you moan. You might be a god to that nurse at the desk and the people who you heal, but I know you’re no god.

You’re a man.

I know you’re bare beneath the scrubs, a habit surgeons have to prevent their personal clothes from becoming soiled. I know if I reach between us I’ll find your cock half-hard already beneath the thin, soft cloth. I know if I slid onto your lap I’ll feel that heat against me, that hardness, and my body clenches at the thought of you filling me; my nipples tighten.

I brush your lips with mine, the barest hint of a kiss. When your mouth reaches for mine I pull back. I’d like to make you beg for me, to hear you say my name in that low, deep, grumble-growly voice, but I know we don’t really have time for those sorts of games.

“Touch me,” I say into your ear.

You do.

One of those hands, those big, strong hands, slides between my thighs up high, against my heat. I push forward, into your touch. It takes only seconds to lift my dress, to push down my panties, to ease your scrubs off. To straddle you. We rock together, your cock sliding against me without friction or effort. I’m so wet for you it takes only one small shift of hips and limbs to settle you inside me.

“Fuck me,” I say, and you do that, too.

It’s slow and easy, the way you roll your hips to push your prick up inside me. You slide one of your hands that make so many miracles between us and use your knuckles on my clit. Your other holds my ass as we move, silent, biting our lips. I clench your shoulder so hard my nails leave half-moons in your flesh, but neither of us cries out.

Someone might know we’re fucking in here, and I don’t care, but there’s pleasure to be had from pretending we do.

Your throat works as you swallow your groan. I lick you and bite you softly. Beneath my lips I feel your pulse beat, beat, beat. The steady throb is echoed between my legs.

I come forever and you follow me with an intake of breath and a murmured curse. We rock together slowly, finishing, and the bed under us creaks.

From the puddle of clothes on the floor, your beeper buzzes. You close your eyes, briefly, though your lips open under mine when I kiss them.

“I have to go,” you say without moving.

I’m the one who gets up, who gathers the clothes, who lifts the small black box and places it in your hands. “You go,” I say. “Someone needs you.”

They all need you.

But you’re still always mine.

 

Why would anyone want to be anything else?

Tell_me had replied even before Puppetboy. The thought he’d been waiting for her to post caused Eve’s heart to skip a couple beats. Eve would’ve made a self-deprecating comment, but it wasn’t Eve who answered.

I can be a demanding mistress.

Endless minutes passed while she refreshed her browser and replied to a few other comments. When the familiar user icon—a hundred-by-hundred pixel square photo of a single red rose—appeared, she actually clapped and bounced a little in her seat.

Please. Demand.

This time, she laughed aloud. Puppetboy might have offered to be her slave, but Tell_me’s genuine sense of humor only added to his appeal. Puppetboy, perhaps sensing he was losing his place in line, had graduated from sending her shots of his cock to attaching photos of his entire body, each including a small hand-drawn sign with PUPPETBOY BELONGS TO ERIS inside a lopsided heart to prove it was really him and not some stolen shot of an abs and pecs model.

Eve didn’t care what Tell_me looked like…well, okay, maybe she did a little, but only because in her mind he looked like every single one of her fantasies, and she couldn’t pretend that every one of them didn’t look quite a lot like a certain IT guy from work. Still, while Puppetboy’s body was impressive and his willingness to debase himself for her pleasure intriguing…Tell_me had stolen her heart.

They’d only been corresponding for a week, but it felt like a lifetime. He commented on her blog; he e-mailed her privately. Their conversations in public had been light and flirty, the way she was with everyone who left a response to her entries, but in private he dug deeper. He didn’t just fawn over her. He asked her questions about what she wanted and why. He answered them, too. He’d managed to give her a clear picture of himself without ever resorting to sending a blurry snapshot of his erection.

They’d graduated to instant messaging, a privilege she’d granted to so few of her readers she could count them on one hand. His conversations in real time were as easy and sexy as his e-mailed replies had been.

Now, though the hour had once again grown late, her fingers flew over the keys as her eyes stayed locked on the computer screen, watching for his next words.

You like fantasies.

Who doesn’t?

But not everyone can express them as well as you can. Or else they stick with clichés.

You don’t think a doctor fantasy is a cliché? She’d had a record-high number of comments after that one. They were still trickling in. Some people want me to write about a cop next. Or a fireman.

Are you going to?

Eve paused. I don’t think so.

Because it isn’t what you want?

Because I don’t take requests.

She imagined a bright smile and the low rumble of laughter, a pair of dark blue eyes.

I don’t think you should write about a cop or a fireman.

What do you think I should write about?

Surprise me.

 

This is what I want.

At the base of my throat, where my pulse throbs in unsteady rhythm, blood pools. The wound is fresh, but numb. The monster’s kind in that way. It doesn’t hurt when he comes to suck my life from me.

I don’t know how long I’ve been in this hole. Time has ceased all meaning. I stopped counting the minutes against the steady, slow drip-drip of water from an unseen pipe long ago. My eyes stare, wide, into darkness, but I see nothing. The cold has raised gooseflesh on my arms and legs, but I don’t feel that, either.

When your light shines on me, I don’t even throw up a hand to block it though it stings my eyes worse than anything else has, lately. I look at you, a dark silhouette behind the golden circle from your flashlight, and my mouth forms the shape of your name. I’m not sure I’ve even spoken. I’m not sure if I remember how.

I thought I’d forgotten the strength of your arms, but when you gather me into your embrace, your breath warm on my cold flesh, I remember all of it. You. Me. The promises you made, and broke, and the one you’ve finally kept.

You take me home, to the house in which you refuse to live but visit often. You bathe me. You dress me. You put me into bed and stand guard at my door until I sleep.

I think you’re afraid I won’t wake, but I do. I open my eyes and wince at the sudden stabbing sensation in my wounds…but I welcome the pain. It means I’m still alive.

You open your eyes at once when I touch your face. The chair jerks as you do, and your hand comes up to catch my wrist hard, not quite flinging it away. You see it’s me within a second and the embrace softens. I frown when you let me go.

“Go back to sleep,” you say, as if I could. As if all that happened can be put behind me the way you so often have done.

But I’m not you.

Days pass this way. I wait for you to leave, and one day you do. You come back stinking of blood and garbage, your hands in fists, and I know you’ve killed it. Hunted it down and taken its life the way it tried to steal mine.

I would be happy but for the fact that this means, at last, you’ll go for good.

“Stay.” It’s the first time I’ve ever asked. I know the score, the rules, what to expect from you. Your life circles mine and only sometimes intersects.

You shake your head, your back to me, the duffel bag I’ve grown to hate thrown over your shoulder. Outside your car awaits. I don’t want to see the taillights. I hate them, too.

“I can’t.”

“You can. If you want to.”

Your shoulders hunch. I want to touch you. To offer comfort. But you don’t want my comfort, do you? You don’t want me…. And too late, I realize I’ve spoken aloud.

I’d be frightened at the way you turn and the fire in your gaze except that now I’ve faced much, much worse. You grip my arms and I love your touch, even as it bruises. I can see you want to shake me, but you stop yourself. You let me go. You step back.

I step forward. “Stay. Please. I want you.”

I open the buttons of my shirt and offer myself. Shameless, ready to be embarrassed when you refuse me, but not caring. I want you so badly I shake. I need you.

“I can’t.” But I see in your eyes that you can.

I touch myself as if my hands were yours. Your gaze follows my fingers as they caress my body. Your hands are shaking.

“I promised to keep you safe.” Your voice is thick with loathing.

“You promised to find me,” I remind you and let my shirt fall to the ground. “And you did. You came for me. You saved me. Please don’t go. I need you.”

You shake your head. “It’s my fault you were in danger.”

I know you think this, and maybe you’re right, but I would not trade the safety of being insignificant to those who stalk the night for one single moment in your arms. A year ago I wouldn’t have believed the monster under the bed was real; now I know better. And I know that you’re the man who keeps us safe.

You keep me safe.

“Stay,” I say, and hold out my hand.

You are a man, after all, and you take it. When I kiss you, your sigh shudders out of you like the wind through trees. I undress you carefully but without hesitation, and trace the pattern of your scars with my hands and mouth until your breath comes fast and harsh in your throat and you wind your fingers in my hair to pull my mouth from your cock.

“No,” you say, and haul me from my knees. “Not like this.”

We’ve fucked on my kitchen floor before. We’ve done it in my bed, too, and in the shower, on the counter, in the backseat of your car. This time, you take me out into the grass of my backyard, under the stars, and you spread out the faded quilt I keep on the porch for picnics. You lay me down and follow my lines and curves with your hands and your tongue, your lips reading the entire story of my body as easily as if I were made of words.

I’m already coming by the time you slide inside me, and it’s as if the stars themselves have descended to hover around us, dancing. They fill me with fire. I lift my hips to take you in deeper, eager to hold on to you as long as I can. You thrust into me. Your mouth finds the scar at the base of my throat and you whisper against it.

“I’m sorry…”

Your voice breaks. Your head dips to press against me. I hold you tight as your body shakes and mine shudders beneath you. I don’t have to forgive you. I know you won’t forgive yourself.

You give me the night, but when the morning comes you’re gone.

But I know you’ll be back.

 

“Eve?”

She turned with a smile on her mouth, lost in thoughts of what story she would tell when she got home tonight and what Tell_me would say. When she saw who’d said her name, she smiled. “Well, hello.”

Lane held up his cup. “Mocha Mint?”

She nodded and held up her own. The new place next door to Digiquest had become something of a tradition for her over the past few weeks. “Yes. Thanks for turning me on to it.”

“My pleasure.” Lane gave her his slow, easy grin. “I’m glad you were turned on.”

Sweet, holy mother of pearl, his voice really did dip low and growly. Eve took a sip of hot, sweet coffee and watched him over her cup. She’d spent the night revealing her most intimate sexual fantasies in intricate detail, but far from being sated, her body only wanted a real-life taste of what she’d put on the screen. He was flirting with her, which wasn’t new. She was flirting with him, which was.

There was no reason not to walk with him to the building next door, nor to hold back when the elevator opened as if by magic as they arrived. The door slid shut, enclosing them together once again in that tiny space.

It would take only two steps for him to cross to her, she mused. To push her against the mirrored wall. Her skirt today was long but loose, and he could easily get both hands beneath it. Those big, strong hands…

“I’m sorry?” He’d said something she’d missed, lost in her erotic musings.

“I asked if you watched the monster marathon last night.”

Eve paused with her coffee halfway to her mouth. “No. I don’t watch much television.”

“Really?” Lane cocked his head to give her one of those damned slow smiles. “Too bad.”

The elevator shuddered to a stop. The door opened with a creak. Lane held it open for her and she stepped through. All normal, nothing different from any other of a hundred days.

Except it was.

Lane DeMarco no longer seemed so unattainable.

 

You haven’t demanded anything from me.

I wasn’t sure you were ready for it.

I’m ready.

Eve paused, watching the cursor blink as fast as her heart was beating. She shifted in her chair, her thighs rubbing. She’d played the part of mistress, and of slave, but those had been stories. She’d never taken Puppetboy up on any of his offers of subservience. This was something new, uncharted. Delicious, but frightening.

She could log out now and blame computer problems, or make no excuses but simply refuse to answer his private messages any longer. She could, but she wasn’t going to. She was going to do as he’d said, to tell him what she wanted, only this time it would be for him alone and nobody else. She typed quickly, not in her blog but in a private e-mail to him.

 

This is what I want.

You, in the shower. Steam wreathes your body. The sound of rushing water is almost loud enough to cover the sound of your groan. Almost.

You lean forward, one hand on the tiles. The other’s on your cock. You close your eyes, lean into the spray. Head down, water streams over your back. Your muscles work as you fuck into your hand.

You’re thinking of me.

I want you to be thinking of me.

Your knees bend slightly as you rock forward. Your fingers curl on the tile. Your hand strokes, strokes, twisting around the head of your prick and down. Over and over you stroke yourself.

What are you thinking of? Am I on my knees in front of you? Do I take you inside my mouth, use my tongue, my teeth, my lips? Do I swallow your cock? Are you wishing your hand was mine, jerking you? Are you imagining me on my hands and knees as you fuck me from behind?

You know best how to touch yourself. How to hold off the pleasure building from the base of your gut. Your balls tighten. You push forward, harder. Faster. Your head ducks lower until the water pounds the place between your shoulders I like to kiss.

Your hand slows. Your breathing is harsh. You’re sweating from the heat of the water and your arousal. I know too well the taste of you, that salty, musky flavor. You tip your head back to let the water wash over your face and down your chest. Over your cock still gripped in your fist.

When you come, is mine the name on your lips? Mine the face in your mind?

 

It took him a long time to reply, all the way into the next morning, but when he did, it was worth the wait. Three words that made her grin all day long.

Yes. It was.

 

“It’s not fair.” Debbie leaned against the opening to Eve’s pod. “That’s the third time this week you’ve had computer problems.”

“I’m not thrilled, Debbie.” Eve gestured at the monitor, where no fewer than three chat windows hung frozen. “It’s really screwing with my performance stats.”

“Yeah,” Debbie said, lowering her voice. “But it means you get to have Lane come and work on you.”

As if summoned by the sound of his name, Lane appeared just behind Debbie’s shoulder. “Problems, Eve?”

“Same old thing.” She lifted her chin toward the computer, then pointed under the desk. “And the tower’s making a lot of noise, too.”

“I’ll take a look at it.” Ignoring Debbie, who sniffed and disappeared into her own cubicle, Lane moved toward Eve’s desk.

He was on his knees in front of her before she knew what to do. His shoulder brushed her leg as he angled his head to look beneath her desk. Eve completely lost her breath at the sight of him that way.

He looked up at her with the panty-dampening smile and it was all she could do not to put her hand on his head to press him down between her thighs. “I think it’s your fan.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Yes.”

They stared at each other until she looked away.

“Eve,” Lane said in a low voice that drew her gaze back to him as surely as honey drew flies.

She pushed her chair back the tiniest bit, just enough to move her knee away from his shoulder. This was crazy. Crazy! His gaze went to the place on her thigh where her skirt pulled up, and his hands dug into the carpet briefly but fiercely. Heat flared in Eve’s face and along her throat. Hell, through her entire body. And Lane leaned forward…

“Lane?” Debbie appeared in the doorway. “Now mine’s doing it, too. My chats are all frozen.”

“I’ll be right there.” His tone was pleasant and gave away nothing.

Eve didn’t move. She couldn’t. She was as frozen as her computer.

Lane didn’t move, either, not until Debbie made a quizzical sound, and then he got up off his knees. Up, up and up, the entire length of him, and then Eve was alone at her desk.

Her computer chose that moment to go back online. Her queue blinked for attention. From Debbie’s pod she heard the low murmur of Lane explaining something, but not what he was saying. Her hands shook a little as she started typing. She thought he’d come back to check on her, but he didn’t.

 

This is what I want.

My dress spreads out around me in layers of satin and lace. The skirts are heavy, but when I’m seated their weight causes me no trouble. My silken stockings whisper when I rub my legs together, though it’s more a feeling than a sound.

I have listened for hours to supplicants begging me for favors. To ministers admonishing me. To suitors attempting to woo. But what do I want, more than anything? I want to rid myself of the weight of this dress and the crown on my head. I want not to be a queen, but a woman.

Your hands hold clear glass globes, three in each palm, and the subtle motion of your fingers is enough to send them dancing. Back and forth they move, astonishing all who watch, though many in this court are too jaded to admit it. No magician, they sniff. It’s all parlor tricks. I’m thrilled to study the ease of your movements, to lose myself in the grace of your performance.

I dismiss the others, but bid you to stay. You do, of course, for though I phrase my command as a request we both know your only option is to obey. Somehow, I don’t think you mind.

You’re on your knees in front of me without me having to order it. Your hands, those graceful hands, push up the dreadful heavy skirts. Your fingers make whispers of their own up my legs, which I part for you with a gasp at your audacity. Nobody touches me.

You touch me. The backs of my knees, the insides of my thighs, the small curve of my belly. And finally, you touch the soft, wet slit of my sex. Without asking and without my command, you kiss me there. You lick. You move my body forward on the chair until you can suck and stroke me with your tongue until I writhe.

The sound of footsteps should make you leave me unfulfilled, but instead of springing away you pull the folds of my dress down over you. It’s full enough to cloak you entirely. Your face presses between my thighs until I have to bite my tongue to keep from crying out.

They’re back again, the ministers and beggars, the suitors. I could turn them away but I owe them my time in exchange for their allegiance. Today I fail to listen properly. Today you lick me in secret until my body clenches and convulses, and I have to fight back the cries wanting to tear from my throat.

You use the thrust of your fingers as you would your cock. As you will use it later, when I take you to my chambers, but for now your tongue and hands move in tandem until I can’t keep from squirming and pushing against you.

“Are you well?” ask my ministers. “You look flushed.”

I climax again and again through the long hours under the attention of your talented tongue and fingers.

No magician, they say, but I know differently.

You’ve certainly worked your magic on me.

 

Eve still replied to all her comments, but she’d given up the pretense she was writing for any other reason than the replies from Tell_me. Her fingers flew over the keys as she wrote her latest entry. She sat back when it was finished and waited. Her reward came a few minutes later when her instant message icon bounced.

How was work today?

It wasn’t the response she’d been expecting, and so her answer took a moment.

Fine. You?

Frustrating.

Why frustrating?

He didn’t answer for so long she thought he’d gone, though he hadn’t signed off. Then, You liked me on my knees for you?

I always like a man on his knees for me.

Another long, long pause. Eve’s heart thumped and her tongue tasted like metal. What, exactly, was going on? The casual, sexy banter had disappeared. The words looked the same, black on white, but something had changed.

Her in-box filled with a few pleas from the abandoned Puppetboy. The shuffle function on her music program played her some interesting songs. Her fingers clenched into her fists as she leaned forward to stare at the screen and willed him to answer.

Any man? Or me?

Eve didn’t know how to answer. She blinked at the rush of sudden, unexpected emotion. How had they gotten to this conversation?

I don’t really know you.

Five minutes passed, then another five, before Tell_me went off-line without saying anything else.

 

In the pause between customers, Eve gave in to temptation. She’d read the memos and knew the consequences, but now…she had to. She had to see if he’d commented since the last time she’d checked, just before leaving for work.

With an eye on her queue, she logged in quickly to her blog. She didn’t have access to her personal e-mail here and would have to be content with refreshing her browser. She opened her last entry and experienced the familiar roller-coaster drop of her stomach when she saw the number of comments had risen by a few, but she had to take the time to enter a new customer chat before she could check.

Back and forth she went, cutting and pasting responses to stupid questions that made her jaw ache and her head pound. Refreshing her browser. New comments but none from Tell_me.

Her stomach hurt.

She cursed herself. It was an online thing, nothing more. She had lots of comments from lots of people. What was so important about his? About him?

At long last his familiar icon appeared and she held her breath, almost too afraid to read what he’d written. The counter clicked on her queue, her response time to the current client too long. It would show up on her performance stats, but Eve didn’t care. Let the moron who couldn’t figure out how to hook up his printer wait a minute. Maybe he’d get a clue in the meantime.

What makes it magic?

Her fingers flew. Magic can’t be defined, can it? Or it loses what makes it magic.

Would knowing me make it more magical?

He was replying in her blog to the private instant message exchange they’d had the night before. Eve imagined a tone of dry sarcasm, but that was the problem with written words. Without the benefit of inflection or facial expressions, they could be so easily misinterpreted. He could be angry, not amused or curious.

Part of the magic is the mystery, don’t you think?

She expected him to agree. She wanted him to agree. After all, he’d always given her what she wanted.

No. I don’t.

Eve didn’t know how to respond. Her queue wasn’t getting any shorter, and she had to finish off her open chat. She stumbled on the keyboard, making too many typos. She inserted the wrong text into the chat and had to apologize. It wasn’t the first time she’d had a “no” from a client when she asked if she’d been helpful, but it was the first time she knew she deserved one.

I want it to be that way.

And it’s all about what you want. How could I forget?

There was no mistaking the tone this time.

If you don’t like it, she typed before she could stop herself, you don’t have to read this blog.

Eve closed her browser abruptly so she wouldn’t know if he replied, and told herself she didn’t care. She got back to work, but it was a long, long day.

 

She wouldn’t IM him. She just wouldn’t. Not if her house were on fire and he really was a fireman.

She was going to ignore the bouncing yellow smiley face of her instant message program. Absolutely. In fact, Eve was going to do something unheard of. She was going to get away from her computer and do something else tonight. Read a book. Take a bath. Watch bad TV.

Anything, anything, but talk to him.

She made herself some dinner that didn’t come from a box or a can. She threw in a few loads of laundry. She read a magazine, but restlessly, flipping past ads for “sexual intimacy” videos and articles on how to please her man.

When she got back to her desk, the yellow smiley chastised her. She clicked on it and read his message to her. He’d sent it hours ago. Surely he wouldn’t still be waiting?

You didn’t post tonight.

I didn’t have any inspiration.

Because of me?

Yes.

I’m sorry. I just want you to know me, that’s all. For real. Not just words on a screen.

I don’t think it’s a good idea.

Why not?

That was a good question. Too bad she didn’t have a good answer. He didn’t wait for one.

I can make you happy.

What makes you think that?

A minute passed.

Because I know what you want.

Reading a blog isn’t the same as real life.

You could let me try.

But she couldn’t, could she? She didn’t know his name, or where he lived, or what he looked like. And wasn’t that what she wanted, really? An anonymous, faceless lover who gave her what she wanted, all the time, without needing anything from her? As long as she didn’t know who he was, for sure, she could still have that.

Right?

Her mouse hovered over the small X in the corner of the chat window, preparing to close it without answering him, but she couldn’t do it.

I’m sorry. I can’t.

What are you afraid of?

Being disappointed, she typed. Being let down.

I won’t disappoint you.

You can’t know that. Nobody can.

I can be what you want.

Eve closed the window. He didn’t ping her again. She stared at the computer screen for a few minutes, then opened her blog and began to type.

 

This is what I want.

Far away there is the sound of machinery. A mower, or a tractor. But inside the barn the only sound I hear is the rustle of the hay as you thrust the pitchfork into the pile, the sweet chirp of nesting birds high in the rafters, the quiet snuffle of the horses pawing at the earth with sharp hooves. The occasional hitch of your breath as you work.

I spy on you from the doorway. I don’t want you to turn around yet. I like to watch the easy way you move. How strong you are. My eyes follow the bunch and curve of your muscles as you strain.

You wear low-slung denim, low on the hips I want to bite. Worn work gloves protect the hands that have moved so often over my body and brought me such pleasure. You grunt, teeth caught for a moment in your lower lip as you concentrate on your task. You haven’t seen me, and that’s all right.

For now.

Dust dances in the shafts of sunlight, golden, buttery, that have found their way through cracks and crevices in the walls. The barn is old, made of stone quarried a hundred years before you were born. A hundred and almost thirty before we ever met.

Yet here we are, inside it, in the sunlight. A horse neighs from a stall far down the aisle and you turn.

And smile.

You straighten, bare-chested and gleaming. I could reach forward and pluck the stray piece of straw clinging to the rim of your collarbone, but I leave it for now. For now, I don’t touch you.

You say my name and the pleasure in your voice is so rich I feel as though I can reach out to touch it. You’re glad to see me; I want you to be glad to see me.

You lean on the pitchfork to stare, and I can guess what you see. My dress is white, sheer, with thin straps of lace that will tear when you tug them. If I let you tug them. I haven’t yet decided.

You don’t ask me what I’m doing here, which would be a foolish question, indeed. You already know. You knew the moment you turned and saw me standing in the doorway; when your eyes caught the shape of my body, outlined beneath the white eyelet. When your gaze traced the curve of my hip, the place your hand fits so perfectly.

You knew.

The barn is silent but for the soft chirping of nested birds and the far-off drone of the tractor, for the occasional stomp of a hoof…and now, for your breath as it catches in your throat and trips on the syllables of my name.

There is a room in the back, fragrant with the scent of leather and horses. Momentarily blinded, I blink against the shadows. I don’t need to see you to know where you are.

Inches apart we face one another. Now is the time for me to reach for the single, lonely piece of straw stuck to your skin with the sweat of honest work, and I let my fingers skim up your side, over your belly. The straw bends between my fingertips when I pull it off you, and it’s dropped, forgotten, to the floor.

I like the smell of you. Sweat and effort. It reminds me of how you smell when I’m done fucking you, when you can’t stand, when you can only lie like a broken doll on the twisted sheets. When I’ve used you up and worn you out, that’s how I like to smell you.

“Put your hands on the wall.”

You hesitate, of course, not expecting this. The jingle of metal is like a melody to my ears as you press your palms flat to the wall between the hanging bits and bridles. You could have fisted your hands against the wood, but you spread your fingers wide. Your shoulders, those broad, muscled shoulders, hunch just a little.

Are you afraid I’m going to hurt you?

I won’t, love. Not too much. I just want to see you this way, giving me what I want without asking me why I want it. I am unaccountably pleased at how you move at once to obey my request.

And it is a request, because I don’t want it to be an order.

You must want this as much as I, else the point is lost. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. You’re bigger than I am. Stronger. I know because you’ve pinned my hands above my head, bruised my flesh and soothed the hurts with kisses and the flat of your tongue, though in truth I didn’t mind the marks that served so well to remind me of how it felt to have you holding me down so tightly.

You wait for me to speak, and I hear the sound of your breath again as your shoulders rise and fall.

“Spread your legs. Wider.” Impatient, I nudge them apart with my foot, though my slipper-clad toes are no match for your thick leather boots. Boots made for work. Your legs move easily enough, though.

Your head dips, emphasizing the way your shoulder blades protrude. For a moment I imagine you as an angel shorn of your wings. An angel in dirty denim.

You are an angel to me.

Behind you, my hands find a place on each side of your belt. I hook my fingers in and pull your hips back until my crotch bumps your ass. I love the sound you make. Mingled surprise and arousal. I picture your eyes closing, those straight white teeth tugging at the softness of your lower lip again.

If I were a man I could fuck you. I could fill you with my cock, make you groan, reach to stroke your erection in my fist while I moved in and out of your body until we both came. But I’m not a man, I don’t have a cock to fuck you with, and I have to be satisfied with running my hands down your hips and around the front of your thighs.

You groan again when my hands find the front of your belt and undo the buckle. When I unzip you. When I ease the worn denim and the blue cotton of your boxer briefs over your thighs and down past your knees, my cheek presses the hot, damp flesh of your back, and I feel the muscles there quiver.

Yet you make no attempt to turn or move your hands from their place on the wall, and this makes me smile.

I pull my dress to my waist. I’m bare beneath. I have to go on tiptoe to press my bush against your ass, but a hand thrust between your thighs moves them apart just enough to bring our bodies together. My fingers dig deep into your hips at the places I want to put my teeth, but later. Later for that.

Now I rub myself against your ass, your back, your thighs. I rub your belly with the flat of my hand and pretend to ignore the tap of your cock on the back of it. When you push your hips forward I dig my nails deeper. The groan you make is one of mingled pleasure and pain, and my clit pulses at the sound of it.

Metal jingles again and leather swings as you lean forward. For a moment I think about putting you in a harness, a bridle. Leather crisscrossing your lean body, straps molding to the curve of your head. I could hook you to a carriage and make you pull me. I could snap the thin whip of braided leather against your thighs and ass to make you run faster.

I laugh when I tell you this, but your head turns and the look in your eye is not of pleasurable contemplation, but alarm. Yet your cock taps again on the back of my hand, pressed flat to your rising and falling stomach, and your hips jerk, just a little.

“Would you like that?” I whisper. I can’t reach your ear. You’re too tall. But I have no doubt you hear me.

“Do you…want me to like that?”

It’s in me to say yes, that I would like to hook you to a carriage and make you my pony, but I don’t. I let my hand tell you what I really want. I cup your balls. I stroke your cock. I say nothing until you shudder and groan and duck your head again, and I know that you’ll do whatever I want…which is what I want, anyway.

“I want to fuck you.” It’s not the first time I’ve said it, and I doubt it will be the last.

I stroke harder and you push into my fist the way you’ll soon push into my cunt. I’m still behind you. I’m still rubbing myself against you. My breasts feel heavy. My cunt aches. I want you so much it’s like burning.

I slip into the small space between you and the wall. My arms go around your neck. I use the pressure of the wall behind my back to climb you like a tree. My legs go around your waist. My dress bunches on my hips.

Your cock, trapped between us, rubs my cunt. My clit. Delicious, but it’s not enough. I want you inside me.

“Fuck me,” I say, and you’re only too happy to oblige.

With one hand still flat against the wall, you slide the other beneath my ass. I’ve got my arms around your neck, my legs wrapped around you, your prick so deep inside me I feel it in my belly. And you move, not bothering to start slow.

You fuck me so hard we rattle the bridles and bits; we shake the wall. We shake the fucking mountains.

I watch your eyes flutter. It’s the look you get just before you come, and I come, too. Hard. Like splintering. I kiss you when I come, your mouth beneath mine sweet and open, and I steal your breath.

I swallow your shout.

You thrust again. Your body quakes and shudders; so does mine. We come together with small, sharp cries that drown out the faraway sound of the tractor and the soft, sweet chirpings of nested birds.

 

The first thing Eve saw when the elevator door opened on the fourth floor was Lane. Today he wore a sleek, chest-hugging black T-shirt and a pair of jeans that gave her palpitations. They wanted to ride low on his hips, those damned jeans, but Lane had belted them tight to his waist with a shiny buckled belt. He wore boots, too, scuffed and black and worn from hard work, but clean.

“Hey, cowboy.” Debbie gave Lane the slow, thorough, up-and-down appraisal Eve wished she could risk, but then Debbie was about as subtle as a wiener dog with a sock toy. “Nice buckle.”

Lane tipped an imaginary hat and gave them both a grin of such blinding brilliance Eve had to look away. “Well, thank you, ma’am.”

He looked at Eve, who felt the weight of his gaze even though she was unable to look at his face. “See you, Eve.”

Both women stared in silence after him as he strode down the center of the pod forest and disappeared around the corner.

Debbie nudged Eve with her elbow. “I would ride him like a pony.”

“I bet you would,” Eve said, but you couldn’t handle him is what she thought.

“Tell me you wouldn’t? Lane DeMarco is ten kinds of sexy.” Debbie followed Eve to her cubicle. “He has an ass that just won’t quit. Did you see those jeans? Jesus, Eve. Tell me you noticed the jeans. And the boots!”

She’d seen them, all right. She’d seen all of it. The only thing that would have made him look any better would have been a battered leather hat pulled low over his eyes, and not even Lane could get away with that at work. He had been waiting for her to get off the elevator, she was convinced of that. His look had convinced her.

It had been a challenge, but then so had what she’d written, hadn’t it?

She settled into her chair, her hands moving to her keyboard automatically, though they felt too numb to actually type.

“Thank God for the casual dress code, huh? Gawd,” Debbie said with another peek around the pod wall. “Do you think he does it on purpose?”

“Does what?”

“He’s a cowboy, Eve. A cowboy!”

The last word ended with a squeak that made Eve look up. “I noticed.”

It would have been impossible not to.

“I don’t understand how you can be so immune to it, that’s all,” Debbie said, proving she really was clueless. “The man is a god, pure and simple. A sex god.”

He was more than that, Eve thought, her fingers tap-tapping on the keys. But someone like Debbie wouldn’t ever see that. “Don’t you have work to do?”

Debbie sighed. “Hell, yes. And dammit, nothing’s broken.” She gave a wicked chuckle. “Yet.”

Eve logged in, but her fingers fumbled too often on the keys and she made stupid typing errors. She messed up the simplest tasks, had to read the same customer replies two and three times to make sense of them and was, generally speaking, a mess.

How could she have not seen this before? He’d asked her about the monster marathon. He’d brought her coffee because he thought it was what she wanted. He was a cowboy today for the same reason.

Lane DeMarco was Tell_me.

She couldn’t deny it any longer. The subtle clues she’d chosen to ignore had been cast aside. He was challenging her to admit she knew it was him.

Lane was her online lover. Tears of anger or sorrow—she couldn’t tell which—clogged her throat and blurred the computer screen. How could she have been so blind? And how long had he known?

“Move over.” The grumble-growl of Lane’s voice took her by surprise, but he didn’t wait for her to obey. He pushed her chair gently so it rolled to the side. His fingers tapped her keyboard.

“What are you doing?” Eve kept her voice pitched low, but couldn’t keep the anger from her tone. “Get out of here.”

Lane threw her a glance. “They’re doing an inspection today. Too many complaints about slow or poor service. They’re checking all Internet usage. People who’ve been going online for personal use are going to get written up, Eve. Or fired.”

Her jaw dropped. “Can they do that?”

He nodded, mouth set in a grim line. “Haven’t you been reading the memos?”

“Yes, but—”

He typed faster. Scrolling lines of files appeared and vanished just as fast. Delete. Delete. Delete. He worked swiftly, without hesitation.

“I don’t need to ask how you knew I was online this week, do I?” Eve said.

Lane shook his head.

“It’s the same way you knew it was me all along, wasn’t it? From the time when you left the coffee.”

He nodded.

She let her gaze cover him from head to toe, every inch, and if her scrutiny made him uncomfortable he didn’t show it. At last she looked him in the eyes. He was the same Lane she’d known for years, the guy with the smile, but he was more than that now.

And it wasn’t what she wanted.

“Thanks,” Eve said coolly and turned back to her monitor. “I’d better get back to work.”

She sensed him hesitating in the entrance to her pod, but he said nothing, and when she looked up, he was gone.

 

Gone. All of it was gone. All the entries she’d spent so many hours crafting. All the comments, the compliments, the conversations. She’d deleted all of it with a few keystrokes, even her instant-messaging account. Eris Apparent was gone.

She hadn’t been to work for the past few days. She wasn’t sick, but had called in anyway, unable to face him. Unable to give him what he wanted.

“You let me down,” she scolded her computer in an attempt at levity she didn’t feel. “You were supposed to protect me.”

At least it would help her find a new job. Getting away from Digiquest couldn’t be a bad thing. She’d already sent in applications to two other, larger support firms where the pay and benefits were better. It would be good to make a break, she thought as she clicked through to another job listing. Two years was a long time to be stuck in a job she didn’t really like.

She’d ordered pizza, so when the doorbell rang she thought nothing of it. She should’ve known better, of course. Wasn’t a hot pizza delivery boy one of those clichéd fantasies she’d never written?

“Can I come in?” Lane leaned in her doorway looking more deliciously edible than any pizza ever could.

“No.”

“Eve.” If he’d tried to wheedle or charm her she’d have sent him away at once, but against his quiet plea she could do nothing. “Please.”

She stepped aside, granting him entrance without saying a word. He pushed past her, looking too big for her living room. He turned to face her, his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans. Damn him, the ones she liked.

“You haven’t been to work,” he said.

“I took some personal time.” She didn’t sit or offer him a chair.

“Because of me?”

She meant to deny it, but instead a sigh slipped from her mouth. “Yes. Because of you.”

“You deleted your blog, too.”

“You should have told me it was you!” she cried suddenly, and he stepped back.

“Would you have replied if you’d known?” Lane challenged her.

“No!”

He smiled. “I thought you’d figure it out.”

“I did,” Eve said in a low voice. “I just didn’t want to believe it.”

“Why not?” He sounded curious. For an instant she saw the words on a screen as if she were reading them. How much of a difference his voice made.

“Because…” She trailed off. “The blog…it was a way for me to be someone else. And I really wanted to be someone else, Lane.”

“I like who you are, Eve.”

She laughed, scornful. “You liked Eris.”

“And you liked Tell_me.”

“It wasn’t real!” she shouted. “None of it was real!”

“Is this real?” Lane demanded, and kissed her.

She melted into him. His mouth parted, and hers did, too. He tasted exactly how she’d always known he would. He felt even better than she’d ever imagined.

“This isn’t going to work,” she warned, voice hoarse, but made no move to step out of his arms.

“It will,” he promised, his fingers already going to her buttons. “I promise.”

“How?” Eve gasped when his bare skin touched hers.

Lane’s slow smile went straight between her thighs as usual. “Easy. Tell me what you want.”

She gulped in a breath at hearing him say it aloud. Something flickered in his gaze when she didn’t respond at once; she felt the reflection of it in her own eyes, just before she took the chance and took his hand.

“This is what I want,” Eve said, and led him into the bedroom to make all their fantasies come true.