My stockinged feet made no noise on the plush carpets as I approached the office. My nerves were fluttery but holding steady.
I was feeling reasonably impressed with myself as I pushed open Caspian’s door and went in.
Or rather I fell in.
I didn’t even know what I tripped over—my own misplaced optimism I guess—but one minute I was sliding into Caspian’s office, all sultry in my sex coat, and the next I was yelping and in a heap on the ground.
“Arden?” If anything romantic had taken place—Caspian’s face lighting up with joy at the sight of me, that kind of thing—I was in no position to witness it. He sounded surprised, though, rather than horrified. So that was good. Maybe. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, and rubbed my nose into the carpet. “I meant to do this.”
“You did?”
“Absolutely. I was just, y’know, sitting at home, thinking about you working late, how tired you must be and how hard you work in general. And it struck me that what you probably needed was for somebody to turn up uninvited and fall over.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
I still didn’t dare look up. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No. I’m…I’m glad to see you.”
“Oh God, Do you mean that?”
“Now I’m nodding. Do you need help?”
“Nope.” I bounced to my feet, with only a small wince. “I’m good.”
Caspian was standing by his desk, washed silver by the light from his computer screen, his face all shadows and angles, and so starkly beautiful that it made this whole venture seem absurd. What in God’s name had I been thinking? How was someone like me supposed to seduce someone like him? How had I ever convinced myself I possessed that power? I mean, it was an excellent coat but it wasn’t magic. And I wasn’t a prince.
If anything I was a frog.
A frog in ill-considered lipstick.
“This was supposed to be sexy,” I muttered.
“Surely”—his voice had gone silk-soft in the quiet room—“you’re familiar enough with my tastes by now to know just how appealing I find the sight of you on the floor.”
Well. That was slightly cheering. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Though I like you best at my feet.”
I managed to meet his eyes again. They were steely gray in the gloom and gleamed like the glass that surrounded us. My magnificent predator. So fierce and so lost. “I can do that.”
My hands were shaky as I reached for my belt.
But, strangely enough, my confidence was back. Maybe he’d been right all along: it wasn’t that fragile. It was true that compared to Caspian I was short and skinny and apparently ridiculously clumsy, and as ordinary as ordinary could be. But all it took was the way he looked at me, the things he said to me and wanted me to do for him, the fractures in his self-control, shining like veins in marble, and I felt like the most powerful, desirable, wondrous person on the whole fucking planet.
And, God, I wanted to please him. Give him everything.
Submission. Desire. Suffering. Longing. Safety. With him it all became the same: the same ache, the same need, the same…oh God…the same helpless love.
Button by button I bared myself.
Halfway down, I realized I should probably have turned around and let the coat slip from my body, while I peeped coquettishly over my shoulder.
So what I was having here was a stripping learning experience.
But it didn’t seem to matter. Because the moment I flashed lace, Caspian made this amazing sound—all rough and deep and lusty—and was away from his desk so fast, his chair hit the window behind him. He prowled across the room, swift as a panther after prey, and then my coat was a pile on the floor and I was in his arms.
Literally in his arms. Legs round his waist. Lips against his. Like some crazy movie kiss in the pouring rain.
Except for the part where it wasn’t raining, and I was naked except for thigh highs and a hat.
But still. I wrapped myself round him, tight as honeysuckle. And kissed and clung and clung and kissed until I was breathless and dizzy and his mouth was a red smear and my eyes were full of stars.
It was only when I felt something solid nudge the backs of my thighs that I realized he’d carried me to his desk. I shoved his laptop out of the way, grabbed him by the tie, and pulled him down on top of me. The glass was gasp-inducingly cold against my unprotected back but he was blissfully warm. I shuddered, caught in a kind of delirious skin-confusion. An ice and fire sandwich.
And then Caspian’s mouth closed over my nipple, drowning me in fresh heat. My brain gave up trying to process anything and I just moaned and clutched at his hair. For once he didn’t shake me off, tugging my pincher back and forth with his tongue until my veins filled up with lightning and I could hardly bear the pleasure of it.
He glanced up, panting and disheveled.
My lipstick had traveled from my mouth to his to everywhere his mouth had touched me.
Which meant I had painted nipples.
It was the most brazen thing I’d ever seen and I wished I’d thought of it.
“I, er, I take it you don’t mind me showing up then?” I asked.
He traced a hot wet stripe up the side of my neck, making my pulse flutter at the realization of its vulnerability. “If I still possessed the capacity for rational thought, I might consider it ill-advised.” I wasn’t sure I liked that answer. But my own ability to have thinking happen was not so great either right then.
“You look…” He seemed to lose track of what he was saying. He dragged a hand along the outside of my thigh until he came to the top of my hold-ups. Slipping a single finger beneath the band, he pulled it outward, and then let it go so that it snapped sharply back into place.
It didn’t really hurt but it made such a loud crack that I gasped anyway. “I look what?”
“Wicked beyond belief.”
I nodded happily. “You should show me my place.”
“And where’s that?”
“Wherever you want me. Begging for whatever you think I deserve.”
“Right now—” His eyes closed for a moment, though not before I caught the flare of passion and cruelty my words had ignited. “I think you deserve to be fucked. I think you deserve to be fucked until all you can do is scream my name.”
I could have come on the idea alone.
“God yes,” I breathed. “Yes, please.”
He gave a shaky laugh. “This is my office, Arden. I keep pens here, not lube. And there are ways I don’t want to hurt you.”
I’d gone without once before—it hadn’t been the worst thing in the world, and it would have probably passed into actively okay if the other guy had been just a touch less eager to plunge his manspear into my succulent dudehole.
But thankfully it wasn’t an issue tonight.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I was a Boy Scout. I came prepared.”
I gave him a little push so he was standing between my legs. Then, putting my years of dedicated yoga to good use, I took an ankle in each hand and split myself like a wishbone.
He was staring at me. At…well. A quite specific and currently very exposed part of me. And having him do that hit me right on that perfect edge between exciting and embarrassing where they got all muddled up. It needed a word. There must have been one in German.
“You were a Boy Scout?” He sounded a bit preoccupied—almost as if that wasn’t at all what he was really thinking about.
“For five minutes or whatever. Before they kicked me out for being a raging queer.” I smiled at him, in what I hoped was a winning manner, and flexed some intimate muscles in a saucy wink. “Now about that fucking me till I scream thing?”
His glanced up, as swift and sure as a wolf scenting blood, and as ferocious. “Don’t move,” he told me.
I’d been feeling pretty audacious with the whole do-me move but I hadn’t quite anticipated being stuck like that. All laid out for his taking. Bound by his command.
But, holy shenanigans, it was hot.
I whimpered earnestly. “I won’t, Mr. Hart.”
And was rewarded by a low growl of approval and pleasure from Caspian. I was glad to see him fumble very slightly with his belt as he released his cock. We were both so fired up I thought he’d slam into me like a train. But he came into me neither carefully nor roughly, just relentlessly, filling me up slowly so that I felt every inch of him as he took possession of me.
There was enough lube to ease his way, but the deep stretch was almost an echo of pain, and it made me pant and cling tight to my ankles. By the time he was all the way in I was moaning softly at the back of my throat, my sweat slicking the glass beneath me. I loved this. Holding him inside me. That kind of oh hey, there’s a man in my body. The slight physical and emotional shock of it. And the way it made me feel vulnerable and strong and right all at the same time.
He pulled out partway, adjusted his angle, and hit my happy spot so perfectly I had to turn my face into my shoulder to smother the epically grateful noise I made.
He caught my chin and pulled my head back. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m not going to—?”
“There’s nobody to hear but me and I want to hear you.”
“O-okay.”
It turned out, that was straightforward. I wasn’t sure how successfully I’d have been able to hold back if I’d tried. He fucked me mercilessly, with a precision and a power that left me an incoherent trembling mess on his desk, my whole body rocking with the thrusts I held myself open for.
Being fucked that way, and helpless to do anything but take it and feel it, was insanely intense. My hands were slippy and my legs were aching and my arse stung a little bit from his thrusts but somehow, that just made everything even better.
Best of all, though, I got to watch. I got to see him pushing into me, framed by the V of my legs, the tender skin of my thighs looking paler than usual in contrast to the dark nylon of the stockings. I got to watch my cock bouncing between us, hard and flushed and shiny with precome, my balls drawn up tight beneath. And I got to watch him. Gorgeously unraveled with his tie askew and his hair mussed from my fingers. Perspiration gleaming at his temples and this tight line of concentration between his brows. The strained ecstasy in his half-closed eyes and the softer bliss of his parted lips, like an untouching kiss.
That was when the phone rang.
It gave me such a fright that I arched right off the desk, my arse death-clamping around his cock.
“Whu?” I gasped.
“That would be the call I was expecting.” He sounded impressively calm considering he was literally inside me.
“Oh…um…awkward.”
I expected he would either pull out or that we’d unconvincingly try to ignore the call. What I didn’t expect was that he’d take it.
The only warning he gave me was a stern “Don’t move, Arden” before leaning over me to hit the speaker button.
I froze, legs akimbo, trying to hold in a horrified yip.
Caspian said something in…I guess…Japanese? And received a longish reply. While I lay there, terrified of the sound of my own breathing, almost unbearably aware of my body, and trying not to squirm. Or do anything that might reveal what was going on to the person—or, people, fuck, what if it was people?—on the other end of the line.
I couldn’t tell if I was panic-stricken or aroused beyond all reason. My cock was definitely on the second team.
Caspian was still talking. Rattling off, I don’t know, figures maybe.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught our reflection in the window. I looked like the virgin sacrifice in a Victorian horror: this pale shape, yielding rapturously beneath the shadow of Caspian. I’d never felt quite so…penetrated. Or so aware of it anyway: the hot stretch and the pressure of him inside me. It made me wish he had fangs to sink into the tender flesh of my bared throat.
Just then, he dragged a finger all the way up the underside of my cock. My mouth fell open on a soundless scream. I was going to come. Or die. Or both. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
Caspian put a hand over my mouth.
Which I was grateful for…and also found superhot. So it was helpful and not helpful. I thrashed—though given my position, pinned and impaled and teetering on the verge of a deliriously exciting feargasm, it was more of an undignified wriggle. Somehow I got myself under control, my teeth scraping against his palm as I muffled my whimpers.
A pause.
Then Caspian murmured something, his tone politely encouraging, and the conversation resumed. It should have been more incongruous: him dealing with whatever he was dealing with, while I was shuddering helplessly on his cock. But it was the same thing, really, wasn’t it—utter command of his universe, from the financial empire he ruled to the lover panting and writhing on his desk.
I honestly thought he’d be at his most remote. I didn’t know how else he could be responding with such ease and precision in a language that wasn’t even his own. But then he glanced down at me and I didn’t think I’d ever seen him quite that out of control, with his hair sweat-heavy over his brow and his cheeks all sex-flushed with heat and exhilaration. His eyes were bright with cruelty but there was something softer too. Something heartbreakingly innocent. Joy, maybe?
It was a good job I was gagged.
I mean, I could probably avoid having a screaming orgasm while he was on speakerphone with Tokyo, but no power on earth would have stopped me blurting out I love you. I kissed his hand instead and he smiled at me, this perfect, film-star smile.
Then he started, as if maybe—just maybe—he’d lost track of the discussion the teeniest tiniest bit. Thankfully, he couldn’t see me smirking under his palm. He said something fairly sharp in response to whatever the other man was telling him and reached into the interior pocket of his jacket, pulling out a fountain pen of such sleek, gold-edged simplicity it was must have been worth more than my family’s house.
Twisting off the lid with a practiced motion, he brought the nib to the planes of my abdomen and scribbled something across my skin. I squinted down my own body trying to see. Numbers? A series of numbers.
It was a weird sensation—a little bit scratchy, a little bit tickly, not really pleasure, not quite pain—but, oh God, the ownership in it. The casual way he marked me and claimed me, turned me into his personal Google keep.
And oh fuck…fuck I was going to lose it completely.
He must have realized. Probably he couldn’t have failed to, given my curling toes and the straining muscles in my thighs, the noises he was almost managing to contain in his hand. A few more notes I could barely keep still for and a hasty—I assumed—goodbye. And the line went dead with the sweetest click I’d ever heard in my life.
The moment my mouth was free, I let out this…mortifying banshee wail of sex need. Caspian’s pen clacked against the desk. And then he was fucking me, fucking me hard enough to rattle the glass and judder my bones, and it was perfect, the pleasure as inexorable as the hammering of his cock against my prostate, coiling so tight inside me it was like being strangled. In a good way. Maybe. I wasn’t sure.
I sucked in a sobbing breath. “Ohgodcaspianpleaseohgodplease.” Fuck knew what I was begging for. More. Less. The luxurious liberty of begging itself, I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
Just…
“Caspian.”
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. Moisture pooled on my stomach from my cock. I was starting to slide on the desk, driven back with every harsh shove into me. The scent of us—sex and sweat and the last honeyed base notes of Caspian’s cologne—hung heavy in the air. And the sounds we made together had turned ugly: the wet slap of skin and the squelch of lube, his ragged breaths and my frantic cries.
But it was all beautiful somehow.
The reality of sex. Rough and raw and glorious.
And when he finally wrapped a hand around my cock, I came hard and instantly, relief pushing me over the edge and then almost into unconsciousness with the baseball bat of orgasm.
Breath-snatching. Heart-bursting. Like thunder inside me.
Wracking me from fingers to toes. To the ends of my fucking hair.
Muscles just…weren’t happening anymore. My hands dropped, my legs fell, curling around Caspian. But he was probably too far gone to notice. He half collapsed on top of me, his face pressed against my neck, and came too, almost silently, in great body-shaking heaves.
I forced my arms into action and got them round him.
Held him tight.
A stolen embrace when he was closest, and most lost, to me.
I was utterly sex-dazed but it wasn’t an ideal situation for a languorous afterglow. Caspian was heavy and the glass was hard and my arse had that wet, well-fucked feeling that made me slightly self-conscious about the mess I might be making on his desk.
“You’d better rescue your notes,” I mumbled, “because I’m seriously—oh fuck.” Whatever he’d written was nothing but sweaty, pale-blue smears. “I’m really sorry. Was…was it important?”
“Yes.” A pause. “Which is why I memorized what I needed.”
I’d been so ready to feel awful that I ended up giggling instead. “And then wrote on me anyway?”
“I’m afraid”—he looked almost abashed—“I wasn’t thinking all that clearly.”
“It’s okay. It was superhot.”
His fingers followed my tattoo over my hip. “But I know I wanted to claim a little piece of you.”
“You can claim all of me.”
“My beautiful Arden.” He smiled at me, but there was something almost sad about it, his hands soft on my body. “In some ways, you are unconquerable. And I wouldn’t have it otherwise.”
“Write on me again?” I wriggled enticingly…if somewhat stickily.
“Write what?”
“Anything you like. How about Caspian + Arden 4 Eva in a big heart?”
That earned me an exasperated look.
I prodded him with my foot. “Please? It doesn’t even have to be romantic.”
“I’m not literary like you.”
“You mean you’ve never stumbled across some words arranged into an order you quite liked? Ever?”
“It’s not that.” He picked the pen back up and absently fiddled with it, twisting its lid round and round between his fingers. “I’m afraid I find it rather exposing.”
“Caspian, I came to your office practically naked.”
“Yes, but you chose to do that.”
Oh fuck. He had a point. I was being super pushy—and one person’s risky titillation was another person’s excruciating nightmare. “I’m sorry. Ignore me. You don’t have to.”
He leaned down—smooshing our too-hot bodies together in a way that was only okay because we’d just had the best sex ever—and kissed me. “No, I’ll do it. I just need to think what to write.”
“But I don’t want you to do something that makes you uncomfortable.”
“You do many uncomfortable things for me.”
I blushed, very aware I was sort of…dripping on his desk. “They’re things I like doing, though.”
“And, in return, there are ways I’m willing to be uncomfortable for you.”
He slid the lid off the pen, found a bit of me he liked that wasn’t too sweaty, and began to write. I couldn’t see much except his head bent over me. But that just made me feel what he was doing all the more intensely. The sharp-delicate pressure made my toes curl. And imagine what it might be like if it was a blade he held.
“What does it say?” I asked when he was done—since all I could make out was a ribbon of blue across my hip and stomach.
He gave me an unreadable smile. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
That was when I realized I’d spent so long sweating the arriving part of this little escapade that I hadn’t given any thought at all to the leaving. The idea of pulling my gorgeous new coat over my seriously sexed body and limping wetly into a taxi was one gazillion percent the wrong uncomfortable. Did Caspian keep spare clothes in his office? It was a posh building—maybe there would be an onsite employee gym, or something, with a shower I could use.
“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” Caspian pulled away abruptly. But since, not so very long ago, he would have taken me being post-coitally tense as an invitation to run like hell, this was definitely progress.
I sat up gingerly, pressing my knees together and folding my hands over my dick, in what was a pretty belated act of modesty. “No. Not at all. Just, err, fretting about logistics.”
“Logistics?”
“Yeah. I need to get back somehow.”
Caspian was silent for a long moment. Apart from the fact there was come and ink on his shirt from where our bodies had pressed against each other, he looked…well…almost put-together. Whereas I was wrecked from eyes to arse.
Then he leaned in and brushed back a lock of hair that had gone off on a frolic of its own when I’d been too busy having sex to keep it under control. “Don’t worry about that. You can stay with me.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, with fucking extraordinary nonchalance.
From the look on his face, I didn’t think he was all that sure, but he nodded anyway. And, dammit, I would take it.
“Here.” He took off his shirt and wrapped it round me. It was warm from him and smelled of him—quite pungently of him, actually, considering what we’d just been doing—and, being ridiculously expensive, it was soft and smooth against my still over-sensitive skin. Of course it was way too big for me, brushing my stocking tops, but I was totally okay with that. It felt like being in Caspian’s arms.
Once I was only partially indecent, he helped me down off the desk. We stared a moment at the imprints we’d left on the glass: smudges of heat and sweat and other fluids.
He didn’t quite facepalm but his palm hovered perilously close to his face. “What in God’s name was I thinking? This was so unprofessional.”
It seemed sensible to brace myself for a cavalcade of regret. I hung my head. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be silly, Arden. I was as responsible for it as you.”
“But I turned up in a…a…” I made an awkward gesture. “…provocative way.”
“Yes, and I chose to respond by fucking you on my desk. Which I enjoyed very much.”
“Really?” I shot him a silly, happy smile. “You aren’t freaking out?”
“No.”
“It was still bad of me, though. You should, y’know, probably spank me later.”
He laughed and pulled me unexpectedly into something I could only call a hug. Squeezed me so tightly, so desperately, I nearly ran out of breath. “Oh Arden, you’re incorrigible.”
I nodded into his chest.
“Please, never stop.”
“No intention of it,” I mumbled. Though what I was thinking was: please never stop holding me like this.
Of course he did. And if he hadn’t, it would have been awkward, what us having to eat and go to the toilet and have separate lives and things. But I could have taken a little bit more of being hugged like that.
A lot more, to be honest.