Chapter 2: Bite Marks on Corporate Leather
The rooftop bar was a strategic nightmare.
Neon signs cast garish pinks and blues over clusters of colleagues whose professional edges had been softened by two drink tickets and the unusual Friday generosity of the CEO. Amy stood by the glass railing, the city sprawled below her like a circuit board of possibilities she usually felt she controlled. Tonight, it just looked distant.
Her champagne flute was a prop. She’d barely touched it.
Her eyes, against her will, tracked a path through the crowd. There. Liam was by the makeshift bar, a whiskey rocks in his hand. He was listening to Sarah from accounting drone on about municipal bonds. But his posture was different from his usual focused slouch. It was looser, his shoulders relaxed. He laughed at something Sarah said, the sound carrying just enough to reach Amy over the din. It was a good laugh. Unselfconscious.
Then Rebecca arrived.
Rebecca from UX, with her artfully messy bun and cheeky smile, slid into the space beside Liam, her hand landing on his forearm as if claiming territory. He turned to her, and his smile changed. It widened, became something more familiar, more intimate.
Amy’s fingers tightened on the cold stem of her glass. She watched as Rebecca leaned in, her lips brushing his ear to whisper something over the music. Liam’s head dipped, his own mouth curving in response. He said something back, his hand coming up to rest lightly, so fucking lightly, on the small of Rebecca’s back.
The gesture was casual. Proprietary.
A hot, sour wave washed through Amy’s gut. It was more potent than any champagne. It was a primal, ugly thing—a possessiveness she had no right to feel, a jealousy that burned through the careful ice of her composure.
The image of his hand in the pantry, the feel of his calloused fingers on her skin, flashed behind her eyes. Had that meant nothing? Was this just his Friday? Pantry one day, Rebecca the next?
She set her flute down on a high table with a sharp click that went unheard. The action was final. She didn’t look at it again. She turned and walked, not toward the elevators where everyone else would go, but toward the heavy, unmarked door labeled ‘EXIT’ in grim green letters.
The stairwell was a hollow, echoing throat of concrete. The noise from the rooftop vanished, replaced by the sound of her own stilettos striking each metal step—a rapid, angry percussion. Click. Click. Click. Down she went, nine flights, the air growing colder and smelling of damp concrete and stale ventilation.
Her mind was a white noise of fury and hurt. She’d let him in. Behind the armor, in the dark. And he was upstairs, laughing, his hand on another woman.
She pushed through the door into the underground parking garage. The air here was thick with the smell of gasoline and cold, stale dust. It was poorly lit, pools of jaundiced yellow light from sporadic fixtures giving way to deep shadows. Her car was on the other side.
She heard the exit door swing open again, a heavier tread on the concrete.
She didn’t turn around. She kept walking, her heels echoing.
“Amy.”
His voice bounced off the low ceiling, off the ranks of silent cars.
She ignored him, walking faster.
“Amy, stop.”
His footsteps quickened, catching up. She felt him before she saw him, his shadow stretching long and distorted ahead of her, swallowing her own. Then he was beside her, then in front of her, turning to block her path near a support column.
“Where are you going?” he asked, his breath a faint cloud in the chill air.
“Home.” Her voice was flat.
“You just left.”
“I saw everything I needed to see.” She tried to step around him. He shifted, blocking her. “Move, Liam.”
“What did you see?” His voice had an edge to it, a frustration that matched her own.
“You and Rebecca. Cozy. Cute.” She spit the words. “Must be nice to have options.”
“She was telling me a stupid joke about a UI bug. It wasn’t—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand, finally meeting his eyes. In the gloom, they were dark pools, unreadable. “You don’t owe me an explanation. We work together. That’s it. What happened… that was a mistake. A lapse.”
“A lapse.” He repeated the word as if tasting something rotten.
“Yes. It shouldn’t have happened. It won’t happen again.” She believed the words as she said them. They were a mantra, a ward.
He stared at her for a long moment. The garage was silent except for the distant drip of a pipe. Then, a muscle in his jaw ticked. “You’re lying. To me, and to yourself.”
The accusation, delivered so calmly, shattered her last thread of control.
“Fuck you,” she hissed, and the venom was real.
She moved to shove past him. He caught her wrist. His grip wasn’t harsh, but it was unyielding, a band of heat against her cold skin.
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
The single word hung between them, a challenge. All the unspoken tension from the elevator, from the pantry, from the weeks and months of stolen glances and suppressed thoughts, surged to the surface. It was a current, live and vicious.
She saw it in his eyes then—not the quiet engineer, but the man from the dark pantry. The one who’d watched her fall apart under his touch. The one who wanted more.
Her free hand came up, not to push him away, but to fist in the fabric of his shirt. She yanked him forward, spinning them both until his back hit the cold metal of a pillar. It was his turn to be surprised, his breath leaving him in a short grunt.
Before he could react, she rose up on her toes and crushed her mouth to his. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a battle. She bit his lower lip, hard enough to taste the copper tang of blood. He groaned, a deep, pained sound that vibrated through her, and his hands came up to grip her hips, holding her against him.
She broke the kiss, panting. She looked at his mouth, at the small bead of blood welling there. A mark. Her mark.
Without a word, she dropped to her knees on the grimy concrete floor.
The world narrowed to the space between them. The rough fabric of his trousers under her fingers. The shocked stillness of his body above her. She looked up, meeting his gaze as her hands went to his belt. His eyes were wide, his pupils blown black in the low light. He said nothing, just watched, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
She undid the buckle, the click obscenely loud. The button. The zipper. She didn’t fumble. Her movements were deliberate, predatory. She used her teeth to tug the zipper down, the metal cold against her lips. The sound was a raw, ripping tear in the silence of the garage.
He was already hard. She freed him from his boxer briefs, his cock springing out, thick and full in her hand. She heard his sharp intake of breath above her.
She didn’t tease him. She didn’t build up to it. She took him into her mouth in one slow, deep, unhurried motion, swallowing him until the head hit the back of her throat. His hips jerked involuntarily, a muffled curse escaping him. One of his hands came down, tangling in her red hair, not forcing, just holding, as if to anchor himself to the world.
She worked him with a relentless, focused intensity. Her tongue swirled around the head, her lips created a tight, wet seal as she moved up and down his length. It was raw. It was filthy. She used her hand at the base, twisting in time with the motion of her mouth, her other hand gripping his thigh through his trousers, her nails digging in.
“Jesus, Amy,” he gasped, his head falling back against the pillar with a dull thud. His grip on her hair tightened. “Fuck… just like that.”
She ignored him, lost in the act itself. The power of it. The submission and dominance all twisted together. The taste of him, salt and skin and precum, the sounds he made—broken groans, stuttering breaths. This was hers. Not Rebecca’s. Hers.
She increased her pace, her own need coiling low in her belly, a dark mirror to the pleasure she was giving. She was wet, aching, her skirt rucked up around her thighs as she knelt on the hard floor. She could feel his muscles tensing, the warning tremor in his thighs.
He tried to pull her off. “I’m gonna… Amy, I’m gonna come.”
She pushed his hand away, holding him deep in her throat. Her message was clear. She wanted it. She wanted him to lose control completely, to shatter because of her, here in this dirty, public place.
With a ragged shout he did.
His release hit the back of her throat in hot, pulsing spurts. She took it all, swallowing steadily, her eyes watering, until he was spent and softening in her mouth. She stayed there for a moment, catching her breath, before slowly pulling back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
She looked up at him. He was a wreck. His clothes disheveled, his lips swollen and bloody from her bite, his eyes dazed and locked on her. He was still leaning heavily against the pillar, his breathing ragged.
Slowly, she got to her feet, her knees protesting. She smoothed her skirt down, ran a hand through her hair. She felt disembodied, a fever beginning to break.
He reached for her, his hand gentle on her arm. “Amy…”
Headlights swept across the garage as a car turned a far aisle, the beam skating over them for a second, illuminating the scene in stark, unforgiving light.
It broke the spell.
She pulled her arm from his grasp. “Don’t,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Just… don’t.”
She turned and walked away, the sound of her heels on the concrete the only sound in the vast, echoing space. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t.
She made it to her car, fumbled the key, slid inside. Only when the door was shut, locking her in the familiar silence of her vehicle, did she let herself shake. She gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white, and stared straight ahead at the concrete wall.
In the rearview mirror, she saw a faint, reflected movement far behind her. Liam, pushing himself away from the pillar, running a hand over his face, watching her tail lights as she started the engine.
She backed out, turned, and drove up the ramp into the city night. The cool, conditioned air of the car did nothing to calm the fire in her veins or the icy, growing dread in her stomach. She had wanted to claim him, to brand him. Instead, she felt the painful, terrifying crack in her own foundations, widening with every block she put between them.