Chapter 5: The Intern Interview
The city outside Seth’s penthouse office was a grid of electric diamonds against the deepening violet sky. He stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, a crystal tumbler of bourbon cooling in his hand, trying to find calm in the ordered geometry of the streets below. It was useless. All he could see was the phantom smear of Megan’s lipstick on the glass from yesterday, when she’d pressed her mouth against it and watched him watch her.
The resume was on his desk. Megan had left it there an hour ago, storming in while he was on a call, dropping the single sheet of paper with a slap that echoed.
“Found your new intern,” she’d said, her voice a blade wrapped in silk. “Talia. Seems… eager to please.”
Her green eyes had flicked to his crotch, a brief, scorching glance that acknowledged the secret they both carried—the damp ghost of the conference room, the smell of her still on his skin some days. Then she’d turned and left, the furious promise in the click of her heels a vibration in his bones.
He’d called the girl in. Talia. A trembling brunette with too-large eyes and a portfolio clutched to her chest like a shield. He’d been professional, asking about her coursework, her software proficiencies. She’d answered in soft, earnest sentences, her gaze respectfully on his face. Until it wasn’t. Her eyes had drifted down, snagged on the faint, stubborn discoloration on the thigh of his gray slacks. A shadow that no amount of dry-cleaning had fully erased. Her lips parted. A flush crept up her neck. She’d bitten her lower lip, hard, and looked away.
He’d ended the interview quickly, coldly. Told her HR would be in touch.
Now, the city hummed its indifferent song. The vintage stereo in the corner played a low, throbbing jazz track, just loud enough to drown the sirens but not the memory of that bite of her lip. The resume taunted him from the leather-bound desk. Talia Chen. 22. Honors.
His intercom buzzed, a sharp, insectile sound. His assistant’s voice, tinny through the speaker. “Mr. Thorne? Talia Chen is back. She says she left her sketchbook.”
Seth closed his eyes. A thin excuse. Transparent. Dangerous.
“Send her in.”
The door opened silently. Talia hesitated on the threshold, holding a worn sketchbook. She wore the same interview clothes—a sensible black dress, too formal for her age. It made her look like a child playing dress-up. Her eyes were wide, the pupil swallowing the brown iris.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” she whispered.
“It’s fine.” He didn’t move from the window. “Close the door.”
She did, the click of the latch deafening in the quiet room. She stood there, shifting her weight.
“You didn’t forget your sketchbook,” he stated, his voice flat.
Her breath hitched. “No.”
“Why are you here, Talia?”
She looked at the spot on his pants again, then forced her gaze up to meet his. There was fear there, but underneath it, a raw, hungry curiosity. “I saw… I mean, I…” She swallowed. “I know what that is.”
He sipped his bourbon, the burn a welcome anchor. “Do you.”
“It’s from her. From Megan.” The name was a forbidden incantation on her tongue. “Everyone… whispers about you two. After meetings. How she looks at you.”
He said nothing. Let the silence stretch, thick and potent.
Emboldened, or perhaps desperate, she took a step forward. “I saw her leave before my interview. She looked… satisfied.” Another step. She was close enough now that he could smell her—clean cotton, adolescent anxiety, and beneath it, a faint, sweet trace of perspiration. “I want…” Her voice dropped to a thread. “I want to know what that’s like.”
It was the worst kind of cliché, and yet his body responded instantly. A tight, hot coil in his gut. His cock, dormant and shamed, began a slow, inexorable thickening. The grower awakening.
“You have no idea what you’re asking for,” he said, turning fully to face her.
“I know you’re hard right now,” she breathed, her eyes locked on the front of his slacks where a new, undeniable shape was forming. “Just from me saying it.”
He was. The shame of it was a secondary pulse behind his arousal. He set the glass down on the desk with a definitive clink.
“Come here.”
She obeyed, closing the distance on unsteady legs. He cupped her chin, tilting her face up. She was trembling. “Open your mouth.”
She did. He slid his thumb inside, feeling the wet heat, pressing down on her tongue. She sucked instinctively, her eyes fluttering closed. A low moan escaped her.
“You like that?” he murmured, his thumb moving in and out. “The taste of scotch and my skin?”
She nodded, a frantic little motion.
He removed his thumb, glistening with her saliva. “On your knees.”
She sank down, her dress pooling around her. Her hands went to his belt with none of Megan’s predatory confidence, but with a frantic, needy fumbling. He watched, dispassionate, as she struggled with the buckle, finally freeing it. She unzipped him, her fingers brushing against the fabric of his boxer-briefs, where he was already straining. She pulled him out.
He wasn’t imposing yet. Just thick, rigid, the head flushed a dark red. Her eyes widened. “It’s… big,” she whispered.
“Not yet,” he said.
She leaned forward, her movements unpracticed. Her first touch of her tongue to his tip was a glancing, timid thing. Then she took him into her mouth, her lips stretching around his girth. She gagged immediately, pulling back with a wet cough.
He didn’t offer comfort. “Again. Slower. Use your hand.”
She tried again, her mouth a tentative, wet sleeve around him, her fist working the base. It was clumsy. Earnest. The sheer submissive awe in her posture, the complete lack of Megan’s controlled power, fueled a different, darker part of him. He tangled a hand in her hair, not guiding, just holding. Letting her find a rhythm. Her moans vibrated along his shaft.
He looked over her head, out at the glittering city. For a fractured second, he saw Megan’s reflection in the glass—a smirk, a challenge. He blinked, and it was gone.
“Stand up,” he ordered, his voice rough.
She rose, lips swollen, a string of saliva connecting her mouth to him for a second before it snapped. He turned her around, bending her over the cool, polished surface of his desk. Her sketchpad slid to the floor. He pushed her dress up around her waist. She wore plain white cotton panties. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband and dragged them down her thighs.
“You’re sure?” he growled, his hand smoothing over the pale curve of her ass.
“Please,” was all she said, her face turned to the side on the leather, her eyes squeezed shut.
He positioned himself at her entrance. She was tight, clenching with virgin anxiety. He pushed, not gently. She cried out, a sharp, pained sound that was swallowed by the jazz. He was inside her, her wet, reluctant heat enveloping him. He didn’t wait for her to adjust. He set a brutal, piston-like rhythm, fucking her over his desk, each thrust driving her forward. The desk was an anchor of professionalism, of deals and signatures, now defiled.
“Is this what you wanted?” he gritted out, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. “To be fucked in a penthouse by your boss? To be just another thing I use on this desk?”
She couldn’t answer. She was sobbing, her body shaking, but she pushed back against him, meeting his thrusts with a desperate, messy energy. Her nails scrabbled on the leather.
He felt the familiar, profound expansion begin at his base, the startling swell of his climax building, pushing him wider inside her. Her eyes flew open, a shock of fear and awe as she felt him change, grow, locking himself within her.
“Oh God,” she whimpered. “What’s… you’re…”
“This is what happens,” he snarled, the transformation complete, his thrusts becoming shorter, deeper, utterly consuming. “This is what she gets. And now, it’s what you get.”
His orgasm ripped through him, a torrential release that had him seeing stars. He ground into her, pumping his seed deep, his body convulsing with the force of it. As he finished, he felt a hot, sudden gush from her, a soaking rush that wasn’t his—a silvery flood that splashed onto the floor beneath the desk. She’d squirted, a helpless, broken reaction to the sheer overwhelming violation of him.
He stayed there, buried in her, until the swelling subsided enough for him to slip out. The separation was a wet, obscene sound. He straightened up, tucking himself mechanically back into his slacks, zipping up the evidence.
Talia slumped over the desk, her body shuddering. The backs of her thighs were slick.
“Get up,” he said, his voice empty.
She pushed herself up, her movements stiff. She didn’t look at him as she pulled her underwear and dress back into place. She picked up her sketchbook from the floor, her hands shaking violently.
“The internship is yours,” he said, turning back to the window, to the indifferent city. “Report to HR on Monday. You’ll be assigned to Megan’s team.”
She stopped, a fresh wave of trembling overtaking her. The cruelty of it was perfect. He didn’t turn around.
He heard the soft sob she choked back, the faint click of the door opening and closing. Then silence, save for the jazzy thrum of the stereo and the distant sirens. He stared at his own reflection in the dark glass, a man fractured, a stain on the pristine world below him. The leather of his desk, where she had lain, was still warm.
The leather of his desk, where she had lain, was still warm. Seth poured another bourbon, the amber liquid catching the neon from a downtown billboard, but the taste was just ash and regret now. His reflection in the glass was a stranger’s—hollow-eyed, the set of his jaw too rigid. The city’s pulse felt like a mockery of his own sluggish heartbeat.
He should call security. Have her escorted from the building. Erase the incident like a flawed sketch. His fingers hovered over the phone’s smooth surface. Instead, he picked up Talia’s forgotten resume. The paper trembled slightly in his grip.
The door opened again without a knock. He knew the rhythm of that entrance, the specific pressure of the hinge.
Megan stood silhouetted in the doorway, her figure a cutout against the bright hallway. She stepped in and closed the door, the lock engaging with a softer, more final sound than before. She didn’t speak. Her eyes took inventory: the two tumblers, his disheveled state, the palpable musk of sex and salt still hanging in the air-conditioned chill.
“You fucked her,” she stated. It wasn’t a question.
He didn’t deny it. “You set the bait. She took it.”
“And you,” she said, walking slowly toward the desk, her heels silent on the plush rug, “you just couldn’t help but swallow it, could you?” She stopped in front of him, her gaze dropping to the front of his slacks. A faint, dark patch was visible.New. “You’re still hard. Or again. Which is it, Seth?”
He said nothing. The shame was a cold stone in his gut, but beneath it, seeing her, the ember of his arousal glowed hotter. She reached out and traced the damp spot with a single, red-tipped finger. The touch burned through the fabric.
“Pathetic,” she whispered, but her own breath hitched. The word was a lie. Her eyes were dilated, black pools in the dim light. She was furious, and she was turned on. The combination was a deadly intoxicant.
“Get out, Megan.”
“Or what?” She laughed, a short, harsh sound. “You’ll fire me? You just hired my new intern after railing her over your executive desk. We’re way past HR, darling.” Her hands went to the buckle of his belt, her movements swift and practiced. “You don’t get to use someone else and then dismiss me.”
He grabbed her wrists, his grip vise-tight. “Stop.”
“Make me.” She leaned in, her lips a millimeter from his. Her scent—jasmine and vicious intent—wrapped around him. “Or are you all out of anger? Did you leave it in that trembling little girl?”
He released her wrists as if scalded. A beat of silence pulsed between them, charged and volatile. Then she pushed him. It wasn’t hard, but he was off-balance, morally and physically. He fell back into his high-backed leather chair.
Before he could move, she was on him. She hiked her tailored skirt up around her hips, revealing she wore nothing underneath. The earlier wetness from the conference room was gone, replaced by a new, purposeful slickness that gleamed in the low light. She straddled his lap, her knees pressing into the leather on either side of his thighs, and settled her weight onto him.
SHE RIDES HIS LAP.
She didn’t guide him in. She was already so wet that as she sank down, he slid into her in one smooth, shocking stroke. She took him all, a deep, consuming engulfment that forced a ragged groan from his chest. Her internal muscles clenched around him immediately, a fierce, possessive grip.
“This,” she hissed, her hands gripping his shoulders, her face close to his, “is where you belong. Not in some starry-eyed child. Here.” She rocked her hips, a slow, grinding rotation that rubbed her clit against the base of his shaft. “Buried in me. In this.”
He was powerless. The chair creaked under their combined movement. He could only look up at her, at the furious triumph in her green eyes, at the way her red hair fell around her face like a wildfire. She set the rhythm—deliberate, controlling, deep. Each downward plunge took him to the hilt, each upward retreat a teasing threat of release before she sheathed him again.
“You felt it, didn’t you?” she breathed, leaning back to brace her hands on his knees, arching her spine. The position opened her further, let him see where they were joined, the slick, frantic meeting of their bodies. “That… expansion. When you came inside her. Did she cry?”
“Yes.” The word was torn from him.
“Good.” Megan’s pace quickened, her movements becoming more frantic, less controlled. The slap of skin against skin filled the quiet office. “You ruin things, Seth. You ruin them beautifully.” She was chasing her own peak now, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. “Now ruin me. Again. Show me what you gave her.”
He couldn’t hold back. The coil, wound tight by humiliation and this brutal claiming, snapped. He felt the profound swelling start at his root, the incredible, stretching fullness that made her eyes fly wide with a mixture of pain and ecstatic wonder.
“Fuck… Seth…” she moaned, her rhythm breaking as he began to thicken and lock inside her, changing the very geometry of their fit.
He bucked his hips up, meeting her final, desperate grind. As the first pulse of his orgasm rocketed through him, he reached between them, his thumb finding her swollen clit and pressing hard, in circles as urgent as his own release. She came with a choked scream, her body seizing around him, a series of tight, fluttering convulsions that milked his own climax from him in deep, shuddering waves. Her release wasn't a gentle flow this time; it was a hot, sudden gush that soaked both of them, a silvery rush that spilled over his thighs and onto the chair’s expensive leather.
They collapsed together in the chair, a tangled, sweating, spent heap. His softening cock, still substantial from the aftermath of his climax, slipped from her with a wet, soft sound. The smell of sex and bourbon and their mutual ruin was overwhelming.
Minutes passed. The city’s lights twinkled, indifferent.
Megan shifted, pulling her skirt down. She stood on unsteady legs, not looking at him. She smoothed her hair, a gesture of re-composure that seemed absurd given the circumstances.
“She starts Monday,” Seth said, his voice raw. “On your team.”
Megan paused at the door. She didn’t turn. “I know.” Her shoulders were tense. “You made your point. We’re all just things on your desk now.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
He sat in the damp, ruined chair, staring at the two empty glasses. The penthouse felt less like a sanctuary and more like a gilded cage, its windows reflecting only the darkness inside.