Chapter 5: The Unplanned Escape
The Monday morning sunlight was a liar. It streamed into the office, clean and corporate, painting the gray partitions a cheerful yellow that felt like a personal insult. Sid sat at his desk, the ghost of a faded blue mattress cover still tactile against his skin. Every rustle of paper from Kirti’s cubicle was a detonation. He hadn’t slept well. He’d dreamed of static and the smell of dust.
His screen showed a quarterly report. The numbers swimmed. All he could see was the curve of her spine in the storeroom gloom, the desperate braille of her nails on his back.
His phone lit up, face-down.
Kirti: These pivot tables are giving me a headache. Need a consult.
He typed back, his pulse in his fingertips.
Sid: Conference Room C is free at 11.
Kirti: Too visible. And I’d end up on the table. Not the professional look I’m cultivating.
A slow heat spread through his gut. He took a steadying breath, the air-conditioning cold in his lungs.
Sid: Then what’s your proposal?
The three dots hovered, blinked, hypnotic.
Kirti: The Henderson analytics file. It’s a beast. Requires an in-person field audit. At their offices. Could take all afternoon.
He understood immediately. Henderson was a client across town. Their office was a real place. But the “field audit” was a fiction. A shared, breathtaking fiction.
Sid: I’ll pull the file. Tell Rita you’re accompanying me for cross-departmental insight. Leave after lunch.
Kirti: Should I drive? Or will you?
The question was a web of implication. Separate cars meant plausible deniability, a return to normalcy. One car meant a sealed chamber, fifteen miles of road between them and this building.
Sid: I’ll drive. We can debrief on the way.
Kirti: Debrief. Right. I’ll pack my most persuasive charts.
The hours until lunch were an exercise in surreal discipline. They passed in the hallway. He smelled her shampoo—coconut, something tropical—as she brushed past him to the printer. “Henderson at one,” she murmured, not breaking stride. It wasn’t a question.
At quarter to one, he stood by Rita’s desk, his posture relaxed, his voice casually authoritative. “Kirti’s got a sharp eye for data patterns I might miss on this one. We’ll be at Henderson’s. Cell service is patchy in their building, so don’t panic if we’re offline for a bit.”
Rita, young and eager, just nodded. “Got it. Good luck!”
In the elevator down, they were alone. The doors sighed shut. He stared straight ahead at the polished steel, seeing her blurred reflection beside his. Her arm was bare, brushing his. The air grew thick, charged.
“This is insane,” she said, her voice low.
“Yes.”
“I’ve been wet since I sat down this morning.”
The elevator dinged for the lobby. He closed his eyes for a second. “Don’t say things like that when we’re about to walk past security.”
She grinned, adjusting the strap of her laptop bag. “Why not? You think old Frank cares about my hydration levels?”
They walked out, side-by-side, into the blinding parking garage. The sound of their footsteps echoed. When they reached his car, a sensible silver sedan, he unlocked it. She slid into the passenger seat, tossing her bag into the footwell. He got in, started the engine. The cool air from the vents washed over them.
For the first five minutes, they drove in silence, merging into the sluggish downtown traffic. The tension was a living thing, curled between them on the center console.
“Left turn here,” she said softly.
He glanced at her. “Henderson’s is straight.”
“I know.” She looked out the window. “My lease says I get to use my apartment in the afternoon. Less traffic this way.”
He signaled and turned left, his heart hammering against his ribs. The professional pretense evaporated, leaving something raw and taut in its place. The drive to her building was a blur of green lights and his own loud heartbeat.
She directed him to an underground spot. The garage was quiet, dim. Before he could kill the engine, her hand was on his thigh, high up, her fingers pressing into the muscle through his trousers.
“You’re shaking,” she observed, but her own breath was shallow.
“Anticipation,” he managed.
Upstairs, her apartment was exactly as he’d imagined and nothing like he’d expected. Sunlight pooled on wooden floors. Plants thrived in corners. It smelled of her—sandalwood, coffee, a hint of sharp citrus. It was tidy but lived-in, a book splayed open on the arm of a sofa.
She didn’t turn on lights. She just dropped her bag and her cap on a side table and turned to him, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “So. Debrief.”
He walked to her, stopping when their shoes almost touched. “The Henderson file is flawed. Critical errors in the demographic segmentation.”
“Mmm.” She played with a button on his shirt. “And the proposed solution?”
“Hands-on recalibration. A complete… overhaul of the engagement strategy.” He traced the line of her jaw with his knuckle. “It may require getting horizontal. For optimal analysis.”
Her smile was slow, wicked. She took his hand and led him to the bedroom. The golden afternoon light was merciless, revealing everything. It fell across her bed, a plain duvet cover, a single pillow. It lit the dust motes dancing in the air.
She faced him. “Last time was in the dark. Mostly.”
“I remember.”
“I want to see you this time. All of it.” She reached for the hem of her t-shirt and pulled it over her head in one fluid motion. Then her jeans, pushed down her hips, stepped out of. She stood in the flood of light, unashamed, watching him watch her.
He undressed slower, each article feeling like a shedding of a skin. The office Sid, the CBO, folded away with his clothes on her chair. What was left was simpler, needier.
When he was naked, she just looked. Her gaze traveled over his shoulders, his chest, down, and back up. “Okay,” she breathed, as if confirming something.
She pushed him back onto the bed and climbed over him, not touching, just studying the map of him. Then she lowered her mouth to his chest, tracing a slow, wet path with her tongue. He groaned, his hands finding her hips, anchoring himself.
“Tell me what you want,” she murmured against his skin, her breath hot. “Not from the client. From me. Right now.”
He opened his eyes. The sunlight was a halo around her short hair. “I want to taste you. I want you to come in my mouth before I’m inside you. I want to watch you lose it in the daylight.”
A faint blush painted her chest. Her eyes darkened. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She moved then, shifting back, kneeling over his face. The light was explicit, revealing every slick, glistening detail. He didn’t close his eyes. He pulled her down onto his tongue, and her first cry was sharp, startled, echoing off her bedroom walls. He held her there, his hands tight on her thighs, and learned her in the relentless afternoon sun. He learned what made her hips jerk, what made her fingers fist in his hair so hard it stung, what made the guttural, pleading sounds tear from her throat.
When her climax hit, it was a violent, beautiful shudder that she didn’t try to suppress. She cried out, a raw, unvarnished sound that was her name for him. She collapsed onto her side next to him, breathing as if she’d run a mile.
She turned her head, her cheek against the duvet. Her eyes were wet at the corners. “Granite countertops are overrated,” she whispered.
He laughed, a rough, happy sound, and moved over her, nudging her legs apart with his knee. He entered her slowly, so slowly, in the bright, quiet room. There were no desks to creak, no risk of footsteps. Just the two of them, joined in the open, with the whole city buzzing unaware below.
“Now,” she said, wrapping her legs around him, her gaze holding his with ferocious intensity. “Now fuck me like you’ve been thinking about it all morning.”
He did.