Chapter 7: A Friend's Advice
The wine bar felt like a different planet.Aurora pushed through the heavy door, leaving the damp chill of the evening outside. Inside, the air was warm, thick with the smell of oak and roasted nuts and a dozen perfumes.Low jazz notes curled around the clink of glasses and the murmur of people unwinding. She spotted Jenna’s riot of red curls in a corner booth, a beacon of normalcy.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Jenna said by way of hello, already pushing a glass of garnet-colored wine across the table. “The good kind or the bad kind?”
Aurora managed a thin smile, sliding into the velvet embrace of the seat. “Is there a good kind?”
“Touche.” Jenna studied her, those sharp green eyes missing nothing. She took a slow sip.“Okay.Out with it.Work shit?Family shit? Weird man on the subway shit?”
“All of the above,” Aurora lied, automatically. The wine was bitter on her tongue. She drank more, hoping it would wash away the taste of the day—the closet, the toy, Marcus’s quiet, knowing voice.Compulsion.
They talked about Jenna’s students, a disastrous clay-firing incident, a new gallery opening. Aurora laughed in the right places, nodded, asked questions. Her mind was a separate room, playing a different film.
“You’re not here,” Jenna said finally, setting her glass down with a decisive tap.“Your body is, which is nice, thanks for that. But you’re hovering somewhere near the ceiling.What happened?”
The directness was a lance. Aurora’s defenses, so carefully maintained, were paper-thin tonight. She traced the stem of her glass, watching the candlelight fracture in the wine. “I did something… I got caught doing something.”
Jenna didn’t flinch.“By a person? Or, like, a security camera?”
“A person.” The word was a whisper.
“At work?”
Aurora nodded, her throat tight.Jenna leaned back, her expression unreadable for a beat. Then a slow, wicked smile spread across her face.“Oh, honey.That’s… intriguing.Details. Now.Who, what, where?”
The story spilled out in a hushed, ragged torrent. Not everything, but enough.The storage closet.The vibrator.The footsteps stopping. The door opening.Marcus, from IT, standing there.His calm observation.His not-leaving. The way he’d watched her fall apart, then quietly closed the door. Aurora’s voice shook. She confessed the shame, the terrifying thrill, the way she’d fucked herself rough on her couch and then in her bed afterward, trying to obliterate the memory and engrave it deeper all at once.Jenna listened. No judgment flashed in her eyes, only a deepening, fascinated intensity.When Aurora finished, deflated and empty, Jenna whistled low under her breath.
“Marcus from IT.Quiet guy.Big hands, nice eyes. Seems… observant.”
“He is,” Aurora breathed, the memory of his gaze a physical brand.“So he caught you. He saw you, in the absolute wild, and he didn’t run screaming to HR. He didn’t mock you.He stood there.He watched. And then he gave you a fucking diagnosis and walked away.” Jenna swirled her wine. “Aurora, that’s not a horror story. That’s a meet-cute for freaks.”
Aurora choked on a surprised, watery laugh.“He knows. He has power over me.”
“Does he?” Jenna leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hum. “Or do you have power over him? You think a guy sees that, really sees that, and just goes back to checking server logs?Please.He’s thinking about it right now. I guarantee it.” She took a decisive sip. “You’ve been treating this like a disease.A dirty secret.What if it’s just… a thing you like? A kink. And now you have a potential… participant.”
“A participant?” Aurora’s heart hammered against her ribs.“A spectator.A co-conspirator.Hell, a director. You have this whole rich, hidden life.What if you… let someone in?On purpose. Someone who already knows the score.”
The idea was a live wire, tossed into the pool of her anxiety.It sparked and sizzled, dangerous and dazzling.“I can’t. He’s… it’s work.”
“He’s in the building all week, you said. In out-of-the-way places.” Jenna’s grin was feral. “So maybe you don’t hide.Maybe you… schedule a performance. See if he shows up.”
Aurora felt dizzy. The shame was still there, but it was morphing, twisting into something else—a terrifying, electric curiosity. Jenna’s blunt reframing was a key turning in a lock she’d thought was sealed forever.They finished their drinks. The conversation shifted, lighter now, the weight shared.But the seed was planted. It took root in the taxi home, in the silent elevator ride up to her apartment.She didn’t turn on the main lights. Just the soft, blue glow of the aquarium in her living room, the undulating shapes of the fish casting dancing shadows. She stood in the middle of the room, feeling the city’s pulse through the floor-to-ceiling windows.Jenna’s voice echoed.A spectator.A director.
She slid down the cool glass of the window, the cityscape a sprawling galaxy of light below her.Her fingers drifted under the waistband of her jeans.She closed her eyes.
This time, it wasn’t a memory.It was a fabrication.A deliberate fantasy.
In her mind, it wasn’t the storage closet.It was her cubicle, after hours. The office was dark, silent.She was at her desk, the blue glow of her monitor the only light. And he was there, leaning against the partition, arms crossed, just watching.Not saying a word. His hazel eyes in the semi-darkness were pools of quiet intensity.
In the fantasy, she didn’t stop.She looked right at him, held his gaze, and let her hand move. She pictured the flush on his skin, the way his chest might rise and fall a little faster. She imagined his voice, low and rough, breaking the silence not with judgment, but with a single, molten word. “Again.”
A moan tore from her throat in the empty apartment. Her back arched against the cool glass. She was hurtling toward the edge, faster and harder than ever before, fueled by the sheer audacity of the imagined scenario.It wasn’t just about the physical sensation anymore. It was about the audience.His eyes on her.His approval.
The orgasm hit her like a shockwave, violent and total. Her cry echoed off the high ceilings, a solitary sound in the vast, dark space.
As she slumped against the window, breathless and trembling, one last, unbidden syllable escaped her lips, voiced into the silent room.
It was his name.