Chapter 6: The Late Shift
The leather of his office chair was cold through his trousers, a shock after the humid memory of his own living room. Julian sat in the dark, the city’s electric glow framing the blinds in stripes across the floor. He could still smell her. Evelyn’s perfume, the scent of another man on her skin, the acidic tang of his own complicity. He’d showered, scrubbing until his flesh was raw, but it was lodged in his sinuses.
His phone glowed on the desk. He typed, his fingers feeling thick and stupid.
Working late. Can you order takeout?
He didn’t specify what. He didn’t specify for whom. He hit send and dropped the phone, listening to the empty building’s chorus of creaks and distant HVAC sighs.
The reply was almost instantaneous.
On it. 20 mins.
Precisely eighteen minutes later, a soft knock fractured the silence. He didn’t get up. “It’s open.”
The door whispered inward. Mara stood there, backlit by the corridor’s fluorescence, holding a brown paper bag and a bottle of red wine by the neck. She’d changed. The daytime skirt suit was gone. She wore a simple black dress, knee-length, but the top three buttons were undone, revealing a sharp V of skin and the lace edge of a bra. Her hair was down, a dark wave over one shoulder. Her eyes were wide, alert, shining with a nervous, hungry energy.
“Long night?” she asked, her voice softer than its usual professional clip.
“You could say that.” He didn’t move from his chair, a king on a ruined throne.
She stepped in, letting the door sigh shut. The tap of her heels was the only sound. She set the bag and the bottle on the desk, but her attention was wholly on him. She saw the hollows under his eyes, the tight set of his jaw, the way his hands rested on the armrests like they were holding him down. This wasn’t the focused intensity of a breakthrough. This was a fracture.
“I thought you might need something stronger than Pad Thai,” she murmured. She didn’t approach the food. She came to him. Without hesitation, she hitched her dress up her thighs and straddled him, settling her weight on his lap. The heat of her through the thin fabric of his pants and her dress was an immediate, shocking contrast to the room’s chill.
Her fingers went to his shirt buttons, working them open with a deftness that spoke of practice. Her palms smoothed over the planes of his chest. She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear. “Tell me what you need, Julian.”
What he needed was to erase the feeling of being loose inside his own wife. What he needed was to possess something, anything, unequivocally.
His hands came up, gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. “Don’t talk.”
A sharp, excited breath escaped her. She obeyed. Her mouth found his, not in a kiss but in a takeover, her tongue pushing past his lips. It tasted of mint and ambition. Her hands abandoned his chest and went between them, fumbling with his belt, his zipper. He didn’t help. He let her work, his gaze fixed on the pale, determined line of her throat.
She freed him, her hand wrapping around his cock. He was thickening under her touch, a purely animal response. “Yeah,” she whispered, a note of triumph in her voice. She shifted, pushing her underwear aside, and guided him to her entrance. She was already wet, slick and hot. She sank down onto him in one fluid, claiming motion, sheathing him completely inside her body.
A grunt was punched from his lungs. Her tightness was a balm and a provocation. It was new. It was his.
She began to move, rolling her hips in a slow, deep grind, taking him to the hilt with every rise and fall. Her eyes were locked on his, watching for every flicker of reaction. She bit her lower lip, her breath coming in short, sharp pants. “Is this… is this what you needed?” she gasped, breaking her own order.
It wasn’t. Not yet. The anger, a cold, coiling thing since he’d seen that jacket, finally found its conduit. With a growl, he stood up, his hands vice-like on her ass, holding her impaled on him as he turned and dumped her onto the polished surface of his desk. Papers fluttered to the floor like wounded birds. A coffee cup rocked and spilled cold dregs.
“Julian—” she started, but he was already spinning her around, bending her over the cold wood. He shoved her dress up around her waist, exposed the pale curve of her ass, the wet, glistening folds of her cunt from behind. He drove into her again, one hard, deep thrust that knocked a cry from her throat.
This was different. This wasn’t her performance. This was his.
He fucked her with a punishing, rhythmic violence. Each slam of his hips into her flesh was a punctuation mark against the memory of Evelyn’s detached ride. The desk shuddered. Mara’s knuckles were white where she gripped the far edge, her head lowered, her perfect hair a mess. She was sobbing, but the sounds weren’t of pain. They were ragged, desperate pleas. “Yes… god, yes… fucking use me, Julian, please.”
Her words fed the fire. He leaned over her, his chest against her back, one hand tangling in her hair to pull her head up. “You want this?” he snarled into her ear, his voice unrecognizable.
“I’ve always wanted it,” she choked out, her body clenching wildly around him. “I watch you in meetings… I hear you stand up to Thorne… I get so fucking wet.”
The admission, raw and truthful, pushed him to the edge. His control shattered. His thrusts lost all rhythm, becoming frantic, deep pistons, slamming into her wet heat. The sound was obscene: flesh on flesh, the desk’s protest, their ragged unison of breath. She came first, her inner muscles spasming around him in a series of violent flutters, her cry muffled by the wood. It tipped him over.
With a final, guttural roar that tore his throat raw, he buried himself to the root and came. It was a volley, a release of poison, pumping deep into her in hot, endless spurts. He collapsed over her, his weight driving her flatter against the desk, his face buried in the sweat-damp mess of her hair. They stayed like that, welded together by sweat and spend, until their breathing slowed from a gallop to a stagger.
Slowly, he pulled out. The separation was audible. He staggered back, fumbling for his trousers, pulling them up over his sticky, softening flesh. Mara slowly pushed herself up. Her dress was ruined, rumpled, stained. She turned, leaning back against the desk for support, her legs visibly unsteady. Her face was flushed, her lipstick smeared, her eyes glassy and satisfied. She looked utterly conquered, and she gloried in it.
She reached for the wine bottle, twisted off the cork with a practiced pop, and took a long, direct swallow from the neck. She offered it to him. He took it. The wine was cheap and tart, but it cut through the taste of ash in his mouth.
“So,” she said, her voice husky. “The Titan project timelines?”
He stared at her, this beautiful, ambitious, complicated stranger on his desk. He had used her body like a bludgeon. And she had loved it. The taste of revenge wasn’t sweet. It was metallic, like blood, and just as empty.
He took another swallow of wine and gestured to the scattered papers on the floor.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said, the words hollow in the silent, neon-streaked room.