Chapter 9: Oral Office Interlude
Sleep did not come as a surrender, but as a slow, tide-like pull. Mark felt himself slipping under, the solid world dissolving into the warm, weightless dark. The last point of awareness was the infinitesimal pressure on his chest, a single atom of consciousness that was his wife.
For Bea, the world expanded as he dwindled.
His breathing became a landscape. Each inhalation drew a vast, slow wind through the canyon of his trachea, a resonant hum that vibrated through the bedrock of his ribs. Each exhalation was a warm, humid breeze, scented with lavender from the bath and the deeper, muskier note of his skin. She stood, a speck of perception, on the plain of his sternum, feeling the rise and fall beneath her.
The urge to explore this sleeping continent was irresistible.
She journeyed across the wide, smooth plateau, her progress a marathon over the subtle topography of his body. She traversed the gentle slope to the dip of his clavicle, the skin stretched taut and warm over the bone. She trekked down the long, winding ridge of his arm, where fine hairs stood like silent forests in the still air. She felt the thrum of his pulse at his wrist, a subterranean river pounding a relentless, vital rhythm against her feet.
It was a world of monumental textures. The smooth, almost polished skin over his hip. The rougher, cross-hatched terrain of a knee scar, a relic of a childhood bike accident he’d once told her about. The soft, springy thicket of hair on his calf. She moved with a reverent curiosity, a pilgrim on a map only she would ever see.
Her destination, when she finally conceived of it, was not premeditated. It was a gravitational pull.
She navigated the soft valley of his lower abdomen, the air growing warmer, richer. She found the dense, curled thicket and moved through it, a tiny explorer in a dark, private wood. The space she sought was a sheltered fold of skin, a warm, intimate junction perfectly designed for hiding. She slipped into the crevice between the heavy warmth of his scrotum and the soft, flaccid weight of his penis.
It was a sanctuary of profound heat and silence. The outside world—the distant groan of a neighbor’s plumbing, the sigh of wind against the window—was gone. There was only the deep, slow cadence of his sleep, the scent of him, and the enveloping, protective darkness.
Here, she willed herself to grow.
It was a careful, incremental process. Cell by cell, she expanded, filling the space like a seed germinating in fertile ground. She stopped when she was roughly the size of a paperclip, a perfect, compact fit. She curled on her side, her back against one warm wall, her front against the other. The pressure was gentle, constant, immensely comforting. A deep, contented sigh escaped her, a sound too small for his sleeping ears to hear. She pressed a kiss to the skin there, a secret bestowed upon his most vulnerable self, and let his rhythm lull her into her own, small sleep.
The alarm was a violation. A brutal, electronic shriek that shattered the peaceful geography of the night. Mark jolted, his body tensing. Bea, in her snug haven, felt the muscles around her leap and tighten, then slowly relax as he slapped the clock into silence.
He took a deep, waking breath, his body stretching. She felt the world shift around her, a gentle, tectonic adjustment.
“Bea?” His voice was a groggy rumble from far above, muffled by flesh and fabric.
She patted the skin beside her, a reassuring tap-tap. “Present.”
A low, sleepy chuckle vibrated through her.“Okay. Good. Don’t… move or anything. I’m getting up.”
She felt the careful, deliberate motions as he extricated himself from the sheets. The pressure lessened as he stood. Cold air whispered into her sanctuary for a moment before he pulled on his boxers, restoring the warm, close dark. She clung on, a happy stowaway, as he moved through the morning ritual: the shower steam billowing around them, the brisk toweling off, the crisp slide of his shirt over his head.
He dressed around her, his movements mindful. When he was in his suit trousers and buttoning his shirt, he finally reached in, his fingers gentle as petals, and plucked her from her warm nest. He held her up to the morning light filtering through the blinds.
“Commute?” he asked, his thumb stroking her back.
“Commute,” she confirmed, grinning up at the giant, handsome blur of his face.
He tucked her into his front shirt pocket, a small, cotton-lined balcony overlooking the world. She peered out as he drank coffee, as he kissed his keys, as he locked the front door. The familiar journey to the office was a symphony of lurching motions and rumbling engines, seen from a thrilling, new vantage point.
The cubicle was a sarcophagus of beige and fluorescent light. Mark sat down, the familiar sigh of his office chair a dirge. His computer monitor blinked to life, a portal to a world of spreadsheets and pending revisions from Abernathy. The note from Leo about his “brother’s condition” had bought a day, maybe two. The clock was ticking.
He worked with a grim, mechanical efficiency. His fingers danced across the keyboard, correcting figures, adjusting language, building his walls of data one meticulous brick at a time. His face was a mask of professional concentration. Only his eyes, occasionally flicking to the security camera’s little red eye in the corner, betrayed any tension.
Inside his shirt pocket, Bea grew restless. The view was static: the gray fabric of his suit jacket, the distant glow of the monitor. The sounds were dull: the clack of keys, the occasional murmur from a nearby cube. She was a creature of motion and mischief, starving in this desert of routine.
She climbed out of the pocket, scaled the Everest of his tie, and made her way to the open collar of his shirt. She tapped his neck, just below his jawline.
He didn’t flinch.His typing never slowed. But his left hand came up, under the pretense of rubbing a stiff muscle, and she stepped into it. He cupped his hand and brought it to his lips, his breath warm.
“Bored?” he whispered, the word a hidden vibration.
“Dying,” she whispered back, her voice tinny against his skin.
He gave a nearly imperceptible nod. His hand returned to the keyboard, but she was no longer in it. She was scaling the column of his throat, a tiny, intrepid rock climber. He felt the minuscule prick of her hands and feet, a sensation like a series of delicate, static-electric touches. He forced himself to keep typing, to stare at a graph of Q3 projections.
She reached his chin, then his lower lip. He stayed perfectly still, his breath held. He felt her tiny hands grip his lower lip, and with a gymnast’s grace, she swung herself down and in.
The world inside was a cavern of wet, living warmth. The air was thick with the faint, minty trace of his toothpaste and the deeper, organic essence of him. The roof was the ridged, hard palate. Below was the soft, muscular plain of his tongue. She landed on it with a soft, almost inaudible pat.
Mark’s breath hitched. His fingers froze on the keys for a single, betraying second. Then he resumed typing, the rhythm slightly off. She was a vibrant, impossible secret resting on his tongue.
She didn’t stay still. Restlessness was her nature. She braced her hands against the trembling inner wall of his lower lip and began to walk, exploring the hidden geography. She traced the slick surface of his teeth, ran a hand along the sensitive webbing beneath his tongue. It was a landscape of profound intimacy, a place no one else would ever see, and she claimed it with a playful sovereignty.
The effects were catastrophic for his concentration.
A slow, deliberate circle drawn on the ultrasensitive underside of his tongue would send a shiver down his spine, making the numbers on the screen blur into nonsense. A gentle push against his inner cheek would force him to stifle a jerk. His professional emails, usually models of clipped efficiency, began to drift.Dear Ms. Hengstmann, Please find attached the revised quarterly forecast, which accounts for the regional fluxiation in… he typed, before Bea decided to stretch out, pressing her full length against a particularly tender spot.
…fluxiation in the… uh… the markt flugelheiten parameters, he finished, blinking at the gibberish. He hastily backspaced, his face hot.
He couldn’t speak. He could barely swallow. He was a prisoner to the tiny, anarchic goddess conducting a symphony of distraction in his mouth.
After ten minutes of this, a new, urgent signal arose. Not from Bea, but from his own body. He needed water.Coffee. Anything. The physiological need and the delightful torment were on a collision course.
He picked up his company-branded water bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took a careful sip. The water flooded in, a cool deluge. For Bea, it was a sudden, rising tide. She held her breath, pushed off from his lip, and let the current carry her. She swirled in the brief, chaotic pool before he swallowed, the powerful muscular contraction sending her on a brief, thrilling plummet before she was deposited back onto his tongue, damp and disoriented.
He set the bottle down, a shaky breath escaping his nose.This was unsustainable.
His salvation came in the form of a scheduled ten-minute break. He stood, his movements deliberately calm, and walked toward the men’s room. It was empty, thank god. He locked himself in the largest handicap stall.
Leaning against the door, he finally opened his mouth, sticking out his tongue slightly. “Okay,” he breathed, the word distorted. “You win. You’re officially a menace to productivity.”
She stood on the tip of his tongue, hands on her hips, grinning up at the vast, looming ceiling of the bathroom lights. “My job is to menace,” she said, her voice clear in the quiet, tiled space. “You were getting all tense and corporate again. I could feel it in your jaw.”
“I am at work,” he muttered, but the frustration was feigned. The relief of being able to talk, to move his face, was immense.
“And now you’re on break,” she chirped.“My break too. I require stimulation.”
He rolled his eyes, but a smile tugged at his lips. He brought his head down to his cupped hands and gently spat her into his palm. She was slick and shining, a tiny, triumphant being.
“Stimulation,” he repeated, his voice low. He then brought his palm to his face and extended his tongue, giving her a long, slow, deliberate lick from her feet to the top of her head.
She squealed, collapsing into a giggling heap in his palm. “Hey! That’s cheating!”
“You started it,” he said, his smile finally reaching his eyes. He did it again, the broad, wet stroke of his tongue flattening her against his skin, coating her in a fresh layer of his taste. She shrieked with laughter, pushing at the massive, pink muscle.
He indulged her for a few minutes, letting her scramble around his palm, tickling his lifeline with her microscopic adventures. He felt the coiled tension of the morning—Abernathy’s silent scrutiny, the precarious lie, the tedious work—begin to unspool. Her absurdity was an antidote.
When his watch buzzed, signaling the end of his break, the reality settled back over him like a weight. He sighed.
“Back to the salt mine,” he said.
“Ugh. Fine.” She walked to the edge of his palm. “But I’m not going back to the pocket. It’s boring. I want the scenic route.”
He knew what she meant. He brought his hand to his mouth. She stepped onto his lower lip, then turned and blew him a kiss before disappearing back into the warm, dark cavity. She didn’t resettle on his tongue. Instead, she slipped underneath it, finding a snug hiding spot in the frenulum, where she could nestle unseen.
The sensation was different. A subtle, constant presence, a slight fullness. A secret held just under his speech.
He walked back to his cubicle, the taste of her—of them—fading subtly on his lips. He sat, pulled the Hengstmann file back up, and began to type. His work was precise, mechanical, focused. But now, every so often, he would pause. He’d press his tongue to the roof of his mouth, feeling the shape of her beneath. He’d take a covert sip of water, imagining her riding the miniature wave.
He was drafting an email when he felt her shift, a tiny, agitated motion. He stopped typing, feigning deep thought. He brought his hand to his chin, elbow on the desk, and let his mouth open just a crack.
“What?” he breathed, the sound lost in the office hum.
Her voice floated up, a muffled whisper from under his tongue. “I’m bored again. Make the numbers dance or something.”
He suppressed a laugh. He dipped his head and let his tongue sweep through his mouth, finding her and giving her a firm, swirling push. She clung on, giggling silently against the muscle. He could feel the vibration of it.
He straightened up, a strange, blissful calm settling over him. The spreadsheet glowed before him, Abernathy’s looming scrutiny a cloud on the horizon. But here, in the private, wet dark of his own mouth, his wife was dancing. And as long as she was, the fortress of beige and fluorescent light would never fully claim him. His fingers began to move again, clicking steadily, a man doing his work while quietly, miraculously, holding the world at bay.
His fingers found their rhythm again, clicking through the data like a metronome. The distracting, thrilling pressure under his tongue became just another part of his physiology, a secret heartbeat only he could feel. He worked through a complex formula, the numbers aligning with a clean, logical certainty that was its own kind of solace.
Bea, however, was not a static secret.
After twenty minutes of relative stillness, she began to fidget. It started as a subtle shift, a change in her posture he felt more than understood. Then came a deliberate, tiny press against the sensitive membrane. Then another, more insistent. It was morse code for I'm bored out of my mind.
Mark’s typing slowed. He clenched his jaw briefly, a silent plea for patience. She responded by doing a slow, rolling somersault against the base of his tongue.
A small, choked sound escaped his nose. He coughed, covering his mouth, his eyes watering slightly as he fought the convulsive gag reflex. Across the partition, Sandra from Accounting glanced over. Mark gave a weak wave and gestured to his water bottle, as if he’d swallowed wrong.
Which, technically, he hadn’t.
He took a long, controlled breath through his nostrils. It was time for a break. He saved the file, stood, and walked with deliberate calm back to the men’s room. The same stall was free. He locked the door and leaned his forehead against the cool metal.
“Okay,” he breathed, opening his mouth. “You’re officially a disruptive influence.”
She clambered out, sitting on his lower lip like it was a diving board. Her hair was damp and mussed. “Your subconscious is a tedious neighborhood. All white noise and nervous tension. I needed some recreation.”
He brought his hand up, and she stepped into his palm. “My subconscious is trying to keep us from getting fired.”
“It needs to lighten up.” She stretched her tiny arms over her head. “I was considering building a monument out of saliva. It was that or start counting your taste buds.”
He couldn’t help but laugh, the sound echoing softly in the tiled space. The laugh felt good, scraping off a layer of the day’s grim polish. He looked at her, this vibrant, impossible creature standing in the center of his life line. The fear of Abernathy, the weight of the lie, it all receded for a moment.
He bent his head and licked her.
It wasn't a teasing flick this time. It was a long, slow, thorough lap from her feet to the top of her head, a full-bodied, affectionate tasting. She shrieked, tumbling backward into his palm, kicking her legs.“Mark! That’s a whole thing!”
“You wanted stimulation,” he murmured, his voice husky. He did it again, savoring the mineral-clean taste of her skin, the faint echo of lavender from last night’s bath. She giggled uncontrollably, pushing at the broad, wet pressure of his tongue. He indulged her, and himself, for several minutes, playing this intimate, ridiculous game until his watch buzzed.
Back at his desk, she was placated, a warm, still presence beneath his tongue. The world outside narrowed to the glow of the screen and the steady, reassuring weight of her. The revisions began to flow, his focus sharpening to a needle point. He cross-referenced data, polished language, built his case with airtight logic.
He took two more breaks. Each followed the same pattern: her restless signaling, his retreat to the stall, a few minutes of whispered, ridiculous conversation and physical reconnection that reset them both. During one, he simply held her in his cupped hands, breathing her in, saying nothing. She pressed herself against the skin of his thumb, a silent, solid comfort.
The final break was the shortest. She just needed to move. He let her scramble from his mouth into his hands, watched her sprint in a dizzying circle around his palm, and then she nodded, ready to return. The whole interlude took ninety seconds.It was enough.
With her settled, a focused quiet humming in his veins, he attacked the last section. The clock on his screen ticked past four. The office din began to shift, the sounds of chairs rolling back and muted farewells filtering through the partitions. Mark didn’t notice. He was in the zone, that pure space where the work itself was the only reality.
He typed the final period. He read it through once, his eyes scanning for errors, his mind clear.It was good. It was better than good. It was bulletproof.
He attached the files to an email. His subject line was professional, concise: Revised Hengstmann Files – V.2 – Mark Finch. He didn’t add a plea for understanding or a note about his “wife.” The work would speak for itself. He took a deep breath, felt Bea shift in reflexive response, and clicked Send.
The whoosh sound was a release of pressure. His shoulders dropped a full inch. He slumped back in his chair, staring at the screen, at the sent message sitting in his outbox like a delivered verdict. A strange emptiness filled the space where the tension had been.
That’s when he saw it. The other email. The one that had arrived that morning, flagged but unopened, its subject line a cold knot in his gut he’d been avoiding all day. It was from Leo.
His finger hovered over the trackpad. The bubble of post-completion calm popped. Bea, sensing the change in his breathing, went perfectly still.He clicked.
Mark – the email began, no greeting.
Talked to Abernathy. He called, “checking in on you.” Smooth as sandpaper, that one. I gave him the spiel. Acute stress response, possible neurological correlation, blah blah. He sounded… skeptical. Not of the story, but of the timing. He asked for the name of Bea’s treating physician at the ER. Said the company’s insurance might need to file something.
I gave him a name.Dr. Alison Kerr.Friend of a friend. She’s covered for us before. She’s expecting his call. She’ll backdate a note, vague but official.But listen. He’s sniffing. This isn’t about a doctor’s note. He’s looking for a weakness. A pattern of instability. You need to be a rock tomorrow. No cracks.
Also, he mentioned the Richardson account. Wants you to “bring fresh eyes” to the projections. Translation: he thinks the numbers are soft and wants you to find a problem. Attached the files. It’s a minefield.
Call me after you talk to him tomorrow. And for Christ’s sake, tell Bea to stay off your keyboard.
- L
The words blurred. A minefield.Instability. No cracks. The relief of sending the revisions curdled into a sour, metallic fear in his throat. Abernathy wasn’t just doubting the story. He was laying a trap, putting Mark in a position to undermine a colleague’s work or take the fall for it.
Bea tapped urgently against the inside of his cheek. He was holding his breath. He exhaled slowly, a controlled leak of air through his nose, and closed his eyes.
He could feel it then, the delicate, impossible weight of her beneath his tongue. Not just a secret, but a liability. A vulnerability Abernathy would eviscerate if he ever knew. The warmth of her felt suddenly perilous.He opened his eyes. The fluorescent lights hummed a sickly tune. His cubicle walls seemed to lean in, a beige coffin. He reached for his water bottle, his hand steady but cold. He took a sip, the water a bland contrast to the acid fear in his stomach. He swallowed, and the office snapped back into a cruel, crisp focus.
He had finished the revisions. He had sent them off.
But the real work was just beginning.