Guilty Pleasure Read online

  I’m in trouble, here. I’m in a whole lot of trouble. He slides his hands out of his pockets, those long-fingered, talented hands that create such beautiful buildings, and places them on my hips, moving his lean body in behind me. We stand like that for a moment, both fully clothed, the thick ridge of his erection pressing lightly against the curve of my bum.

  If someone caught us now, we could still make it look like nothing. But it isn’t nothing. When his hands slide up and his fingers catch the edge of my blouse and pull it free from the waistband of my trousers, it’s so much more than that. He rests his hands on the dip of my waist, and I can feel the heat of him, the warmth of his touch. It sends a shiver of anticipation through me, making it hard to breathe. And then he finds the zip on the side and slowly, carefully eases it down. My trousers drop to the floor, cold air rushing over my skin.

  If someone walked in now, there would be no way to make this look like nothing. If someone walked in now, they would see Ethan on his knees behind me, slowly pulling my knickers down over the curve of my bum. They would see me arching my back and closing my eyes as his fingers gently trace the opening of my cunt. His breath caresses the skin of my bare, exposed arse, then he bites down on my left bum cheek, hard enough to make me squirm. And then he puts his hands on my bum, spreads me wide, and tastes me, lingering, exploring, making it hard for me to breathe and even harder for me to think.

  ‘Tasha,’ he says softly, as he lifts his head and his thumbs slide in, in. ‘You’re so very lovely.’ He rubs his cheek against the back of my thigh, and I can feel the faint graze of stubble. ‘I would like to eat you out slowly. I would like to put my tongue inside you and taste you until you beg me to make you come. I would like to fuck you long and slow and hard. But we don’t have time for that. We need to make this quick, do you understand?’

  He’s breathing quickly, and I can tell he’s excited, and I realise that this is the most I’ve ever heard him talk, and fuck, the sound of his voice turns me on. ‘Yes,’ I say, my voice quivering.

  ‘Just imagine what would happen if we were caught fucking in the office,’ he says, as his fingers continue to work me, one thumb sliding in and out of my cunt, the other sliding forwards to flick over my swollen, sensitive clit. ‘Can you imagine that, Tasha? Can you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘Then you better be quick,’ he says. ‘Because you don’t want to get caught like this, with your pussy exposed as I fuck you with my hand.’

  ‘No.’

  He slides his thumb slowly out of me, and I can feel my body clench, trying to hold onto him. ‘Would you like that?’ he asks. ‘Would you like me to fuck you with my hand?’

  ‘I…I don’t know,’ I reply, not sure what he means. I’m finding it hard to hold onto reality, with the way he’s stroking my clit, slowly, deliberately, just firmly enough.

  ‘Hurry up and decide, Tasha,’ he says.

  So I say the only thing I can. ‘Yes.’

  He slides a finger inside me, stroking, stroking, slowly, slowly, then another, then another, and I shift my legs further apart, opening myself up to him. He’s still stroking my clit, that gentle, precious swirl of contact that is pushing me to the edge of sanity. We shouldn’t be doing this, we both know we shouldn’t, but I don’t think I could stop now even if I tried. He slides another finger inside me, and I’m tight around him, so tight. ‘Relax,’ he says. ‘Breathe.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’

  ‘I don’t think I know how,’ I tell him, and I can feel my voice catch in my throat as I realise how true that is. It’s been so fucking long since I did either that I don’t know if I even remember how. But I have to. I have to. I grip the back of the chair as tight as I can, force down the tears that are burning at the back of my throat, and force myself to focus on taking air into my body, matching the slow thrust of his fingers into my wet cunt, and suddenly I find the rhythm, and my hips are bucking against him.

  ‘Easy,’ he says. ‘Easy.’ And then he takes his fingers away from my clit, and a moment later he leans over me and sets a beautiful silver cufflink on my desk, and I wonder what he’s doing, and I realise that he’s rolling back his shirtsleeve, and I don’t know what to think about that, until I feel him ease all his fingers inside me, and then slowly, slowly, his fingers curve and I feel the shocking push of his fist.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ I say, and my hips buck some more, and then he touches my clit again and then I can do nothing, nothing but breathe. He fills me with his hand, fucks me with it, and the sensation is so intense that I am completely lost to it.

  ‘Hurry, Tasha,’ he says. ‘You don’t want to get caught with my hand in your pussy, do you?’

  I shake my head. I’m too lost for words.

  ‘Then hurry,’ he says again, in that gentle way of his, even though what he’s doing to me isn’t gentle at all, it’s wicked and fierce and intense and brutal and I need to come so badly, to break the dam on all the pressure building inside me, and I know he won’t stop, he won’t let me go until I do.

  So I breathe, and he keeps fucking me with those talented hands, and something inside me snaps. I feel my entire body soften, and there are no deadlines, no ticking clock, no straight lines and no boundaries, there is only joy.

  And then I start to come. It tiptoes over me slowly, devastating in its intensity, and I scream out my pleasure in a silence built entirely from shock.

  ‘Good girl,’ he says, his fist still inside me. I’m shaking, unable to speak.

  I open my eyes, take in my desk, my computer, my pens, the beautiful silver cufflink, and reality comes back to me in a hot, clammy rush. It was easy to ignore it, before.

  It’s not so easy now. I reach behind me and push at his hand and he takes it out of me, leaving behind an empty, aching soreness. I try to pull up my trousers, but my hands are shaking and my knees are weak and when I let go of the chair, I think I might fall over.

  ‘Let me,’ he says, and sets his hands to my hips and turns me round. He carefully redresses me, easing up my knickers and my trousers and easing up the zip. I shudder out a breath as he tucks in my blouse. We don’t look at each other. And then I hear something, the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and I can tell Ethan hears it too.

  Someone is coming. We break apart, put distance between us. ‘We could have been caught,’ I say to him, a warning to both of us.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘We could.’

  And something in his voice tells me that he hoped we would.

  Chapter Four

  The door swings open and Cal strolls in. I know the instant he sees us, because his eyes narrow and he makes a beeline for my office. I pull out my chair and sink into it and try to look unflustered as Ethan rolls down his sleeve and folds his cuff back into place. I see Cal Bailey look at the cufflink on my desk, look at me, look at Ethan.

  ‘I thought you were going home,’ he says to me.

  ‘I forgot something,’ I say. ‘Had to come back for it.’ It’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me.

  ‘Oh,’ Cal says. Then he turns his attention to Ethan. ‘I just wanted to check that we were still on for our meeting tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ethan says.

  ‘Good,’ Cal says. ‘See you at ten thirty, then.’

  And with a final, lingering look at me, he leaves.

  I watch as the door swings shut. ‘He suspects something,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ Ethan says. ‘I think he probably does.’

  This is the point at which I should say that we need to stop what we’re doing. That it breaks a million professional rules. But I don’t. Because I am beginning to realise something about Ethan, something I can’t bring myself to voice out loud, not yet, just in case I’m wrong.

  I’m beginning to realise something about myself, too.

  The fact that we might get caught excites me. It adds this thick layer of erotic excitement to everything. I could suggest
that we do what other people do, what normal, sensible people do, and we screw in the privacy of our own homes at the weekend, and during the week we act like there’s nothing going on, even though everyone in the office knows that there is something going on because one Sunday morning Dave from accounts saw the two of us kissing in the supermarket.

  But I don’t suggest that, and neither does Ethan.

  Instead, I pick up my bag and we walk to the door and he holds it open for me, and just for a split second, our gazes meet, and there is such hot hunger in his eyes that I am quite undone. And then my hands are in the lapels of his jacket and I am tugging him closer and his hands are on my arse and we almost, almost lose control.

  And right before we do, I let him go. I straighten my jacket and shake back my hair, then I turn and walk away, gripping the handrail tightly so that I don’t trip on the stairs. I make it to the bottom of the stairs before I can breathe. Cal almost caught us. A couple of minutes earlier and he would have. He would have found us there, me half naked with Ethan’s fist in my cunt, gasping out my orgasm. I don’t think I’d have been able to stop if he had, and I don’t know if that scares or excites me.

  We could have gone in Ethan’s office, could have locked the door and hidden ourselves away, but we didn’t. We were open and on display and it’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that it wasn’t because we were too strung up on passion, on our need for each other. It was for another reason entirely.

  I push open the door and step out onto the street, which is empty now, quiet, during the lull between the work crowd leaving and the evening crowd arriving. I don’t know how long I stand there for, just breathing, but when I turn around Ethan is stood next to me. He looks so perfect, so pristine, that it’s hard for me to reconcile him with the man who did what he did to me upstairs in the office. Who touched me so skilfully, so shamelessly, who made me surrender so completely that I almost lost myself, and is quite possibly the most fucking exciting man I’ve ever met.

  ‘Tasha,’ he says.

  ‘Ethan.’

  I said his name before, but it’s never felt like this, so wickedly sinful on my tongue.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he says, but he doesn’t move.

  ‘I suppose you will,’ I reply, but I don’t move either. It’s almost as if I am fixed to the ground, held there by some invisible force. I can’t bring myself to move away from him. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  He stares down at the ground, tucks his hands into his pockets. ‘I could ask the same thing of you.’

  And it would be a good question. A bloody good question. One I’m not sure I have the answer to, though I’m trying to figure it out. I pull in some air, let it out again. ‘Because it’s exciting,’ I say finally. There. I admitted it.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Isn’t it just.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then,’ I say.

  He nods. ‘Tomorrow.’

  And then he walks away.

  I watch him go, watch the swing of his legs and the way his hair gleams in the sun, the way the women he walks past take a second look and pretend not to, the way he doesn’t even seem to notice. He walks like he’s got somewhere to go and doesn’t want to be late, with a sort of determined purpose that I find insanely sexy. I should go to the train station and go home, but I need some air to clear my head, some space, something, so I take a walk into town. I’m not sure what I’m doing until I find myself staring in a shop window, and then I know.

  I walk inside, ignoring the shop assistants who clearly don’t want a customer this late in the day and aren’t willing to help me. I find what I’m looking for and buy it without even trying it on. The assistant gives me a fake smile and tosses it into a bag as I enter my pin, a shiver of excitement shooting down my spine as I wonder what Ethan will think when he sees me in a skirt, instead of my usual trousers. Then I walk to the train station and go home.

  The next morning, I’m awake at five, sweating and tangled in the sheets. I’ve spent the night flying through shockingly erotic dreams, everything depicted in perfect Technicolor. I could taste him, smell him, they were that vivid. That creamy skin with a hint of gold, the bright flash of his hair contrasting so sharply with the black of his suit. He was never naked, always sharply dressed. I was the one who was exposed, baring everything to him, begging him for more and more and more.

  And he smiled and gave it to me, with his hands and his mouth and his cock. I shower, get dressed, play around with a piece of toast before tossing it into the bin, then I put on power lipstick and get my head together and leave. I’ve got a meeting with Mr Donovan later, and I’ve got to be on my game.

  I stroll into the office, dump my bag on my desk, get coffee. If any of the others notice my change of outfit, they don’t say anything, at least not until Cal strolls up to my desk. He leans to the side, gives my legs the once over, then straightens up and looks at me. ‘Boss has called a group meeting at half nine,’ he says. ‘I don’t know if you got the memo.’

  ‘Of course I did,’ I say. Although I didn’t. I haven’t even checked my emails yet. Usually I’m here early, so that I can already be working by the time everyone else arrives, but I couldn’t seem to make it work this morning. I blame the power lipstick. I give Cal a dismissive look, then I pick up my phone and pretend to make a call. As soon as he’s gone, I open my email, and there is it, a message from the big boss Mr Thomas. He’s a sexist old bore, but fortunately he doesn’t spend too much time mingling with the staff. I check the clock. Nine fifteen. I pick up a notepad and pen and my phone, and make my way to the meeting room down the hall. I take a seat at the big conference table, fiddle around with my phone as the other seats start to fill up. I don’t see any sign of Ethan.

  Maybe he’s not here today. Maybe he’s late. No, Ethan is never late. Cal Bailey strolls in and takes a seat on the other side of the table. I ignore him. Finally, just when I think he’s not coming, Ethan walks in, followed by Mr Thomas.

  The seats are all full, and Ethan stays by the door. I can’t see him unless I look back over my shoulder, and I can’t do that unless I want everyone in the room to wonder why I’m staring at him.

  Mr Thomas doesn’t waste any time. He launches straight into it, into a speech about plans to build a new shopping centre on the other side of town, and how he wants the contract. And then my phone vibrates. I snatch it up off the table, cursing myself for not turning it off like I usually do. I hide it under the table as Mr Thomas carries on pontificating. Dammit, I have to check the message, although it’s probably Mr Donovan, changing his mind again.

  It’s not.

  The message is short. Two words. Nice skirt.

  Who the hell sent that? I glance around the table, shake back my hair, pretend I’m listening to Mr Thomas. Various people have their phones out, but no-one looks particularly guilty.

  And then my phone buzzes again. Are you wearing anything underneath it?

  I blink, read it again to be sure I read it right. I did. And before I can glance back over my shoulder, before I can think of a reply more intelligent than Of course I am, another one arrives. And another.

  God, I want to fuck you.

  I want to put my cock inside you.

  I wish I’d fucked you already. I wish you were sitting there with my come slowly sliding out of you, thinking about me.

  I can hardly breathe. Because now he’s put that thought there in my mind, it’s expanding, filling me with hot, wicked desire. I hear the door go, and I instinctively know that Ethan has just left the room. I try to stay in my seat, I try so hard, but Mr Thomas is droning on and on and on and all I can think about is Ethan, and I glance down at my phone, and I see another message.

  Hurry, Tasha.

  I shoot to my feet, mumble some excuse, shove back my chair and walk out of the room as fast as I can without running. I almost trip, but I manage to right myself at the last minute, shovin
g the door open so hard that it bangs against the wall before swinging shut.

  Ethan is waiting for me in the corridor, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, one thumb idly stroking over his bottom lip.

  ‘This is madness,’ I tell him.

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘Where?’ I ask.

  For a moment, I think he’s going to say right there in the corridor. He moves towards me, the move so smooth and quick that I barely see it coming. He flattens me against the wall, his long, lean body holding me there as his hand finds its way up my skirt, and my mouth finds its way to his.

  ‘Fuck, Tasha,’ he says. ‘What the hell are you doing to me?’ And then he moves away, chest heaving, hands curved into fists at his sides. He looks unsure suddenly, confused and uncertain. ‘You’re driving me crazy,’ he says. ‘You’ve been driving me crazy for months.’

  I move closer. ‘I want you,’ I say. I maybe say it a little too loud, because his gaze flicks to the door of the meeting room before moving back to me. ‘I want you to fuck me, and I want to spend the rest of the day squirming at my desk because my knickers are wet with your come and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.’

  He makes a sound, a low, rough sound, and then he reaches for me, taking my hand and dragging me along the corridor to the nearest empty office. He pulls me inside, kicks the door closed. I put my hands on his chest and shove him back towards the desk. Pens and paper go flying as he moves back against it, his hands scrabbling for grip. Thighs spread wide, he sits on the edge and as I reach for the opening of his trousers, I look at him.

  He’s watching me steadily, those water-blue eyes unwavering, hungry, as if he’s waiting for me to make the next move.

  I tug open his belt, tug down his flies. ‘I’m on the pill,’ I tell him.

  ‘I’m clean,’ he says. ‘I haven’t…’

  I cover his mouth with my hand, hush him before he can say anything more. I don’t need to know. I don’t want to know. I just want this to be what it is, the two of us, here and now, doing something we know we shouldn’t be doing, unable to resist. ‘Hurry,’ I say. ‘Hurry.’