Indecent...Desires Read online

  ‘You want me to punish you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says hoarsely. He drops a hand to his crotch and squeezes his cock, which I can clearly see is hard, pushing out against the fabric of his trousers. ‘Please, Ms French. Please punish me.’

  ‘What do you think would be a suitable punishment?’

  ‘I want you to…I want to…’ He can hardly get the words out, which tells me that whatever it is, it’s filthy. He is almost too ashamed to ask for it. I find myself holding my breath, eager to hear what it is. ‘I want to be spanked,’ he says. ‘I want to be spanked on the arse.’

  ‘Do you think you’ve been bad enough to earn a spanking?’ I flex my fingers, thinking about how the firm muscles of his backside will feel under my palm. I’ve never spanked a man before in my life, but oh, I want to. I want to so much.

  ‘I…I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m not sure that you have,’ I say. I’m trying to resist the temptation, trying to find a way out of this, but I don’t seem to be able to manage it. Somehow, this young, beautiful man is unlocking fantasies in me that I didn’t know existed, and the thought of his tight, bare backside turning pink under my hand is making me wet.

  I need him to give me a reason to say no.

  ‘I could be worse,’ he says. He has a tight grip on his cock, now. I can see the way his fingers curl round the stiff length, through the fabric of his trousers. He’s talking fast and he’s breathing fast, too. His other hand moves to the fastening of his trousers and pops it open, and then he shoves a hand inside his underwear. He licks his lips, his head falling back as he gets a hold of himself and starts to play. ‘I could wank myself off, here, in front of you. You would have to spank me then.’

  I should walk out of here. I should open the door and walk out, and walk straight into my bosses’ office and have Lucas Brady fired on the spot. He has more than crossed the line now. I’m pretty sure I could turn this into a sexual harassment claim without much difficulty.

  But I don’t want to. God, I love the way he touches himself, as if he’s so turned on that he can’t help himself, as if he just has to do it.

  ‘This is wrong,’ I tell him, as he eases his stiff prick free from his underwear.

  ‘I know,’ he says, as he wraps his hand around it and starts to pump.

  I feel my breath catch, and I lean back against the door and fiddle with the chain around my neck, unable to stop watching. ‘Stop that,’ I tell him, but I can’t bring myself to sound like I mean it. I don’t think I’ve ever sounded less sincere in my life.

  ‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘I’m so hard that my cock hurts. I have to get myself off.’ He slides a glance at me, as his fist works and his cock swells under his touch. ‘Can I ask you something, Ms French?’

  I nod, a slight movement of my head.

  ‘Did you get yourself off when you were watching me? Did you slide a hand into your knickers and play with your clit? Did you stick your fingers inside your pussy?’ He strokes himself faster as he asks me those questions, as he says all those dirty things.

  ‘No.’

  He hand stills. ‘Why not?’

  I think back to last night, when he turned his back on me so that I couldn’t see, about the email he sent me this morning, about the times I’ve shamefully snuck into the toilets here to get myself off because I couldn’t bring myself to do it at home, even though I desperately needed to, and suddenly I’m jealous. I’m jealous of how freely, how easily he accepts his desires when I cannot accept mine. ‘Because I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s wrong! Can’t you see that? You’re so much younger than me, and I’ve been watching you through the window like some sort of desperate pervert. It’s disgusting, Lucas.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ he says, and he sounds suddenly very hurt and vulnerable. He slowly uncurls his fingers and lets his hand hang loose at his side. ‘You should touch yourself, if you need to. Do you want me to do it? I will, if you want me to.’

  ‘No,’ I say hoarsely.

  ‘The door is locked,’ he says gently. ‘No one would know.’

  And it’s then that I begin to realise that maybe there is another way to deal with this, with him, because let’s face it, the other ways I’ve tried haven’t worked. He isn’t going to let it go, and neither am I.

  I’m tired of feeling ashamed. I want to feel something else. I want to feel the way his words make me feel. I want to believe that this is OK, that I am OK. My hand drifts to the front of my blouse, and I gently test the weight of my right breast. It feels sensitive and heavy against my hand. My breasts aren’t particularly big, though my nipples are, and I’ve often thought the combination ridiculous. But I like the feel of that soft, warm flesh under my hand. I like it so much that I unfasten some of the buttons on my blouse and slip my hand inside, my nipple instantly hardening as my fingers find it.

  Lucas is staring at me with flushed, open-mouthed hunger and, all of a sudden, we’re back in the game. The past few minutes are forgotten. The way he is looking at me, his hands fisted at his sides as his cock juts straight out towards me, the little noise he made when I slid my hand inside my blouse makes me feel something I have never felt before.

  ‘You like that?’ I ask him. ‘You want to see what my breasts look like, don’t you. You’re wondering what colour my nipples are, if I’m going to let you suck on them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I see a hand start to drift inwards, towards his crotch, but I stop him with a look and a shake of my head. Then I open another button on my blouse and pull my breast free of the padded satin. My bra pushes it upwards, contorting the shape, my nipple a dark, attention-seeking circle.

  I slip my fingers into my mouth, moisten them, then I gently stroke that sensitive tip. God, it feels good. I wet it some more, stroke it some more, all the while watching Lucas Brady. I’ve never had a man look at me like this before, with such unashamed want. His erect cock jerks, straining out between the flies of his unfastened trousers.

  ‘You want to fuck me, don’t you?’ I say softly, words that I’ve never said to a man before.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘God, yes. Please, Ms French…’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Not this time, Mr Brady. This time you have to learn your lesson.’

  I release my grip on my breast, slide a hand down over the front of my trousers, cupping myself through the fabric. The pressure feels wonderful, accompanied as it is by his groan of desire, but it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough. Feeling his gaze on me, seeing how fiercely aroused he is does something to me.

  I want to see how hard I can make him, how desperate. I wonder if I can make him beg. The side zip of my trousers slides silently down, the fabric falling forwards to give him a glimpse of my cream satin knickers. I push my hand inside and start to finger myself, but it’s not enough. He can only imagine what I’m doing. I want him to see. I want him to know what I’ve been going through for the last month, as I’ve watched him in all his beautiful glory and had to resist.

  I ease my trousers down over my hips, let them fall to the floor, aware every moment of where we are and how wrong this is. But I can’t seem to stop myself from wanting it, from wanting him. My knickers follow suit. I keep my gaze firmly locked onto Lucas Brady as I slide my fingers over my exposed pussy, through the hair that covers my mound and down to the soft wetness below. I stopped waxing when I got my divorce, so I’m hardly neat down there, but Lucas doesn’t seem to care.

  He’s watching the movement of my hand as I touch myself. For the briefest of moments, his gaze lifts and I find myself looking right into those dark, dark eyes and it is as if he understands how much I have held myself back from, how much I am holding myself back even now. I’m exposed, but he isn’t seeing all of me, not yet. My clit is hard and throbbing beneath my fingers and the first rub of my thumb across it has me biting into my bottom lip to keep from crying out.

  ‘Is this what it was like for you?’ I ask.
‘Knowing someone was watching?’ Because the fact that he is watching seems to have heightened every sense in my body, driving me on, driving me to feel more, to want more. My climax is rushing towards me with the force of a freight train and there is nothing I can do to control it. I slide a finger inside my pussy to try and ease the ache, but it’s not enough, so I add another and I fuck myself with my hand as my thumb works my clit and Lucas Brady watches me.

  I am going to come, and I am going to come now, and it is going to be loud and messy and everyone in the office is going to know. Oh, god. I won’t be calm, responsible Meredith any more. I’ll be that horny bitch Meredith, the one who can’t control herself. And then I’m there, riding through an orgasm that makes my head feel like it might explode as my vagina tightens round my fingers in wave after intense wave of pleasure, and I am going to scream, only I can’t.

  Because Lucas Brady is all around me. His hands are on my body, holding me, soothing me, grounding me, as his mouth covers mine and he swallows my uncontrolled howl. He tastes of the two sugars he adds to his coffee and he tastes of something more, and for the briefest of moments I find myself kissing him back, my hands fisted in the front of his tank top.

  But then it is over, and there is nothing in the space but the sound of our breathing. I uncurl my hands and push him away. I snatch at my underwear and my trousers and pull them up, fastening the zip with shaking fingers. I shove a hand through my hair and try to find my balance, but it has deserted me. I pull in some air, force it out again. It only tastes of him, anyway.

  I should say something, I know I should. Something cutting and vicious that will put him firmly back in his place. But I don’t have the words. So instead, I open the door and storm out, marching back to my desk with my head held high and my heart racing. I send out a group email saying that I’ve got a headache and I’m going home, then I shove my feet into my shoes and pick up my bag and leave.

  And wonder how long I can make the headache last.

  Chapter Five

  I spend the rest of the afternoon lying on the sofa and watching rubbish on TV and when that fails to work, I take a bath and reorganise my wardrobe. By the time I’ve polished all my shoes and folded all my weekend T-shirts, I’ve regained some semblance of being in control.

  I stick a ready-made lasagne in the microwave and open a bottle of wine – if I’m going to have a headache in the morning, I might as well make it a good one – and settle down with a book.

  It’s about that time, right before the microwave pings, that I hear the familiar sound of the post being shoved under the door. We have a system in the building where if there’s mail on the mat inside the main door, whoever comes in shoves it under the door of the person it’s meant for. There are only three of us living in the building, so it’s a pretty effective system. It should be. I implemented it.

  I put down my book and get up from the sofa, my bare feet quiet on the floorboards as I make my way over to the door. There, just inside my door, is a small white envelope. I pick it up and turn it over. It has my name on it but it doesn’t have a stamp or the rest of my address. The alarm bells are ringing even before I get it open.

  The stationery is thick, crisp, expensive, just like the kind we use at work. I know as I set my thumb under the flap and tear it open that it is the kind we use at work. My heart pounds, my vision blurring for a second as I try not to think about all the things that could be inside this note, like a polite little letter from Martin Banks telling me that he’s very sorry, but he’s going to have to let me go for inappropriate use of the stationery cupboard.

  But it isn’t from Martin Banks. It’s from Lucas Brady. Two lines in untidy script, with his name scrawled at the bottom. I force myself to read it.

  And then I read it again. And again.

  I go into my bedroom and there, through the window, I can see Lucas. He is sitting on the bed, his back propped against the headboard, a laptop on his knee. He doesn’t so much as glance in my direction.

  I look at the note again. Dear Ms French, it says. I thought you should know watching you get yourself off was the horniest thing I have ever seen, and that after you left, I stayed in the cupboard for another ten minutes so I could have a wank. I came on the floor but I cleaned it up. I am very sorry. Lucas Brady.

  I almost can’t believe his audacity. I wanted to let this go, to pretend that today had never happened. I intended to take tomorrow off work and then go back in and act like everything was normal. All I needed was some space. I have plans for the future and they don’t involve playing sex games with a twenty-four-year-old man. Especially not these sort of games. Lucas is making me explore a side of myself that I’m not sure I want to know, a side that I’ve tried so hard to keep buried, because quite frankly, it scares the shit out of me.

  But I can’t let it go. Not now.

  I shove my feet into a pair of pumps and quickly pull on a cardigan, wanting to get this done before I lose my nerve. I’m about to do something I never thought I would do, and it takes a tremendous amount of courage to leave my flat and cross the road and push the buzzer that links to the top-floor flat.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We need to talk,’ I say, without bothering to tell him that it’s me. If he’s been watching out of his window, he’ll know that anyway. And I can’t let him give me any chance to talk myself down.

  ‘Oh,’ he says. Then, ‘Do you want to come up?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say firmly, before I can think of reasons to say otherwise. I pull open the door as the buzzer sounds and make my way up the narrow, uncarpeted staircase, my shoes squeaking on the bare wood. It feels like I’m crossing a boundary, entering into territory that doesn’t belong to me. I have to take control of the situation but I’m not on my own turf, and that unnerves me. At the top of the stairs, Lucas is waiting in his open doorway. I hear the gentle sound of music filtering out from inside his flat, something cheery with guitars and singing that I would probably enjoy, if I was on my own in my car.

  But not here, not now when I’m so filled with fear and frustration that it is all I can do not to yell at him like some sort of thirty-something harridan with an attitude problem. ‘I got your note,’ I snap.

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Should I not have sent it? Should I have phoned you instead?’

  ‘No, you should not!’ I push past him before I even realise what I’m doing, and then I’m inside his flat, which is comfortably untidy and smells of him. I move into the middle of the living room, take in the faded sofa and the coffee table with the pile of well-thumbed Stephen King novels on top of it. The windowsill is dusty and the curtains are old and don’t match the carpet, yet there’s a sense of comfortableness in here that doesn’t exist in my own flat. I turn, find him standing in the doorway, watching me, and something inside me breaks. Something that had started to shatter back in the darkness of the stationery cupboard at work, when he told me I wasn’t disgusting and I touched myself in front of him.

  For the first time in a long time, I feel in control of my life. Of what happens to me. ‘Show me your bedroom,’ I say finally.

  ‘It’s through here,’ he says, his voice catching in his throat.

  I know what he’s thinking, because I’m thinking it too. I follow him through into that private space, a space I know he would never normally share. I haven’t shared the bedroom in my flat with anyone. I haven’t even shared it with Lucas because I always sat in the dark, refusing to let him see in.

  But he shared his space with me and he’s sharing it now, as he stands aside to let me in. It’s small, dominated by a king-sized bed with a rumpled duvet and a huge chest of drawers. A yellow plastic hanger is hooked on the back of the door, with a shirt draped over it.

  I look at the bed. Lucas looks at me, and then he looks at the bed.

  ‘I would like to fuck you,’ he says. ‘I know it’s wrong of me to say that. But I would really like to fuck you.’

  I turn my head, let my gaze travel over him,
let those words work their way through me. He doesn’t want to have sex with me, to have a missionary position quickie that will satisfy him but not me. He wants to fuck me. ‘I’m not very good at this,’ I say.

  ‘At what?’

  ‘At this.’ I gesture to the room, to the bed, to him.

  ‘Just be yourself,’ he says.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say. Look at yourself.’ I take in his broad shoulders inside his shirt and tank top, the unfastened collar, the messy hair. I take in the tailored trousers, the mismatched socks, the long legs and the glorious bulge at his crotch. The air all but crackles with a sudden spark of tension. ‘Are you ever not hard?’

  He scratches his head, then gives me a little glimpse of those dimples. ‘Sometimes,’ he admits. ‘But I am not very good at controlling it.’

  Be yourself. It sounds so simple, so easy. And maybe it is. Bossy Meredith. ‘Then it’s about time you learned,’ I say. I gesture to his clothing. ‘Get undressed.’

  ‘Completely?’

  I nod. ‘Yes. You are going to get undressed and then I am going to give you a lesson in self-control. Because clearly the one I gave you earlier hasn’t sunk in.’

  His eyes go wide with excitement, and I can see he’s trying not to smile, though he’s not doing a very good job of it. The fluttering in my stomach gets stronger as he pulls off his tank top then tugs off his shirt without even bothering to unfasten it. He lets them both drop to the floor and then starts on his trousers, his hands shaking as he rushes to get them off. And then he’s stood in front of me, completely naked and fiercely erect. I haven’t even taken my shoes off.

  That dark gaze settles on me, and for a moment, he lets me see the wickedness in it. And then he wraps a hand around his cock and slides his fingers slowly to the tip. He glides them over the end, which is already glossy with his arousal. And then he lifts his fingers to his mouth and tastes himself.

  A twinge of jealousy grips me. I straighten up and move up close, close enough for the end of his cock to touch the fabric of my suit trousers. He shudders in a breath as he senses the contact, and I glance down to see the wet, shiny patch that he’s left on me. ‘Look what you did,’ I say. ‘This, Mr Brady, is completely unacceptable. Do you understand that?’