Guilty Pleasure (2 page)

I turn, press my ear against the door, but the pounding of my pulse is so loud that I can’t hear anything over it. Crap. I can’t stay in here all night, though I’m thinking about it. I press my hands to my face, my shame burning my palms. Why didn’t I resist? Why didn’t I go home and let my favourite vibrator Mr Big have his way with me?

Why did it have to be Ethan?

I run through a million ways out of this, most of which involve variations of me staying in my office until they find my desiccated corpse on the floor, and realise that I’ve got only one option.

I’m going to have to bullshit my way out of it.

I set my fingers to the door handle, take a deep breath, steeling myself to greet him with a quick hello and act as if nothing happened. After all, I don’t really know what he saw. Maybe the desk hid everything. Maybe he turned up the second after I’d done, and all he saw was me slumped in his chair with my eyes closed, and I can pretend I felt a bit faint, that’s all. Maybe he didn’t in fact see me frigging myself senseless behind the desk, with my legs spread wide and my fingers in my pussy and a look of ecstasy on my face.

Yes. And maybe my orgasm face is attractive and not completely demented.

I open the door.

He isn’t there. The place is empty, silent except for the whirr of the air conditioning. For a second, I think that I imagined it, then I catch the faintest trace of his aftershave in the air. It hits me like a cricket bat to the stomach.

Ethan Hall just caught me masturbating. Mr Uptight, Mr Don’t-use-ten-words-when-one-will-do just caught me getting myself off right there on the swivel chair in my office. The door at the far side of our floor opens and the cleaners clatter in. I dash back to my desk, grab my handbag, flick off my computer screen and lock my desk drawer. I have to get out of here. I can’t breathe.

I push past the cleaners, barely hearing their hellos, and make my way down the stairs. By the time I make it outside I am utterly convinced that I’ve just killed my career and ruined my entire life. I walk to the train station in a complete daze, and how I get on the right tube and get off at the right stop is beyond me.

I stagger into my house and collapse on the sofa in the dark. I sit there like that for long, too long, staring mindlessly into space, trying to figure out what the hell to do now.

By the next morning, I still haven’t figured it out. I spent most of the night lying awake in bed, trying not to think about it. At best, I’ll have to change my name and leave the country. At worst…well, the worst doesn’t even bear thinking about.

I pull on a suit, a blouse, fix my hair and makeup and catch the train to work. When I get inside, everything seems normal. No-one says anything. When I sneak a glance in the direction of Ethan’s office, the door is closed. I drink coffee and work and drink more coffee and buy a pair of shoes on my phone, and by half eleven, I’m beginning to think that maybe this is going to be okay. Maybe he didn’t see. Maybe he did see, but he’s going to act like he didn’t. Maybe if we never speak of it, it didn’t happen.

And then a little box pops up on the corner of my computer screen.
You have new email!
I automatically click through to my inbox. It’s probably Mr Donovan, changing his mind for the fiftieth time.

It’s not from Mr Donovan.

It’s from Ethan.

I don’t want to read it. I can’t read it. I’m not going to read it. I click delete and go back to the plans I was working on, only I can’t focus and basically I’m just drawing Lego houses. Twenty minutes later, my email pings again. I click delete again. Denial, denial.

Denial doesn’t really work when he rings my office phone and I answer it. ‘Tasha,’ he says. ‘Can I have a quick word?’

‘I’m a little busy,’ I say.

‘It’s important,’ he says. His tone is sharp, and through the open door of my office, I hear fingers stop tapping away at keyboards as the admin staff out on the main floor pause and listen in to our conversation.

Damn it. My cheeks flame. ‘Fine,’ I say. I slam down the phone far harder than I intend to, then put some steel in my spine, walk through into his office and carefully close the door. He’s sat behind his desk, a vast expanse of polished oak, in a dark swivel chair the same as mine. My stomach drops to my knees. I pick at my cuticle then remember that I don’t do that any more, and stop myself.

He clears his throat. ‘About yesterday,’ he says.

Dear god, this is awkward. I know that everyone outside is wondering what’s happening in here. Wondering what we’re doing. Thomas Associates isn’t a place where a lot happens. When we swapped from digestives to custard creams, everyone talked about it for a week. This little confrontation will be gossip fodder for a month. If not longer. ‘What about it?’

He raises an eyebrow. ‘We need to talk about what happened.’

‘Which was?’ I can’t stand this. I can’t listen to him talk in that cut-glass accent. I’m tired and anxious and being in here with him must be messing with my head, because I’m looking at him and I’m remembering the way he looked when I caught that glimpse of him through the half-open door last night.

‘Tasha,’ he says quietly. ‘We both know what you were doing.’ He sits there, watching me with those pale blue eyes, his arms folded, and I’m suddenly struck by how attractive he is. It’s not the loud, brash sexiness of Cal Bailey, but something quiet and dignified, with cheekbones that could cut glass, and that accent that definitely does.

I bet he’s really filthy. Why did I not see that before?

And now I’ve got that thought in my head, I can’t get rid of it.

‘I’m not trying to make this difficult,’ he says. ‘I simply want to make sure we can move forward from it.’

‘What do you want from me?’ I hiss out the words, because I really want to shout them, but I can’t. ‘I did it, you caught me. Now you’re either going to make an issue of it, or you’re not. Which is it?’

‘That depends.’

‘Depends on what?’ I can feel my anxiety growing inside me, a black, oily thing, only it’s less like anxiety and more like rage, now. I’m tired of having to work myself into the ground in order to get ahead. I’m tired of not only having to work the same as the men, but having to outwork them.

‘On you,’ he says.

Oh, I get it. ‘I see.’ I shake my head. It figures. He is a man, after all. ‘You think because you caught me doing…because you caught me, I owe you? Name your price. Sex on the desk? Handjob? Blowjob?’ I straighten up, fold my arms. ‘I could have you for sexual harassment, you know.’ My anger is a big, hungry beast now, fuelling me as I stalk to the door. I let it fill me, don’t even try to fight it back, because it’s easier to put the blame on him than carry it all myself.

His voice stops me, pulls me up short. ‘A blowjob would be nice,’ he says.

I spin around. ‘What?’

A soft silence falls, and I stay very, very still. I don’t quite know what’s happening here, but there’s a sudden tension in the air, an electricity that I’ve never been aware of before.

‘Say that again,’ I order him.

He leans back in his chair with his hands resting loosely in his lap. ‘A blowjob would be nice,’ he says again. ‘If you feel it would help you move on.’

‘Help
me
?’

‘Yes.’

I open my mouth and prepare myself to launch a blistering refute, but nothing comes out. He doesn’t move from his chair, and I don’t move from my position by the door. And in the moment when I know I should say no, when I know I should storm out of his office, I do the opposite.

‘Someone might catch us,’ I say softly.

‘Yes,’ he replies. His voice is very quiet, very gentle. ‘They might.’

That thought sends a shiver of excitement crashing through me that is so strong it almost makes me gasp. When I thought about getting caught before, it wasn’t like this. It made me feel powerful, and reckless, and strong.

It didn’t turn me on.

I lift my hand, beckon him closer. He hesitates for a moment, then he gets up from his desk, walks over to me. We stand there, close but not touching, for a long moment. He smooths his tie, which is silver silk, and I fasten my suit jacket. I’ve never been this close to him before. He’s a lot taller than I realised, and his hair is shot with strands of gold mixed in amongst the red, and he’s got the faintest of freckles, and something about his mouth makes me weak.

I sink slowly to my knees. We still aren’t touching, but being in this position in front of him intensifies my excitement. He carefully unfastens his jacket, moving the sides apart to give me easy access to his belt. The buckle gives with a soft clink, and as I unfasten his trousers, my knuckles graze against the hard, warm wall of his lower belly. When I ease down the zip and realise that he isn’t wearing anything underneath, I nearly swallow my tongue.

When I see his cock, I think I definitely do.

Long and thick and so very, very hard, the slit at the end is already slippery and wet. I open my mouth, taste him. I wrap my fingers around the base, as far as they will go, and squeeze until I can feel his pulse against my fingers, and then I lower my head and open my mouth around his dick.

‘Hurry,’ he says, his voice low and rough. ‘Hurry. We might get caught.’

Yes. Yes we might. With a slow twist of my hand, I work my mouth slowly down the length of his lovely cock, taking him as deep into my mouth as I can and holding him there. I slide back along his length, right to the tip, swirl my tongue around the swollen head and through that slit at the end.

I should rush. I should work him hard and fast, get him off, but I don’t want to. I want to savour this, to take my time, because I don’t think I’ve ever had my mouth round a cock as stunning as this one. And because with every passing second, the chance that someone might walk in and see us increases, and the thought of it sends a rush of hot, wet heat flooding into my cunt.

The other staff are just on the other side of the door. I can hear the sounds of their chatter, the clatter of keyboards and the thud of footsteps as people move around, doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

I suck to the end of his cock again, find the sensitive spot just below the head and slowly work it, looking up at him as I do so. I don’t expect to find him watching, and the jolt of those water blue eyes goes right through me. His mouth is slightly open, and he licks his bottom lip, and fuck, he’s hard. He slides a hand into my hair, gentle at first, then he gets a good grip and I realise what he wants.

He reaches out and presses his other hand against the door, holding it closed, and then he pulls my head forwards, pushing his cock deep into my mouth. A rock of his hips, and he pulls back. ‘Hurry,’ he says softly, eyes gleaming, cheeks flushed. ‘We don’t want to get caught, Tasha.’

No, we don’t. But I think he likes the fact that we might.

He fucks back into my mouth again. ‘Suck harder,’ he says. ‘You don’t want to get caught with my cock in your mouth, do you?’

I try to shake my head, but my mouth is too full of cock to manage it properly. I’m right up on my knees now, both hands wrapped around the thick base of his erection as he sets the pace, sets the rhythm, makes sure I don’t slow, I don’t falter. And things are getting sloppy now, and it’s getting harder and harder to stay quiet, and I want so much to shove a hand inside my knickers and finger myself.

He smells of soap and sex and the fur around the base of his cock is red, too, and I can’t even begin to describe how much it fascinates me. He’s pulled his shirt up a little, and I can see the faint blue veins that trace under the skin of his belly, the dip of his bellybutton, the lean play of muscle under the skin.

‘Fuck, I think I need to come,’ he says.

And then someone knocks on the door.

I nearly lose my rhythm, but he doesn’t let me. I grip him tighter, suck him harder, deeper, as he closes his eyes. ‘Just a minute,’ he calls. He almost manages to make his voice sound normal.

Hurry, Tasha, hurry. He’s breathing fast now, and so am I. Fuck, what are we doing? We should stop, only I can’t stop, because he’s coming. He’s coming right in my mouth in thick, hot spurts, more and more, and fuck, it’s hot.

But there isn’t time to think about it, to do anything more than swallow and wipe a hand across my mouth as I push to my feet and shove my hands back through my hair and watch as he hastily fastens his trousers and tucks his shirt back into them and smooths his tie.

He doesn’t say anything, and neither do I as he opens the door and I walk out, still dazed. I bump my way past Cal Bailey, who grins at me in that cheeky way of his as he strolls into Ethan’s office.

I stagger back to my desk, barely able to focus, drop into my chair and sit there, staring at my screensaver and wondering what the hell just happened.

Ethan Hall happened, that’s what. All over my tongue.

Chapter Three

Somehow, I manage to make it to the end of the day, though I’m not sure I’ve been particularly productive. I’ve answered three emails from Mr Donovan and drunk far too much coffee, and I can’t seem to stop myself from thinking about Ethan. It’s suddenly occurred to me that I know absolutely nothing about him, apart from the fact that he’s got a beautiful cock. Everything I think I know I’ve basically assumed, which isn’t the same as knowing at all.

Realising this makes me feel strange and confused, as if I’ve stepped into an alternate reality where everything is familiar and yet everything is strange at the same time. It gets to six and everyone starts to leave, and for the first time in months, I shut off my computer and get my bag and leave too. I have to. If I don’t, I’ll be in that chair in his office, desperately trying to masturbate away the tingling ache that I’ve had between my thighs all bloody day. And I don’t want to do that. All of a sudden, what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks feels wrong, and I can’t work out why.

When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I bump straight into Ethan and Cal. Shit.
Shit.
Talk about bad timing. I think about ignoring them and going straight home, but there’s no way to do that without looking rude, and anyway, they’re both looking at me with obvious curiosity.