Two minutes passed with agonizing slowness while she waited for the answer.
Because you said so.
She had to smile at that and admit it was true, at least as far as her word choice was concerned.
So who are you? She waited, tension coiled tight in her belly and had almost given up when the new comment appeared, the answer that would keep her up, tossing and turning, for most of the rest of the night.
I’m what you want.
* * *
“Thanks for the coffee.” There was no way for her not to say it, not with Lane holding the elevator door open for her yet again. “It was good.”
The door closed with a slow, dull thud, but the cranky elevator didn’t move. Lane punched the button for the fourth floor. The elevator shuddered slightly as a grinding noise came from above them and then lurched into its ascent.
“Was it what you wanted?” The question, asked so casually, wasn’t what made the breath catch in Eve’s throat.
No, that was from the look in Lane’s eyes.
“It was good,” she repeated, her voice gone whisper soft. Hoarse.
Lane smiled. “Good.”
If this was a story, she’d have pushed him back against the hazy mirrored wall and had her way with him...but this wasn’t one of her stories. Nothing ever was, that was the problem. Men—real men—inevitably disappointed, and dating someone she worked with?
Not a fantasy she’d ever had, not even in her blog.
She cut her gaze from his though she sensed his eyes on her until the elevator jerked to a reluctant stop and the doors creaked open. He reached to hold the door, which had a penchant for trying to trap people, and Eve stepped through with a murmured “Thank you.”
“Any time,” Lane said.
For one instant an image of Lane bending her over a smooth, polished desk filled Eve’s mind. Blood lifted to the surface of her skin, bringing heat. Her fingers would be spread. His hands would lift her skirt...
“Hey, Lane, I was looking for you!” Debbie Chambers, Eve’s pod neighbor, pounced. “I’ve got a problem with my computer. Can you come help me?”
Eve didn’t wait to see if Lane gave Debbie the same slow smile he’d given her. She walked off with a small wave, not looking back.
There was one major problem with that little scenario anyway, she thought as she slid into her chair and logged in. They worked at Digiquest, home to the typical office cubicle jungle. Nary a polished wooden desk to be found, even if it was what she wanted.
Was it what she wanted?
I am what you want.
For an instant, she heard the words from last night’s newfound admirer spoken in Lane’s voice. She knew how he’d sound, how his voice would dip low and gravelly, even though she’d never heard it that way. Her belly tightened and her fingers hovered over the keyboard, itching to open her blog. To see if Tell_me had commented again.
Surfing the Internet for personal use was officially forbidden, even though she knew many of her colleagues spent as much time online shopping, paying bills or chatting with their friends as they did on their queues. She’d never heard of anyone getting in trouble as long as they met their quotas and didn’t do something stupid, like download porn. She didn’t consider the stories she wrote as Eris Apparent porn, but they were certainly skirting the issue of what was or wasn’t work-safe.
The long, dull hours of fairly mindless work had always provided the perfect time for her to think of what she wanted to blog about. She often spent entire days locked deep in her fantasies, perfecting and honing the words she’d later use to describe her imaginary sensual exploits. Her blog was a beautiful addiction, the rush she got from writing and commenting as compelling as the ecstasy brought on by drugs or booze. The interlude this morning and the conversation with Lane in the elevator had merely amplified her desire, but with the problems her computer was having, she didn’t dare do anything about it.
It was a very, very long day.
By the time she got home, her body ached from tension caused by the hours of sexual fantasy. She had her entire entry plotted out, with no more than the most minor of changes needed to create the perfection she owed her readers. Hell...owed herself.
The computer screen flickered to life when she tapped the keyboard, waking from its sleep like a lover lifting his head from the pillow to greet her as she came home. The comparison gave her a moment’s pause, but only a moment’s. Her computer was more of a lover to her than any man had been in months. It certainly gave her more of what she needed in a partner. Always ready, always available, always faithful. She opened her browser, then her e-mail program, and smiled as the ping, ping, ping alerted her to a full inbox.
Twelve new comments and a few extra e-mails, too.
She savored the anticipation. Had he commented? Though the anonymity of the Internet meant it could have been a woman, she knew it was a he, a man. It had to be.
She deleted several messages offering to enlarge her penis and skimmed the comment notifications, none of them from him. But the second to last e-mail was from a username she recognized.
She let out a breath she’d been unaware of holding.
“Well, hello,” she murmured as her fingers on the keys stroked open the message.
Two words only, but they hit her like a tsunami.
I’m waiting.
* * *
I should be angry by the time you come through the door, because you’re late. Instead, the waiting has only made me hungrier for you. I wait until you set down your briefcase, close the door, shrug out of the charcoal gray jacket of your expensive suit. I wait as you hang it carefully, so it doesn’t rumple. When you reach to loosen the knot of the tie at your throat, I can’t wait any longer.
It makes a nice leash by which to lead you. A handle I can use to open you for me. I pull it, hard, silk fisted in my fingers, and your mouth comes down to meet mine.
You smell of cologne and newsprint, of expensive lunches and hostile takeovers. Your clothes cost more than some people’s car payments, and your body beneath them is sculpted from hours in the gym.
Do I care who you are behind your wide, smooth mahogany desk? Behind your contracts and your Montblanc pen? Do I care who you are in the office? No. Because you’re here now, and you’re mine, and that’s what matters to me.
“Take off your shirt, but leave the tie.”
Your look, quizzical, doesn’t stop you from obeying. You tug the knot harder, widen the loop and ease it from the prison of your collar. You strip yourself of pink linen and toss the shirt to the floor, careless with it in a way you were not with your jacket.
“And the pants.”
Oh, you enjoy this, and the pants are down around your ankles and kicked to the side in minutes. Socks come next, but I don’t tell you to take off your briefs. Not yet. I like to watch the shape of your cock beneath the soft, heather-gray cotton. I like to watch you get hard for me.
This is what I want, to be on my knees in front of you. I want to run my hand over your prick and watch your hips bump forward against my caress. I want to nuzzle the crisp, curling hairs of your thighs and inhale your scent. I want to close my eyes and bump at the front of your boxer briefs with my face, the way a cat will bump at its owner’s hand to encourage petting.
I wet the front of your briefs with my mouth, my breath hot and seeping through the fabric to cover you. I want to feel the outline of your erection with my lips and teeth and tongue blunted by the material. I want you to thread your fingers in my hair and tug to tip my head so I look up at your face.
I want to hear you say, “Please,” as if my mouth on your cock is a gift you’re not certain you deserve.
I want to give it to you.
Down go the briefs, over your thighs, knees, calves, ankles. Now there is nothing between my mouth and your cock but desire, and soon enough not even that, because I engulf you.
That sound you make, that low, startled moan, never ceases to amaze and arouse m
e. I am on my knees before you and sucking your dick, my hand on your balls, and you whisper my name.
That is the gift you give me, the sound of my name in a rough rasp. You give me your need, your desire, your passion. You give me your ecstasy, too, the taste of you flooding my mouth.
I want to come with your cock lodged in my throat and your hands pulling my hair. I want to come to the sound of my name, shouted, and the pulse of your prick against my tongue.
* * *
Eve was almost late to work again, but this time she couldn’t blame the slow elevator. She’d stayed up too late the night before, replying to comments and e-mails from her mysterious new admirer. They’d both been online, his replies to her coming nearly as fast as instant messages.
She hadn’t been quite ready to offer that next level of communication, somehow more intimate than simple e-mails and yet not as personal as the telephone. The barrier of time between replies allowed her the luxury to think of what she wanted to say. It was easier to remain Eris when she could make each message almost a mini blog entry of its own, when she could take her time to form her words. Real-time conversation intimidated her.
She hadn’t signed off until that point in the night just before it would have made more sense to stay awake until morning. She’d fallen asleep almost at once despite the fever of blood pulsing in her veins and dreamed exquisitely of hands, mouths, tongues and cocks. She’d woken as orgasm rippled through her, twenty minutes after her alarm had rung unheard in the erotic landscapes of her dreams.
Today coffee wasn’t just a want, it was a physical need, and not poofy designer coffee, either. Eve gripped an industrial-sized double espresso as she rounded the corner to her pod and stopped short.
“Morning.” Lane bent over her desk. “I’m here to fix your computer.”
His tie, patterned with a long, ceaseless stream of numbers, fell over her keyboard. She couldn’t stop staring at it. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him wear a tie before. “Oh.”
“Routine inspection.” Lane worked the mouse to bring up a scrambled bunch of files Eve couldn’t interpret. “Apparently management wants to replace some of this equipment, rebuild some of the databases. Yours was logged as one of the ones having trouble.”
Eve leaned against the padded wall of her pod. “Have you figured out why my chat connections keep dropping?”
“Let me bring up your directory.” Lane pointed to her monitor. “I’ll be able to figure out what’s going on from there.”
He straightened. Eve watched his fingers stroke the smooth material. Over the past two years she’d watched those hands dismember a hard drive and fly over a keyboard with the precision and genius of a piano virtuoso playing a concerto. Lane had very, very nice hands. Strong and nimble, yet gentle enough to coax a recalcitrant computer back from death or force it into submission.
Eve had spent hours thinking of Lane’s hands.
“Nice tie,” she said abruptly, when he caught her staring.
“It’s pi.”
“Pie?” Eve’s brow furrowed momentarily as she imagined cherry or blueberry, only after a moment realizing he meant the number. “Oh. Pi. I get it. Clever.”
Again Lane’s long fingers smoothed over the satiny material. “Yeah. I felt like wearing a tie today.”
“I like it,” Eve said.
Silence.
Lane smiled.
An inferno burned in her cheeks as Eve busied herself suddenly with a stack of paperwork. She’d never considered herself shy by any means, but she wore her lust for him in the quirk of her lips and flutter of her lashes. She didn’t want him to see it.
“Here’s your problem.” He pointed to her monitor. “Someone’s been playing around online.”
“It wasn’t me,” she said a second before his teasing smile told her he hadn’t meant her. “Must be the night shift.”
“I know. I can tell who it is,” he said with a lift of his chin at the long list of files. “The time they logged in, what sites they’re surfing. All of it.”
Eve thought of the day he’d brought her coffee and was very glad she’d resisted blogging at work over the past week. “The night shift must have a lot of free time.”
“Yeah.” Lane bent to peer at the screen. “And someone likes to hit the personals sites.”
“Is that what’s screwing up my computer?” Not that she cared, actually, because as long as her chat connections kept dropping she’d be paid to watch Lane work.
“Yep. But don’t worry. I can fix it.” He shot her another grin and heat flared again...this time, much lower down. “Just call me Dr. DeMarco.”
He was killing her. Absolutely killing, she thought as he bent back to work, fingers caressing her keyboard with as much intimacy as if he were touching her body.
And he didn’t even know it.
* * *
This is what I want.
The lines around your eyes and mouth should make you look haggard, but they only remind me of how beautiful you are. Even exhausted, rumpled, smelling of bad cafeteria coffee and clad in crumpled scrubs, you are lovely.
You lean over the desk to hand the charge nurse your clipboard. She smiles at you and bats her lashes, and I want to laugh. She thinks she has a chance at you, her own personal Dr. McDreamy, but she has no idea. Not a clue.
You are mine.
You are weary from hours on your feet, hours in the operating room. You’ve put on clean scrubs but I know you want to shower and shave, sleep for a few hours, maybe grab another cup of disgusting coffee. I know that’s what you want, but instead you’ll have me.
You look up from your place on the hard cot they give the on-call staff to use when I close the door behind me. When I lock it. When I smile, you smile, too.
I don’t ask you how long we have. At any moment the black box clipped to your waistband can bleat. People will need you. You fix them with your scalpel and your knowledge. At any moment someone could need you more than I do...but for now there is only me.
I don’t like the smells of antiseptic and despair that fill the air here, or the metallic scent of blood we can’t seem to escape. I miss your clean scent, soap and hot water, but there’s no time for that.
Your head tips back when I thread my fingers through it and pull, and you moan. You might be a god to that nurse at the desk and the people who you heal, but I know you’re no god.
You’re a man.
I know you’re bare beneath the scrubs, a habit surgeons have to prevent their personal clothes from becoming soiled. I know if I reach between us I’ll find your cock half hard already beneath the thin, soft cloth. I know if I slid onto your lap I’ll feel that heat against me, that hardness, and my body clenches at the thought of you filling me; my nipples tighten.
I brush your lips with mine, the barest hint of a kiss. When your mouth reaches for mine I pull back. I’d like to make you beg for me, to hear you say my name in that low, deep, grumble-growly voice, but I know we don’t really have time for those sorts of games.
“Touch me,” I say into your ear.
You do.
One of those hands, those big, strong hands, slides between my thighs up high, against my heat. I push forward, into your touch. It takes only seconds to lift my dress, to push down my panties, to ease your scrubs off. To straddle you. We rock together, your cock sliding against me without friction or effort. I’m so wet for you it takes only one small shift of hips and limbs to settle you inside me.
“Fuck me,” I say again, and you do that, too.
It’s slow and easy, the way you roll your hips to push your prick up inside me. You slide one of your hands that make so many miracles between us and use your knuckles on my clit. Your other holds my ass as we move, silent, biting our lips. I clench your shoulder so hard my nails leave half-moons in your flesh, but neither of us cries out.
Someone might know we’re fucking in here, and I don’t care, but there’s pleasure to be had from pretending we do.
&n
bsp; Your throat works as you swallow your groan. I lick you and bite you softly. Beneath my lips I feel your pulse beat, beat, beat. The steady throb is echoed between my legs.
I come forever and you follow me with an intake of breath and a murmured curse. We rock together slowly, finishing, and the bed under us creaks.
From the puddle of clothes on the floor, your beeper buzzes. You close your eyes, briefly, though your lips open under mine when I kiss them.
“I have to go,” you say without moving.
I’m the one who gets up, who gathers the clothes, who lifts the small black box and places it in your hands. “You go,” I say. “Someone needs you.”
They all need you.
But you’re still always mine.
* * *
Why would anyone want to be anything else?
Tell_me had replied even before Puppetboy. The thought he’d been waiting for her to post caused Eve’s heart to skip a couple beats. Eve would’ve made a self-deprecating comment, but it wasn’t Eve who answered.
I can be a demanding mistress.
Endless minutes passed while she refreshed her browser and replied to a few other comments. When the familiar user icon—a hundred-by-hundred pixel square photo of a single red rose—appeared, she actually clapped and bounced a little in her seat.
Please. Demand.
This time, she laughed aloud. Puppetboy might have offered to be her slave, but Tell_me’s genuine sense of humor only added to his appeal. Puppetboy, perhaps sensing he was losing his place in line, had graduated from sending her shots of his cock to attaching photos of his entire body, each including a small hand-drawn sign with PUPPETBOY BELONGS TO ERIS inside a lopsided heart to prove it was really him and not some stolen shot of an abs and pecs model.
Eve didn’t care what Tell_me looked like...well, okay, maybe she did a little, but only because in her mind he looked like every single one of her fantasies, and she couldn’t pretend that every one of them didn’t look quite a lot like a certain I.T. guy from work. Still, while Puppetboy’s body was impressive and his willingness to debase himself for her pleasure intriguing...Tell_me had stolen her heart.
They’d only been corresponding for a week but it felt like a lifetime. He commented on her blog; he e-mailed her privately. Their conversations in public had been light and flirty, the way she was with everyone who left a response to her entries, but in private he dug deeper. He didn’t just fawn over her. He asked her questions about what she wanted and why. He answered them, too. He’d managed to give her a clear picture of himself without ever resorting to sending a blurry snapshot of his erection.