Power Play Read online

  But no one gets kissed on the cheek with something like exquisite tenderness afterwards.

  ‘I’m sorry, Benjamin. Was there something you wanted to say?’ I ask, but he just grits his teeth. Gives me a lovely long lick of ruefulness in his gaze.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Excellent. Come and have a look at your present then, would you?’ I say, and though I lean back in my chair and act as casual as I can – meaningless paperwork is a blessing, it really is – I can’t help the flicker of delight I feel to see him hesitating a little. He just kind of stops about six inches from my desk, almost up on tiptoe.

  A question on his lips that he’s clearly unsure about asking.

  ‘Are you seriously wanting me to …?’

  ‘Walk around with a sex toy deep in your sweet little ass? I think that’s a given. I mean – unless you have another orifice I could shove this thing into.’ I pause, as though I’m really considering. ‘Your mouth might be nice.’

  ‘I couldn’t walk around the office with a sex toy in my mouth! That would be … obscene.’

  I have to say, I really appreciate the way he purrs the latter. It’s like he believes it, oh of course he believes it. Yet at the same time maybe he also appreciates how that word feels on his tongue.

  ‘But as for the other thing I just mentioned – that’s A-OK,’ I say, and though I expect him to look caught out or unsure, he doesn’t this time. He leans over the desk towards me instead, that syrup-smile back on his face.

  ‘I think I could be persuaded, sir,’ he murmurs to me, all soft and low and good. It’s so soft and low and good, in fact, that I have the strongest urge to flick things back to the other idea I mentioned.

  You know – the one he wouldn’t do, under any circumstances. If I’d demanded it he would have refused, I know he would, and then where would we be? Back to him being just an assistant, most probably, with me as his internet-surfing, Woods-obsessing, tightly boxed-in Boss.

  ‘I have to persuade you?’

  ‘Well, no. Mostly I’m just going to do it because it sounds awesome. But you know – I just wanted to seem cool and seductive and like I understand what we’re doing here.’

  I don’t think he means to do it, but those last words definitely stomp all over the lines I’m trying to draw. In fact, I think they scrub them out with the heel of an old boot, before kicking dirt over their shallow graves.

  We might play games, but we can’t go back to being a game. It’s too late for anything like that now. We’ve cuddled, and laughed together, and he thinks it’s OK to say something cute to me in the middle of me telling him to lube his ass and fill himself with a sex toy.

  ‘You want to watch me do it right here?’ he asks, and ohhh I’ve definitely lost the rulebook on this. The second he says something like that my heart starts beating a little harder, and my toes kind of curl inside my shoes, and then I just have to watch as he picks up the thing I’ve given him and examines it with excessive enthusiasm.

  His eyes are way, way too big for something like this. But I understand, because my eyes got big when I found it in the sex shop I visited not so long ago.

  It’s not just a plastic dildo, or a butt plug of some description. It’s thin and curved and at its base it has an extra little tongue that could, say, lie comfortably along that strip of skin just behind his balls.

  The one that’s unbearably sensitive and just waiting to be buzzed, courtesy of the remote control in my hand.

  Because that’s the other feature that this little item has. And when I press it he almost jumps right out of his skin before he’s gotten it anywhere close to his ass. Currently he’s just holding it in his hands, and apparently that’s enough on its own to make him nuts.

  He’s never going to survive this.

  ‘You can … you can make it do that, at any time?’

  I lean forward over my desk, as he does his best to hold onto the thing.

  ‘What fun would it be if I couldn’t?’ I say, but he doesn’t seem to know how to answer that. He’s too busy marvelling at what could well be my evil genius as he works to get his trousers off.

  ‘You know, Benjamin,’ I say, in that way I’ve reserved for things I don’t really mean at all. ‘It’s more than a little unseemly to be so eager.’

  The words don’t appear to affect him, however. Quite the contrary. He only shoves his pants down faster, seemingly unable to decide between hanging onto that magnificent toy and using both hands to get the job done.

  ‘Is it OK if I don’t care?’ he asks, and oh the urge I get to tell him yes. Yes, it’s more than OK. Be as eager as you like, be as crazy as you like, oh Benjamin, my lovely Benjamin.

  But of course I don’t actually reply with any of that.

  ‘I suppose it will have to be,’ I tell him instead, one leg crossed casually over the other, hands in my lap as though I don’t want to grab anything that he’s just revealed.

  Even if I absolutely do. His cock’s so hard it’s almost as though I’ve just spent the last half an hour sucking it – and it’s as pretty as it had seemed the night before. It has that deliciously steep curve, as though it doesn’t understand things like weight and gravity. It just wants to push up towards his belly in a way that tests my resolve, to be this calm and aloof sort of person.

  ‘Do you have some lube?’ he asks me, almost as though I might not. Instead of anything so considerate, I’m just going to make him force that thing into his ass without any help at all.

  Lord, I must really seem like a wicked, wicked person.

  ‘Here,’ I say, and then I’m given front row seats to the kind of show I’ve only previously seen in my wildest dreams. And if that makes my wildest dreams very odd – far odder than they’d seemed before – there’s nothing I can do about that.

  I want to see him do this, and he doesn’t disappoint. He even makes the act of lubing his fingers seem sensual, because after a moment of him coating them I can tell he’s enjoying it. He’s actually enjoying the slippery feel of it on the sensitive webbing between thumb and forefinger, between fore and middle – and I can tell he is, by the way he reacts when everything slides around everything else.

  ‘You realise I’m totally going to make a mess here,’ he says, but his voice isn’t steady or even amused any more. It’s just breathless, and he’s all flushed, and when he finally gets around to reaching behind himself, he’s shuddering just a little.

  ‘I’d expect nothing less from someone as clumsy as you,’ I say, though after I’ve done it I regret it. I’m not trying to push him away – I’m really not. It’s just happening … but here’s the problem:

  It has absolutely no effect whatsoever.

  ‘Yeah, talk dirty to me,’ he says, and he isn’t being sarcastic. He’s actually taking my mean words and turning them into something else altogether, and once he’s done it I have to accept the fact that I probably wasn’t trying to be cruel at all.

  I was just trying to make him be the way he currently is: so full of amusement, and pleasure, and all of the things I probably barely understand. I can’t even process the simplest of feelings, whereas he’s more than able to turn boneless right in front of me the second he finally manages to work one finger inside himself.

  I know that this is exactly what’s happened without seeing it for myself. I can tell by the way his head goes back, and the way his eyes drift near-closed, and the way his lips part to let a little gasp out. It’s always the same with him – that slow sink into abandonment the second anything even mildly sexual happens.

  And this isn’t even mildly, at all. He’s fingering his own ass in front of me, in my office, while I watch with breath that is bated. It has to be because I swear if I breathe out I’ll never be able to take any oxygen back in again.

  I’ll just suffocate, right here at my desk.

  ‘You want to know what I’m doing?’

  Ugh, I hate him, I hate him. Where are my boundaries, for God’s sake? Where are the lin
es I had thought to draw around all of the feelings that are currently trying to blurt right out of me?

  I’ll tell you where: they’re in the goddamn toilet.

  ‘Yes, tell me,’ I say, like some breathless whore he just met five minutes ago – and oh Lord, he knows it. He’s seen my true face now – the one I’ve never shown to anyone, the one I keep under this cool, cold mask – and it’s turning him into the biggest tease in all the world.

  ‘Not as good as when you do it.’

  Did I say biggest tease? I meant to say bigger than that. Way, way bigger.

  ‘When you do it, it’s smoother. Less awkward – though I kind of like that too. Is that weird? I like it being awkward, because when I actually manage to hit it just right it’s like I’ve worked hard for it, you know?’

  I almost resist the urge to respond to that. Almost.

  ‘And you like to work hard for something, Benjamin?’

  ‘You know I do,’ he says, as though it’s almost amusing to hear me pretend otherwise. Why, a fool would understand how intimate we’ve now become! It’s really quite preposterous that I’m sat here trying to squirm my way out of the fact that we’re lovers.

  We’re lovers. I have a lover. A someone. A one in particular.

  Thank God he then distracts me from this revelation with mindless sex talk.

  ‘Oh man, that’s … oh that’s really good.’

  ‘Right there, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, right there,’ he says, and then I just have to watch as he does something unbearably sweet and sexy – like sinking his teeth into his lower lip. Plus the sound he makes, to follow it up … oh it’s nearly my undoing. It’s not quite a grunt and not quite a sigh, and underneath it I can just make out the slick-clicking of his finger in his ass.

  He’s not going about it calmly now. He’s fucking himself, hard, and after a few seconds of this treatment he has to put his free hand on my desk – you know, just for the extra support just for a bit of solidity beneath him as he works himself back on what has to be more than one finger.

  It’s probably three now. He’s probably getting close to filling himself, which in all honesty is just one thought too far for me.

  ‘Stop,’ I say.

  Then have to take a moment to gather myself. That one word came out like a foghorn, blarting, and though it’s jerked him back to reality it’s also made him raise one eyebrow. I can’t have him raising one eyebrow over my total lack of self-control. I mean, wasn’t this whole thing supposed to be about him controlling himself? And now here we are with me practically drooling all over myself, words snapping out of me without my permission, one of my hands unbearably close to his on my desk.

  ‘You do recall what I asked you to do, don’t you, Benjamin?’

  He glances at the gleaming plastic toy on my desk, like he has almost no idea how it got there. I doubt he can even recall letting it go, once fingering himself and holding something at the same time proved too hard.

  ‘Uh … yeah,’ he says, but he’s lying. He has absolutely no clue, which of course only means that I have to explain it to him again, in explicit detail.

  ‘Take that plastic cock and slide it into your ass,’ I tell him, and it’s good, it’s good. Orders make me firm and resolved, even if the content of them turns my insides to syrup. Even if words like those close a little hand around my sex, and squeeze, tightly.

  While I wait for him to obey.

  And he does. It’s just that he does it in a slightly different way to the one I expect. He doesn’t oil the toy first before making an attempt. He holds my gaze, nice and steady, and then tries the very thing he refused to do a moment earlier.

  He eases it into his mouth and sucks. And licks. And generally puts on the lewdest act he possibly can for me, so that I can’t imagine anything but what he’d look like if that thing were real. That’s how he’d suck someone’s cock, I think – all slow and half-smiling, as though it amuses him to tease in such an obvious, brutal sort of fashion.

  I’m not even the man he’s doing it to, and arousal is currently pulsing through me. It goes through me hard, which is bad enough on its own. But then he just curls his tongue out to lick the tip and says a whole bunch of words as he does so, and I realise I don’t even know what bad is.

  ‘Think it’s wet enough?’ he asks, after which my face actually heats. I mean, I knew he could be this rude. I’ve seen him be this rude before – he got pretty close in my bedroom, and more than close when I sucked his cock.

  But I don’t know. There’s just something different about it here now. Like he’s been given permission to run with whatever he wants to, and to hell with my orders. To hell with everything. We’re past petty parameters now, and oh I don’t mind admitting it: That thought is terrifying to me.

  ‘I think you need to do what I’ve asked you to,’ I say, but that little hint of behaviour correction doesn’t hit. He just grins at me, all pointed incisors and stormy eyes, and then he takes that sex toy I should never have bought and slowly, oh so slowly eases it into his ass.

  Though of course he does it in the worst possible way he could. He doesn’t just stand there and squirm and work it in. He actually puts one knee up on the desk while he does it, because he knows exactly how thrilling such a thing looks.

  It looks like he’s a naughty little whore, and his words back that assessment up.

  ‘You know what I love best? I love the slipperiness. I love feeling something just … gliding in, nice and slow. Is that what you like, too?’

  I can’t answer. I’m too far gone for that. If I move a muscle I’ll do something insane, like have an orgasm without one single, solitary finger laid on me.

  ‘Or do you like the feeling of being filled? Because you know this thing is really … it’s, oh, it’s a lot bigger than it looks.’

  His eyes flutter closed, briefly, and though I think it’s unwise I can’t help picturing what’s making him react like that. Is it too much for him to take, just that little slender toy? Or has it recently pressed against something sweet inside him and now I’m looking at the fallout of that?

  His chest isn’t so much rising and falling as jerking through each breath. And I’ll be honest, I’m pretty much in love with the way he’s touching his tongue to his upper lip. It’s like the whole thing is hard, very hard … but at the same time he could carry on feeling this way until somewhere around the end of time.

  And then his eyes flick quite suddenly open, and his mouth curls up at one corner, and I know what’s happened. I know, even though I ask him anyway.

  ‘Are you done?’ I say, but before he can respond I do something very bad indeed. Oh, it’s so bad that I almost feel sorry about it, after the fact – though when I say almost, I mean almost. It’s not like I punch him in the gut or anything.

  I just hit the button on the remote control, then watch that victorious expression slide all the way off his beautiful face.

  * * *

  By the time I get to point twenty-seven on the agenda, he’s close to a nervous breakdown. I know he is because when everyone takes a moment to read over the section in some new contract I dare to glance up at him, sat in his corner.

  He isn’t scribbling down the minutes to the meeting any more. He’s just sat in that weird hunched-over position that I suspect was all he could manage, with one hand actually over his face.

  And every time I press the button on the remote control he loses just a little bit more of his composure. In fact, when I hit it for the seventh time he almost slides right off his chair – to the point where someone other than me notices.

  Oh yeah, Aidan notices this all right. He notices it so much that once Ben actually gathers himself a little, my second in command decides to ask him if he’s all right.

  In a decidedly suggestive sort of tone.

  ‘Would you maybe like to get yourself a drink of water, Ben?’ he offers, but that’s not what he’s really saying. He’s not really being kindly or thoughtful to a col
league who probably appears to be losing the plot.

  And he obviously knows he isn’t really losing the plot either. Or at least, I hope he knows. Because after he’s asked and Benjamin has bolted for the door, he turns his glacial gaze on me.

  Then winks.

  He actually has the gall to wink, though in one way I’m glad he does. It makes it very easy to hardly care once the meeting adjourns, and it’s just me and Aidan in this stifling, stiff little room.

  ‘Oh Harding,’ he tells me, like a teacher expressing his disappointment in an otherwise exemplary student. They just did this one bad thing, you see, this one terrible thing, and the teacher can’t resist shaking his head at them.

  And Aidan can’t resist flashing that shark’s grin of his at me either – though in one way I’m glad he does. I’m glad he’s sitting there in his swivel chair, trailing himself back and forth, back and forth. Beautifully manicured fingers laced over his even more beautifully manicured suit jacket.

  He’s so smug and so smooth that it’s almost easy to puncture his bubble. In fact, it skates very close to victory, when I just let the words slide out of me.

  ‘As though you wouldn’t do the same,’ I say, and as I exit the room he laughs, oh how he laughs. I can hear him laughing in that deliciously wicked way of his all the way down the hall.

  Chapter Twelve

  He doesn’t react the way he did before, when I tell him we should probably cool it for a while. He doesn’t try to provoke me into anything, with a dirty shirt or a misspelled letter. He just waits for the perfect, most excruciating moment – which just so happens to be 12:35 in a fairly busy break room – and presses a slow, low trail of words against the side of my face.

  Like the glances he used to give me, in elevators and stationery cupboards and other enclosed spaces, all of that heat pushing and pushing against me, even when I refused to look. Only now it’s spelled out in explicit detail, each letter a little brand pressing into my cheek.

  I go red before he’s finished talking, and I haven’t the faintest clue why. He’s said ruder things before. He’s told me about how it feels to get fucked, and what my pussy tastes like, and whether I enjoy watching him debase himself … and none of those things had any real impact.