Power Play Read online

  This is something else altogether. It’s heated and too intense and it squeezes a little fist somewhere, deep down inside me. It pushes a very particular sort of thought on me, before I can scramble and urge it away again.

  He’s lovely, I think, and then hate myself.

  ‘Did you know that you’re kind of staring at me, sir?’ he asks, and I’m not sure what’s worse. That he’s noticed; that he’s almost sort of smiling around his own incredulity; or that he uses that dreaded word on the end of it.

  All three make me want to do something very bad indeed.

  ‘I think you need to go back to your desk, Benjamin,’ I say, in my lowest and most deadly voice. However, instead of sending the fear of God through him – as I’m hoping – it does something I did not intend.

  Something that doesn’t so much as sock me in the gut as punch a hole right through my body.

  A flash of heat blazes across his gaze, so obvious that for a moment I’m trapped between two versions of myself. One who’s still the blundering girl I was, shocked by the things Woods wanted her to do. And the other who sees with Woods’ eyes, and knows a million intimate things about a person before they know it themselves.

  ‘Of course,’ he says, once he’s reined that little response back in. ‘All you have to do is say the word, and I’m totally your man.’

  He can’t possibly be saying what I think he’s saying. He can’t be. It’s all just my sex-fevered imagination; it’s my body missing Woods and wanting something to fill the void. There’s no heat in his gaze, no slow sensuality in his otherwise breezy voice. And by totally your man, he means: I love writing letters for you, Ms Harding.

  Not anything sexual or suggestive at all. In truth I think he’s too boyish for those sorts of kinky games, too gauche. He doesn’t realise the double meaning of the words he’s saying.

  Or at least I think so, until I open the letters.

  * * *

  I try to be calm about it at first. Any normal person would be calm and rational about the whole thing, I’m certain. Aidan, for example, would most likely give him a gentle dressing-down before offering him a biscuit.

  And that’s what I need to do. I need to find some biscuits to offer him, after I’ve tried to strangle him with two bits of paper.

  Because that’s what I want to do, of course.

  I don’t know what he thinks he’s playing at by writing the letters in this way. But he’s playing just the same, and I know it. I can’t deny it. No one could write this way for their boss and fail to understand that they’ve made a complete mess out of it.

  Most of what’s in the two letters isn’t identifiable as something a human being would do. There are sentences without endings, words misspelled so badly they’re not really words any more. Blotches on parts of the paper, as though maybe he drank a gallon of strawberry-flavoured liquor while writing them and some of it spilled out of his mouth – and the truth is, I can really imagine him doing just that. He’s so excessive somehow, so full of extra gestures and obvious greed. It’s like he’s just finished cramming a box of cakes into his mouth a second before you see him.

  And the only thing he could find to clean his hands and his mouth were these letters, apparently.

  I mean, they’re just an unmitigated disaster. But worse than that: he’s clearly done it on purpose. He wants me to tell him off, he actually wants me to – though if he thinks it’s going to be that easy he’s mistaken.

  I’m a professional person, for fuck’s sake. I can’t be goaded into the kind of thing Woods did, by a misspelling of the word ‘potato’. Even if there’s no godly reason why the word ‘potato’ is there in the first place. Even if I can see his face behind my eyes when I close them, all heavy-jawed and somehow much more perfect than I’d ever allowed myself to think he was.

  It’s the hair, I think; that thick maze of toffee-coloured hair, as though someone dipped him in something sticky and delicious only a moment before. Or maybe it’s the tender shape of his mouth, caught between the heaviness of the rest of his face – that near sullen jawline, that broad, clear brow.

  Those eyes of his, all hazy with longing as though he’s been left out too long on a summer’s day. They say things he doesn’t want to or can’t quite make himself, those eyes, and they’re the first thing I think of when I picture myself going to tell him off.

  Even though I’m absolutely not going to do that. I’m not. I’m just going to spend the rest of the day as I had planned – calm and collected. If he wants to do things like this, he’s entitled to. But he’s not getting a rise out of me in return.

  He’s just going to get me walking to the cubicle he occupies at five p.m. Everything about me glacial somehow, in a way that should be comforting. It should, but it’s the strangest thing. By the time I turn the corner into his little nook – almost an office, if it were not for the lack of a door on one end – I’m not comforted by the coolness I’ve descended into at all.

  It’s too cool. It’s almost as though I’ve coated myself in a pane of glass, and I can watch all of the things I’m doing and understand them. But I can’t control them. When I try to, my fingers butt up against that sheet of something see-through.

  And this feeling gets a hundred times worse when I see him.

  ‘Hey, Ms Harding,’ he says, all innocence. That big body of his folded into his tiny little swivel chair, one side of his collar sticking up ridiculously. A hint of bemusement touching those soft, entirely fuckable lips.

  Which is never a good thought to start things off with.

  And then there’s the fact that he licks a stamp the moment I’m focused on him, in a very deliberate sort of way. His tongue curls out to cover the little scrap of nothing completely. Those completely innocent eyes intent on me the whole way through it.

  Everything slow, so slow, and so … slick, somehow. Does he know how slick that looks, how lewd? He has to know, and yet sometimes when I look into his eyes I can’t be sure. It’s like there’s a veil over his gaze, and the second something dirty happens he just draws it all the way down, over that sweet boyishness.

  Then waits, to see what I will do. He’s struck the match. Do I want to put the fuse to that little flickering flame?

  ‘Can I help you with something?’ he asks, and then he licks the damned thing again.

  Would it be so bad if I just got a fistful of his hair and shoved his face into the carpet? He doesn’t look as though it would be a bad thing. He looks as though he wants me to grab a fistful of hair and shove his face between my legs.

  ‘I really hope I don’t have to tell you these letters are unacceptable,’ I start. It comes out much better than I thought it would. More like a boss and less like a sex maniac.

  ‘Really?’ he asks, and it’s then that I start to hate him. It’s not even a start, in truth. I loathe him already. I despise his fake innocence and his stupid handsome face and these letters, covered in stuff that most likely fell out of his gorgeous mouth. And unfortunately, all of these things make me ball them up and throw them at him before I speak.

  ‘I’m not sure how you could fail to realise. You’ve misspelled the word and.’

  He blurts out a little oops, which seems to send me into some sort of tailspin of indecision. On the one hand, the word sounds genuine. The breath he puffs out sounds real, and his big eyes go bigger. In fact, by this point they’re so big that they’re starting to swallow me whole.

  But on the other hand … he misspelled the word and. Twice. I’m not sure how that’s possible.

  ‘Do you have some sort of issue I’m not aware of, Benjamin?’

  He shrugs. He actually shrugs.

  ‘Nope,’ he says, and I don’t know what I despise most. His sloppy, ridiculous approach to things, or his utter American-ness. Both just sing out of that nope, so blatant and too much for me to handle. ‘I guess I just made a mess of things, huh?’

  ‘You made a mess of things?’

  ‘Yeah. I probably wasn’
t thinking.’

  ‘You weren’t thinking?’

  I have no idea why I keep repeating what he’s saying back to him. But I at least know this: if I don’t get a handle on myself soon, I’m going to do worse than getting a fistful of his hair. I’m going to put the heel of my shoe into his back, and dig in hard enough to make him scream.

  ‘But I swear to God, I’ll do better next time.’

  ‘You keep swearing to God. Is he likely to make you better at your job?’

  ‘Oh, well –’

  ‘The job that you failed to do on Monday morning, when you gave me a vital letter of great importance about four days too late. The job that a chimpanzee could do, if you gave him enough paper and his own desk.’

  His face actually flushes red at that. It’s satisfying, in a way I don’t want to acknowledge.

  ‘I’m so –’ he starts again, but I cut him off. I’m on some sort of roll now, and the longer I let it go on the worse it gets.

  ‘Perhaps the responsibility of a desk is a little too much for you. If so I could hire this theoretical primate to take your place, and you could come and work in my office. I have an absolutely wonderful spot on my floor somewhere for you to play with some coloured blocks.’

  I notice, absently, that his mouth is hanging open. It looks like the expression someone would make if they’d just recently been stabbed in the gut. Sound seems to want to come out of him, but all he can manage is a strangled gasp.

  ‘Are those words you’re trying to form, Benjamin? Because if they are, allow me to fill in the only ones you should be using: yes and sir.’

  I pretend I don’t see his eyes drift closed, briefly.

  ‘Rewrite these letters, without a mistake in them. Do so, and I might let you keep your job. Fail, and … well. I don’t think you want to know what will happen if you fail.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he says, and my mind immediately goes back to the last time I heard two words spoken like that. When Tim Lockley was underneath me, body almost completely out of control. Hips jerking upwards, cock fucking into me hard.

  Voice breathless, as he told me yes, now.

  That’s how Benjamin sounds, I think. Like he’s shaky with lust and ready to come at any moment – though naturally I try to evade the obvious. I turn around and stride right out of his cubicle, the second the thought occurs to me. And if my legs feel like water as I do so, well, what am I supposed to do about it?

  I can’t keep reprimanding him like that, I can’t. I went harder than I’d ever intended to, but it hadn’t seemed to put him off. He’d still looked heavy-eyed and weird once I’d done it and even now, as I stand shaking in the sanctity of my office, I can recall the softness of his parted lips. His breathlessness.

  The way he’d seemed to tremble minutely the second I left that little suggestion in the air. If you fail, I think, and then can’t ignore the pulse of pleasure that goes through my sex. I’m aroused because I told someone beneath me off. I’m aroused because I abused my power, and probably upset someone who only maybe sort of deserved it.

  And for a moment I’m so ashamed of that fact I can’t speak. I can’t do anything. I just stand there, thinking about that incredulous look on his face as I suggested a monkey would do a better job than him.

  It’s just unforgivable. Woods might have done more to me and worse, but that doesn’t give me the right to do the same to someone else. I liked what Woods did to me. How do I know for sure that Benjamin does – because he sounded aroused?

  That’s crazy. It’s insane. I have to go back and apologise, I have to.

  Though by God I wish I hadn’t, the minute I get to that partition around his little non-office and take in the long, lovely slope of his body.

  Of course, there are many, many things he could be doing. He could be crying. He’s leaning against the wall of his cubicle, back to the entrance. Shoulders shaking as though with emotion, everything about his gait somehow sloppy and like he’s lost control of himself.

  And yet I know without a shadow of a doubt that he isn’t upset. It’s like the strange understanding I have of his facial expressions. I can tell just from looking at his hunched shoulders and the way his arm is twisted around his body …

  He’s masturbating. He is absolutely, one-hundred-per-cent masturbating.

  I can see his hips rocking forward into what is almost certainly the press of his hand, and when I make myself as quiet as I can, the sounds he’s making become obvious. Little breathless sighs and moans that would probably escape anyone else – they’d just think he was distressed in some way, and get his attention, at which he could turn and straighten himself and pretend to have been blubbering into a hanky.

  Or in this case: the piece of paper he’s got crumpled in his hand.

  I can see it the second he lets himself get completely out of control – the letter I balled up and threw at him. But he hasn’t just got it crushed in his fist, as he pushes all of those sounds against the back of his hand. No no no.

  He’s got the paper pressed against his mouth. He’s got the paper in his mouth practically, as he shudders and bucks into his own grip. And now I can hear it too – the slick slide of a hand over a very slippery cock. All of it just a little muted, because of course he’s doing this under the cover of his trousers. He’s just kind of slipped one hand inside, to work himself all quick and frantic like this.

  And though I wouldn’t admit it before, I’ll admit it now: the idea is thrilling. The whole of it – him purposefully making a mess of those letters, the things I said and his reaction, and now this – it’s just horrendously exciting. My cunt clenches around nothing, in some kind of bizarre sympathy for his predicament. My clit swells, ready to be touched or rubbed or … God …, if he would only lick it the way he’d licked that scrap of paper. If I could just make my legs move and go to him right now, he’d do it, I know he would.

  But knowing is somehow worse than not. Now it’s real. Now it’s true. Being belittled and told off excites him, in the same way it excited me – more so, in fact. I never masturbated at my desk, thinking of Mr Woods telling me to be better, do more, stop making a mess.

  But God, Ben is. He’s really going at it now, as though he’s barely aware of the people who could be in the office at this time. Aidan usually stays late, for example. I always do, and he had to know that it was possible I’d return to apologise.

  Though somehow, I don’t think he does. I don’t think he cares about anything but the feeling of his fingers wrapped around his cock and that paper crushed into his mouth, everything about his body language so intent on the task at hand. From where I’m standing I can make out a million arousing little details – like the clench of his ass cheeks beneath those thin trousers, and the shuddering he does every time he hits it just right – but even then I’m not prepared for his orgasm.

  It seems to lurch through him, and when it does he makes a sound. More than a sound really – even with the paper in his mouth I can tell he says my name. He just blurts it out, full of a kind of reaching desire that I’ve never heard from another person. Voice shaky and torn, hips bucking towards the circle of his own grip, body shuddering under the stress of such impossible pleasure.

  He just gives himself over to it, and I realise something in that moment. I realise it amongst the ruins of my own arousal, clit still pulsing slow and steady. Wetness now making its way down my inner thigh, the whole of my lower body so thick and heavy with sensation.

  Even with Woods, I was never like that. I never gave my all the way he is doing.

  I’m not sure if I know how.

  Chapter Four

  He knocks this time. And after I’ve taken a deep breath and told him to come in, I notice something different about him. Something I probably shouldn’t notice, as a person who’s definitely not obsessed.

  I’m not. I’m not.

  In fact, I almost let him leave the second he’s put the letters on my desk – tentatively, but in that same almost clumsy w
ay he has. Eyes on me, as he just kind of nudges them over the wood.

  But then he turns to go and that different thing impresses itself on me immediately. His shirt is tucked in at the back. He’s tucked it in, and pulled the ridiculous stripy cardigan he has on over it right down, so that it covers the waistband of his trousers.

  I suppose it’s the small details that mean the most.

  ‘Benjamin,’ I say, though I’ve no idea what’s going to follow it. I just want him to stop for a second, and be easy in my presence. Hell, I want to be easy in his.

  Though that seems unlikely to happen when he turns back to me and I have to take in a million things about him. His face, those eyes, how broad his shoulders are. How big his hands look, even though he’s kind of clasping them one over the other. It looks for all the world like he wants to crack his knuckles, desperately, but is resisting.

  And I guess I’m resisting too, because Lord the sight is arresting. I don’t know what’s arresting about it. The length of his fingers? The way they kind of jab out at me like that, all awkward and not like fingers at all?

  I don’t know. I don’t know what to say next. What did Woods do, after our first encounter? After he first knew I was raring to go? Because it’s inescapable now – I know Ben is. There’s not a small series of clues, like the flush I got whenever I was around Woods, or how eager I was to do his every bidding.

  He masturbated while stuffing a remnant of my reprimand into his mouth. A blind buffoon would know what that meant.

  ‘Yes?’ he asks, so full of hope it’s unbearable.

  ‘Thank you,’ I try, but I know before I’ve said it that it’s wrong. It leaves an opening, and he takes it effortlessly.

  ‘Oh, no problem. I think you’ll find them more to your liking this time.’

  Why? Is his cock in there somewhere?

  ‘I’m sure I will.’

  I turn away then, and look at my computer screen. Of course there’s nothing on it – but he can’t see that. Hopefully I look like I’m all business, and not poised on the edge of insanity.