Power Play

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 way 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.

‘Well, if there’s anything else I can do for you, Ms Harding …’ he says, and so I can’t be blamed. It’s the fault of that little ellipsis he leaves on the end of his sentence, that little trail off into nothing.

Anyone would want to fill that nothing up, immediately. Anyone.

But still I wait, until he’s backing towards the door. Until he’s waving at me, casually, in lieu of a goodbye he doesn’t know how to give. See you later sounds too informal, I suppose. Until next time is almost a threat.

Like the thing I then give him.

‘You could possibly not masturbate in your cubicle.’

I see him freeze in position without turning my head, those soft-focus eyes of his bright and wide, on the periphery of my vision. Everything about him clearly stunned, even without the benefit of the sound he then produces.

It’s almost a croak, I think, and it makes me snap my gaze to him. I want to see, I realise. I want to see how open and soft his mouth looks, how wide his eyes are, how rigid his body has gone. And once I’ve taken in all of these things undercover of a steely stare, my sex clenches, just once.

‘That is what you did, isn’t it?’ I ask, though of course we both know I’m not really asking. Or at least, I know. Because after a second, he answers.

‘I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Don’t lie.’

‘I’m not – I –’