Guilty Pleasure (7 page)

But I don’t.

Instead, I push back, work my way down his long, lean body, exploring him with fingers and mouth and teeth. I work lower, lower, taste the arousal at the tip of his erection. I don’t linger there, even though I want to, because the window is calling to me. I get off the bed and walk slowly over to it, place my palms flat against the glass.

Anyone could look up and see me. I lean forward, set a knee to the narrow ledge and turn my face to the side, pressing my naked breasts against it. The cold makes me gasp. The warm stroke of Ethan’s hands makes me close my eyes and tip back my head. He’s tender with me, careful, as he gently pushes me down onto my knees. I rest my arms on the ledge and stare out of the window at the world beyond, as he lifts my hips and puts me exactly where he wants me. I can see the people walking along the street outside, the cars slowly driving past, and yet we’re safe from them in here.

And I realise that’s how he makes me feel. Safe. Even with all the things we’ve done, and the places we’ve done them, I was safe, because I was with him. I can feel the thick head of his cock pressing against the entrance to my body, and he eases his way forwards, filling me with one smooth stroke that has my back arching and my nails digging into my palms.

‘Tasha,’ he says. ‘You’re so very lovely. You know that, don’t you?’

His hands slide over my back, warm and strong, as he fucks into me again, and I lift my hand and thump the glass. Below on the street, a woman walking past turns her head, but she doesn’t look up at me.

‘So lovely,’ he says, ‘and so very, very naughty. Tell me, just how much time did you spend masturbating in your office?’

‘Not much,’ I lie.

‘And how much is not much?’ he asks. He’s fucking me harder now, a deep, steady rhythm that has my entire body humming. ‘Once a month? Once a week? Once a day?’

‘Not every day,’ I manage. Oh god, he’s fucking me hard now, and his fingers are sliding lightly over the cleft between my bum cheeks. I wiggle my hips, trying to increase the pressure of his touch.

His hand stills.

‘Most days,’ I admit.

‘Anywhere else in the building? Or just your office?’

I bite my lip as he increases the pressure. ‘Just my office.’

‘You are welcome to use my office,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

I can’t respond to that, I can’t. I shake my head and arch my back, needing him deeper, wanting him more. ‘Shut up and fuck me.’

His hands meet my hips, holding me firm, as he angles his hips and does as I ask, fucking right into my g spot, making me moan. I bite my lip harder. I reach down between my legs and touch my clit, the pressure instantly sending me closer to climax.

Ethan takes my wrist, pulls it to the small of my back and holds it there. I jam my other hand onto the ledge as his thrusts get harder, more desperate, each one pitching me forwards towards the glass. Each one has me crying out, unable to stop myself, and I know that the entire street can hear me, and it only turns me on more.

‘Dirty bitch,’ he says.

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

‘Hold onto the window sill,’ he orders me, releasing his grip on my wrist. I obey, gripping it tightly, not sure what he’s planning. And knowing what I know about Ethan now, he does have a plan. He already knows how this is going to play out, even if I don’t. He moves away from me.

‘Stay there,’ he says, as I start to turn. ‘Don’t move.’

I hear the pull of a drawer and the snap of a condom, and then he’s back behind me. He puts a handful of something cold and slippery between my legs, and then higher, between my arse cheeks, and then I feel the hard press of his cock right
there
, where his fingers played so skilfully earlier, and I think
yes, oh yes.

He eases his way inside me, carefully, slowly, as neither of us makes a sound and we both hold our breath, and I suddenly realise that we’re not playing games any more. This is something more, something very adult and dangerous, and I don’t quite know where we’re headed with it, but I can’t stop, I don’t want to stop. I push myself upright, taking his cock deep into my arse, and his hands come around me and find my breasts, and I slowly lift myself up, thigh muscles burning, then lower myself back down, loving the feel of him inside me, of his hands on me. I lift my hands, lock them into his still damp hair, turn my head so that his face presses against mine. God, he’s hard inside me, thick and stiff, and it feels wonderful. I don’t even care if anyone is watching, not now.

One of his hands moves lower, over the curve of my belly and between my legs, and he finds my clit and strokes it as I fuck his cock. I’ve done this before, but it was never like this, and it was never something I owned, never something I asked for. It was never something I openly desired.

Ethan Hall has done something to me. He has changed something inside me, and I’m not sure it can ever be changed back. I have his rhythm and he has mine, and it doesn’t surprise me to find that they match each other perfectly. He starts to thrust harder, deeper, and I know that he’s losing control, and I wonder if he thought about this when he thought about us.

And then I’m coming. It hits me like a freight train, the force of it making me scream out his name as I am completely destroyed, reduced to a trembling, quivering wreck by the sheer force of it. I’m sweaty and shocked when we slide to the floor together, when his arms come around me and with one final, fierce thrust, his cock swells and he empties himself inside me.

Chapter Seven

We lie there, breathing hard, until we’re both cold and my stomach has started to rumble. And then we laugh. I don’t know which one of us starts first, but once we’ve started we can’t seem to stop, and god, it feels good. I can’t remember the last time I laughed. I can’t remember the last time I did anything other than work and stress. Time seems to expand around me, trapped in this precious place with him, with work so very far away.

Then we pick ourselves up, and get back into the shower. I’m tender and he’s careful with me, and I tease him about it. We order takeout, and he dares me to answer the door wearing nothing but a towel, and I do. We sleep in his big bed, and we wake up with our hands entwined. Neither of us says anything about it.

‘Spend the day with me,’ he says, when I go to gather up my clothes. I stop, turn to him with my skirt in my hand. ‘We can go out, explore.’

‘I’ve only got this to wear,’ I point out.

‘Yes,’ he says, and that wicked smile curves his mouth. ‘I know.’

We go for breakfast, and he gropes me under the table as I eat the froth from my cappuccino with a spoon and pretend his hand is not under my skirt. I drag him to my favourite clothing shop and make him wait as I buy myself something to wear, and when the assistant is distracted by another customer, he slips into the changing room cubicle I’m currently occupying and puts his mouth between my legs and refuses to move until I come on his tongue. When I go to the till to pay, I can tell from the assistant’s expression that she knew exactly what we were doing, and she is not impressed.

I’m too wrapped up in my post-orgasmic haze to care.

He rubs up against me as we admire a stunning Gainsborough portrait in the National Gallery, and I play with his cock as we sit through a crappy action film at the cinema in Leicester Square. And all the time, we talk. About everything. About nothing.

Or rather, he asks questions, and I talk, but I’m okay with that.

‘So tell me, Tasha,’ he asks, as I hold his erection in a tight fist and shove popcorn in my mouth. ‘How did you end up working at Thomas Associates?’

‘I was working at a firm in London, but after three years of being constantly turned down for promotion, I had to make a change. I thought I might have a better chance at a smaller firm.’

‘And you thought that masturbating in your office would help you with that?’

I slick my hand over the head of his stiff cock, lean a little closer. The cinema isn’t busy, but it’s busy enough to please us both. ‘I didn’t mean to get caught.’

‘Then why did you do it?’

A car explodes on the screen, flooding the cinema with sound. The scene crashes to an end, with explosions and gunfire. ‘To get my own back,’ I say. ‘To stick two fingers up at all of you. Because being a woman in a male-dominated profession really sucks sometimes. You have to work twice as hard just to make people think you’re half as good. And everyone assumes that all you’re really interested in is shoes and marriage and babies. No-one refuses to promote a thirty-year-old man on the offchance that he might want children. I’ve put my whole life on hold for my career.’ And up until this point, I hadn’t realised how unhappy I am about that.

‘So why are you screwing me? Is this some sort of revenge fuck, Tasha? Did I cramp your career progress? Did you want my job? Is that it?’

My hand stills on his erection. ‘No.’ I’m screwing him because it makes me feel feminine and powerful and sexual, something that I’ve denied myself for far too long. ‘Being with you is something different. It isn’t about that.’

‘So what is it about?’

‘Pleasure,’ I tell him. ‘Pure, unadulterated, hedonistic pleasure.’ I caress him again, locking my fingers tightly round his girth, squeezing, finding him deliciously hard. ‘You’ve reminded me how much I like cock. It’s been a really long time since I last had any.’

‘I aim to please,’ he says.

‘I know,’ I tell him, thrilling us both with a quick flick of my wrist. ‘And you’re so damn good at it.’

‘How long?’ he asks.

‘How long what?’

‘How long since you last had cock?’

‘Eighteen months.’

‘Fucking hell,’ he says. ‘That’s a long time to go without, Tasha.’

‘I didn’t want any distractions,’ I tell him. ‘And being in a relationship can hinder a woman’s career.’ And that’s been my motto for the past eighteen months. But suddenly it doesn’t make me feel determined, it makes me feel angry. I’ve denied myself pleasure for far too long. I’m not prepared to do it any more.

‘Speaking of distractions,’ he whispers, ‘we’re being watched.’

My entire body goes rigid, and I fight the urge to look around. ‘Who by?’

‘By a woman on the other side. A couple of rows back.’

‘What do you think she can see?’

‘Everything.’

‘Oh,’ I say. And this time I do glance back. It takes me a while to locate the woman, nerves and the darkness doing a good job of hiding her, and then something explodes on the screen, sending a flash of light out across the audience, and in that split second, I see her, and she sees me, and something passes between us.

And I know that she understands. I am not alone in this. I sit back in my seat, and I can’t stop myself from smiling, and I begin to wank Ethan harder, sliding my fist up and down his length, my grip tight, my intention unmistakeable. I want to give her a show. Heat rushes through me, pooling between my thighs, and I let myself enjoy it. I’ll let Ethan take care of it, later. My nipples are tight inside my bra, and I enjoy that too.

‘I used to come to the cinema a lot when I was a teenager,’ I whisper to Ethan. ‘I used to pick a film that had been on a while, so it would be quiet, and I used to sit in the back row and masturbate.’ How could I have forgotten about that? The memory comes back to me in a rush now. The total lack of privacy at home, at school, the need to find somewhere I could have the privacy I craved, the first time I came. It had been my guilty pleasure. It had kept me sane in a house that was too small, too cramped, too loud, too full of males. That house is why I’ve focused so hard on my career. I won’t go back to being poor again. I can’t.

‘Dirty bitch,’ he whispers, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. I know I have him now. I work him harder, and whisper secrets to him, dirty little secrets, and his cock gets bigger and harder in my hand, and I wonder if it would be wrong to suck him off, and I wonder if that woman is still watching us. ‘Fuck, I need to come.’

I open my hand and stroke my fingers over the sensitive spot just below the head of his cock, feel the thick length jerk against my hand. Then Ethan wraps his hand around mine, so much bigger, so much stronger, utterly determined. He holds my hand tight around his cock, then he opens his eyes and looks at me, there in the darkness, the flickering light from the screen illuminating those sharp cheekbones and that wicked mouth. ‘Do it, Tasha,’ he whispers. ‘Make me come.’

And with one final jerk of his wrist, he spills himself all over our hands. I feel it, surprisingly hot, as it slides between my fingers, more and more and more, and I look at him, and I think
fuck.

I didn’t know I wanted this until I met you.

Chapter Eight

Somehow, we make it to the end of the film and make it out of the cinema without being arrested. By the time we get outside, the woman has disappeared, and I wonder who she was, what she thought. I feel a strange sense of kinship with her, as if we share a secret, and in a way I suppose we do.

‘You’re quite something,’ Ethan says, as we stroll across Leicester Square together.

‘I could say the same thing about you,’ I tell him.

He takes my hand, links his fingers between mine, pulls me closer to him. ‘So what’s next?’ he asks. ‘Cunnilingus on the London Eye? Mutual masturbation in Selfridges?’

I look up at him, and I can feel myself blushing. He presses a kiss to my hot cheek, strokes the hair back from my face. ‘You’re pretty when you blush,’ he says.

And it’s then that he has me. Not back there in the cinema when we were all kink and sin and fun, but here, and now, with those silly words. I feel feminine and lovely, something I haven’t felt in a long time, if ever. I was so scared to let myself feel that way, in case it held me back at work. My focus has always been the next promotion, the bigger salary, the security of knowing that the bills will always be paid. I thought that was all I needed.

I was wrong.

Ethan Hall is showing me another way. And he’s making it easy and straightforward, and I don’t feel any less for it. But I do feel scared. ‘Ethan,’ I say, and then I pause, not knowing what to say next, how this works.