But even sweeter is the fact that he actually goes.
‘That’s better, Benjamin,’ I say once he’s stood there, just behind the chair on the other side of my desk. Of course the minute he does so, I notice something very obvious and very thrilling.
He’s hard, as I figured out a moment earlier. He’s painfully and obviously hard.
But he doesn’t go to touch himself. In fact, he very pointedly puts his hands behind his back, and when he does it I can almost see how he’s got them there. One set of fingers braceleting around the other wrist, to keep him from doing something he was told not to.
I told him not to, and he’s obeyed me to the letter.
In that moment I fully appreciate how far he’d let me go. And it’s about a million miles from where we’re now stood.
‘In the elevator you didn’t answer me,’ I say, as I fuss over things on my desk. Red pens lined up in a neat row, fresh pad of paper on my lovely felt blotter. ‘How was your weekend?’
‘Fine,’ he tells me, but the word comes out so tight I practically hear it squeak – not to mention the way his eyes follow my every move. All I do is sit back in my chair, legs neatly crossed again, and he devours me as though I’m a stripper divesting herself of that last item of clothing.
‘Well, that’s good,’ I say, though he doesn’t break the way I expect him to. I feel sure he’s going to blurt something out again, or maybe try to take a step forward. Suggest something, anything.
But he doesn’t.
‘How …’ he says faintly, then has to start again. His words seem to be dying in his throat. ‘How was your weekend?’
It makes me ache again, to see his attempt at casual breeziness.
‘Very pleasant,’ I say, though of course I’m underselling it somewhat. And after this pause I’m dragging out, I’m going to let him know why. Just another second now … another moment of his heated gaze all over me …
‘I spent most of it masturbating.’
His face goes almost completely blank, which I have to say is not what I was expecting. I’m still not quite sure what I am expecting, but it’s there all the same. A little frisson of disappointment.
Followed by an almost inescapable urge to push him beyond that nothingness.
‘For some reason, I found myself almost unendurably aroused. Isn’t that odd? But I have this toy … and when I put its slippery tip to my stiff little clit I can come in under two minutes.’
Even I’m impressed by how far I go. When I flick back through the empty pages of my life, there are almost no chapters called and then I told someone about my masturbatory habits. In fact, I’m not certain if I’ve ever revealed anything like that to longtime lovers or trusted confidants, which only serves to circle Benjamin in an even deeper shade of red.
He stands out, I think, in the Book of Me. He’s different in some way, though I can’t quite say how. All I know is that I tell him this thing, and after I’ve done it his expression kind of seems to slide sideways.
‘Of course, that’s not half as satisfying as drawing it out – don’t you find, Benjamin? So on Sunday, I filled both my holes with my favourite vibrators, and just sort of let them … hum me to orgasm.’
And then it just falls off his face altogether. I’m left to discern his feelings from his body language and the sound he makes, both of which resemble something large and wounded slowly dying. The words he next manages to squeeze out are just overkill, in all honesty.
‘Ms Harding,’ he says, in a manner I would call disapproving, if I didn’t almost know him by now. At the back of his throat, I can just hear it – that hint of thrill.
‘Did you masturbate this weekend, Benjamin?’ I ask, as casual as you please. I pick a piece of lint off my skirt while speaking.
‘You –’ he blurts out, clearly aiming for outrage or indignation, before wrestling himself back under control. I see him do it – those shoulders of his going back as he takes a series of slow, deep breaths. ‘You told me not to.’
‘And you obeyed?’ I ask, though I don’t have to. After all, it’s like he then says:
‘Isn’t it obvious? I must look like an insane person. In fact, I know I look like an insane person. I couldn’t shave this morning, my hand was shaking too badly. I can’t remember if I washed my hair, because being in the shower was like having sex rain on me. My body feels like a giant nuclear power plant, and to top it all off – I’m pretty sure I just saw your business.’
Now it’s my turn to be stunned. Though I confess, I’m more stunned by the urge to giggle than anything else. I’ve never seen anyone do mock-outrage and incredulity as well he does it, though I think it’s really just a symptom. It’s a side-effect of the wider problem he has – that inability to keep any of his emotions off his face.
He’s worse than a silent movie. He’s like a pornographic pantomime.
‘My business?’ I ask, because really. On Friday he called it my pussy, and talked about fingering it. But now he can’t get the correct terminology out? Now he’s shy all of a sudden?
Oh no nono.
‘Yeah. You just … flashed me,’ he replies, and for the hundredth time I honestly suspect he knows exactly what he’s doing. I mean, he sounds innocent when he says those words. But he’s definitely smart enough to know that’s not what I was asking.
‘And the thing I flashed you is called a “business”?’
His eyes roll up and to the left.
‘No. No. I meant … your pussy. You just flashed your pussy at me.’
‘I see. And do you really think it was appropriate of you to stare at my cunt?’
‘I didn’t say the c-word,’ he breathes out, and I swear it takes everything I have to not fuck him right there on my office floor. I swear it does. He called it the c-word. He couldn’t bring himself to actually say the word, as though the word is in some place far, far beyond the pale.
‘No. I said it. Really, Benjamin, keep up.’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he fumbles out, clearly searching in vain for the right thing to say.
‘You’re apologising for that, but not anything else?’
He searches harder.
‘And for the … for staring at your pussy. And coming behind your desk.’
‘That’s two out of three.’
‘There’s another thing I did wrong? Oh Geez, I don’t know it. Um … oh! The other week, with Hendricks, in the meeting. He wanted black coffee, two sugars. I brought him two coffees, no sugar.’
It’s true. He had. But I’ve got no idea what that has to do with this.
‘Do you really think I care about Hendricks? Tell me, Benjamin, why would I be interested in the coffee of someone I have no consideration for?’
He shrugs with just his upper lip. It’s one of the weirdest and most obvious facial expressions I’ve ever seen, and just this side of absolutely adorable.
‘I honestly have no idea. I’m shooting in the dark here.’
‘Is that what I asked you to do? Shoot in the dark?’
‘You kind of asked me to do the opposite,’ he says, and then, you know, he’s all the way into absolutely adorable and out the other side.
‘Very amusing. But unfortunately, amusement gets you no points here.’
I take out a little bound notebook from my top desk drawer. Of course, it isn’t for anything other than vague notes about things I’m never going to do, but he doesn’t know that. All he sees is his insane boss putting pen to paper, somewhere around the middle of what could well be ‘The Book Of Employee Transgressions: Kinky Edition’.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to add another day to your punishment,’ I say, as I put a little blue and meaningless tick on a blank page.
Funny, really, how something so ridiculous has such an effect.
‘What?’ he says, and then once he’s barked out the word he actually cranes, to try and see what I’m writing. ‘No, no. You can’t – please. I’m going out of my goddamn mind.’
&n
bsp; ‘You can go now, Benjamin.’
‘Oh God, I can’t. I can’t. People are gonna notice,’ he moans, one hand suddenly in his impossibly thick and far-too-long hair. ‘Look, you don’t have to do anything. I could just –’
‘Come on me? Rub your dick on my tits? Fuck my face?’
‘Oh Jesus, please don’t talk like that. Why do you keep talking like that?’
‘I don’t know, Benjamin. How does it make you feel when I do?’
‘Like I just want to come, and come, and come until I pass out.’
I give him a quarter of a smile. Just with the very corner of my mouth, but I think he catches it. He catches it, and that shaky mess he’s descended into stills itself somewhat.
‘OK,’ he says, and takes one long, shuddery breath. ‘OK, I can do this. I’ll just go back to my desk and start on that presentation you wanted putting together.’
I turn to my computer. Switch it on.
‘I appreciate that, Benjamin,’ I say, so bright and breezy that for a moment I’m staggered by myself. It’s like I’ve found a well in the bottom of me, and it lets me draw all the strength I need direct from its depths.
And if it’s because of Ben that I’ve unearthed said strength, well. I just won’t mention that to myself, as I use it to navigate the rest of my morning.
* * *
I have a perfect plan for the remainder of the day. It’s called pretend I never said any of those things to Benjamin Tate. In fact, it goes one worse than that. When I pass him at the water cooler and he opens his mouth as though he’s going to talk to me, I pretend he doesn’t actually exist.
And I do it well, too. I know I do, because it stings hard enough to make me wince, once I’m safe back in my office. I have to lean against the door and close my eyes against the little flash I get of his suddenly stormy gaze.
Of course I’m better at this than I thought I would be. But even so, I can’t quite manage the glacial indifference of Woods, no matter how much like a game this all seems. Or how hard Benjamin wants to play it.
Because he does, he clearly does. I know it automatically, the second he walks into my office just as I’m having a one-to-one with Aidan about scheduling. And I do so because of several very obvious things.
Firstly, he doesn’t knock. He just blunders right on in, as though he’s already forgotten how aware he’d seemed of intruding before.
Secondly, he makes pistol fingers at Aidan as he passes by the raised eyebrows and comes up to my desk.
And thirdly … oh dear God, thirdly …
He’s wearing an untucked T-shirt, with a coffee stain on it.
Of course, I get the immediate urge to ask him where his grey jumper went, where the red collar went, where his tie went, for fuck’s sake. But then the moment I do so a lot of things flood into my already overheated mind. Like the image of him carelessly tossing aside various items of clothing with a look on his face that’s akin to the one he seems to be wearing now.
I’d call it insouciance, if insouciance was an actual thing people did outside of nineteen-fifty-five. Hell, I’d call it insouciance if I was actually able to speak, but for the longest moment I can’t say anything at all. Neither can Aidan, as it turns out, though I feel this works out best for everyone.
And most especially for Benjamin, who apparently has quite a few things he wants to say. Though of course, none of them are even remotely acceptable.
‘Oh hey, Eleanor,’ he says, which is more than enough on its own to make Aidan let out an incredulous breath. God only knows what it does to me. No one calls me Eleanor. I’m not even sure if Aidan knows it is Eleanor.
He probably thinks my name is Frank.
‘I was thinking … maybe I could make that presentation up for you tomorrow. I spilled coffee on myself and I’m sort of tired. Really not up to, you know. Doing stuff.’
By God, I didn’t know he had it in him. I thought he was boyish, maybe a little silly. Capable of writing the odd misspelled letter to provoke me, and not much more. Certainly nothing of this size and scope.
He’s practically outgunned me. I’m not sure I understand what kind of dirty punishment fits this, though one thing makes itself abundantly clear. That’s what he’s pushing for.
Dirty.
He didn’t appreciate me ignoring him, and now he’s rolled himself in shit and pranced around in front of me, like he knows. He knows I can’t just add another day for this.
But good goddamn I do it anyway. I reach into my drawer and get out my little notebook, right there in front of Aidan. Benjamin’s eyes following my every movement, naturally, as greedy as a starving man watching a waiter take his food order.
Though of course there are no rare steaks coming for him.
‘Tomorrow, did you say?’ I ask, as I scan the blank page in front of me – like maybe I’m looking for a date, a time, a thing that doesn’t exist. ‘So that will be … another twenty-four hours.’
I have the gratification of seeing his eyes flash big, just before he yanks himself back under control. No other outward signs to say he’s suffering – apart from the impossibly tight tone he then uses to tell me that’s perfectly fine.
‘Right. Thank you,’ he says, and then I wait. I wait until he’s just at the door before calling out:
‘Oh, and Ben … find a shirt from somewhere, would you? Otherwise I might have to postpone the presentation for …, say …, a week.’
It’s almost terrifying to see his face go as slack with lust as it then does. But not half as terrifying as Aidan saying, once Benjamin’s gone:
‘What the fuck was all that about?’
* * *
The problem is, I suppose, that I don’t really know what this is all about. After every little step I take – and every little blundering push forward he goes after – I’m just left floundering, unsure. A million little warnings flash up in my head, each more severe than the last. You could be fired, these warnings say, and then of course I have to wonder if that’s what happened to Woods.
Someone caught him in the office with Ms Harding and a dildo. Like a game of Cluedo, only impossibly filthy.
Is that what I want to be? A person who plays filthy Cluedo with Benjamin Tate, just because Benjamin Tate deliberately spills coffee on himself and then tries to provoke me into it?
Because that’s obviously what he did. He doesn’t even drink coffee, for God’s sake. And, worse, I suspect Aidan knows all of the above. I didn’t appreciate that hint of amusement in his usually so cool and unsettling gaze. And in all honesty, I didn’t appreciate my own answer to his question either.
He’s having trouble with his girlfriend, I’d said, but of course that one word had struck far too close to bones I don’t want to have. Girlfriend, I think, even now, and then a parade of Benjamin’s possible conquests march through my head, each more lissom and lovely than the last.
Or worse: I parade through my own head, with that word stamped on my chest like a scarlet A. As though I could ever be something like that. As though this thing between us is actually just hearts and flowers disguised as kinky perversions, and really we’re going to end up on a date next Friday night, like normal people.
We’re not normal people. I know we’re not, because when I go the stationery cupboard to get something perfectly acceptable, like a fresh new ream of paper, he’s in there too. And after I realise this fact, I don’t quite know what I should do.
Go back out again? I can’t go back out again. It will look obvious and weird and like he’s won, somehow, though I’ve no idea when I started keeping score. And I can’t stay, either, because in here there’s no desk between us. There’s nothing in the way, and no time limit like there was in the elevator, and even after I’ve told him that I just need something from the shelf behind him nothing gets better.
The space we’re in is just too small for things to get better. He seems like a giant, stood amongst the Tippex and the Post-It pads, and when he turns every part of his body bru
shes every part of my body. I don’t have to step away from the door to have it happen. He’s just so immense that it occurs all on its own – or at least I think so, until he quite abruptly bends down to get the paper.
And then I stop thinking all together, about anything that even loosely resembles logic.
It’s the way he does it, that’s the thing. He doesn’t bend down the way normal men bend down when they need to get something. He bends down as though the only working joints in his body are in his hips, and everything else just has to stay exactly where it is. Even if this means that he has to take up a lot of space when he does it. And by a lot of space, I mean he bends over and then quite suddenly my back is against the door, while his absolutely gorgeous and frankly scantily clad ass almost pushes right into me.
Of course, rationally I know that his ass isn’t really scantily clad. He’s wearing perfectly acceptable trousers, truly he is. I keep calling them thin and crappy, but that’s probably just because of the enormous erection he keeps sporting. I’m sure such a thing would make corduroy seem flimsy.
No, no. The trousers are fine. It’s just my dirty mind. It’s just this urge I suddenly have to reach one hand out and run it over the perfect curve of his tight little ass. Or maybe … maybe do more than that. Because I’m pretty sure that’s what he’s suggesting, as he takes an absolute age to find something that’s right fucking there.
I can see it from where I’m standing, so God knows he should be able to. In fact I think he’s got his hand on it right now, as he takes a step back and that solid curve gets much, much too close to me. So close that I almost say something, so close that I nearly break the game and tell him don’t. Stop.
I can’t take this much pressure, I really can’t. His ass is in my lap, for God’s sake, and after another second of this unbearably tense and completely ridiculous stand-off, it is in my lap. I can feel him just sort of … urging himself back against me, as though he wants me to fuck him with the cock I don’t have. As though he’s some heated, delirious animal, just waiting to be mounted.
And ohhh, that thought. I don’t know why it does the things it does to me. All I know is that I have to touch him, I have to. I don’t care about the line or the notebook with the little mark in it or anything, anything at all. I just want to touch him in some unfathomably rude way, and dear God I do.
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