Broken Enagement

by Gage Grayson

  One more circle, two more, then I back up my head just in time for Maddie to come.

  “Oh, oh.” A horrible buzzing racket starts up from the table. “Oh shit.”

  “What?” I manage to ask, pushing myself up from the floor.

  “My fucking phone. I put it down on the table. It’s from work, and I’m supposed to be back by now.”

  Maddie grabs the phone and stops the vibrating.

  “You have to go? Are we gonna be able to pick this back up soon? Tonight?”

  “No, fuck that. I’m not leaving. I just have to send a quick email—hold on.”

  That sure took me out of the moment...but I also probably have a lot of messages from when I was sleeping.

  I take out my business phone for a quick check while Maddie’s sending her email.

  Ethan

  “What the fuck, dude?” Madeline chortles when she spots me checking the usual slew of texts and emails I get in the afternoon.

  “You’re doing work stuff. I’m just taking the opportunity to catch up until you’re ready.”

  Maddie tosses her phone back on the table and laughs loudly.

  “This is turning into a business meeting, isn’t it? Listen to the way you’re talking...”

  “Now, missus, or, I’m sorry, is it miss?”

  “What is it, Mr. Barret?” Maddie responds reluctantly with a sigh.

  I start taking off my suit jacket, and I pace deliberately over to the magic marker mess on the whiteboard.

  “You aren’t responsible for this presentation earlier, were you?”

  “No.” Maddie gets up, starting to get a little more into the act. “That wasn’t me, but I may be able to walk you through it.”

  Maddie gracefully undoes her bra while walking in my direction. I unbutton my shirt as I wait for her arrival.

  With Maddie’s eyes purposefully fixed on me, I’m having trouble concentrating on even the simple task of taking off my shirt.

  “That would be most appreciated, if you would.” I’m finding it tough to talk too—but I free myself of my dress shirt.

  Madeline steps out of her shoes, leaving them on the floor behind her without missing a beat.

  Maybe it’s the sight of Madeline taking one step after another through the empty boardroom, slowly and steadily after shedding the last of her clothes that’s making me feel like I could honestly fucking faint on the boardroom floor.

  Or maybe it’s the related fact that every drop of blood is rapidly leaving my brain and journeying straight to my cock...

  Fuck, I feel myself going seriously weak when Maddie grabs my tie, still hanging on my neck, and pulls me around as she walks to the whiteboard.

  “Okay, good. You’re paying attention now.”

  “Yeah.” Just that one stupid word is all I can say.

  “Now, if you look here...” Madeline points forcefully at a sloppily drawn, incomprehensible pie chart–looking thing at the corner of the board.

  Her nails look newly manicured, and they’re painted bright green—sort of a faint echo of her eye color.

  I wait for Madeline to continue her presentation, but she just stares at me with a very studious, businesslike expression.

  “I’m looking.”

  My words do nothing. Maddie keeps up her silent stare until I start laughing.

  Even after that, she just keeps staring until I finish.

  “As I was saying, Mr. Barrett, if you’re quite done.”

  “I’m quite done.”

  “As I was saying, this pie represents the various colors available in a small pack of Sharpie markers.”

  “What does it mean, though?”

  “What does it mean, Mr. Barrett? I’ll tell you: it’s a statement, it’s somebody crying out to the boardroom to the world that they picked up the cheapest colored markers they could find by the cash registers at Staples.”

  “So, it’s a cry for help?”

  “No, Mr. Barrett, don’t you see? It’s a statement of pride. This whole display is a way of screaming out: ‘Look, everybody! Look at what I can do! None of it makes any fucking sense, but look how colorful! Pretty!’”

  I start undoing my belt.

  “I still don’t get it.”

  Maddie grabs onto the waist of my pants and pulls them down as she descends to her knees.

  “Of course you don’t,” she mumbles just before grabbing my rigid member as it pops out.

  “Glsfsfdnfd.” That’s the garbled noise I make when I feel Maddie’s hand wrapped firmly around my cock.

  “Maybe you do get it.” Those whispered words are the last thing I hear from Maddie before the sensation of her tongue traveling slowly up my shaft sends my eyes rolling back in my head and makes the world go fuzzy for a flash.

  Maddie brings her tongue all the way up my shaft and over the tip of my dick. I’m able to stay standing straight because I no longer have to think about it, or anything else.

  I’m merely existing in the moment—and I’m also existing in the next moment when Maddie takes nearly all of my cock into her mouth.

  She lets it out with an almost vicious slowness, her tongue wrapping and moving around every inch as it falls.

  “Aglythkop,” I say, trying to channel the pleasure somehow, but it’s too damn much.

  Finally, I just let out a stupid “ohhh” sound.

  “See? You get it,” Maddie says breathily as she stands back up.

  “I’m not sure if I do.”

  Our hands roam everywhere along each other’s bodies freely. I start lightly kissing Maddie’s tits, then I start remembering something from years ago.

  It’s a memory from a restaurant parking lot, and later a beach, all on a Pacific island, under an amazingly starry sky.

  It’s a memory from under the Milky Way.

  I move my kisses up toward Maddie’s left shoulder. Again, she grips the back of my head, digging in her fingertips.

  I move to Maddie’s neck, and she guides me slightly, but I don’t need too much guidance.

  I know now that I remember that one exact spot, toward the back of Maddie’s neck, and I start kissing with a little more ferocity when I find it.

  “Ooooooh...tongue now.”

  I follow Maddie’s instructions and flick the spot with the tip of my tongue.

  “Ooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

  There’s that change of vowel sound. I remember it like it was yesterday.

  I lay one last lingering kiss on the back of Maddie’s neck before she starts to shift, turning to the whiteboard.

  “Do you still not get it, Mr. Barrett?”

  I take a few steps back, and Maddie slaps both hands on the whiteboard. Magic marker ink smears down the display as she slides down her hands and sticks her perfect ample up into the air.

  “I don’t, but I want to so fucking bad.”

  “Then fuck me in front of this fucking whiteboard right fucking now.”

  Time stops yet again.

  Or it somehow starts bending, because I could not tell you what happens first: my cock slipping into Maddie’s wonderfully wet pussy, or my own hands falling onto the wall on either side of Maddie’s.

  That part is a blur, but I’m back in the present again, and thankfully lucid as those immense pleasure waves run through me.

  Maddie has a preternatural sense for moving in harmony. As my pace increases, gradually, hers does at the exact same time.

  I don’t even notice how much we’re both grunting until we really going at it in earnest thrusting with a bottomless passion and yelling much too loudly for any noise machine to even think about competing with us.

  “Ugh!”

  “Ah!”

  “Ugh!”

  “Ah!”

  We’re taking turns, at least.

  Now that we’ve found our groove, which is intense and loud today, we stay at the same pace.

  It’s perfect.

  I move one hand off the wall and onto Maddie’s side, feeling aro
und her waist then lightly teasing around her tits.

  Maddie lets out a throaty, raspy screech that makes our grunting sound like sprightly little whispers in comparison. I can tell she’s coming as she thrashes her hands against the whiteboard, sending it crashing to the floor with a deafening racket.

  I hear myself grunting again.

  “Yeah, keep fucking going. I need to come one more time,” Maddie snarls with a fierceness that almost makes me come.

  We go back to grunting, simultaneously, hastening the pace as we both start to reach the top of the mountain together.

  When I sense that the summit is in sight, and I can feel it looming, Maddie’s grunts turn to soft sighs. My grunts also transform to quieter moans as we draw near the point of no return.

  With another raspy screech, Maddie flips her head back up, tossing her golden hair down her back.

  Maddie directs a shrill moan up at the ceiling, and I pull out as she moans again.

  I come all over my suit jacket on the floor as Maddie orgasms with a final shriek.

  We stay in that weird position for a few seconds, with Maddie leaning against the wall and me standing a few inches behind her.

  We catch our breaths as the glow of a perfect sunset fills the entire room.

  Maddie stands up and starts retrieving her underwear and her dress.

  With our intense appetites sated—at least for the time being—we both start chuckling as we get redressed.

  “Shit,” Maddie declares, holding her panties out in front of her. “I hope this place is clean.”

  “It’s disinfected at least once a day.”

  “It needs to be,” Maddie responds cryptically.

  I’m about to offer to run down to Dior get some undergarments and Anthropologie for a new dress and whatever else Maddie wants, but she’s already putting her bra back on, well on her way to getting dressed entirely.

  “What did you tell work?” I ask her.

  “I told them I’m not feeling well, but I finished the meeting. Zip, please?”

  I zip up the back of Maddie’s dress, and she drops onto a chair and smiles. Her shoes are still on the floor, and my heart soars at the thought of Maddie staying at least a little while.

  Ethan

  “So, are you ready to go take a look now?” I’m reclining as much as I can in the office chair, barely hearing my own voice ask the question.

  “What?” Maddie’s busy throwing the markers and everything else into the two plastic shopping bags that Kallie left on the floor.

  “To go see if anyone’s here.”

  I put my feet back on the floor, ready to take a for-real walk. Maddie just looks at me like I’m the craziest bastard she’s seen all day, which would probably be saying something.

  “Do we really need to go through all that again?”

  I put the brakes on and try to remember what happened before our boardroom meeting.

  “Fuck, that’s embarrassing. It’s not new to you anymore, and you certainly know there’s no one around at this point.”

  “I certainly hope not, Mr. Barrett.”

  Maddie’s got both bags, packed full of markers and packaging, with one of them holding the entire whiteboard, clenched in one hand. I see her eyes travel to the bags before traveling mischievously somewhere off toward the distance.

  “Maddie, what are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.” The corners of Maddie’s lips turn up ever so slightly.

  “You know I don’t like to leave a mess for the janitorial staff, right?”

  Maddie shrugs, her smile now large and unstoppable.

  “Just tell Kallie to clean it up.”

  Maddie pitches both packed bags across the room, their contents tumbling out onto the conference table surface.

  “Damn, Mad.”

  The markers are fairly quiet, but when the whiteboard falls out, it clangs with a wicked racket. I actually fucking cringe when I hear it.

  “You know how I feel about people calling me that, Eth.”

  “I think the table just broke.”

  “How could that table break?” Maddie puts her hands on her hips, trying to convey a sour, pissed-off expression, but I can see the smile already starting to play around her lips again.

  “The tabletop, I mean. It may be cracked now.”

  Maddie gestures in the direction of the table with the top of her head.

  “Go check.”

  She says it so casually. I want her so bad again.

  But it’s not just like I want to fuck her. I want to be with her, to be beside her.

  I want her there to be sassy, throw shit, and make me fucking laugh. All the fucking time.

  But I know she’s just going to leave again soon. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it will continue to be.

  I go to check. I walk to the middle of the table, reach over, and move the whiteboard.

  “It’s still pristine—the whiteboard didn’t do shit.”

  “Well, yippee for that hedge fund tabletop. May it live to see many more years of pointless meetings.”

  I start sweeping the markers and the whiteboard into a big pile at the edge of the table.

  “Pointless, you say?”

  “Yeah,” Maddie answers quickly, her hands still on her hips. “Every single one.”

  “Even today? Even your meetings?”

  I can’t help myself. I’m already sweeping the mess back into the bags. There’s no way Kallie is cleaning this up; it’s going to end up being some poor janitor working a sixteen-hour day.

  I hear a heavy sigh coming from Maddie’s side of the room.

  It’s definitely from Madeline, but there’s a world-weariness I wouldn’t expect to hear from her.

  “I’ve been trying, Ethan.” Madeline’s tone is so hefty that I’m afraid to even look up from what I’m doing. “I wanted...I still want to do this the easy way.”

  “The easy way?” It’s like I’m following a script at this point. I need her to fess up, even if she needs me to lead her on a bit.

  “Interviews, Ethan. That’s what I told my higher-ups. Not formal interviews—I thought I could keep it casual. A new approach.”

  Now I’m holding both plastic bags, one in each hand. They’re both bursting with Kallie’s garbage.

  “Do you have an old approach?” I’m staring at my hands holding the bags like a shy child. I know where this is going.

  “No. I mean new for this branch office.”

  I walk in Madeline’s direction, looking at her. She’s not trying to hide a frown of disappointment with a mounting, resigned anxiety in her eyes.

  “Investigations never start this way in New York?”

  “They start this way, but they don’t continue this way for this long. I’m not going by the book, and I was hoping to avoid that.”

  I deposit the bags on a chair a few spots from the end of the table in case Maddie starts to feel like Maddie again.

  “Why?”

  “Because now, it’s only going to get worse.”

  “Why?”

  I arrive at my spot just in front of Madeline, getting close enough that she has to look up at me.

  I lightly rub her back with one hand, and her frown and troubled eyes start to take on a maudlin, playful tone.

  “Can we speak in your office?”

  I look around the room as if I’m checking for a giant reel-to-reel recording our entire conversation.

  “Madeline, we’re safe here. I’m sure of it.”

  “I’m sure of it too. I’d just like to see your office. Please?”

  Shit, if Maddie didn’t worry about being recorded up until now, with everything we just did in this room, she must mean business.

  “Okay, let’s check it out.”

  Madeline nods, and she’s halfway out the door by the time I take my first step.

  “I appreciate you giving me your time after hours,” Madeline calls out to me as I follow her down the corridor. “I ho
pe we can get some of these questions answered.”

  Now that Madeline’s got me in a sort of paranoid state, I try to act natural and pull my business phone out from my pocket to check my messages.

  There’s an email notification on the lock screen. I don’t usually get notifications for emails, except for one account—the account that the partners set up for me when I first joined.

  The email is from John Barrister’s Gmail account.

  Why would he be using his Gmail account?

  We need to talk re:Basel. Remind me when you see me next.

  “Not this shit again,” I say out loud as Maddie opens my office door.

  “What shit?” she asks, walking around my desk to sit in my chair.

  After walking into my office, I close the door behind me and pull up a chair to my desk.

  “I keep forgetting, even though it’s a big fucking deal. The firm is in talks, internally, to move to Switzerland.”

  “Switzerland?” Maddie lets out an odd, vaguely horrified laugh after saying the word.

  “Yeah, weird, right? It’s not going to happen, or at least I doubt it.”

  “When have you heard about an entire firm making a move like that?”

  “Exactly. I think it’s just a negotiating tactic because our lease in the building is almost up. They’re trying to make it look as realistic as possible.”

  Maddie spins around in my chair, making a complete rotation to the window behind the desk and back. Her expression’s still dead serious.

  “That is one nice view you’ve got here.”

  “Tell me about it. That’s why it doesn’t make any sense—this is a historic building, we’re on an upper floor, and I don’t think there’s room to negotiate.”

  “You don’t say...” Maddie gingerly brings her hand to the open laptop on my desk then swiftly slams it shut.

  “Hey,” I complain weakly.

  “Not what this is, I’m afraid.”

  “Not what what is?”

  Maddie watches my laptop and waits for the light indicating it’s in sleep mode before she continues.

  “Are you really thinking about moving to Basel?”

  “How did you know the city? Did they tell you, or did you uncover that detail somehow?”

  Maddie pushes back with her foot, sending the chair a few feet backwards.