🕯Hello Lovie🕯

Your team, and even your department, is small. You don't know anyone with those initials. Do you? In your email, you pull up the department group to scroll through all the names; you're still new, you're probably forgetting a few.

Nothing. Well, it's intra-company, so no harm, no foul. It's not as if you're clicking on a suspicious link.

» Accept.

You wait. The longer you wait, the antsier you get. You flick at your thumbnail, your fingertip catching where the nail polish is peeling up. Little flecks of polish in a tiny pile that you sweep off with a scoop of your hand.

Wrong message maybe?

Sighing, you flip back to your manual to scroll through for specific information when the window suddenly blinks.

» Like your hair today

» Hi, sorry who is this?

» You don't know?

Your stomach flips.

» Sorry, I'm new. I really don't know anyone outside my department.

» Shame. Should socialize more.

What?

» Oh, well…I'll start soon, i'm sure lol. Sorry what department are you in?

» Kinda fun to let you figure it out

You minimize the chat window silently. It feels like holding a snake that suddenly turns its head to look at you.

You message Sasha, asking if she knows anyone with the first initial G, without telling her the rest. She laughs and says you might as well be asking if there're any white guys working in big tech.

For the rest of the day, anyone passing by your little cubicle is a suspect. You are in a busy, central spot of your floor; dozens of people float around every hour, many faces still unknown to you. You constantly receive a spectrum polite smiles, blank smiles, warm hellos, but nobody that stares or lingers. Every single person you interact with, hear about, you're training yourself to look for any matching initials.

Judging by their message, G doesn't want you to deduce it right away. Wants to play a bit, and you don't like it one bit. You delete the message history. It won't prevent them from sending you messages, but it's the only thing that works to keep your focus off it.

Pretend it hasn't happened.

—

A week later, you're deep in a document review, eyes bleary, when the window blinks. Doesn't occur to you that it wouldn't be anyone but your team members.

» Forgot to mention I like your cute little picture

Your eyes slam to the pinned picture on your partition wall — you, your best friends, soaking wet on the dock, arms up and eyes closed. A comfort to look at. No different from other people's pictures of their pets or kids or spouses. Suddenly, it feels as if you blew it up and hung it off the side of the building to flap in the wind and let the city gawk at you. Like a nude got published. You're all in your bathing suit cover-ups, nothing untoward to hang up in the workplace, but you suddenly grab it, the little pushpin ripping out with it. You stuff it in your bag, suddenly noticing that your palms and soles of your feet are sweating.

» Make you nervous?

» I don't really know what to say. I don't know who you are.

» You sure?

What the fuck. You close the chat again, pushing your chair out from your desk, and get up to go talk with Sasha. She asks if you want to tell IT; not yet, not really. HR? Definitely not. You both tool around and discover the chat app doesn't let you block other users, considering it's just a company-wide tool.

"Okay, well. I can try to look up directories, if you want, anyone with a G-name. Find an org chart, but those are constantly fuckin' outdated. Do you think they work on this floor?"

"Sasha, how would I know that," you laugh weakly. You scroll up through the chat history to show her. "There's nothing there that tells me what department they work in. How often they see me. They could be mailroom, or someone's assistant, or…anyone!"

She chews her lip, hip bumped against your desk. "Yeah. Fuck. Well, just ignore them for now. Let me know if you want to escalate it." She gives you very serious eye contact until you nod sincerely. "Or if they do something even weirder. Okay?"

You wander back to your desk.

You work later than usual that day. A company this size and given the field you're in, there are still dozens of people on calls, staring at screens, wrapping up meetings. Makes you feel better, safer.

A maintenance worker is waiting for the elevator when you approach. The sheer breadth of him makes you feel small and insignificant, standing there with your lunch bag and water bottle and backpack like a schoolkid. He's got a big yellow maintenance pushcart with him, and when the doors ding open, you motion for him to go first so you can fit yourself in after. He obliges with a blank nod, and you skirt in behind him.

G for you.

B1 for him.

You're staring unseeingly at the smeared stainless steel reflection of the elevator door, picking at your nail polish, when the lights flicker rapidly in a one-two count, and then the elevator car is shuddering, pulling up short and making your stomach roil.

"What the fuck," you mutter automatically. Eyes flick up to the robotic floor read-out, but that doesn't even seem certain where you are. Between 2nd and 3rd floor?

The lights shudder out again, plunging you both in dark for a few moments. You breathe in sharply until some sort of backup system kicks in, running lights on the ceiling of the elevator turning on. A ceiling fan spinning, thank god.

You turn to the maintenance worker — also thank god, someone who might know what to do exactly besides pressing the HELP button — and his mouth is downturned, unimpressed.

"Do you want—?" You gesture to the panel of buttons. He nods silently. Then, with the big-ass cart filling up the space of nearly 4 people, you have to maneuver off to the side like one of those frustrating tile games so he can bring himself up to where you were stood.

Tucked at the back, his broad back blocks you from seeing what he's pressing. Then there's a tinny, crackling voice. "Maintenance."

"Hey mate, it's me. Stuck in car 2 between 2 and 3. Power go out?"

"Oh, hey, man." You can almost detect relief in the other person's voice, like they're grateful not to hear from a panicking employee instead. "Yeah, brown-out. Car should be good though — lights and fan on?"

"Yeah."

"Weird. 'Kay, hold tight. I'll give J a ring." The crackling noise cuts out.

You stare at his back impolitely. Large shapely muscles bulked under a dark grey short-sleeved canvas shirt, tattoos pouring out over thick biceps and forearms. Workman's belt. Matching grey canvas pants and some of the thickest black boots you've seen. Huge, muscular ass. Tree trunk thighs stretching the canvas tight.

Boots turning backward to face you. Your eyes fly up to his face — solemn dark eyes, healed-wrong nose, and full mouth — breathlessly, guilty.

"Y'alrigh'?"

"Yeah?" You almost cough. "Yeah. Good."

"Might be a bit. Stingy fuckers been delaying calling the elevator techs out since spring."

"Oh." You panic because there's nothing to look at except for him and all he's looking at it is the way you're grabbing helplessly at the straps of your backpack. "Well. At least we've got air." You, ever the optimist.

—

The cart forces awkwardness. When you finally slide to sit down, and he follows suit later, you can't even see one another. Two ends of an L shape of space.

The silence is mortifying for no good reason, shining floodlights on your social insecurities.

You've tucked yourself in the back corner of the car, knees pulled up to your chest, unzipping your backpack quietly like you don't want to disturb the man.

It's been an hour and a half. You've stopped caring about the sweat that's peppered along your hairline, under your arms.. You scrape your hair up and find a claw clip to keep it off your skin.

"Whatcha got?" he asks after you crinkle around in your lunch bag too loudly.

"Oh, I was…I was just about to offer. I have some cold noodle salad left. You allergic to sesame or peanut?"

"Nah, no allergies."

You scrape two portions out, using your emptied containers to divvy them up. Big boy; you serve him a bigger portion. Around the corner from you, he won't know any different. Instead of standing, you scoot forward until you're peeking around. His legs are kicked out as much as they can, but he looks cramped and awkward.

He meets you halfway, arms flexing to grab your offerings; a can of grapefruit seltzer water, chopsticks and cold noodle salad, and a two-bite brownie from the dollar store. His expression, so blank before, looks surprised when he sees it.

His big fingers drag against yours as you weirdly try to place it all in his opened palms.

"Cheers," he says bluntly.

You nod politely and you both retreat to your corners like sweating, sad boxers.

"Oh wait!" You call out brighter than anything else you've said to him. "Ice packs."

A repeat of moving forward and then a hand-off a cool-but-better-than-nothing ice pack. He makes a very small sound when it hits his hands. Scuffled back into your spots again. A deeper groan when he puts the ice pack…wherever. You don't want to imagine where he's placed it.

"You get this downstairs?" It's the only question he's asked you except

At first, you think he means the ice pack.

"Huh? Oh, the salad? No, I made it. Why, is it okay?" Properly a character deficiency for you to seek validation from a random stranger in a stuck elevator.

He slurps the noodles loudly. "S'fuckin' good. Can't figure these things out though." You suspect he means the chopsticks.

You laugh lightly. "Sorry, I don't have a fork."

"Don't say sorry. S'good." The crisp sound of the pop can being cracked open and then a long thirsty guzzle. He must be sweatier than you in that canvas uniform. You imagine his Adam's apple working up and down as he chugs the water. "Ah, what the fuck is that" spat out in a strangled voice.

"What?"

"Your pop's gone off."

"Huh?"

"Tastes old."

Realization. You laugh. "It's just seltzer water. Flavoured. Not really pop."

You see the edge of his steel toed boots move slightly, and then a hand appear around the corner, setting the opened drink down for you. He moves back against his wall. "'m good. Thanks."

Are you opposed to drinking from the same can as a stranger? Yes.

This stranger? You grab the can quickly as if he's going to snatch you, and set it beside you. Look down and see where some of the water's pooled around the open tab. In the utter, humiliating privacy of your corner, you silently sniff the top of the can. Nothing. You have a tiny sip, and then dig into your own noodles, awash with whatever has come over you. A bitch in heat.

You gasp very loudly when the speaker crackles to life.

"Ey, G? You good, man?"

The man — you still don't know his name. He doesn't know yours — awkwardly pushes himself up to stand. "Yeah."

"Sorry for the wait there, brother. Fuckin' shitshow with these fools. Someone had to pull up their goddamn contract to check about OT calls. Anyway, they should be here soon. You guys good?"

"Yeah, all good, mate. Cheers." From this angle, stood up tall, he glances back and sees you tucked up tight, staring up at him. A funny look crosses his face, but you don't know him, can't read him.

When the technicians finally arrive, it doesn't take long for you guys to finally arrive at the 2nd floor, doors sliding open, and you finally on more stable ground. The man chats a little with the techs and you shyly say, "Thank you so much," to…everyone there, and then aim for the stairwell. The cold recirculated office air is a fucking relief on your skin, under your dampened clothing.

There's a door slam in the stairwell, echoing loudly in the chamber as you descend, and heavy boots clomping down, not hurried but not slow. You glance back and up: he's followed you. Didn't stay to chat.

"Walk you out." He says simply, and you mouth oh and you don't really have any arguments for that, so you walk self-consciously ahead of him. Aware that your pants and top are stuck unflatteringly to your skin with probably a pool-shaped band of sweat at the back of your top. "You drive or take public?"

"Uh, drive." Nerves rankling your voice like you didn't just spend hours cooped up in a tighter space than this.

He nods. Laughs short and rough when he sees you heading to the single car in the deserted parking lot. Overnight crews must park elsewhere.

An absurd question out of your mouth — "Do you want a drive home? Or…need? I don't know if you drive or…" You fumble with your car keys, press repeatedly on the fob to open the doors just for something to do with your hands. Your car lights blinks obediently as you approach.

"'m good. Drove." You turn your head, too afraid to look back up at him now, but watching his arm lift to gesture at a secondary parking lot. Some trucks parked there.

He stands, crossing his arms across his bulky chest, as you smile unnaturally.

"Okay, well, thanks, I guess." You laugh uncomfortably. "For keeping your cool. Made me feel a lot better."

"Yeah?" An eyebrow, ripped apart by scar tissue, tugging up by a hair.

"Yeah. A lot, actually." And then immediately, your cheeks feel even hotter, feeling like you've revealed something far too intimate to a man whose drink you swallowed.

"Cute."

You hustle into your car, flinging your shit on the passenger seat, sweating furiously and keys bouncing off the ignition cylinder multiple times until it takes, and waving until you can pull out and far away.

“Don’t you sweetheart me,” she says, primly. Her mouth is pinched with determination. Despite the steadiness of her voice, her hands nervously smooth down the skirt of her smart blue shirt dress. With a deep breath, she strides forward and sits in one of the chairs across from him. “You promised me.”

Price arches an eyebrow. “Did I, now?”

“You did,” she says, tipping her chin up. “You said you’d be home. I told you six o’clock.”

John crosses his arms. “And I told you I had a meeting that couldn’t wait.”

“And I told you that this is a priority for me. You told me being home was a priority for you, too.”

“It is.”

“We agreed on six o’clock. I didn’t pull that time out of thin air, John,” she says.

“And I don’t get to choose when the world needs saving next.”

Her jaw sets, and he can almost see whatever nervousness she had fading in the face of sheer stubbornness. She nods and stands. Then, to Price’s shock, she starts unbuttoning the front of her dress with deft fingers.

“Sweetheart,” he starts, then clears his throat when he sees sheer blue lace. “What are you doing?”

You finally feel his cock against the swell of your ass. He takes his own deep inhale, mouth and nose shoved against the back of your head, and exhales loudly. It sounds mangled in his throat, and you shut your eyes to soak it up.

When the nerves start pinching at you again — what time is it? what did you just do? — he seems to sense it, and hauls your hands behind the small of your back as you bleat in half-hearted protest. "Stay."

Cheeks burning, you tip your head forward and slam your forehead into the door, not even knowing who you'll see in the rearview mirror in your car later. His grasp leaves your skin, and you obey, keeping your hands clasped at your back like you're politely awaiting arrest. The door doesn't even feel cool against your hot skin.

Behind you, there's shuffling. Scraping. A squeal of sharp against steel. His hands find you again, calming your brain, and then he's got you sat up on a wedge of cleared stainless steel countertop. It's disorienting, face to face; laughable to call yourself an equal in this scenario.

"Cute trousers, these."

You look ahead to what he's getting at. He wants you to take them off. The only scrap of fabric holding your sanity intact at this point. How quickly a little attention has you under this man's boot, ground into dust, no longer yourself.

You take them off and he's going to fuck you. He won't surprise you by going easy on you or delaying it. He's not ripping them off you either, forcing you to bend under him. A simple statement said out loud, dropped into the room, and left to fester.

"They're new."

He laughs, a broken-up brutish thing that rubs you raw. "That right."

You nod. "Can you kiss me again?" You want to feel it at this angle, no height difference with a craned neck.

It's the only time he's looked surprised, but he smirks and it's gone in a flash. "Soft girl." He laughs roughly, then buries himself between your open legs, and sets his large hands high on your waist where it gives you a fresh fall of shivers. His fingers knead your flesh through your thin sleeveless top, nipping in, not gently. He knocks his head to the side and catches your mouth with his, and your eyes flutter closed. His lips are softer this time, malleable and forceful all in one, and he notches you open finally; his tongue entreats yours, and you eagerly accept. His groan meets yours, bullish breath fanning out of your noses, and his hands tighten considerably at your waist.

You slide your hands, timidly at first, from his wrists up his arms — the hair feels sparse in spots, likely burned off from close contact — and bulking biceps, shoulders. You breathe excitedly as you explore up his pillar of a neck to his stubbled face. When they meet the prickly fuzz of his shaved head, you shudder again, running your fingers over and over. Your legs wrap around his waist to the best of your ability with the size difference, hauling him in closer up against you, his sweat smearing against your clothing and skin.

The more you touch and grab and pull at him, his mouth and tongue get more frantic, the lazy and self-satisfied passes chipping away.

You break the kiss, pulling a rude grunt out of him, and grab fistfuls of his damp, sweat-stained t-shirt. His eyes are glassy and dazed, and you think maybe the kiss handed the power back to you somehow.

"God, I want you," he mutters, his head looking suddenly very heavy. He kneads hotly at your sides until you squirm. It's enough of a yes, and your top is being peeled off. Your thin summer bra, discarded with it. "Fuck." You're coated in a fine sheen of sweat in this airless room and he lowers his head more, swiping his large tongue along the underside of your breast where the sweat's pooled. Finishes it with a bite to the fat of you, up to your tightened nipple. He draws it in, sucks, and lets it pop out all in one long harsh pull. His other hand then squeezes the neglected breast, twisting at the nipple experimentally to watch your face for a reaction. Your mouth drops open in a little gasp, and he smirks again.

Power evaporated.

He pushes them up together, cupping in a display just for him, and buries his face. Plants a weird mix of slobbery kisses and bites and suckles across both nipples until he growls frustratedly. "God, you're so fuckin' soft." Almost angry about it.

You know it's coming.

Your squirming, hitching breaths, and damp patch on your pants all tell Simon the story he's been getting you to write this entire time. Minutes ago, a I'm not going to remove my pants has changed to well maybe they can slide down a bit. How easy you went down; no fight at all.

"Simon," you whisper, your voice catching, and he lets a long, snarling groan out hearing it.

It's the yes.

Do it for me. I can't do it myself yet.

"Such a sweet girl, huh. Bein' a bit bad with me like this." He grunts, his hands dropping your breasts and dropping heavy and flat against the tops of your thighs. He rubs them up and down like you're freezing and he needs to warm you up, move the blood back around, like it's not already pumping thick and hot.

When you moan, he smiles tightly, stretching across his face. "Open your mouth."

You expect another kiss.

You get a sudden glob of saliva spat onto your tongue with a satisfied smirk.

"Hold it."

Your eyes bug out, making him laugh low and dark. His spit tastes like beef and cigarettes.

His thick, blunted fingers, nails bitten to the quick, tug at your zipper. He lifts you up so you can shimmy the pants down, lightweight things that flutter down over your feet and onto the dirty floor.

Glazed, hungry eyes latching onto your basic seamless underwear. "You're a sight, love." As if he's returned from war. He sucks in a sharp breath. "So fuckin' pretty. You're gonna ruin me."

His final words are more scorching than his gaze, and you want to hide, shrink away.

A large finger traces your labia through the opaque cotton, and your mouth breaks the spit down, flattening into across your gums and teeth until it fills you up, smoke and meat suffusing you.

"I'm gonna make you feel good again. Lemme do that for you."

You nod.

"That's a love. You're gonna make me feel good too, yeah?"

You nod harder, your thighs clenching around his feather-light fingertip.

"You want some more, love?" You don't need to nod. He fingers your mouth open, spits again, closes it back up. Smears his thumb across the seam of your lips. His head drops down; the scarring continues across his shaved head, breaking up the swaths of shorn hair like circuitry. His other thumb swipes up and down over your clit, and you shudder, grinding your hips against the countertop.

Just his thumb. Pulling your underwear teasingly to the side of your lips then letting it snap back into the crease. He moans appreciatively, a starving man sat down to sup on his feast.

Achingly slow and yet abruptly fast, his own zipper is being pulled down, his hard cock released from the depths. You try to control your reaction, but it looks intimidatingly big and mad about being caged up so long without release. Large and heavy, bobbing up, wet at the throbbing darkened head. Heavy sac. Hairy pillars for thighs. And you with your cunt squished by a pair of underwear squeezing your labia to the side.

He has the same revelation and his expression is far more wicked.

"Put your hand on me, love. Before we start."

Your stomach plummets at those words, like you haven't taken every step here yourself.

A hand droops down between your legs, past the soaked cotton of your underwear, until he's surging into your loosely curled palm and fingers. It feels like a fucking weapon. Your mouth hangs open dumbly, making him laugh, his cock jumping in your tightening grip in response.

"Christ, you got some soft hands there, bird."

He hauls you more forward off the counter, balanced precariously so he can fuck you at a good angle. Then he commandeers his cock out of your hands, setting yours back against the steel surface to rest back a little. Brace yourself.

He sets a thumb down into the wet shallows and drags your liquid up and up, around your clit until you're hissing. "S'good." You both watch as he sets the head of his fat cock up against your plumped lips, and you moan before he's even made contact, like wincing away from a needle before it's even pressed to skin. "Greedy, huh."

Just seeing the way his fingers hold his cock gives you shivers. He brushes up against you to find that sweet, slick glide, and you both make noises then. Your hips shift impatiently without you even meaning to. A smirk, low and dark.

"What if I just tease you like this, eh?" His eyes blink slowly up to yours, watching your face.

You shake your head.

"No?" He presses the head a little further, and you try to clench down on it right as he withdraws just a little. A fucking game of slap hands.

You finally swallow his spit angrily. "No."

"Mmm," he groans at the bite in your voice. His face mirrors yours — eyebrows drawn down tight tight tight, mouth hanging open in anticipation — mockingly, as he pushes deeper. Rocks in an inch, maybe two. Your cunt grabs at him and he gives, releasing a near-whine that seems to surprise him. "Alrigh', alrigh'. Give you what you need."

It's slow, but steady, and you can't keep your eyes off him until he bottoms out, the tops of his thighs meeting the fat of your ass hanging off. "Christ. Fuck me, girl."

You clench harder and he hisses sharp at you. "What, girl? You wan' me to just be done like that? Come in you like a young lad?"

Yes.

You can't even hide it. He sees it on your face and there's another wash of surprise, something he doesn't expect you to want or ask for. "You don't want me to fuck you nice an' slow?"

Head shake, then a full-body shudder when his cock pulls almost all the way out.

"Hm. Nice, sweet girl…maybe you'll just take what I give you, even if it's scraps." His voice is gritty, rubbing raw across your flesh, might as well be a thumb to your clit. "Hungry thing."

Your eyes flutter shut and it's a mercy that he lets you keep them closed as his cock works back into you, harsh and perfect against your soft. You lean back on your hands and instead of focusing on his cock striking true, you smell him. Inhale the stale, grease-laden air with his cigarette smoke and sweat and low-lying body odour working too hard over cheap antiperspirant and cooked meat and onions and everything that should repulse you, should have you marching out that door, but whatever the fuck it is — something chemical and sick — is like a immurement of your own design.

He grabs your ankles and props your feet up onto the edge so he can fuck you without your legs in the way, and you could just collapse back for all you care. You feel the ghost of his thumb over your clit every now and again, but it's as if he has to keep reminding himself not to work your clit; feed you the scraps.

Hungry thing, you do. You clench and pull and work at your own orgasm despite his strokes that aren't really paying attention to how you like it, trying to claw something out of it just for you, and you can practically hear him smirking behind your closed lids.

"You got me fuckin' close, lovie."

You could scream.

"I'm gonna come in this gorgeous fuckin' cunt of yours. You know that?"

Some garbled monstrous noise works it way out of you at that and your hands claw at the countertop ledge for something to grip before he slams you up against the shore.

"Yeah, you do. Dirty fuckin' bird takin' what I give her. Got some bad news for you, lovie. Real bad."

The worst fucking timing to reveal 'bad news' and your eyes fly open wide.

"You're it f' me now."

And then you're shattering up against his jagged rocks — taking what you can get, ripping it with your sharpened teeth, and then baring them like a wild thing.

-

His thumbs stroke down over your trachea, running along it to feel the ridges.

He doesn't let you kiss him yet; he teases you away from a full one, even though your mouth is opening to press the wet silk of your tongue against his. He seems to find this funny, especially when a tiny whine gets needled out of you after the third pass.

"Come on," you sigh against him.

"What's that, love?"

"Kiss me."

Oh, his eyes. Danger lurking brightly, luminescent under a filmy veil.

"You want me t' kiss you, hm?"

"Why am I here?" You suddenly break out, pushing at him to no success, feeling a pinch of embarrassment at your cheeks and and eyes and tits and cunt. He's barely left you space to slide off the stool. "I-I gotta go. I'm gonna be late for work."

"Mm, she doesn't like t' be teased, eh."

You don't want to put your hands on him, so you lock your forearm ups in a dukes-up position and push toward his body. "No! I don't." It surprises you by how raw it comes out.

Simon's arms are coming up and his hands are now cupping your face, which would look romantic but for his thick, scuffed elbows resting on your shoulders, nearly weighing you down. He probably looks like he's going to pop your head clean off the rest of your body. "Sweet girl like you. Too soft for those games, eh."

"No." Defensive. Too defensive.

He gives you a humiliatingly knowing smile, almost a mercy. "Yeah. Too soft. Maybe you just wanna feel good, huh." No question mark in the gravelling, thick voice.

You don't answer, you can't, but your thighs squeeze together and he knows.

Gently and slowly, he takes your cross-body bag off, setting it on the counter. Your only barrier. A loud skidding sound and he's dragging the stool away and chucking it behind him, clanging onto the grease-marked floor. "Shut the door."

You pull it closed, or try, but it's got a funny sticking latch that you can't figure out and the longer it takes you, the more embarrassed and inflamed you feel. Then, there's a dark rumble of a chuckle at the back of your neck — god he's so quiet, how the fuck did he get closer in this already-cramped space without you noticing? — and he reaches over you, the curve and sanctuary of his armpit resting on your shoulder damply as he pulls the latch and twists it funny. Cranks it once to test it. You turn your head slightly, and the wave of him pouring off his skin and t-shirt is thicker than the humidity.

You're the type who has sex almost exclusively after showers, and your cunt is throbbing at the acridity of him, that nose-crinkling density of smoke and sweat and grease. He doesn't smell like sex, but he smells like how sex with him might feel. Harsh and staggering and obliterative of anything else but.

"You smellin' me, love?" Fuck, his voice is right there, pressed into the hollow of your ear. He's not touching you anywhere else, but his fingers might as well be in your cunt. A cold shiver runs over you, setting goosebumps across your bare flesh.

You turn your face, shamed, back to the door, staring blankly at some certificate taped up shoddily. Simon Riley, it says his full name. You're not sure it suits him.

His arm presses down harder, and then the other one is doing the same on the other side, until he's got you in some strange MMA-like hold, chin propped closer to the crown of your head than your shoulder. You almost laugh, and then his hands land on the door. Your head, between his locked arms. A dark laugh heating your neck.

A gasp slips out of you when he breaks up your soft summer flats with his steel-toed boots, widening your stance. Then, a heavy knee and thigh are braced between your legs, and all of a sudden, you are pressed against the door. Forehead under the certificate.

"Think she wants t' feel good. Wants me t' take care o' her."

A moan as diaphanous as late summer steam pours out of you, like a teakettle announcing itself.

"Ohhh," he breathes out, ghosting your crown. "I'll take such good care of you," he croons, and then he begins to rock his thigh up until it hits your cunt squarely. Your head punches back, nowhere else to go. Trapped in this cage and rutting against it like an animal desperate for any sort of substance.

"That feel good, love?" He repositions slightly, raises his leg higher until you're lifting off the floor, the slippery soles of your flats scraping gently. As you lose your balance, your tits push out to overcorrect your tipping. "Where you gonna hold on?"

There's nowhere else. You hook your arms up until your fingers curl around the meat of his forearms, holding on tight. Hysterically, you think that it looks like his arms are next going to come down on you like a rollercoaster restraint, the steel band that cages you in and keeps you from falling out.

He shifts his leg back and forth, holding you up. A fucking thigh for a seat.

"There you go."

You breathe out a whining sound.

"Nah, don't be embarrassed. I got you. Y'wanna feel good, use me, love."

It's not the rough texture of his jeans against the thin fabric of your pants. It's not the breadth of him pressing everywhere, nearly hitting every spot under you. It's not his thick, tattooed arms banded on either side of your head, your fingers gripping for dear life.

It's his voice, telling you that. It's his smell, drenching your back, dripping down, way deep down.

It's not embarrassment that stills you. It's the wanting. The sheer intensity of it engulfing you out of the blue.

Your fingernails bite down into his skin and he groans coarsely and that's when you start rocking. A slow measure, testing it out, unsure. He can't see your face. All he knows is your first name. These are the things you hold onto as you start to keen, clamping and unclamping your dangling legs around his, still uncertain that he's got you.

Your hips begin grinding faster, deeper, rocking your clit downward to find the friction, and he works with you now, shifting his thigh exactly so it resists where you need it to, the hard grip of denim making you moan even through two layers of cotton.

"Oh my god."

Despite the strangeness and newness, you are bolting to your orgasm like a wild horse that's been penned in, frantic for the exit, for release.

His stocky arms are holding you up. Damp with exertion, marked up from your fingernails, but steady. His breath is hard and laborious behind you, nearly against you, so fucking close.

"'m taking such good care of you, huh?"

You squeeze your inner thighs and eyes at the same time, clenching everything down to ride him, sweat running through your hair now, down your nape. "Oh, fuck. Oh my god."

"Nah, lemme hear you." And then he bumps his thigh up abruptly, jolting the start of the orgasm through you, as your fingers nearly pry off his arm, so slippery now.

It's a sobbing, breaching orgasm, rushing and hitching out of you, and it feels like you're on a fucking rocking horse, grinding yourself to a screeching finish. You feel a nail break skin but you can't stop the sounds, the words, the onslaught of everything pouring up and out of you —

— under your sounds, his own — sweet thing, s'good, that's fuckin lovely now, feelin' that pretty cunt on me — until you're drenched in tears or sweat or him.

Breakwaters giving way like salt.