“That depends on what you’re about to do with that tie.”
“Close your eyes.”
She hesitates. One breath. Two. Her fingers release the armrests one by one, consciously letting go of the controls. Then she removes her glasses and her eyes close. I lay the silk gently across them and tie it at the back of her head. Careful with her hair. Careful with the pressure. The fabric is thin enough to see shadows through but not detail. Not enough to plan or control or design her response. That’s the point. For the next few minutes, Celeste Brinley doesn’t get to be in control. She just gets to feel.
I move back around to the front of the desk. I don’t touch her. Not yet. I let the silence stretch. Let her sit in the anticipation, in the not-knowing, in the space between nerves and need.
“Saylor?” Her tone is pitched differently. Tighter.
“I’m here.”
“What are you?—”
“Breathe, Celeste. Relax.”
I hear her exhale. Not a sigh. A surrender. The sound of an exhausted woman who is still mentally managing crises even as I stand between her thighs, finally breathing out. Choosing to let someone else hold the reins for thirty seconds.
I kneel in front of her chair. My hands find her knees. She flinches at the contact, not from fear but from the voltage of being touched without seeing it coming. I rest my hands there. Still. Just holding her knees through the fabric of her skirt, letting the warmth of my palms communicate before my fingers do.
Then I begin to move. Slowly. My thumbs tracing small circles on the inside of her knees, gradually sliding upward, pushing her skirt higher as I go. Inch by inch. The fabric bunches and rides. Her breathing accelerates with each inch of skin I uncover, the sound filling the quiet office like a metronome set to an increasing tempo.
I reach the lace edge of her underwear. I trace it with one fingertip. Just one. Following the scalloped border where fabric meets skin, from one hip across the front to the other, and the noise she makes through pressed-together lips is so controlled and so desperate that it sends heat straight through my chest and down.
“I have employees,” she whispers. “On this floor. Thirty of them.”
“You also have a locked door and covered windows.”
“The blinds aren’t soundproof.”
“Then you’ll have to be quiet.”
I hook my fingers into the waistband and pull downward. She lifts her hips without being asked, which tells me everything about the distance between her protests and her want. Her underwear slides down her thighs, past her knees, over her heels. I set them on the floor beside me. Black lace. I’ll be taking those with me.
I don’t go straight to where she wants me. That’d be a mistake. The destination only matters if the journey makes you desperate to arrive. So I press my mouth to the inside of her knee. Then higher. Then higher still. Kissing a path up her innerthigh with the patience of a man who has absolutely nowhere else to be, stopping every few inches to let my breath land against her skin so she can feel the heat without the contact. The anticipation does more than the touch. Every pause makes her shift in the chair, angling toward me, seeking something I’m deliberately withholding.
“Saylor.” My name comes out like a warning she doesn’t mean.
“Mm-hmm.”
“If you don’t?—”
“Don’t what?”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t need to. I can feel the tension in her thighs, the way her muscles are pulled taut, vibrating at a frequency that tells me she’s right at the edge of patience. I ghost my mouth over her clit without making contact and she inhales so sharply the chair creaks.
Then I give her what she wants.
My tongue makes first contact with her slick heat and she’s already so wet I can taste how badly she’s been wanting this. The sound she makes is low and choked and immediately swallowed, her hand clamping over her own mouth with the desperate efficiency of a woman who is trying not to disturb the moment. As if her moans of pleasure would stop me. Wrong.They energize me.
I use my tongue with the patience and attention I promised her in the guesthouse. The kind of focus that says I’m not racing toward a finish line. I’m learning a language. I vary the pressure, the rhythm, the angle, reading every shift of her hips, every catch in her breathing, every involuntary movement of the hand that’s gripping my hair like a lifeline. I suck her clit between my lips and feel her whole body jerk in response. Her thighs clamp around my head so hard I can barely hear her desperate whimpers.
I want more. I want to see her, taste her, every inch. I hook one of her knees over my shoulder and shift her so she’s right at the edge of the chair, her skirt bunched and hiked up around her waist like a ring around a finger. Now she’s open in front of me, spread and vulnerable, the blindfold turning her into pure sensation. I press my tongue deeper, flatten it, push past her slick folds and into her. She gasps, the sound completely involuntary this time, a noise of shock and want, and her hands fly to the sides of my head, steadying herself, steadying me, like she’s afraid she might fall out of the chair.
She tastes like sweet and salt. Something phantom-like, haunting. A taste I’ll chase to the ends of the earth, like the ocean just before a storm. I want to drown in it. I drag my tongue up, circle her clit, playing, teasing, then fuck her with it, plunging in and out, slow and deep. I can hear her fighting so hard not to make noise, her hips rolling against my mouth, her breath going ragged and sharp. It’s the most honest I’ve ever seen her—no armor, no boardroom voice, just the mess of it, the need.
I slide my hands up her thighs, grip her hips, hold her still so I can control the pace, and she gives it up to me, lets me take her apart. I can hear the hum of the air vents, the faint sounds of office life somewhere out there beyond the glass, the slick sound of me lapping at treasure like a starved animal.
“Fuck,” she whispers, barely audible, her throat choked with need. “Right there.”
