Page 117 of Offside

She didn’t move. “How occupied?” she muttered quietly.

“Extremely.”

A beat passed. Cole was still somewhere behind us. The countdown was seventeen minutes out.

“Back hallway,” she said over her drink. “Two minutes.”

I took my napkin and went back to where I’d been before.

I lasted ninety seconds.

The hallway smelled like old wood and cold air and the faint ghost of a kitchen that had closed three hours ago. One overhead light. No windows. The bass from the bar came through low and steady, more feeling than sound.

She was already there. Of course she was. My shoulders settled and I took her in. She was wearing a sparkly dress that was way too short for other men to be able to look at her in, and a wicked grin.

She had her back against the wall and her arms crossed and she was watching me with none of the professional distance she usually wore in this building. Unguarded and direct, a side of her only I got to benefit from.

I met her in only a couple steps and put a hand behind her neck, the other on her face, and kissed her. Not careful. Not the version I’d been managing all night, or even any night. I wanted her so fucking bad. She made a sound against my mouth and grabbed the front of my jeans with both hands and kissed me back the same way, and for a moment there was nothing else—just her mouth and her hands and three hours of pretending burning off all at once.

I pulled back enough to breathe. She was already flushed, her eyes dark, her lips kiss-swollen.

“I cannot keep my hands off you,” I said. It came out rougher than I intended. “Three hours. Do you have any idea⁠—”

“I know.” She pulled me flush to her, and she had to feel how hard I was. “I know⁠—”

I kissed her again, deeper, walked her back two steps until she was against the wall and pressed the length of myself against her so she could feel exactly what three hours of watching her across a room had done. She exhaled sharply through her nose.

“Ryan.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a door at the end of this hallway.”

I pulled back and looked. Employees Only sign. Dee’s office. I’d clocked it the first time I’d ever been in this bar and down this hallway. We needed to move before we got caught anyway; the restrooms were nearby and anyone could come along.

I tried the doorknob.

It opened.

She looked at me. “I need you right fucking now.”

I glanced at my watch and then met her feral gaze. “Fourteen minutes.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her through the door with me.

Dark. The only light was a desk lamp in the far corner throwing a low amber circle over a cluttered surface—receipts, a scheduling binder, a small succulent in a terracotta pot. Filing cabinet against one wall. A corkboard dense with shift grids and supplier notes. A desk pushed against the far wall. Solid wood. The kind that didn’t move when you put weight on it.

She looked at the desk.

I looked at her.

I reached behind me, not taking my eyes off her, and locked the door from the inside. I walked her back to the desk with my hands on her neck, kissing her the whole way. The faint bass pulse of the music in the bar came through the walls. Outside that door, the countdown was moving, our friends were partying. In here there was just the dark and the smell of old paper and cedar and her—just as hot for me as I was for her.

She started to undo my belt as she met my kisses, deepening them, pulling me against her. I broke the kiss, breathing hard, and turned her around, placing my hands over hers, flat on the desk. I leaned over her, pressing my hard cock against her ass. She braced without being told, spread her palms wide, and the line of her back in that dress in the low light made it genuinely difficult to think.

I brought my mouth to the curve of her shoulder, the side of her neck, the place below her ear that made her breathing change. My hands ran the length of her sides, the curve of her waist, and I gathered the hem of her dress slowly—an inch at a time—until it was bunched at the small of her back.

I palmed both cheeks. Took my time. Felt her breathing go uneven under my hands. Her skin was hot. She’d been drinking and dancing across the room from me for hours and it was all right there under my touch.

I put my mouth to her ear. “Can I fuck you like this?”