I’m going to have to bullshit my way out of it.
I set my fingers to the door handle, take a deep breath, steeling myself to greet him with a quick hello and act as if nothing happened. After all, I don’t really know what he saw. Maybe the desk hid everything. Maybe he turned up the second after I’d done, and all he saw was me slumped in his chair with my eyes closed, and I can pretend I felt a bit faint, that’s all. Maybe he didn’t in fact see me frigging myself senseless behind the desk, with my legs spread wide and my fingers in my pussy and a look of ecstasy on my face.
Yes. And maybe my orgasm face is attractive and not completely demented.
I open the door.
He isn’t there. The place is empty, silent except for the whirr of the air conditioning. For a second, I think that I imagined it, then I catch the faintest trace of his aftershave in the air. It hits me like a cricket bat to the stomach.
Ethan Hall just caught me masturbating. Mr Uptight, Mr Don’t-use-ten-words-when-one-will-do just caught me getting myself off right there on the swivel chair in my office. The door at the far side of our floor opens and the cleaners clatter in. I dash back to my desk, grab my handbag, flick off my computer screen and lock my desk drawer. I have to get out of here. I can’t breathe.
I push past the cleaners, barely hearing their hellos, and make my way down the stairs. By the time I make it outside I am utterly convinced that I’ve just killed my career and ruined my entire life. I walk to the train station in a complete daze, and how I get on the right tube and get off at the right stop is beyond me.
I stagger into my house and collapse on the sofa in the dark. I sit there like that for long, too long, staring mindlessly into space, trying to figure out what the hell to do now.
By the next morning, I still haven’t figured it out. I spent most of the night lying awake in bed, trying not to think about it. At best, I’ll have to change my name and leave the country. At worst…well, the worst doesn’t even bear thinking about.
I pull on a suit, a blouse, fix my hair and makeup and catch the train to work. When I get inside, everything seems normal. No-one says anything. When I sneak a glance in the direction of Ethan’s office, the door is closed. I drink coffee and work and drink more coffee and buy a pair of shoes on my phone, and by half eleven, I’m beginning to think that maybe this is going to be okay. Maybe he didn’t see. Maybe he did see, but he’s going to act like he didn’t. Maybe if we never speak of it, it didn’t happen.
And then a little box pops up on the corner of my computer screen. You have new email! I automatically click through to my inbox. It’s probably Mr Donovan, changing his mind for the fiftieth time.
It’s not from Mr Donovan.
It’s from Ethan.
I don’t want to read it. I can’t read it. I’m not going to read it. I click delete and go back to the plans I was working on, only I can’t focus and basically I’m just drawing Lego houses. Twenty minutes later, my email pings again. I click delete again. Denial, denial.
Denial doesn’t really work when he rings my office phone and I answer it. ‘Tasha,’ he says. ‘Can I have a quick word?’
‘I’m a little busy,’ I say.
‘It’s important,’ he says. His tone is sharp, and through the open door of my office, I hear fingers stop tapping away at keyboards as the admin staff out on the main floor pause and listen in to our conversation.
Damn it. My cheeks flame. ‘Fine,’ I say. I slam down the phone far harder than I intend to, then put some steel in my spine, walk through into his office and carefully close the door. He’s sat behind his desk, a vast expanse of polished oak, in a dark swivel chair the same as mine. My stomach drops to my knees. I pick at my cuticle then remember that I don’t do that any more, and stop myself.
He clears his throat. ‘About yesterday,’ he says.
Dear god, this is awkward. I know that everyone outside is wondering what’s happening in here. Wondering what we’re doing. Thomas Associates isn’t a place where a lot happens. When we swapped from digestives to custard creams, everyone talked about it for a week. This little confrontation will be gossip fodder for a month. If not longer. ‘What about it?’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘We need to talk about what happened.’
‘Which was?’ I can’t stand this. I can’t listen to him talk in that cut-glass accent. I’m tired and anxious and being in here with him must be messing with my head, because I’m looking at him and I’m remembering the way he looked when I caught that glimpse of him through the half-open door last night.
‘Tasha,’ he says quietly. ‘We both know what you were doing.’ He sits there, watching me with those pale blue eyes, his arms folded, and I’m suddenly struck by how attractive he is. It’s not the loud, brash sexiness of Cal Bailey, but something quiet and dignified, with cheekbones that could cut glass, and that accent that definitely does.
I bet he’s really filthy. Why did I not see that before?
And now I’ve got that thought in my head, I can’t get rid of it.
‘I’m not trying to make this difficult,’ he says. ‘I simply want to make sure we can move forward from it.’
‘What do you want from me?’ I hiss out the words, because I really want to shout them, but I can’t. ‘I did it, you caught me. Now you’re either going to make an issue of it, or you’re not. Which is it?’
‘That depends.’
‘Depends on what?’ I can feel my anxiety growing inside me, a black, oily thing, only it’s less like anxiety and more like rage, now. I’m tired of having to work myself into the ground in order to get ahead. I’m tired of not only having to work the same as the men, but having to outwork them.
‘On you,’ he says.
Oh, I get it. ‘I see.’ I shake my head. It figures. He is a man, after all. ‘You think because you caught me doing…because you caught me, I owe you? Name your price. Sex on the desk? Handjob? Blowjob?’ I straighten up, fold my arms. ‘I could have you for sexual harassment, you know.’ My anger is a big, hungry beast now, fuelling me as I stalk to the door. I let it fill me, don’t even try to fight it back, because it’s easier to put the blame on him than carry it all myself.
His voice stops me, pulls me up short. ‘A blowjob would be nice,’ he says.
I spin around. ‘What?’
A soft silence falls, and I stay very, very still. I don’t quite know what’s happening here, but there’s a sudden tension in the air, an electricity that I’ve never been aware of before.
‘Say that again,’ I order him.
He leans back in his chair with his hands resting loosely in his lap. ‘A blowjob would be nice,’ he says again. ‘If you feel it would help you move on.’
‘Help me?’
‘Yes.’
I open my mouth and prepare myself to launch a blistering refute, but nothing comes out. He doesn’t move from his chair, and I don’t move from my position by the door. And in the moment when I know I should say no, when I know I should storm out of his office, I do the opposite.
‘Someone might catch us,’ I say softly.
‘Yes,’ he replies. His voice is very quiet, very gentle. ‘They might.’
That thought sends a shiver of excitement crashing through me that is so strong it almost makes me gasp. When I thought about getting caught before, it wasn’t like this. It made me feel powerful, and reckless, and strong.
It didn’t turn me on.
I