My Office Rival Swore I'd Beg First, and I Took the Bet novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Exhibit A

On her keeper day Roz locks his office door, puts her mouth on him by the clock and stops three times, and he refuses to beg.

"There's a pool," Laney said on Wednesday morning.

She had sat on my desk with a breakfast burrito, which is against three separate policies she wrote herself.

"What kind of pool?"

"Who gets the seat. Forty-one people are in. You and Drake are at even money."

"Laney, you work in Human Resources."

"I know," she said happily. "That's why the pool is so well run."

She looked at me over the burrito with narrow, shining eyes.

"You've got a look," she said.

"I do not."

"You walked in at eight with your lipstick on perfectly. You never do that. You've got a thing."

"I have a Ridgeline Kit."

"Mm," said Laney. "Fine. Keep your secret. I'll find out at the Summit."

She slid off the desk and left a grease spot on my calendar.

It was Wednesday, which meant I was the keeper.

I had thought about this for thirty hours.

At noon I sent Drake a text with no punctuation.

Your office. 6:15. Lock the door.

He answered almost immediately.

Yes.

He wrote it like a man agreeing to a merger.

At 6:15 the floor was empty except for the hum of the printers.

His office is a corner room with a window onto the rail yard, a leather chair and a framed photo of a mountain.

He sat behind the desk with his vest buttoned, his jacket off and his hands flat on the blotter.

He looked at me.

"Lock it," I said.

He got up, locked the door, turned the blinds and came back around the desk.

I did not let him sit behind it.

I pointed at the leather chair in the middle of the room, the one for visitors.

"Sit there. Hands on the arms. They stay there."

He sat.

His hands went to the arms of the chair and curled around the ends.

"Good," I said.

It came out softer than I meant.

I knelt on the carpet between his knees and put my palms on his thighs.

The muscle jumped under the wool.

"What are the rules?" he asked.

"Mine. You don't come until I say. You don't move your hands. If you say please, you lose."

"And if I say your name?"

"That I'll allow."

I undid his belt.

My fingers weren't shaking, and I was very proud of that.

When I got his zipper down and his cock into my hand, I had to stop for a second and just look.

He was thick and heavy and flushed dark, already wet at the tip.

And he was long enough that my hand did not close around him easily.

"Szymanski," he said. "Stare any longer and I'll start billing you."

"Shut up, Hollister."

I put my mouth on him.

I took the head slowly, with my tongue flat, and he made a low broken sound in his chest.

I heard the leather creak as his hands gripped the arms.

I went down and came back up, slow, wet, keeping my eyes on his face.

His head was tipped back against the chair.

His throat worked.

"Look at me," I said around him.

He looked.

I have never seen anything like his eyes just then, dark and unguarded and a little dazed.

Fixed on me as if I'd opened a door.

I took him deeper, as deep as I could, and his thighs went hard as boards.

I built the rhythm until his hips tried to rise, and I put a hand flat on his stomach and held him down.

"Stay."

"Roz."

"Say it nicely."

"I'm not saying please."

"I didn't ask for please."

I did it again, slower, with my tongue working under the head.

And a sound came out of him that I will think about on my deathbed.

The wall clock behind him said 6:41.

At 6:44 his stomach went tight under my palm and the whole line of his body started to shake.

I pulled off him.

"Don't you dare," I said.

He swore, once, carefully, with his eyes squeezed shut.

I waited with my hand wrapped loose around the base while he breathed.

"You have a very good mouth," he said, when he could. "That's a professional opinion."

"Noted."

I started again.

He hung on, white-knuckled, for another six minutes, and I took him to the edge a second time and stopped.

The third time his voice cracked.

"Roz, I'm going to."

"No, you're not."

"I am."

"Then say the word," I whispered, against the inside of his thigh.

I felt him go still, utterly still.

"Is that you begging?" I said.

"That," said Drake, "is a counterargument."

I laughed so hard I had to put my forehead against his knee.

He started laughing too, helplessly, shaking.

With his hands still obediently on the arms of the chair and his trousers open and the wall clock ticking.

It was the real laugh, the one from the archive, rough and boyish.

I had sat across from him for two years and never heard it in a meeting.

I looked up at him, his face open and creased with it, and my chest did something painful.

"What?" he said.

"You're different when you're laughing."

"I'm different with my pants open."

"No. You're different when you're not holding still."

He stopped smiling.

"Nobody has made me laugh in a long time," he said. "I'd forgotten I could."

I sat back on my heels.

The thing I'd planned to say was gone.

I stood up, smoothed my skirt and wiped my mouth with my wrist.

"No leave," I said. "Zip up. You're done for the day."

He stared at me, flushed, wrecked, his cock still hard and wet against his stomach.

"You are the cruelest woman in Colorado."

"I'm the keeper."

He zipped up with the care of a man defusing something.

When he stood, he caught my hand and held it for one second too long.

"Tomorrow's mine," he said.

I looked at his mouth.

I thought, I should be afraid of that.

I wasn't afraid of that at all.

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