Читать книгу Power Play - Charlotte Stein - Страница 6

I decide it, before I’ve walked into the building and said hello to Kelly on reception. Today, I am going to be normal. Perfectly, respectably normal. I’m not going to practically masturbate at my desk to fill the void Woods has left. I’m not going to think mad thoughts about the people under me in an illegal and inappropriate way.

No. Today, I’m going to do ordinary things. Like speak to Aidan Harcroft about his promotion, for example. And then maybe speak to Anderson the doucheknuckle about his lack of one.

All of which will go something like this, I believe:

Anderson, I know it’s a terrible tragedy that I got the managing director position ahead of you. But if you just remember what an absolute toilet of a person you are, I’m sure you’ll understand why.

And as for my conversation with Aidan Harcroft … well. That can’t possibly be predicted. Nothing about Aidan can be predicted, because he’s the human equivalent of quicksilver. Fantastic eye, of course, but the problem comes when you’re trying to imagine what’s behind said eye.

Mercurial thoughts, I believe. Mercurial thoughts about not taking the bullshit job I had. I mean, in all fairness, no one wants to babysit people like Derek Hannerty. He’s tried to get that book about the guy who likes enemas past me so many times … and he’s going to ride Aidan just as hard.

‘You’ve got to be kidding, Harding.’

Or maybe he’s not going to get the chance to ride him at all.

‘You think there’s someone better for the job?’ I ask, as he presses the phone to his chest. He’s talking to some author, I believe – though the author isn’t going to mind in the slightest that he or she has been put on hold. I’ve known newbies faint during a conversation with Aidan.

Not that I blame them. He talks so fast and so smoothly, it’s like having a discussion with the magical emperor of a world that doesn’t exist.

‘Janet,’ he says, but I can tell he’s just throwing it out there. He doesn’t really mean it at all, because Janet Everly regularly falls asleep at her desk in the middle of the day. I could pretend to overlook it, back when I was just the gatekeeper.

But now I’m the actual fucking gate.

‘You may as well have pulled a name out of your ass. Come on, Aidan. Even you can do better than that.’

He sighs, and swivels his chair around – but him doing so only gives the game away. He’s not annoyed at all. That shark’s grin is cutting its way across his sharp-boned face, and when he answers there isn’t a hint of weariness anywhere in his words.

‘I’m not going to have long discussions with Derek about Endless Enemas,’ he tells me, while doing something that seems to have an ever so slight hint of lewd – like maybe rocking in his chair a little until I can’t help flicking my gaze down to his groin.

It doesn’t disconcert me, however. It’s just the way Aidan is – louche, I would call it, and the rather unsubtle hints he gives about his sex life only back this one word up. There are rumours he fucked James Wentworth in the men’s room, rumours that he had a threesome with the two girls from marketing, rumours that he banged our receptionist in the underpass down by Collingham Street.

And I know at least one of them is true, because last Christmas said receptionist poured an entire bowl of punch right over his head.

‘Fine. He bothers you, send him to me. I’ll fire him.’

That grin gets broader, as does the faint lilt of his half-Irish accent.

‘So that’s the kind of boss you’re going to be, huh?’ he says, and for just the briefest moment I go cold, before he quite suddenly follows his question up with: ‘Knew you were on the cusp of some epic ball-breaking. Don’t go easy, OK? I won’t respect you if you go easy.’

Of course he uses the jolting pause I then descend into to return to his phone conversation. But unfortunately, I can’t do the same. I don’t have a phone conversation to return to, and if I did I’m not sure I’d make it. Instead I go hot and cold thinking of how close he’s just come to a slightly more personal issue I seem to be going through.

I’m on the cusp, I think, and then I walk over to his desk on new feet, and push the hold button on his phone.

‘I’m not asking,’ I say, and that shark on his face tries to eat me, I swear.

‘Good,’ he tells me, as I stride back out of his office.

* * *

My second conversation of the day goes even better than the first one. I tell Anderson that I really do not give a shit if my promotion has bent him out of shape, and he doesn’t lose it. He doesn’t threaten to murder me, or the board of directors, or all of us in one big clock tower massacre.

No – he just has a nervous breakdown instead. He actually cries in front of me, which is so completely the opposite of what I was expecting that I leave his office wondering if I’ve stepped into an alternate universe. One where Woods is gone and I’m in charge, and Anderson the doucheknuckle is actually a guy who’s just had someone he’s never been respectful to promoted over him.

I can see why he’d think it doesn’t bode well for his future.

Though naturally, I reassure him. Sales are up by two per cent since we went digital, and a lot of that is his work. Despite his bullish attitude and his hideous two-tone shirts, he’s a reliable member of the team.

And I’m going to need reliable, if I’ve got a prayer of getting through this month. This week.

Today.

Aidan might have faith in me, but I don’t. I feel suddenly small inside the grey pinstripe I picked out this morning, these dagger heels making me less sure instead of how they usually make me feel. Strong, I think, strong, as I stride down the hall between sales and marketing, back to where I’m safest.

The mess that is editing.

It’s not an open-plan office really. It’s just a big jumble of egg-carton cubicles, most of which have been knocked through into three or four massive spaces as the editing staff declined and the mad grab for power rose.

You get a couple of egg cartons knocked together and you’re practically a junior no longer. You’re a senior, just waiting for Aidan or Janet to die so you can take their place and publish eight hundred undiscovered masterpieces.

All written by you, most likely.

‘Harding!’ somebody hollers as I pass by – though they quickly seem to gather themselves. ‘I mean, uh …’ Sir, I think, but of course silly little Terry Samson doesn’t go with that. He goes with something more normal, like this is high school and I’m now his teacher. ‘Miss Harding, is there any word on whether we’re getting a little extra to the autumn budget?’

I answer without looking. I have to, because Benjamin is coming from the opposite direction and by God I need to build up a head of steam. His trousers are too short for his massive legs today, and when he sees someone he knows in editing he waves at them. He actually waves.

I can’t let him get his mad, awkward hooks into me.

‘No chance,’ I say, as I barrel on by.

Or at least, I try to barrel on by. I really do. I get as far as my office door, breathless and flushed with victory.

Only to find that Benjamin has actually followed me, as though my single-minded expression said yes, come right up and bother me. I cannot wait to relive every moment of the fantasy I had about you directly to your face.

‘Um, Ms Harding?’ he starts, which is promising. At least he doesn’t lead off with sir, though the question he packs in there is a bit much. It’s so tentative, I think. So lacking in confidence. And then of course there’s the um at the front of it all, like a big red sign:

This is the way I am. You know what way I mean, don’t you? It starts with a sub and ends with a missive.

God, I wish I hadn’t spent all that time looking at those websites.

‘Yes, Benjamin?’ I say, without turning fully. It’s best not to, all things considered. Showing him my front might inadvertently be a sign, of things I know almost nothing about. Like some sort of D/S mating signal, maybe.

‘I have those letters you wanted drafting.’

Is that all? And if so, what more was I expecting, exactly?

‘Good,’ I say, then think of a way of putting even more distance between us. Why, by the end of the week I might never have to see him at all. ‘But in the future, you can just leave things of that nature on my desk.’

‘Oh,’ he says, and nods. Though I swear, a hint of disappointment flickers across his always obvious face when he does so. ‘Well, OK. Sure thing. Hope you like them.’

He hands me two slim, perfectly folded pieces of paper. Fingers almost brushing mine as he does so. Eyes fixed on that near-meeting, before drifting ever so slowly back up to my face.

Of course, it’s then that I realise something appalling. Something I’ve been veering away from, with lots of talk of pointed teeth and lineless mouths – though I swear, I’m not going to let myself think it until I’m safely inside my office. I can’t, because it’s not like Aidan’s handsomeness, that just exists.

This is something else altogether. It’s heated and too intense and it squeezes a little fist somewhere, deep down inside me. It pushes a very particular sort of thought on me, before I can scramble and urge it away again.

He’s lovely, I think, and then hate myself.

‘Did you know that you’re kind of staring at me, sir?’ he asks, and I’m not sure what’s worse. That he’s noticed; that he’s almost sort of smiling around his own incredulity; or that he uses that dreaded word on the end of it.

All three make me want to do something very bad indeed.

‘I think you need to go back to your desk, Benjamin,’ I say, in my lowest and most deadly voice. However, instead of sending the fear of God through him – as I’m hoping – it does something I did not intend.

Something that doesn’t so much as sock me in the gut as punch a hole right through my body.

A flash of heat blazes across his gaze, so obvious that for a moment I’m trapped between two versions of myself. One who’s still the blundering girl I was, shocked by the things Woods wanted her to do. And the other who sees with Woods’ eyes, and knows a million intimate things about a person before they know it themselves.

‘Of course,’ he says, once he’s reined that little response back in. ‘All you have to do is say the word, and I’m totally your man.’

He can’t possibly be saying what I think he’s saying. He can’t be. It’s all just my sex-fevered imagination; it’s my body missing Woods and wanting something to fill the void. There’s no heat in his gaze, no slow sensuality in his otherwise breezy voice. And by totally your man, he means: I love writing letters for you, Ms Harding.

Not anything sexual or suggestive at all. In truth I think he’s too boyish for those sorts of kinky games, too gauche. He doesn’t realise the double meaning of the words he’s saying.

Or at least I think so, until I open the letters.

* * *

I try to be calm about it at first. Any normal person would be calm and rational about the whole thing, I’m certain. Aidan, for example, would most likely give him a gentle dressing-down before offering him a biscuit.

And that’s what I need to do. I need to find some biscuits to offer him, after I’ve tried to strangle him with two bits of paper.

Because that’s what I want to do, of course.

I don’t know what he thinks he’s playing at by writing the letters in this way. But he’s playing just the same, and I know it. I can’t deny it. No one could write this way for their boss and fail to understand that they’ve made a complete mess out of it.

Most of what’s in the two letters isn’t identifiable as something a human being would do. There are sentences without endings, words misspelled so badly they’re not really words any more. Blotches on parts of the paper, as though maybe he drank a gallon of strawberry-flavoured liquor while writing them and some of it spilled out of his mouth – and the truth is, I can really imagine him doing just that. He’s so excessive somehow, so full of extra gestures and obvious greed. It’s like he’s just finished cramming a box of cakes into his mouth a second before you see him.

And the only thing he could find to clean his hands and his mouth were these letters, apparently.

I mean, they’re just an unmitigated disaster. But worse than that: he’s clearly done it on purpose. He wants me to tell him off, he actually wants me to – though if he thinks it’s going to be that easy he’s mistaken.

I’m a professional person, for fuck’s sake. I can’t be goaded into the kind of thing Woods did, by a misspelling of the word ‘potato’. Even if there’s no godly reason why the word ‘potato’ is there in the first place. Even if I can see his face behind my eyes when I close them, all heavy-jawed and somehow much more perfect than I’d ever allowed myself to think he was.

It’s the hair, I think; that thick maze of toffee-coloured hair, as though someone dipped him in something sticky and delicious only a moment before. Or maybe it’s the tender shape of his mouth, caught between the heaviness of the rest of his face – that near sullen jawline, that broad, clear brow.

Those eyes of his, all hazy with longing as though he’s been left out too long on a summer’s day. They say things he doesn’t want to or can’t quite make himself, those eyes, and they’re the first thing I think of when I picture myself going to tell him off.

Even though I’m absolutely not going to do that. I’m not. I’m just going to spend the rest of the day as I had planned – calm and collected. If he wants to do things like this, he’s entitled to. But he’s not getting a rise out of me in return.

He’s just going to get me walking to the cubicle he occupies at five p.m. Everything about me glacial somehow, in a way that should be comforting. It should, but it’s the strangest thing. By the time I turn the corner into his little nook – almost an office, if it were not for the lack of a door on one end – I’m not comforted by the coolness I’ve descended into at all.

It’s too cool. It’s almost as though I’ve coated myself in a pane of glass, and I can watch all of the things I’m doing and understand them. But I can’t control them. When I try to, my fingers butt up against that sheet of something see-through.

And this feeling gets a hundred times worse when I see him.

‘Hey, Ms Harding,’ he says, all innocence. That big body of his folded into his tiny little swivel chair, one side of his collar sticking up ridiculously. A hint of bemusement touching those soft, entirely fuckable lips.

Which is never a good thought to start things off with.

And then there’s the fact that he licks a stamp the moment I’m focused on him, in a very deliberate sort of way. His tongue curls out to cover the little scrap of nothing completely. Those completely innocent eyes intent on me the whole way through it.

Everything slow, so slow, and so … slick, somehow. Does he know how slick that looks, how lewd? He has to know, and yet sometimes when I look into his eyes I can’t be sure. It’s like there’s a veil over his gaze, and the second something dirty happens he just draws it all the way down, over that sweet boyishness.

Then waits, to see what I will do. He’s struck the match. Do I want to put the fuse to that little flickering flame?

‘Can I help you with something?’ he asks, and then he licks the damned thing again.

Would it be so bad if I just got a fistful of his hair and shoved his face into the carpet? He doesn’t look as though it would be a bad thing. He looks as though he wants me to grab a fistful of hair and shove his face between my legs.

‘I really hope I don’t have to tell you these letters are unacceptable,’ I start. It comes out much better than I thought it would. More like a boss and less like a sex maniac.

‘Really?’ he asks, and it’s then that I start to hate him. It’s not even a start, in truth. I loathe him already. I despise his fake innocence and his stupid handsome face and these letters, covered in stuff that most likely fell out of his gorgeous mouth. And unfortunately, all of these things make me ball them up and throw them at him before I speak.

‘I’m not sure how you could fail to realise. You’ve misspelled the word and.’

He blurts out a little oops, which seems to send me into some sort of tailspin of indecision. On the one hand, the word sounds genuine. The breath he puffs out sounds real, and his big eyes go bigger. In fact, by this point they’re so big that they’re starting to swallow me whole.

But on the other hand … he misspelled the word and. Twice. I’m not sure how that’s possible.

‘Do you have some sort of issue I’m not aware of, Benjamin?’

He shrugs. He actually shrugs.

‘Nope,’ he says, and I don’t know what I despise most. His sloppy, ridiculous approach to things, or his utter American-ness. Both just sing out of that nope, so blatant and too much for me to handle. ‘I guess I just made a mess of things, huh?’

‘You made a mess of things?’

‘Yeah. I probably wasn’t thinking.’

‘You weren’t thinking?’

I have no idea why I keep repeating what he’s saying back to him. But I at least know this: if I don’t get a handle on myself soon, I’m going to do worse than getting a fistful of his hair. I’m going to put the heel of my shoe into his back, and dig in hard enough to make him scream.

‘But I swear to God, I’ll do better next time.’

‘You keep swearing to God. Is he likely to make you better at your job?’

‘Oh, well –’

‘The job that you failed to do on Monday morning, when you gave me a vital letter of great importance about four days too late. The job that a chimpanzee could do, if you gave him enough paper and his own desk.’

His face actually flushes red at that. It’s satisfying, in a way I don’t want to acknowledge.

‘I’m so –’ he starts again, but I cut him off. I’m on some sort of roll now, and the longer I let it go on the worse it gets.

‘Perhaps the responsibility of a desk is a little too much for you. If so I could hire this theoretical primate to take your place, and you could come and work in my office. I have an absolutely wonderful spot on my floor somewhere for you to play with some coloured blocks.’

I notice, absently, that his mouth is hanging open. It looks like the expression someone would make if they’d just recently been stabbed in the gut. Sound seems to want to come out of him, but all he can manage is a strangled gasp.

‘Are those words you’re trying to form, Benjamin? Because if they are, allow me to fill in the only ones you should be using: yes and sir.’

I pretend I don’t see his eyes drift closed, briefly.

‘Rewrite these letters, without a mistake in them. Do so, and I might let you keep your job. Fail, and … well. I don’t think you want to know what will happen if you fail.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he says, and my mind immediately goes back to the last time I heard two words spoken like that. When Tim Lockley was underneath me, body almost completely out of control. Hips jerking upwards, cock fucking into me hard.

Voice breathless, as he told me yes, now.

That’s how Benjamin sounds, I think. Like he’s shaky with lust and ready to come at any moment – though naturally I try to evade the obvious. I turn around and stride right out of his cubicle, the second the thought occurs to me. And if my legs feel like water as I do so, well, what am I supposed to do about it?

I can’t keep reprimanding him like that, I can’t. I went harder than I’d ever intended to, but it hadn’t seemed to put him off. He’d still looked heavy-eyed and weird once I’d done it and even now, as I stand shaking in the sanctity of my office, I can recall the softness of his parted lips. His breathlessness.

The way he’d seemed to tremble minutely the second I left that little suggestion in the air. If you fail, I think, and then can’t ignore the pulse of pleasure that goes through my sex. I’m aroused because I told someone beneath me off. I’m aroused because I abused my power, and probably upset someone who only maybe sort of deserved it.

And for a moment I’m so ashamed of that fact I can’t speak. I can’t do anything. I just stand there, thinking about that incredulous look on his face as I suggested a monkey would do a better job than him.

It’s just unforgivable. Woods might have done more to me and worse, but that doesn’t give me the right to do the same to someone else. I liked what Woods did to me. How do I know for sure that Benjamin does – because he sounded aroused?

That’s crazy. It’s insane. I have to go back and apologise, I have to.

Though by God I wish I hadn’t, the minute I get to that partition around his little non-office and take in the long, lovely slope of his body.

Of course, there are many, many things he could be doing. He could be crying. He’s leaning against the wall of his cubicle, back to the entrance. Shoulders shaking as though with emotion, everything about his gait somehow sloppy and like he’s lost control of himself.

And yet I know without a shadow of a doubt that he isn’t upset. It’s like the strange understanding I have of his facial expressions. I can tell just from looking at his hunched shoulders and the way his arm is twisted around his body …

He’s masturbating. He is absolutely, one-hundred-per-cent masturbating.

I can see his hips rocking forward into what is almost certainly the press of his hand, and when I make myself as quiet as I can, the sounds he’s making become obvious. Little breathless sighs and moans that would probably escape anyone else – they’d just think he was distressed in some way, and get his attention, at which he could turn and straighten himself and pretend to have been blubbering into a hanky.

Or in this case: the piece of paper he’s got crumpled in his hand.

I can see it the second he lets himself get completely out of control – the letter I balled up and threw at him. But he hasn’t just got it crushed in his fist, as he pushes all of those sounds against the back of his hand. No no no.

He’s got the paper pressed against his mouth. He’s got the paper in his mouth practically, as he shudders and bucks into his own grip. And now I can hear it too – the slick slide of a hand over a very slippery cock. All of it just a little muted, because of course he’s doing this under the cover of his trousers. He’s just kind of slipped one hand inside, to work himself all quick and frantic like this.

And though I wouldn’t admit it before, I’ll admit it now: the idea is thrilling. The whole of it – him purposefully making a mess of those letters, the things I said and his reaction, and now this – it’s just horrendously exciting. My cunt clenches around nothing, in some kind of bizarre sympathy for his predicament. My clit swells, ready to be touched or rubbed or … God …, if he would only lick it the way he’d licked that scrap of paper. If I could just make my legs move and go to him right now, he’d do it, I know he would.

But knowing is somehow worse than not. Now it’s real. Now it’s true. Being belittled and told off excites him, in the same way it excited me – more so, in fact. I never masturbated at my desk, thinking of Mr Woods telling me to be better, do more, stop making a mess.

But God, Ben is. He’s really going at it now, as though he’s barely aware of the people who could be in the office at this time. Aidan usually stays late, for example. I always do, and he had to know that it was possible I’d return to apologise.

Though somehow, I don’t think he does. I don’t think he cares about anything but the feeling of his fingers wrapped around his cock and that paper crushed into his mouth, everything about his body language so intent on the task at hand. From where I’m standing I can make out a million arousing little details – like the clench of his ass cheeks beneath those thin trousers, and the shuddering he does every time he hits it just right – but even then I’m not prepared for his orgasm.

It seems to lurch through him, and when it does he makes a sound. More than a sound really – even with the paper in his mouth I can tell he says my name. He just blurts it out, full of a kind of reaching desire that I’ve never heard from another person. Voice shaky and torn, hips bucking towards the circle of his own grip, body shuddering under the stress of such impossible pleasure.

He just gives himself over to it, and I realise something in that moment. I realise it amongst the ruins of my own arousal, clit still pulsing slow and steady. Wetness now making its way down my inner thigh, the whole of my lower body so thick and heavy with sensation.

Even with Woods, I was never like that. I never gave my all the way he is doing.

I’m not sure if I know how.