Ever Unknown (3 page)
Authors: Charlotte Stein
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Erotica, #Bdsm, #Romantic Erotica
Rebellion burst through her again, and she considered standing and really looking for him. He had to be close.
But what then?
What if she found him, and he turned out to be awful, or else completely different without the veil of anonymity? What if he became enraged by her refusal to sit down and take this amazing, thrilling, undeniable pleasure?
How ungrateful she was. What a silly little nothing.
She sobbed into her fist, and hunched all the way over her desk. If she hunched, no one would know that everywhere between her legs felt like molten lava, or that she was just an inch away from coming over something as slight as a mild buzzing against every sensitive place inside her.
Of course, it didn’t feel like something slight. It felt immense, and even more so when he pressed it and pressed it and pressed it. It got to the stage where she felt sure there was barely a pause in between each one, and yet she gasped for it to come back every time it went away. She rocked against that pressure, and bit down hard on her fist, and willed him to do it again—just a little faster.
Then he obeyed, and she begged him not to. After a while, she wasn’t even sure if she was begging him in her head, silently, or not. Maybe Mavis in the next cubicle could hear her, groaning for him to do it
faster, faster, please, make me come
.
Only then it stopped altogether for what seemed like a vast amount of time, and that sob she’d pressed into her fist became a real one. He was a bastard, an utter bastard. She knew what he was trying to get her to do—it was obvious.
He was trying to get her to finish the job, herself.
At her desk.
She’d laughed at him the first time he’d suggested it, and this was what she’d got.
Punishment.
Awful, hideous, electrifying punishment.
And an email.
Think you can do it, now?
So that’s what this was about. Because she’d said,
I don’t think so
, and laughed. And now he was testing her, pushing her, trying out things that would get her to that place without having to demand or even suggest.
She wanted to roll in his inventiveness. In truth, she couldn’t think of a single man she’d ever been with who’d had even half of
Ever’s
ingenuity. It didn’t seem like much on paper, but oh, up close and personal it was delightful.
Exquisite.
Delicious.
Never
, she typed, with shaking fingers.
Then sent it, in the middle of such wonderful squirming, that really did nothing at all.
Him responding with the words, “
you’re
a bad, bad girl,”
did more.
She felt them all the way to the roots of her hair. On reading them she briefly forgot to continue looking over the rest of his email, and rocked and squirmed until a great surge of pleasure ran through her, brilliant and beautiful. She locked her thighs together around it, and it billowed into something so close to an orgasm, so close it almost was.
It gave a modicum of relief. But in the end, it only made her hunger for more, more, while her need to know who he was grew deeper. It had practically burrowed its way right to the centre of her, by this point, and the rest of his words only exacerbated that feeling.
I think I’m going to have to punish you, for a word like never. Apparently, bringing you off with a sex toy just isn’t enough—and really, why should I let you off so scot free? I asked you to do it to yourself, after all, and you just relied on me. What am I to do with you?
She thought of many possible answers. Most of them ended in the word, “spanking.” Unfortunately, her fingers could barely type, and her body felt too limp to do anything other than sprawl over her desk, while her legs dangled like noodles beneath. He’d wrung her out, just like that. Not even a powerful orgasm, to show for her dazed, lax state.
It took her forever to send him what she hadn’t dared before.
Who are you?
And even after she’d typed the words, she found she didn’t want to send them. What if he never replied? What if he did
reply,
and the answer was something terrible?
She deleted the words, and tried again.
Is this James Walsh?
That seemed more fitting. Or at least, it seemed more like something he could definitely accept or deny. Or would it just be silence, silence that she could then take as a yes or no? She didn’t know, but sent it anyway.
Then waited.
And waited.
She waited for what seemed like longer than her slow crawl towards an orgasm had been. It felt as if the end of time came and went. Three clients called and asked her questions she could only just remember how to answer. She responded to other, less interesting emails about nothing.
Then finally, finally.
I think I’m definitely going to have to punish you, Molly. Yes. I think that’s what I’m going to have to do.
Chapter Two
There were many ways he could choose to punish her. He’d already done a lot of them—maddening sex toys, those cool, teasing words, making her do naughty things like taking dirty trips to the bathroom.
Playing with her limits, throughout.
But she still couldn’t guess what he might have in store, next. While staring up at her bedroom ceiling, she imagined some of her newest favourites—being tied up, being spanked, being told ridiculously filthy things as he fucked her.
Unfortunately, all of them invariably included him, revealing who he was. And somehow, she just couldn’t push her fantasies to something as wild as that. He hadn’t responded to the accusation of
James Walsh
, which more or less solidified him as said person in her mind, and that definitely meant he wasn’t yet ready for any kind of reveal.
It even suggested the dreaded—
he might never be
. He might never want to reveal himself, and instead, leave her perpetually in the dark. Maybe one day he’d even stop replying altogether. Just fade away as though he’d never existed at all.
She almost didn’t dare switch on her computer. And it was an embarrassing relief, to find his name amongst the various other items in her inbox. Or at least, it was a relief until she remembered what he’d said the day before.
Then her mind went right back to punishment, again. And oh, this was a
doozy
.
I’ve arranged something for you, my lovely little Molly. But don’t think of it as a punishment, oh no. It’s not a punishment, really. It’s a gift, I think, like everything I want to give to you.
Such a romantic.
Except, you know, while being an anonymous pervert who sent her dirty emails. It made her giggle with nervous delight that he kept her on the edge of her seat no matter what.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it—and oh, I know you will, my luscious partner in deviant pleasure—is to remain at your desk until six-thirty.
Later, if there are still people in the office.
And yes, I know I told you that I’d like nothing better than to see you exposing yourself to strangers and colleagues alike, but this is different. This is very specific, indeed.
When the office is empty, I want you to go to the second floor—to the office where Paul Sanderson used to work. The one that’s now empty. Once there, you mustn’t speak. If you do, I’ll know you have—you’ll understand how when you get there.
Then I want you to follow the instructions I’ve left for you on the cards I’ve placed on the desk where Paul Sanderson used to sit every day. Do you understand, and accept?
Several things went through her mind, all at once. That he was possibly crazy, truly crazy. That he had to be someone in the office, now, and not just the sandwich boy or a passing client or some other crazy thing, like a window cleaner. And finally, that she was probably crazy too, because she knew right down to her bones that she was definitely going to obey. It probably meant being laughed at by a gang of office assholes who’d been stringing her on all along, but what the hell.
In for a crazy penny, in for an insane pound.
Plus, she wasn’t stupid. She had her pepper spray, in case things turned out horrible and hideous. She had a panicked text message ready, for Mavis—who was always the last to leave the office, and so would be the first one to make it back and save her from maniacs and assholes and whatever else was lurking beneath
Ever’s
surface.
Even if she didn’t really believe that anything was. She believed in him, even before he sent her a second message, unprompted and eerily as if he’d read her mind.
If at any time you want to stop anything, the safe word is delicious. And if you’re worried about anything else, the office is right next door to
Gregson’s
. He’ll be in there until six-forty-five, in a meeting with Benjamin Everett. You can leave upon seeing whatever’s in the room, if you so choose.
She wanted to be sarcastic about the message—say something like,
you’re such a kind sort
, or similar—but couldn’t. It sent a warm feeling through her that she could neither laugh at, nor deny.
* * * *
It took some almighty patience, to get to six-thirty. The time simply didn’t want to come. Not even picturing what could possibly be in that secret, empty office made the minutes fly by, and oh, she did a lot of picturing.
Mostly with Walsh as the star, and all kinds of frightening apparatus as his guest.
She looked up a good deal of bondage and domination sites, and they didn’t paint an easy and comfortable picture. Did people really attach themselves to racks and frames, and wait for someone to prod them with things? Not to mention all the outfits, and hoods, and things to put in people’s mouths!
He didn’t seem to be that kind of dominant, and she didn’t feel as if she was that kind of submissive—if those terms did, in fact, apply to both of them—but who knew, really? The whole thing was obviously going to end up in the land of minor discomfort and sweating inside latex.
She was sweating now, and latex wasn’t even involved. She had to go to the bathroom at six-fifteen and clean herself up. If he was going to strip her clothes off and fondle her all over, she wanted to at least smell nice for him. Somehow she imagined him being scrupulously clean and tidy, and, indeed, James often looked that way, so he deserved something as good, in return.
Which included the underwear she’d started wearing, just for him.
Just in case today should be the day. Everything was matching, and everything was cream silk. And though she’d usually think herself too fat for it, or too pale for it, or some other nonsense thought that strayed into her mind even at the best of times…now? Now her mind never went to those places, and not because he’d assured her otherwise.
Just because.
Because all the things she’d never known about herself were now firmly in the awareness column. Because as much as it was him in control, she felt as if something was in her grasp, something powerful.
Her heart pounded, but never-the-less she
strode
to that office door.
Along the way she heard
Gregson
in his office, just as Ever had said he’d be. The IT guy, Benjamin, coming through loud and clear, too—he had a distinctive, ever so slightly flat voice that always made her think of the slim, corner-less line of his mouth.
Though she thought of nothing at all, when she finally got to the door.
Sanderson’s name still in brass on the door, daring her to open it.
She got the overwhelming urge to press her ear to it, just to see if she could hear, first. Hear his breathing, or maybe the breathing of a second person, or the sound of some bizarre torture device that she hadn’t been able to find on ThingsUpMyBum.com.
But there was nothing. No breathing, no whirring. Goddamn it, maybe there wasn’t even anybody in there! Until she pushed down on the handle and opened the door, and found that there was. Of course there was. It had been him all along.
James Walsh.
Even so, it didn’t make knowing what to do any easier. If anything, it made it worse. He’d told her not to speak, but all she had were a million questions bunching together at the end of her tongue. For a start, she wanted to know why he wasn’t turning around. Mainly because there couldn’t be any doubt that it was him.
He had on the same too-tight blue trousers she’d seen him filling out in the elevator earlier on. No
jacket,
and her view of his firm, round ass was completely unfettered and delightful. And that hair!
That blond, almost
too
long hair.
A person couldn’t mistake James Walsh, from either the front, or the back.
They could, however, wonder why he had his hands tied
behind
said back. Yeah, they could probably wonder about that.
Again, the urge to ask a million questions welled up inside her. She wasn’t quite sure what held her back, either. Was it really the fact that he’d told her not to speak? Did he have that much power over her, already?
Probably.
Almost definitely, in fact.
After all, she had done that thing with the knickers, and the stockings, and the sex toy, and now she was walking over to the desk he stood in front of, to retrieve the instructions he’d promised he’d leave.
Why he couldn’t just tell her, she didn’t know, but she glanced at the side of his face as she collected the little stack of cards, looking for some sort of clue. He seemed fixed and resolute, mouth set into a firm line, gaze forward on nothing but the wall. He didn’t even flinch when she leaned around him a little bit, trying to catch his eye.
