ANIMUS
{a usually prejudiced and often spiteful or malevolent ill will}
Y/N has never had to work a day in her life. Harry Styles has worked for everything he has. She decides she wants him somewhere between the jail waiting room and her own front door, and Y/N has never been double-minded. Harry has three good reasons and no intention of acting on any of them, until she makes intention irrelevant.
WC: 10.8K
pairing: older!harry/dad's!friend x reader
cw: age gap, breathplay/choking, degradation, crying during sex, praise kink, office sex, orgasm denial
a/n: this is very new for me so be nice!
VOIR DIRE
{to speak the truth}
The cinder blocks are painted Deutzia white.
Y/N knows this because Deutzia white is, humiliatingly, the colour of her bedroom walls. What she's been metabolising over the last seventy-two hours—between the ceiling tiles, which are doing the bare minimum, the ceiling tiles again, and, for variety, the concrete, projecting no such aspirations—is that Deutzia white is just white, and white is not really a colour so much as it is the absence of one.
At some point, she went through the considerable trouble of selecting the same paint swatch as whatever benighted custodian was tasked with the aesthetic vision of this particular facility. She chose it because it felt clean, noninvasive, and neutral; as it turns out, that is more or less the design philosophy of a jail cell.
That's the thing about Irony. She is personified, and she is laughing at you, even when she is the only witness.
Unlike Y/N’s bedroom, there is a single metal bench (no cushion) and a lidless stainless-steel toilet angled for indecent exposure. The county-issued jumpsuit smells vaguely of a hospital after the patient has died and does absolutely nothing for her skin tone. This is not the primary problem with orange jumpsuits, but it's the one she chose to fixate on because the other problems are too large.
One week closer to AP exams. Her college counsellor is probably having an aneurysm. He has been treating her life trajectory like it's personally offensive since she chose not to apply early decision to Yale. This will give him actual heart failure.
The woman in the cell next to Y/N’s has been humming the same agonising tune for two hours. It's driving her slowly insane, but she can't bring herself to tell her to stop, because she sounds like she's the one maintaining sanity through ritual. The humming is hers. Such silence would be Y/N’s. They're both clutching their respective coping mechanisms and neither has the moral high ground.
Y/N’s been reflecting. Primarily about how she ended up here, which is the sort of reflection her father wants, but also about how cell walls feel colder on the left side than the right. How teenage mistakes feel like they matter more when they're written in abstruse legalese. How being eighteen feels exactly seventeen, but with voting rights and the capacity to sign your own arrest paperwork.
When that became tedious, she spent her newfound solitude renaming Deutzia white (Morning Guilt, Midmorning Guilt, Afternoon Guilt. Now, Guilt after Dinner), and trying to hate her father efficiently—and succeeding, mostly, in intervals—although it keeps folding into self-hatred, origami of shame. Ten-thousand-dollar bail is the balance of her tennis camp fund. Dad could fax the cheque between conference calls. He isn't, because consequence is expensive only when someone you love pays it.
The opium-smooth voice of a guard calls, "Up and at 'em, Princeton. You're being released," before he fumbles keys that rattle like tin bones. She contemplates refusing—polite hunger strike until her father arrives to scowl her out—but lets the lock slide without protest. Turns out resolve collapses quickly when the alternative is internment.
Y/N’s been pining for this moment, but now that it's here, it feels like being told she's being moved to a different kind of incarceration. The guard marches her past a series of doors identical to the one she just left. From behind one, a grumbled lullaby in Spanish. At the release desk, he dumps a clear plastic bag onto a counter. Her phone, wallet, keys, tennis bracelet—a mockery of her own social class. She signs her name four separate times, making an effort to keep the loops loose and illegible.
The clothes she wore that night—a soft linen skirt and blouse she should have chosen more carefully given how it would photograph—arrive in a different bag that someone labelled with her name in permanent marker. The guard tells her where she can change. It's a small room with a bench bolted to the wall and a mirror that definitely observes. The skirt hangs differently now, remembering what happened while she was wearing it. Just down the hall, a small vestibule opens into institutional law-abiding Tuesday.
"Congratulations, you're free. Don't drink and drive—also don't drink and park. Accidents cause people." The guard tries for jocular, lands profoundly short of it. She mutters thanks, as good breeding conquers contempt.
The waiting room is everything the Deutzia white walls were not. Sunlit, for one thing. Windows that show actual sky rather than cyanine approximation. Couches that have been sat on by people both more and less fortunate than her. She scans for Dad's bespoke cashmere, his exacting posture, eager to explain how she's disappointed him categorically. He's not there. Nobody's there. Just a room expecting someone who isn't coming, and her, standing in it wearing the weekend's mistakes.
She powers on her phone, but the screen blinks weakly. A dead, pensive brick. The polished brass timepiece above the window displays 9:17 p.m.; the world has continued scoring its evenings without her. After day two, she swallowed her pride and asked what became of her car. Impounded. She pictures it caged behind a chain-link fence, its taillight busted, her Spotify paused mid-croon. Functionally, she's stranded, and stranded feels different when you've spent three days in captivity. Less romantic than it sounds in novels.
The room isn't that big, but he's not that quiet. Charlie from that county thing Dad did last spring. Marcus, who handled the stock transfer. Just another eternal element in her peripheral vision, yet this one does not stay peripheral; her head lifts like a dog's as expensive Oxford leather squeaks linoleum with no hurry. The man approaching has been assembled by a committee for sexual disorientation. Tall, civilised scruff, dark curls brushing collar—not long enough to render as careless, but long enough to remind you other rules apply to him.
His top button is undone, forecasting restraint rather than imprecision. Ink creeps just above collar and cuffs—a cross, an anchor, three-leaf clover—and his eyes are green. Wild green. Mid-thirties, maybe thirty-seven, but impossible to pin because "tricenarian" looks like a decision he made rather than the inevitable. He smells like cedar and cold air, absurd in here.
Y/N’s seen this man before. Not often, but enough. The country club when her father was angling for something. Always on the perimeter of her family’s empire strategy, never quite in the middle. He stops two feet away, his hands tucked casually in his pockets as though he frequents jail exit lounges.
"Y/N." His voice is soft grain whisky, neat, no ice. "Your father asked me to collect you."
She draws herself straighter, some dumb tether of posture. "That's exactly what someone says right before the trunk."
The pause isn't hesitation. It's him choosing delivery. "Harry Styles. I'm a friend of your father's. We've met."
Harry Styles, a name that has skated across benefit galas, firm letterhead, her father's mouth casually attached to superlatives like "rabid dog" or "absolute shark" but always with undercurrent respect. The one who makes problems disappear.
"I don't recall."
"You do." His head tilts; the overhead light slides along the jawline shadow. "I'm afraid your father is still in Tokyo. He asked if I'd step in—legal representation and retrieval."
She swallows the indictment. Something makes her skin feel too aware of its own imprudent boundaries. "You're my lawyer?"
"At least one of them."
"And you just happened to be available on a Tuesday night after nine?"
"I bill by the hour, so yes." If humour were a dessert, this would be the unsweetened dark chocolate someone leaves for those who've outgrown frosting. "Car's outside. I'll take you home."
Wooden benches at confirmation creak behind them, but the memory tinged with pity fades the moment Harry—Mr. Styles?—opens the exit door. Wind, city-early-April, slides across her cheeks like cool silk on a sunburn. She follows him because tenacity, while admirable, would grant her nothing but another night of sleeping on cement.
His car is conspicuousness disguised as lavish discretion, yet he opens the passenger door as an absent courtesy, suddenly indifferent to opulence. Y/N slides in, and the seat assimilates to her back, as if anticipating her arrival. The door closes, he rounds the hood in a controlled whipcord motion, and settles behind the wheel.
He doesn't ask for her address.
They pull out smoothly, no engine noise, just forwards motion. They pass the courthouse, then the jail again from the outside. Seeing it from free air is surreal—the building looks designed to be intentionally forgettable. Her fingerprints are probably still drying somewhere inside.
"You didn't kill anyone," he starts, his tone a gavel. "That's where your luck begins and ends."
"Comforting."
Harry ignores the sarcasm. "Your charges: underage consumption of alcohol, driving while intoxicated, and reckless driving. In ascending order of complication."
He stares straight ahead as he rattles off the itemised list of her moral failings. Professional competence hypnotically wears a human face; the same features that look amiable in candid become punishing when discussing your immediate future.
"Your licence is suspended, automatic on the DWI. The reckless driving is the problem—that takes this from a first-time stupid decision to a possible criminal record." His fingers drum once on the steering wheel, an economy of movement that suggests everything he's not letting himself express. "Prosecutors see reckless, they know you weren't just drunk; you were driving like a drunk person. Different category entirely."
Y/N doesn't remember driving recklessly. What she does remember is the headlights on the wrong side of the road fluorescing her windshield, her chest aching with the epiphany that this was how people died—other people—and still somehow convincing herself she was two seconds from sobering up entirely.
"Is it the 'totally fucked' category?"
"Depends how much the DA wants to make a point. But whatever happens will be significantly less punishment than you deserve."
Two summers ago, there was a headline: Greenwich teen walks on vehicular manslaughter, probation and community service, judge cites promising future. The State loves redemption narratives, especially for adolescents with no priors. In this circle, consequences are a facade—anything is permitted; it's simply a matter of how much it's going to cost.
"Prosecutors respond well to narratives," he continues, merging onto the highway as the traffic reorganises around him. "We're selling you as a bright kid, Ivy-bound, made one mistake, but no pattern of behaviour and absolutely zero reason to believe this will ever happen again."
Bright kid (easy). Ivy League bound (check). One mistake (stretching it). She hears what's between the lines—the negotiation happening already in the space where this goes away or doesn't. She'll acknowledge fault in open court. She'll say the phrase out loud like she means it. Afterwards, she'll smile pleasantly while photographers she can't punch quantify her disgrace for the town-website notch on their bedposts.
"So, it's fine then?"
"No. It's not fine." His eyes track to the side, an antique projector of contempt. "But I'm telling the DA you're not like this, so you have to actually not be like this. Not so much as a tardy slip between now and resolution."
She ponders what "not being like this" entails for someone whose primary problem-solving strategy is typically "try harder to be perfect." There's probably an allusion to be unveiled, but she's too distracted by how his hands move on the steering wheel. Long fingers, deliberate placement. The tattoo on his wrist isn't delicate—the anchor seems to pulse, straining against the hold. Restraint is a secondary skill.
"I will be a caricature of impeccable."
The projector rolls, a three-sixty of brazen indignation. "You'll be good?"
Good is being quoted—a side comment in italics, patiently waiting for annotation. Somewhere behind his iris the same word is spelt in black lace: good girl, good job—arbiters and belts. As if being good is optional but preferred, as if it's something someone might ask for specifically, as if he wants a demonstration. It's a line of inquisition that sounds flirtatious if you aren't careful with your tone, and he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
"Yes," she says, the words tasting like submission and anticipation in tandem. "I can be good."
"Yes sir," he corrects. "I'll believe it even more when you say it like that."
The seats seem suddenly warmer despite the climate control remaining unchanged; the air thins, lurching towards something more illegal than what they're already discussing. His eyes flick to hers—one quick assessment—then back to the road like he's done nothing more interesting than check blind spots.
"Yes, sir. I'll be good."
"Better." The approval lands faintly frustrated—as if he didn't want it to feel so pleasing.
The houses are getting larger as they trace the spine of old money through the city. Most are set back from the street behind hedges or stone walls, their grand charades lit like museum exhibits. These are the types of houses that have names written on bronze plaques, though people stopped using them thirty years ago. Somewhere in here is hers, though defining "hers" feels increasingly private between the two passengers.
The road curves into the secluded area where the stop signs become more decorative than functional. When they roll past the stone pillars that mark her family’s property, the security gate swings open—the guards have his plates logged and approved. This feels like information she is not supposed to know.
"Your father's flight lands Monday," he says, following the long, gravel path to the house. "I'll have everything ready by then."
Y/N can't place if she's dreading that meeting for its contents or company, only that she's grateful to confront it wearing clean clothes and sleeping in a veritable bed.
The last stretch of driveway feels insurmountable, winding through landscaping that has never witnessed a member of her family being returned from jail. Floodlights illuminate the colonial brick house—three stories, predictable; white-columned portico, executive; black shutters bracketing windows, punctuation marks in firm rejection of any original thought. From the passenger seat, it appears as a production she inexplicably climbed out of, now complicated by explorations children aren't supposed to have.
Harry parks precisely parallel to the front steps, not quite blocking the entrance but close enough to broadcast procurement if the Johnsons were feeling particularly observant. The engine idle is the only sound in the million-dollar neighbourhood quiet; the automatic locks haven't released yet, so she is still his passenger until he decides she's not.
"Thank you for the ride, Mr. Styles."
He nods, the soft click of locks unzipping their détente. It's not until she's pushing open the front door that she realises he's still behind her, stepping inside without waiting for invitation. The chandelier above the foyer hangs, a constellation the wrong side of bail-release has shamed into silence.
"Car keys, please."
"Car keys?" she laughs. "Why? It's impounded. Unless you're wary I'll hot-wire the tow truck, in which case, I'm sure you could recommend less obtrusive felonies."
He doesn't smile, or even acknowledge the humour. He stands there in her foyer like he was installed along with the chandelier. "I'm aware. That's why I'm going to retrieve it for you."
"So this is about theft risk and daily ransom fees—not a subterfuge, then?"
"Bit of both, in case you forget every casual promise you've made in the last half-hour. Daddy’s orders."
If it came from her father, it must be praxis. She surrenders the set, hanging from the balls-for-all keychain that was ludicrous enough sophomore year. He accepts them without critique, although his eyebrow tilts. "There are at least sixteen other vehicles spread across this acreage. Unless your father has taken up eccentric lawn sculpture, they all start. I'll need those too."
Of course. Because temptation doesn't just wear the licence plate of the Porsche currently enjoying government custody.
From behind, there's a scuffle of soft-soled shoes that know this floor's every creak and avoid it out of respect. Alana appears from what her father persists in calling the "service corridor" despite her polite requests that he stop calling it that.
"Y/N! You're home." Her eyes flick to Harry, absorbing his ostentatious presence. "And Mr. Styles. Would you like a drink?"
"I won't be staying." An amalgam of dismay and relief, exemplified. "But thank you, Alana. Do you know where Dominic keeps his car keys?"
"He claims my own set isn't sufficient proof of caution."
Alana disappears, wordless and without protest—she's used to stranger requests at stranger hours. Her father once had a French diplomat's aide call at 3 AM because his boss was having an existential crisis about American butter standards and required immediate imported guidance.
"You're quite comfortable giving orders in other people's houses," she observes as Alana rustles around in what sounds like every drawer at once. "Is that natural talent? Do you teach seminars?"
He turns towards her fully, the movement as prepensive as a closing argument. "It's a talent derived from necessity. Usually when someone ends up in my custody, they're not looking for subtlety."
"And I'm looking for..."
"You, Y/N, are looking for someone to make you feel like this isn't your fault. But it is. Every decision you made three nights ago was yours. The good ones, the bad ones, the spectacularly stupid ones. Own them, or repeat them."
It's the tone that does it—like he's speaking from a place where choices aren't theoretical and repercussions aren't neologisms. Technically, it was Sarah who bought the tequila. Technically, the gas station bathroom was occupied. And technically, her APUSH tutor cancelled last minute, leaving her unattended and without her usual weekend obligations. So, no. It is not her fault. Except Y/N is a stickler for semantics, and even she can accept that technically does not mean actually.
"That's terribly helpful," she manages. "Truly, my self-awareness is transformed."
"Your self-awareness is shit," he says without heat. "But it's a curable condition."
Alana returns with a small ring of keys that looks like it belongs to a used car dealership. There's the Bentley, the European convertible her father bought during his Italy obsession, the vintage Mercedes supposedly owned by a Kennedy, the practical Range Rover, a motorcycle she didn't know they had. Alana hands them to Harry with the solemnity of a Eucharist. He drops them into his pocket, probably designed for this exact purpose.
"Thank you," he says, addressing Alana. "Dominic's not keen on investing in a follow-up performance."
Alana has gone very still. Watching this man stand in the house and speak to Y/N like she's actually capable of hearing difficult truths is novel terrain. Most people here address her hubris, or don't address her at all.
"Why don't you get some sleep, Y/N?" Alana offers. It is at this moment she realises the magnitude of her fatigue—and that three days of jail does something to your spine; it bends in ways you can't control.
Harry adds, "Best behaviour, please."
"Yes, sir," she says quietly. Maybe the novelty evaporated, maybe she wanted more of whatever it started, but the accidental intimacy turns flame-tip.
The stairs stretch above her like they're considering whether to allow passage. She must look like a stranger—a miscreant—because they have never witnessed her like this. No, that's wrong. They've witnessed everything; they're just very discreet.
Her bedroom door opens onto the same gallery it always was. Deutzia white walls, painted by someone her father paid to never speak of them.
IN LIMINE
{at the threshold}
"Remind me where you're going to university."
Harry is not making polite conversation. He is pining for a foothold, an angle for the judge, or perhaps a disqualifier for himself. That’s the purpose of this meeting—exhume, sculpt, condition—the holy trinity of fraudulent reformation that’s meant to replace what Y/N is with what she should be. Y/N is not offended by this. Everyone does it. It’s like deep cleaning only the rooms guests will see.
“Cornell. Is that my character witness?”
“It certainly doesn’t hurt.”
He flicks a page of her file, blinking at the details. He remains perfectly stoic, but every so often his prudence bleeds through—a slight furrow in his brow, a piffling eye roll. The man has tells, and Y/N has excellent retention. He has presented winning her case as an impossible feat, a labyrinthine negotiation requiring considerable goodwill from the prosecutor, but she has read the precedents, and she knows mercy is as certain as sunrise.
The hyperbole is not a lack of confidence, but rather a pedagogical extraction of contrition. If Y/N shows no remorse as is, he will engineer the conditions until she produces it naturally.
Some may call this manipulation. Harry would call it lawyering.
“Your blood alcohol came in at .11. Legal limit’s .08, but I may be able to get it downgraded.”
“To?”
He shrugs, the leather of his chair creaking. “DWAI, Driving While Ability Impaired. It’s a traffic infraction. Higher points on your licence, but no background check complications.”
“So a misdemeanour?” It’s less than that. Follows you like a speeding ticket and vanishes within three years if you don’t repeat the mistake.
“Not a felony.”
The same way sleeping isn't death. The ceiling of his reassurance, apparently.
“You’ll voluntarily enroll in alcohol education before you’re even required to.” Imperative disguised as suggestion, Juris Doctor knows best. “And community service—I’ll coordinate with whatever organisation fits the bill.”
Y/N has never been one to volunteer anything—not her time, not her attention, not her parking spot—but submission is a requisite for absolution, and absolution is the last lacuna in her otherwise unimpeachable portfolio.
“And the reckless driving?”
His hands stall, pointer finger tapping the black-and-white mugshot. Her own debased bingo card, captured by a somnolent booking officer. New, probably. Or at least, new to her antics. Crimson, black-rimmed eyes rebut, but there’s the tiniest hint of a smirk she genuinely thought she was suppressing. It’s instinctual, as automatic as breathing or blinking. “Candid” and “camera” are not a natural pairing in her experience.
“Most likely, DA won’t play ball on that one.” Two truths and a lie, delivered with the conviction of three truths. “You were going 83 in a 35. That's a misdemeanour. Comes with possible probation, mandatory licence suspension longer than the DWI alone would carry, and Cornell could–in theory–rescind admission if it hits your record before you enroll.”
His phone vibrates on his desk—he glances at it, but doesn’t reach for it. The screen illuminates his face in ghost-light, revealing the affect he wears when he’s building something inside himself, how other people build things outside. She notices he never asks questions directly, but makes observations and waits.
“I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt.”
“I meant your legal proceedings, not your academic standing.” His assistant trails down the corridor, stopping right in front of the brass name plate. Harry shakes his head no. No—what? No, cut your losses. No, push it to Monday. No, move the reservation. No, cancel the car. The assistant closes the door, courtesy or consequence.
He leans back in his chair, arms perpendicular, head tilted for inquiry. The starter shot has fired; the only wonder is who will make it to the finish line first. “Absolute best-case scenario, reckless driving gets reduced to a lesser charge, maybe careless driving. It’s like the DWAI, carries points and a fine but nothing criminal.”
“You really should have led with that.”
“The caveat is: you represent me as much as I do you. I negotiate with the DA using my reputation. If I promise you're worth the charity and you prove otherwise, I look foolish."
She surmised, even with his histrionics, this was a formality, a foregone conclusion. Harry's allegiance with her father has made it personal—confounding—and personal is its own jurisdiction, but the dynamics are, at least, transparent. Dominic is in Tokyo, and the discipline made the trip without him; Harry is the intermediary, except intermediaries aren't supposed to mean it.
“Does that happen often?”
He acknowledges this with a small nod that might be pleasure or meagre employment politics. “More often than you would think.”
She crosses her legs, over-under, his eyes hone the mugshot. “Perhaps you should exercise discernment.”
“And what—” he flips the page like it’s gone up in flames— “do you think I’m doing right now, Y/N?”
The file has three more pages. He's not going to reach them. "So is my obedience for you or for the court?"
“It’s for the court, and for yourself. I’m merely the third signature line.”
Nobody who was actually the third signature line would imply any awareness of being more than that. Cognisance is a conflict of interest.
“Do all your cases pertain to some form of quid pro quo?”
His lips quirk up, dimples making their debut. “You will soon come to learn all things in life pertain to a quid pro quo.”
Equivalence is a prerequisite, interchangeable in value, function, or meaning. He is domineering in both function and meaning; value is the only column left to Y/N, and she has always been good at being valuable. Attention, for example. Undivided, unconditional, even if unrequited, is a reverent phenomenon.
“You’re supposed to get me off,” she says, testing boundaries. “That’s what you said. If I’m good, you’ll get me off.”
“I said I'd believe it more. I didn't say to what degree it’d have utility,” he acknowledges, glancing at her sideways. “But that would be a different conversation between us than this one.”
"Is that what you’re in pursuit of?” This is either humour or petulance and Y/N’s always chosen the more useful option. “A man so enamoured with compliance becomes the authority. Is it virtue, vanity, or a simple obsession with control?"
He returns to the first page of the file, circles the mugshot, and adorns it with an exclamation point. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“It’s how the interesting people find each other. I consider it my most redeeming quality.”
He sits up straighter, posturing his stringency. Hanging behind Y/N is a Richter—the first contrivance she noticed when she walked in, after the absence of personal photos and the visitor chairs that inspired the hostile architecture downtown. Like all art inspired before the twenty-first century, you don’t have to squint for the meaning. The paint was grazed into surrender, vigorously shoved rather than gently coaxed by bristles. Lawlessness, guided without resistance, or fortitude. Harry’s eyes track where the scarlet and cobalt bleed into Tyrian, scouting. He seems to have forgotten—paint isn’t sentient. It never stood a chance.
“I’m not obsessed with anything but resolution.”
“The process doesn’t interest you?” Her eyes narrow, filling the answer before she’s asked the question. “You don’t want to see me on my knees, begging?”
The dimples demand an encore; his lips curl, a slow smile spreading despite his attempt to conceal it. “It seems you’re the one in pursuit of something more. Don’t you think I'm a bit old for you?"
A leading question, designed to affirm or deny, irrefutably. Thankfully, semantics are, again, a divine endowment.
“That’s not what I asked. And that’s not a no.”
“There are bar association rules about this that exist for good reason.”
Still, not a no. “I didn’t take the bar.”
“And you’ll never have the chance, if you’re underrepresented and charged.”
Y/N is privy to catastrophising, too. Fear is her most considerable motivator; at present, it has taken an extended leave of absence. She finds herself studying the way his shirt collar sits against his throat, how the top button creates this angular shadow that’s somehow both strict and inviting. Much like the night that acquainted the two of them, she is not thinking about deliverables, or reputations. She is not thinking at all.
RES IPSA
{the thing speaks for itself}
Y/N’s piano teacher taught her two manners of refrain. One: abstention. To resist the impulse, desist before the inevitable. Two: recurrence. Repetition, returning without apology. Harry’s quid pro quo had her faithful to the first. In time, her case closed, she thought again about his top button, and proceeded to reconsider.
The refrain is the theme—the thesis of a piece, the part that gets smudged in your ear and reveals itself between waking and sleeping, linking one idea to the next. Like O Fortuna, or Boléro, or literally anything by the Beatles. Indelible, impossible to dislodge, eject, or replace.
Take Mr. Styles, as Y/N calls him, although he is Harry in her head. Harry is the thesis made flesh. Since the hearing, every night as she lies, she envisions him beside her, his deft fingers tracing the column of her throat, teasing against her collarbone as his lips savour hers. His tongue coaxes between short gasps as his hand trails lower, lower, lower. Her legs part, imbued, as he tugs the elastic of her underwear, finding his way beneath.
She fathoms his touch is like cool water on the back of the neck—astonishing, then ambient. Gentle fingers wading in arousal, steadily circling her clit. Each paltry, unrestrained moan swallowed with a kiss, a hum, a praise of “good girl,” as the pleasure coils taut in her belly. He laughs, because even in Y/N’s own imagination, he finds delight in her surrender.
Lust is a poor choice of word. Too simple, too common. This is more like a geological event happening inside her, something tectonic and patient and unstoppable.
So this—standing here with her palm against the cool door handle of his office—is not about her not thinking. Rather, that she is having the same thought, over and over, ad infinitum, like a pendulum returning to centre.
Y/N was going to leave it be. She was. The refrain had been playing for two weeks solid, and she had every intention of letting it fade into background noise, as all desires do if you starve them long enough. But if she doesn’t do this, the fantasy will keep growing, and fantasies that grow ignored become worse than reality; they become unassailable. Her piano teacher also taught her that there are few things in this life worth being unassailable.
The handle turns without resistance. She’s greeted once more by the Richter painting; black smears appearing vindictive, vaguely self-congratulatory chartreuse. She glances right, where Harry is standing with his office phone pressed to his ear, absorbed. The sleeves of the burgundy dress shirt he wears are rolled past the elbows, exposing an atlas of ink that retires into fabric she wants to strip back.
He looks up as she enters, but the look is not one of surprise; it’s foreboding. Harry doesn’t do surprise—or perhaps he doesn’t like surprise. Y/N will soon find out.
“Mm,” he says into the phone. “No, that’s not going to work. Tell them we’ll take the deposition Thursday or we’ll file the motion. Those are the options.” He pauses. “Yes, both are terrible. That’s why they’re the options.”
The door latches shut behind her; stillness expands to fill the room. The sound is microscopic but docks leaden. She feels the tap in the tendon behind her wrist. He sets the phone down, and then his eyes find hers, reading the fine print. She is in here now. There’s no accidental exit, or pretending she wandered into the wrong office looking for the water fountain.
“Y/N.” No rising inflection. He never uses it when he knows the answer.
“Hello, Mr. Styles.”
She stays by the door, because progression feels like a commitment, and she is suddenly reneging. From here, the desk is a cordial episode before the refrain. From here, she can still pretend this is an act of social decorum, something her father has instilled in her to do when someone has done her a professional favour.
“The court shouldn’t be reaching out with anything new. I’d have been notified.”
Her thumb brushes forefinger, flicking hesitation beyond. “They haven’t.”
“Then what’s the issue?”
“No issue. I came to say thank you.”
His eyes do something that allies a narrowing and a roll, the facial equivalent of an ellipsis. “Most clients email.”
“I prefer in-person gratitude.”
While she doesn’t know if Harry does surprise, she does know, incontestably, that he doesn’t fill silence. Most people do—they rush into the gaps with small talk or nervous laughter or questions that aren’t really questions. He lets it fester, boiling, until you’re the one who feels compelled to fill it. It’s a lawyer trick. It’s also, she suspects, a Harry trick.
But since her sanctioned foray, as it conjugated in her head, she’s learnt that silence is only uncomfortable if you’re trying to hide something in it.
So she lets it fester too.
“You came all the way to the city,” he repeats, slowly, testing the words for structural integrity, “to say thank you.”
“Well, you talked the DA down to 50 hours of community service and a fine.” A parody of righteousness, her father celebrated with a round of golf and Macallan Sherry Oak. “So, yes.”
“That’s all.”
“That is all.”
His weight shifts from his left foot to his right, and his fingers tap against the desk in contemplation. He’s reading her. Trying to, at least.
“What are you really doing here, Y/N?”
Her hand finds the tie of her dress. “I told you, I wanted to say thank you.”
It’s the colour of a swimming pool at dusk, and it wraps around her how a river swathes a sunken pebble. This dress is not frequent in her rotation, because one swift motion and you’re nude, intention be damned. (Ask her how she knows.)
The fabric glides off her back, relieved to be free of obligation, and gathers at her feet into a puddle. Her heels click as she step forwards, abandoning any and all nuance.
It’s a Trojan horse. What’s more pertinent than the dress is what it’s meant to conceal: black lace, a set she bought at a store she’d never been in before, from an associate who seemed to figure exactly what she was planning and approved, dimly. The bra is strikingly transparent, letting her nipples peek through, and the thong is cut to sit high on her hips, magenta detailing reinforced along the trim. Between her thighs, she’s already soaked.
Harry doesn’t look away, which is saying something. He doesn’t pretend he’s not looking, which is saying even more. But he also doesn’t move. He stays perfectly still, aside from his left hand, which reaches behind him and yanks the cord for the blinds. They descend in a rapid whir, cutting off the post meridiem sun in increments that make the room dance with furtive shadows.
She checks his hand—no ring. She’s checked each time she’s seen him. If this were the time for it to premiere, she’d have cut it off.
He squints, short-lived. “You’re cute.”
Cute. Cute as in, adorable. Cute as in, something a child does that amuses an adult. Cute as in, not serious, or tempting, and certainly not worth the energy of a substantial response.
Neurotically, he turns away and begins rearranging the desk. He closes his laptop, slides it into a drawer. Gathers a heap of files into a neat little stack. Collects the pens and returns them to the holder. Y/N is not disrupting anything he’d struggle to put back in order.
“Cute? That’s your assessment?”
He glances over his shoulder, the bare minimum of validation for someone standing functionally naked before him. “You’ve got a crush. It’s normal, and I’m flattered, really. But we’ve been over this. It’s not happening.”
“Yeah, when I was your client.” She crosses her arms, then uncrosses them because her breasts push together, and right now, she’s not trying to be lewd, she’s trying to be understood. “Which I’m not anymore.”
“No,” he agrees, sounding just as definitive as he did in court. “But I’m still thirty-seven. You’re still eighteen. And I’m still close friends with your father, who would—”
“I didn’t plan to tell him.”
“And I don’t plan to tell him about this.”
It suddenly occurs to her that the refrain may have been the quid pro quo.
Her dress is on the floor and her nipples are visible through her bra and the only praise she’s getting for her seduction attempt is related to the production value. Something resembling shame blooms behind her cortex, but she declines to evaluate further, because that would be confessing that this has deviated beyond repair from her itinerary.
“So the ethical consideration—”
“Is one of several.”
“It’s not unprecedented.”
“No. It’s just generally a bad idea.” Men are notorious for their bad ideas, surely this one in particular is licenced. “And even if neither of those were issues, it’d still be cruel.”
Cruel is less dismissive than cute, somehow, although it’s just as much a rejection. She doesn’t understand what he means, but she understands that he means it.
“Cruel to whom?”
“To you.”
He rounds the desk the way a planet orbits and leans against it, crossing one foot over the other. They are two feet closer than before, but miles away from consensus.
Y/N’s heart hammers against her ribs, shoving her to retreat or advance. Advancement implies achievement. Achievement is relative to success. If she looks at it that way, this is a recess, not a verdict.
“You don’t find me attractive.” An observation extending opportunity to mince words. She takes a step, teasing the elastic of the thong. “Shame. Because I clearly find you very much so.”
Harry rests his hands behind him on the desk, unintimidated, for appraisal. His gaze falls to the mesh panelling that veils her heat, blemished with slick evidence. This has mutated into a standoff between two people who seldom welcome defeat. One of them is about to have a new experience.
“Turn around for me.”
Her lips twitch a smirk. Perhaps, between now and his laundry list of objections, he has learnt the value of switching sides. She turns, painfully slow, a ruby in a display case pining to be scored, as he beholds every curve of what the lace doesn't cover.
It’s more reverent than she anticipated. She expected to feel like prey, but as his eyes track the small of her back, the smooth, plump skin of her arse, Harry is preoccupied with maintaining his restraint. She turns back to face him, exhaling the fear that, even still, this conversation will end the way he presented it: her dressed, him unchanged, the hierarchy intact.
“If it’s validation you want, fine. I’ll play along.” Y/N notes, with satisfaction, the argument straining against his trousers. “You’ve got a mouth that needs managing, an arse I’d kill to mark up, and I’d fuck you ‘til you'd never dare walking into someone's office like this again.”
“Then why don’t you?”
He briefly lifts his hips, accommodating the argument. “Because you couldn’t take it.”
A challenge cloaked in concern. She scoffs. “I can handle myself, thank you.”
“But you can’t handle me.”
Boys Y/N’s age—she calls them boys, because that’s what they are—are lacking in both the sapience and the self-control that makes refusal possible. But Harry is more mature. He has a type (presumably), and standards (evidently), and an acquired taste for something specific (unknown). Abstaining from the convenient means sex—for him—is not a hunger that accepts alternatives, and attraction alone is not grounds for rationale. That he could want her and still say no only makes her want to dismantle his principles.
“But you’ve thought about it.”
“Yes.”
A mind without bars entertains both, and while he’s disciplined, he’s also not a monk.
“So, in your fantasy, could I take it? Or was the fantasy that I couldn’t?”
He closes his eyes, inhales deeply, and exhales just the same. Any other context, Y/N would marvel in the triumph of pinning a man against his own logic. But in this one, she is mostly starting to grow concerned that the lingerie is losing its novelty.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he says, flicking his eyes open, a match struck and caught. “It’s not an insult, just the truth. You’ve had sex, I’m guessing, but you haven’t had this. You’d get more than you bargained for, and then you’d be in my office, crying, and I’d be the prick who made the princess cry.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions.”
“I’m making one assumption.” The light tosses his shadow against the wall behind him, staggering and regnant. “That you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s the one assumption that’s never wrong.”
“That is also an assumption.”
“Y/N.” He says her name like he’s reading the riot act, scolding and unimpressed. “I’m serious. I don’t share control. I'd take what I wanted, and you'd be expected to give it.”
The feeling of wanting to be used—immorally, exquisitely, used—is not one she often entertains. But she wants him to put her over his knee and remind her how to behave, to make her regret every sardonic thing she ever said to him, to give her something to actually be sorry for. It’s not control that she’s after; she can find control anywhere. No—what she wants, for once, is for him to make her.
“I told you I’d be good. I’ve been good, haven’t I?”
He laughs, puncturing what’s left of her self-righteousness. “You haven’t been anything but the brat you always are. You’re so used to getting whatever you want, to wearing people down until they give in. If that’s what you think of me, you’ve read me wrong. I’m not doing that.”
She tilts her head, courage seeping out. “Then what would you do?”
His face stalls, the exasperated crease in his brow turning spellbound. “What would I do? I'd put you right on the edge and keep you there. I’d make you beg ‘til you cried, and I wouldn't let you cum unless you earned it. And I’d be pleased to do it, too.”
The wetness between her thighs is getting worse, a slow ache that’s forcing her knees together. It’s becoming unbearable, much like—she’d imagine—the argument in Harry’s trousers, growing into a critical, needs-attention obtrusion. And, no. She doesn’t believe it’s attributed exclusively to the arousal of saying all of this aloud.
Naivety is mistaking someone’s reluctance for patience, or resistance for denial. Y’N’s never been cited as naive—not by anyone of importance—but as she considers his bulge, the realisation strikes her like lightning: this is a game of chess, a war of attrition. Their perversions are selfsame, indistinguishable from each other. He wants her insolent just as much as he wants to be the one who makes insolence concede.
She stares at his lips and wonders what he might taste like. “What makes you think you can make me cum?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. Mint, she decides. Or cinnamon. “Please. You’re practically dripping into your shoes, and I haven’t even touched you.”
She looks down, where desire has migrated, then back at him. Her cheeks are burning. Not with embarrassment—or not only with embarrassment, but with impatience. “Well, are you going to?”
He runs his tongue along his teeth. The clock ticks, quarter-til, but time is the last thing on their minds. This will take as long as it will take.
Two taps on the mahogany, and he shifts left, liberating space beside him. “Come here.”
She’s standing in front of him before she considers the request that’s not so much a request as it is a command. Today, he smells like vanilla bean and tobacco leaf, which would be intoxicating if she weren’t already incapacitated by this very moment.
His hand reaches out, grasping her bare hip. After this much anticipation, the subtle touch is enough to make her legs consider buckling beneath her.
“Can you be quiet?”
She nods, then remembers she might be doing so too eagerly and stops. “Yeah, I’ll be quiet.”
He hums, disapproving. “I thought you told me you’d be good—what did we talk about, again?”
The words spill out like they’ve been preprogrammed in her brain. “Yes, sir.”
Her arse makes contact with the wood as he, without warning, lifts her onto the desk. Suddenly, he is standing between her, bracing her knees, and she is very, very quiet. He glances down at her slick heat, then at her lips, and then steps back, letting his hands fall to his sides.
“Touch yourself. I want to watch.”
Y/N quit piano for one reason and one reason only: performing is a spectator sport, and she has stage fright worse than death. Playing alone, or alongside someone, was fine. Playing for someone was not, because it’s an invitation for scrutiny; everyone is thinking of her phrasing, or her posture, or—especially in this scenario—what her face is doing. The moment she became the entertainment while others simply observed, something in her stuttered and refused.
Irony, who is personified, is no longer the only witness.
“What if I said no?”
This does not appease Harry. He looks at her like a door labelled “unlocked” that refuses to open. “I’d point out that’s not a ‘yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir.” The sir rolls off her tongue asphalt-slick; she feels its acid etch her initials to her ribs.
She parts her legs, bracing on the heel of one palm. Harry watches, intrigued, as she trails her hand down her stomach, rubbing herself over the drenched cloth. She wants to touch herself, to let him watch her unravel just by the sight of him alone, but her hips jerk, a small pivot seeking friction, and then she stiffens.
“Look at that.” His voice is sly and taunting, making her stomach drop. “Someone’s gone shy on me.”
“I’m not shy.”
“No. Not usually.” He watches her fingers hover at the waistband, reluctant to commit. “Do you want to stop?”
“No—” She clears her throat, thinking twice. “No, sir.”
He crosses his arms, the fabric of his sleeves pulling taut across his shoulders. “Good. Go on, then. Touch yourself.”
Checkmate demands the king to fall.
Her fingers skim into her panties, and before she even grazes her clit, her hand is drenched. It would be embarrassing if you completely bypassed the detail of her being naked on her lawyer’s desk. As she circles her fingers against her clit, the pleasure swirls up her spine in a torrent so compelling she has to bite her cheek to keep from making a sound.
She wishes it were his hands. That’s the thought that won’t leave her, the one that makes this both tremendous and substandard. Their long fingers and the anchor tattoo that strains against his skin, the one she’s been staring at as they flex in suspense. His hands instead of hers, his touch instead of this pale imitation.
So she watches him, watching her. He doesn’t blink much. His eyes track the movement beneath the lace, the syncopation as she lures herself closer and closer to the brink. He keeps his arms crossed, gripping his bicep with enough pressure to make his knuckles grow pallid. Y/N tries to suppress a desperate sound—the same sounds that would get swallowed by her pillow at two in the morning when she’s alone with nobody to hear her wanting something she shouldn’t—but it comes out without permission, and his lower lip catches between his teeth.
His belt comes undone like a sentence being passed. The leather slides through the loops of his trousers until it falls to the floor with a heaviness that seems to shake the room. Y/N watches it land, coiled on the floor like a hibernating animal.
Her heart drubs persistently as he unbuttons his trousers. The zipper descends, and then his hands are at his hips, pushing the fabric down. His erection strains against his boxers, a thick line pressed against the dark cotton, and as he palms himself through the fabric, a low, raspy groan escapes him.
Settling in the space between her knees, his hand finds her chin. Steady fingers tilt her head back, and then his mouth is on her neck, and she has to bite down on every noise trying to climb out of her because her neck is her core weakness, her absolute undoing. His lips move against her skin, warm and soft, and then his mouth opens and he sucks—merciless—right below her ear. Another gratified moan slips out before she can catch it in time.
“Fuck,” she whispers as his hand grasps her hair, pulling to improve access.
Harry moves lower, utilising his free hand to push the bra aside, and his mouth latches over her nipple. The sensation is jolting, sudden and sweet, and she arches into it. His tongue spirals, flicks, sucks; the pressure builds in her core like a typhoon gathering.
Love bites. She’s going to have love bites, plural. At her father’s dinner table, at her graduation, at the country club pool where her bikini won’t cover his branding. All of it flashes through her mind in a titillating panic that lasts exactly half a second before his teeth graze her and it disintegrates into something far more urgent:
Orgasm. It builds, winding tighter and tighter in her abdomen. Her legs shake, her hips moving, unsanctioned and uninhibited. Harry’s hand coasts from her neck down her thigh, fingers digging into the muscle, and he squeezes firm enough to leave a bruise.
“Not until I say.”
The pendulum stills, snagged at the exact peak of its arc. Y/N nods, forcing her fingers to drag against her clit in slower, wider circles, the frustration of denial coming impalpable from the wanting.
He pulls back from her chest, his lips wet and slightly swollen. “Don’t make me tell you a third time.”
The understimulation pulls her back to herself. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s better.” He takes her wrist and brings it to her mouth. “Taste yourself.”
She licks fingers clean, the syrupy tang of her own desire distinct on her tongue: slightly sweet, slightly bitter, slightly undignified. His eyes eclipse as she sucks each digit dry, and the intimacy of it—being witnessed while she tastes herself on his command—only exacerbates the ache.
There is an unspoken rule to wearing lingerie that separates experience from incompetence: you keep it on as long as possible, if not throughout. Lingerie is not simply a means to an end, but the whole dissertation. Harry knows of this rule, and he chooses the former, shifting her underwear aside, exposing her completely. Cool air whips her wet core, and she quivers from the insufferable vulnerability—and also from the fact that he’s looking at her like he’s finally decided she belongs to him.
His thumb lightly circles her clit, almost sadistic after the urgency of everything it preceded, and then two fingers plunge deep inside her, kissing a spot that makes her vision blur. Any self-control she had stockpiled dissolves into a blatant, ragged gasp.
“Quiet, kitten,” he warns. “You asked for this. I’ll give it to you, but I need you to be quiet.”
It’s not an ordinary pet name, Y/N doesn’t think. But then again, baby is too soft, angel would be insincere, and princess would be satirical. So, kitten it is. Like she’s something small and demanding and dependent on whether or not he feels like being generous. It should read condescending—it does read condescending. That’s apparently what does it for her.
His mouth is on hers before the sound has time to recapitulate. The kiss is nothing like she imagined, which is to say it’s painstakingly ardent—messy, hungry, his tongue sliding against hers with none of the composure he’s held everywhere else. He tastes, in fact, like mint, but also something arcane enough she’d be able to pick it out of a lineup blindfolded. His other hand cups the back of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair, pinning her exactly where he wants while his mouth works hers open.
“Fuck—just look at you,” he murmurs against her mouth. His fingers curl again, deeper, and she whimpers into his kiss. “All of this, and I've barely done anything.”
Y/N tries to respond, but she can’t. Her hands find his shoulders, then his chest, feeling the heat of him through his shirt, and she wants to tear it off, but she’s overwrought, trying to remember how to breathe around the sensation of his fingers inside her, and his thumb still stroking her clit, and his tongue in her mouth and—
“I’m—” she starts, but whatever she was going to say melts into a mewl as he picks up the pace, pressing firmly against her clit. The pressure builds, fast, her hips grinding against his hand of their own accord, chasing release. But every time she gets close, he slows his rhythm just enough to pull her back from the edge. It’s torture. It’s superb. It’s exactly what he said he would do.
He watches her struggle with naked amusement, and mutters, “What did I tell you, hm? You can’t fucking take it.”
She bites down on a sob. “I-I am taking it.”
But she is also so close to begging that the words are starting to form, polite and indelicate in equal measure. Please, sir. Please let me cum. Please, I’ll be good, I promise, just let me—
He slows his hand, divine agony. “Should I fuck you instead?”
Yes. God, yes. That’s what she needs, what she’s been asking for since she walked into this office with her stupid dress and her stupid, optimistic plan. Y/N doesn’t have to think twice about it. She doesn’t have to consider the implications or any of the other things she’s supposed to be considering. The answer is already there, written in the pool of pleasure that’s dripping onto his desk.
“Yes, sir. Yes, please. I—” she whines, piteous, pathetically whines. “I want you so badly.”
He plants a final, punitive kiss on her lips, and then he’s reaching for his wallet in the pocket of his trousers. He retrieves a condom—the man is nothing if not prepared—and sets it beside them.
Y/N’s never had the fulfillment of seeing him without his shirt, but it turns out to be everything her wet dreams suspected, and then some. As he lifts it over his head, she’s cordially met with chiseled, defined lines sketching each muscle, skin several shades darker than her own—tanned and silklike—and the tattoos—Christ, the tattoos. Mosaics she can’t make out in the dim light but wants to trace with her tongue: swallows below his clavicle, a moth below his ribcage, and two ferns adorn his hips, a path indicator to something far more pornographic.
He frees himself, boxers tossed absentmindedly into his heap of clothing. Her mouth waters—his cock is long, thick, and the tip is florid, already leaking a droplet of precum that traces the vein running along the underside, slow as a pulse. He wraps his hand around himself, giving a few slow strokes, keeping his eyes locked on hers. The distance between his hand on his cock and where she wants it feels supremely disgraceful.
His eyes drop to her feet, to the vermilion-soled heels that are still on because she never took them off. Undressing stopped at the lingerie and everything after that happened too fast to remember footwear.
“Keep these on,” he says, and then he lifts her leg, examining the bottom. The shade is proprietary and garish against her pale skin. “They’re meant to be pointed at the ceiling.”
Foil tears into crescendo, and the condom rolls onto his length. As his head slightly tips back in imminent bliss, she clenches around nothing.
“Actually,” he says, his voice rough and devious. “Turn around. Want you from behind.”
Turning your back on someone who has already seen you naked—it’s not the nudity, that’s been established—but there’s something that makes it punishing anyway. It’s the trust, or the illusion of trust, or the fact that at this point the dichotomy between the two has become academic.
She hops off the desk and turns without questioning, the movement mindless as a dancer’s pivot. At first, she looms, bracing her palms against the wood, and suddenly she’s the paperwork. But that is not enough for him. His warm palm pushes against her shoulder, flattening her chest against the mahogany until she can feel her heartbeat reverberating back to her. Y/N’s skin prickles everywhere it isn’t touching as he traps her wrists at the small of her back, one large hand encircling both, locking her in place. His knuckles dig into her tailbone, rigging her to the surface.
“Promise you’ll be good?” His free hand strokes down the dip of her spine, tracing each vertebra through the lace. “Gonna show me how good you can be?”
“Yes, sir,” she heaves, the words sticky with sincerity. “I’ll be so good for you.”
His chuckle ghosts across her shoulder blade. “We’ll see.”
She feels him shift behind her. The anticipation is its own form of delectable anguish—knowing what’s coming, not knowing exactly when, her body suspended for something it craves so badly it’s neglected craving anything else. Then she feels him, the blunt, silken heat of his cock sliding between her lips. Not entering, but coating himself in the undeniable evidence of how badly she wants this. The sensation wrings a gasp from her—buzzy friction against her clit, the teasing promise of abundance.
“Filthy,” he murmurs, dark and honeyed. “Knew you would be. Knew it since that night...” He thrusts shallowly, the thick crown stretching her entrance. “...this was exactly what you needed. For someone to make you earn it. Not just give it to you as everyone else does.”
He pushes in, the stretch pilfering her breath. He’s big. She knew he would be—she saw him—but knowing and feeling are different orders of knowledge, and feeling him now, Y/N’s afraid anatomy has limitations, and she’s found hers. But then his hands tighten on her hips, holding her immobile as he sinks deeper with infinite, tormenting control. The fullness is beyond anything she envisioned, a penetrating nuisance that ignites every nerve ending. He stops halfway, her body straining to accommodate him.
“So fucking tight, kitten.” His thumb rubs circles over her tailbone. “This feel good?”
She’s panting, her fingers scrabbling against polished wood. Her heels are on the floor, and she’s grateful for the height they add because without them she’d be climbing the furniture for leverage. “Yes, sir. So good.”
He withdraws slightly, just enough to make her whine, then sinks back in. “Want more?”
It’s not a question; it’s a fuse, lit with open flames. “Please. More, harder. Fuck, I need—”
And then he’s fucking her in earnest. The rhythm is severe, each thrust driving her forwards, slamming her against the desk edge and rattling the brass lamp. No more restraint—he pistons into her with deep, murderous strokes that steal her vision in bursts of white light. The sounds are abhorrent: the wet slap of skin, the creak of stressed wood, her own choked whimpers. His free hand fists in her hair, yanking her head back.
“Look at you,” he grunts, punctuating his words with each impulsion. “Absolutely gagging for it. Begging for my cock like a fucking whore.” The degradation makes her head spin, something close to nausea settling in her stomach. “And this…” He slams home, grinding his hips against her arse. “…is exactly what you’re useful for.”
He’s silver-tongued, weaving “good girl” and “filthy slut” in the same breath. “Taking my cock so well” and “such a greedy little thing.” The juxtaposition is devastating; it lures her closer to the edge with every crude, withering syllable.
Y/N tries to be quiet. She really does. She bites her cheek until she tastes iron, presses her face against the desk, anything to muffle the strangled sounds trying to escape. But as his thrusts grow more desperate, as the tip of his cock meets her cervix with each deep drive, a moan tears out of her throat—piercing, uncontrolled, perfectly tactless for an office building on a Wednesday afternoon.
Harry’s hand promptly clamps over her mouth, muffling the next cry. “I said quiet.” A pantomime of discretion; the moment it’s there he’s pounding into her with enriched force. “But you can’t help it, can you? Need everyone to know how well I’m fucking you?”
She yelps against his palm, eyes stinging with prophetic tears, and he eases his hand just enough for speech. “What was that? Can’t understand you.”
“Please, just—” she gasps, the plea catching in her chest.
“Please what? Use your words.” His thrusts don’t slow. “You were so smart with words five minutes ago. What happened?”
What happened is that she can’t think. What happened is that the only word she can remember is please, please, please, playing on a loop in her head. What happened is that he’s fucking her beyond coherence, beyond pride.
“Please,” she blubs defeated. “I need to cum. I can’t—”
“Not yet. Maybe I won’t let you at all. Maybe I’ll fuck you ‘til you’re begging me stop.” His hand returns to her hair, forcing her face harder against the desk. “Someone needs to teach you a fucking lesson. Break that bratty little attitude down.”
Y/N knows, rationally, that disputation won’t help her case. That pushing back when she’s pinned and spread and so close to coming she might actually die is not a winning strategy. But depravity, in this case, only ignites her audacity.
“But I’m being good! I’m being so good—”
“I like how desperate you are. But...” His hand slams back over her mouth as another moan builds. “...still too loud.”
Reckless insurgence: she lets her muscles flutter around him, thinking maybe he’ll let her cum when he does, but it only amplifies the sensations—the stretch, the burn, the friction as he pounds into her g-spot. The orgasm looms, inevitable, terrifyingly close despite his denial. Her thighs shake violently; her vision tunnels.
“Don’t you dare,” Harry warns, cutting through the haze. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
She shakes her head frantically against his restraint—I won’t. I promise. Then the tears spill without warning, a sudden slip of debility. At first, it’s just one or two, but then they keep coming, tracking down her cheeks and over his hand.
He must feel the wetness seep between his fingers, because his rhythm falters, and then he stops, a disorienting absence of motion, and pulls out.
He turns her back around to face him. She doesn’t need to see herself to know—her face is flushed, tear-streaked, hair sticking to damp skin. He props her back onto the desk, pushes her right knee up towards her chest, spreading her wide again, and locks his eyes with hers.
“Said I’d make you beg ‘til you cried.” His gaze pins her, as forcible as his hands, and he pushes in slowly, watching her face as he fills her up again. The new angle is deeper, more direct, his pelvis grinding against her clit with every shallow thrust. “Look at that. Such pretty tears for me, kitten.”
She’s already choking on her own sobs, but his hand wraps around her throat for good measure. His thumb strokes her crazed pulse, not squeezing, but letting her know that he’s thinking about it. The prospect scrunches her eyes shut—if she cums now, after all this, without approval, her subconscious will never let her live it down. But then the pressure of his hand around her throat tightens, just enough to get her attention.
“I can tell you’re trying so hard,” he murmurs, snide. “Ask me one more time. Maybe I’ve reconsidered.”
Eleventh-hour. “Please. Let me cum. Please.”
He tightens his grip; air vanishes. Y/N’s hand flies up, clutching his wrist in reflex. Suddenly, the cross tattoo, the anchor, the three-leaf clover—it all makes sense.
“There you go. Cum. Quietly.”
This is the part where pride gets stored in the overhead compartment and the body takes over. The orgasm doesn't build, it crashes, making her eyes roll back, blinding her in bliss. Pleasure scalds through every vein as she convulses around him, milking his cock in surges.
“Manners.”
“—thank you, sir.”
He watches her come apart, his thrusts growing heedless and uneven. “Oh, fuck you, Y/N,” he snarls, his control finally snapping. His hips slam into hers, his fingers digging into her thigh. “Fuck you.”
That one feels personal, but she’s too dissolved to care, because then he’s cumming, too. The groan that escapes him is low and bitten-back and sounds dragged out against his will. She feels the pulse of him inside her, and then stillness.
Her body twitches, tiny tremors running through her thighs and belly. Harry’s hand slides from her throat to cup her cheek, his thumb wiping away a tear track.
“Good girl.” He kisses her damp cheekbone, then her temple, his lips lingering. “You did so good.”
Recurrence, then. Without apology.
