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windowtotheabbey

Feb 20

durrtydawg

Occupational Hazard

(Sam Drake x F!Reader smut)

She’d thought she hated being spoken to like that. Especially by men. Apparently, her body hadn’t got the memo.

Masterlist

In which the strings of lifelong conditioning fall into one Samuel Drake's hands.

15.6k words of plot-propped filth: bad attitude, cheeky bit of power-imbalance, and some extremely unprofessional behaviour. Yay for the durrtydawg resurgence x

CW for mildly dubious consent, d/s undertones, and general degradation & humiliation. For detailed tags take a peek at ao3! Not the best but not the worst. Enjoy! <3

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭

Be a good girl. Look after the big guys. Something for the résumé.

She recounts the instructions from her father as she stares at the kettle, hip propped against the counter, arms folded over her chest. The little plastic base quivers faintly with the buildup.

She watches it through blurred vision, her focus elsewhere.

The deal had been struck over a pricey bottle of whisky and shared military history; Victor leaning back in his chair, charm turned on just enough to soften the ask. Her father, loyal to a fault, insisting there was no need to pay rent if the old man would “take the girl on” for a bit. Give her something that would look good on paper. Some exposure. Loose connections to her degree in Art History. A line on her CV that didn’t end with ‘made redundant’ again. That's what she gets for picking a Mickey Mouse degree. They laughed. She heard it all through the crack in the kitchen door.

“Just a few weeks,” her dad had said to her the next morning, hands splayed on the dining table as she unpacked another box of things from an apartment she could no longer afford to rent. “Victor needs the space. You need something to take your mind off of… things. It’s a win–win, love.”

He’d smiled at her awkwardly like he was offering her a gift and not trading his daughter for free work. She’d smiled back, brittle, and accepted because that’s exactly what 'good girls' do when the men who love them make choices on their behalf.

Now a mysterious old Navy friend has the attic.

And she has two mugs lined up by the sink, already knowing one of them will go unthanked.

Not by Victor, mind you. He's easy enough.

Charming; presumably survived too many bad deals and lived long enough to know better than to waste time on being unpleasant. After the first day or two, he’d become the one who made her look forward to scraping herself out of the depression crater that is her bed in her childhood home.

Mornings with Victor mean making coffee that’s near–chewable, listening to, and occasionally telling, morally dubious jokes, hearing stories of places she’s only ever read about in Lonely Planet books, and so on. He lets her talk through her ideas without interrupting, even when he’s already five steps ahead.

Mr Sullivan does the early mornings.

Dad's shop in–between: 9–5, ringing up pawned wedding rings and battered guitars, sorting through other people’s poor attempts at clawing money together to fund their various vices, instead of having any respect for sentimentality.

Then, after the shutters come down and the shop bell stops ringing, she comes back up for the 'late shift'.

Mr Drake’s turn.

Filing again. Extra research again. Basic tech support he pretends he doesn’t need. Tea, coffee, maps, tea again. Turning his scrawl into legible notes before it fossilises into nonsense.

She gets on with Victor.

She gets the sense she is merely tolerated by Sam.

She drags a thumb along the edge of the mug. The ceramic is chipped near the rim; she knows better than to give that one to him.

She’s learned his habits quickly. The total silence when he’s genuinely annoyed, tension settling in his jaw and shoulders and hands, even. The way his voice gets louder when he feels cornered, more mocking, as if being the first one to make the jab means he wins by default.

The kettle wobbles on its stand, getting closer to boiling point.

She rolls her shoulders, trying to shake out the tension, and her thoughts slip – as they have done frequently, lately – back to the men she’s worked for before.

Her last boss with his predatory smile and too–long stares. He’d called her “darling” right up until the meeting where he sat across from her with a printout and said her role was “no longer required.” Eyes glued lazily to her chest while he talked about restructuring.

She glares at the kettle as it begins to rattle more violently.

Be a good girl. Look after the big guys. Something for the résumé.

That’s what her father wants. What Victor promised. What Sam clearly assumes she’s there for– quiet hands, quick typing, no backtalk beyond the occasional “Are you sure you meant 1723 here?” that he pretends not to hear until he realises she’s right.

Steam spills from the spout.

She straightens, uncrosses her arms, and plops two tea bags into the mugs. Black for him, mint for her.

Samuel is… for lack of a better term, hot. Not in a poster–boy, symmetrical, swipe–right kind of way. She's had her fair share of those morons. No. Sam’s attractiveness is more… cumulative. The sort that snuck up on her after the third late night spent by his side and the fifth time unintentional eye contact had happened, when she’d realised she’d spent more time than deemed normal cataloguing the little scar at his cheekbone and how his hands move as carefully over old paper as they probably do over expensive firearms.

And then there’s the way he looks at things.

When he’s over the desk, palms planted, weight tipped forward, eyes narrowed at some obstinate detail– he’s beautiful in a way that makes her teeth ache. Focused. Dedicated to the task in front of him. All that restless energy slammed into something that can’t flinch.

She puts a teaspoon in his mug.

You always want what you can’t have, don’t you.

Sam displays this constant, low–grade intolerance, like she’s background noise he has no control over, so simply has to endure. Barely concealed sighs when she asks a question. Tight, clipped “mhm”s when she’s right about something and he has to acknowledge it.

Half the time, he talks around her, not to her. The other half, he talks through her, like she’s a screen he can project his frustration onto without consequences.

And yet–

Her fingers pinch harder around the teaspoon.

Ugh, God.

She can’t help it.

She likes how his voice drops when he’s really annoyed. Likes the grit of it. The little scrunch at the bridge of his nose. The way his eyes darken, not with cruelty, exactly, but with a kind of feral irritation that makes her feel like she’s poking a caged thing with a stick.

She likes that she can do that. Get under his skin.

She’d dressed this morning with that thought in mind.

She could have worn the regular jeans or those ridiculous but oh–so–comfortable joggers that make her look like Aladdin. Should have, really, given the dust and the bending and the general indignity of the day. Instead, she’d stood in front of her open wardrobe and chosen the skirt.

Would he look harder? She'd wondered, inspecting herself from all angles in the mirror.

Would his eyes drag down, then snap back up, like they did yesterday? Like he's internally chastising himself.

Would he say something? Would he… tell her off for it, like yesterday?

Yesterday, yesterday, yesterday. She can't stop thinking about that. The gum.

Reminiscing makes her stomach flip and her thighs press tighter.

'The gum incident' is proof that whatever this feeling is– it perhaps isn’t one–sided.

Her pulse jumps as she stirs the teabag, hardly paying attention.

Last night had been… something else. One minute she’d been chewing gum, lost in the bookshelf. The next, she’d been pinned between said bookshelf and said man, his voice gravelly, his hand in front of her mouth like there was nothing strange about it at all.

Her cheeks burn at the memory.

The shock. The embarrassment. Her brain had split cleanly in two: one half appalled at how demeaning it was, the other half tingling with something heart–flutteringly bewildering that had nothing to do with shame.

She’d thought she hated being spoken to like that. Especially by men.

Apparently, under the right circumstances, her body hadn’t got the memo.

She remembers the sight of his attention more than the words. Everything else in the room had fallen away. He’d watched her mouth, watched her obey him, like he couldn’t look at anything else. Oh, she’d felt so minuscule and so… huge at the same time; cornered, yes, but also...

Hm.

And then there’d been the moment after.

The way his body had reacted. Completely at odds with the disgust on his face when reality crashed back in. The fact that she’d seen it. That he knew she’d seen it– almost felt it press against her.

The scene had followed her to bed.

It had replayed in loops: The feel of being held in place by nothing but his proximity and her own will. The knowledge that if she’d said no, he probably would’ve backed off.

Except, she hadn’t said no. She hadn’t wanted to.

She’d lain there in the dark, mulling over how it felt, being the object of that much focus. How desperately she wanted to feel it again. How she wanted to be the maps and the documents and the centuries–old diagrams he pinned down and looked at so meticulously.

Inevitably, her hand had slipped under the covers, beneath her waistband.

It hadn’t taken long. It hadn’t been romantic. Just efficient, embarrassed, almost angry; chasing the edge of something she didn’t quite understand but couldn’t shut out. She came thinking of his hand in front of her mouth and the words that left him in such a rough, impatient tone.

She’d fallen asleep after with her cheeks hot and her guts still tense, duvet damp from where she'd had to bite down to stop herself from being heard, furious at herself for giving Sam that much real estate in her head.

Today, the anger has faded.

The wanting hasn’t. It’s amplified, in fact, because in this tiny strip of time where no one’s looking– she doesn’t just want his attention or his temper or the grudging praise.

She wants him to take her.

Not gently. Not sweetly. Not in a way that soothes anything. She wants him pushed past whatever line he keeps drawing in his head; for all that tightly wound control to finally snap in her direction. Wants to see what he becomes when he stops pretending he doesn’t want anything from her.

How much more does she have to chip away at him before he shatters? What would he do if she pushed and pushed and then didn’t back down? If she obeyed again. And again. And again. If she showed him, without ever saying it out loud: I can take it. I want this.

She sets the spoon down with a soft clink and exhales, trying to will the colour out of her face.

She shouldn’t want a man who clearly barely tolerates her.

She shouldn’t want a man who weaponises his irritation like that, who talks over her, who can’t admit when she’s right without acting like it was his idea all along.

She shouldn’t want a man who treats her like a dog.

But she does.

She wants the attention. The consequences. The humiliation, if she’s honest, because in that brief, suffocating pocket of time yesterday, there had been no doubt at all that she had all of him.

She wants to know how far that would go.

How far her own obedience would go.

Whether wearing a skirt that's half a size too small today was enough to make him crack a little further. Whether he’ll look at her like that again.

Her pulse is thudding in her throat and between her legs in equal measure.

That’s the bare, mortifying truth of it. Standing here making tea like some nervous little assistant she is, while every dark, private nook is lit up with the realisation that she doesn’t just like his attention – she craves it. Wants him to touch her. Not just look at her, not just get a fucking hard–on and pretend it never happened. She wants to become another problem for him to solve, another thing to catalogue and conquer.

She stirs her own mug a little too hard, tea slapping the sides. Hot water splashes onto the back of her hand and she hisses under her breath.

It snaps her out of it a fraction.

She can’t do anything with any of this. She knows that. She’s too nervous to deliberately provoke him in such a way, too used to swallowing her wants in favour of keeping the peace. All of this lives behind her teeth. Ha. Forever pathetic.

And why in God's name has she put this dumb fucking skirt on?

She lets out a small, frustrated sigh and presses the cool metal of the tea tin briefly to her cheek, looking up at the shelf as if she can chill the heat out of her thoughts.

Sugar. She needs sugar for his tea.

She rises up on her toes to reach the pot on the highest shelf and feels the answering throb low in her belly as she continues to think about her stupid little fantasy.

Samuel is supposed to be working.

The desk in front of him says he is – maps spread to their edges, corners curling in disobedience; endless printed excerpts weighed down with whatever’s close at hand; a scruffy notebook open under his pen, full of dates and numbers and half–slashed notes that only make sense to him.

This is his thing.

He’s in an attic office set up over a pawn shop because it was cheap, because it was quiet, because an old friend promised Victor the space and a lead and the illusion of control. No guns. No mercs. Just dust, dim lighting, an oddly impressive literary collection, and a paper trail that might lead to something worth the trouble.

He clicks his pen.

The ink on the page doesn’t rearrange itself into an answer.

Victor would say they're close. That you don’t get this kind of volume without there being something big at the bottom of it. Sam’s less convinced. Right now, all he’s got is a headache, a knotted back, and a growing suspicion that he’s missing something obvious.

He exhales through his nose, hard, and drags a hand down his face.

Focus. He can't focus.

He forces his attention back to a series of dock manifests, to the cramped seventeenth–century scrawl, to the pattern he's trying his hardest to decipher. His ears start picking up everything that isn’t what's in front of him; the creak of the rafters, the faint hum of the mini fridge in the kitchenette, the ceramic clink of mugs.

And under it, somewhere in the back of his skull, he's stuck twenty–four hours prior.

Clack. Squelch.

He pauses, shuts his eyes and grits his teeth together.

Chew, chew, chew.

His fingers tighten around the pen.

Yesterday begins to play out as if he's still there.

He’d heard it long before he’d done anything about it.

The irksome, wet click of gum between her teeth while she typed, the constant noise that wormed itself into his focus and refused to budge. She’d been curled in her chair across from him, eyes on the screen of her laptop, jaw working slowly like she had all the time in the world.

He’d told himself to ignore it.

Just gum. Just background noise. Nothing worth giving her the satisfaction of reacting to.

At first, he’d only tutted.

She’d glanced at him, lips pressed together in apology, and the sound had stopped.

For all of five seconds.

Then it started again. Chew, pause, chew, rhythmic, goddamn maddening.

He felt frustration climb the back of his neck like heat. He'd huffed, jaw tight, louder this time. She glanced over again, brows faintly knotted, but she didn’t stop.

Fine.

Whatever.

He’d put up with it. Just like he has no choice but to put up with her.

Well – he was going to put up with it– until he saw her finger slip between her lips.

Just for a second.

She’d hooked the gum with her index, stretching it out idly as she scanned the screen, twirling it once before popping it back into her mouth. The little wet sound her tongue made when it caught the gum again stirred a cocktail of feelings in his body.

Blood rushed south so fast it practically winded him.

He hated that. Hated that he’d gone still, staring silently before he caught himself.

He snapped before he could think better of it.

“Are you an animal?” he barked, louder than he'd meant.

She jerked, looking up at him frozen, eyes wide like she’d been caught in something far more incriminating than doing her best Violet Beauregarde impression.

He pushed on, sarcasm slicing through the air as he rubbed a hand over his face.

“Oh yeah, fantastic – let me just get my slobber all over these three-hundred-year-old papers. Christ almighty.”

Her mouth parted, the gum tucked away behind her teeth as she tried to find words.

He didn’t let himself look at her lips again.

“Chew with your mouth shut.” he muttered back down towards the desk; crude, defensive and wholly unnecessary.

Across from him, she’d gone still.

Silent, chastened, small.

“I – I’m sorry,” she’d murmured.

And the noise had stopped.

For about three minutes.

Then she’d stood. Moved around the table toward the shelves, her fingers grazing labels, murmuring to herself as she hunted for a book.

He should’ve gone back to the notes.

Instead, his eyes had followed her.

She’d reached for a higher shelf, stretching up on her toes. Her shirt had ridden up at the small of her back, exposing a narrow strip of skin. Nothing, really. Just a flash of flesh above her waistband.

He’d looked down again, annoyed at himself.

Clack.

The sound again – quieter, but once he’d heard it, he couldn’t unhear it.

He’d glanced up in time to see her drop to her knees, then lower, one hand on the floor as she peered at the bottom row. The gum had clicked once more between her teeth, thoughtless.

He could have looked away. Could’ve affixed his eyeballs to the map, the notes, the safest part of the wall. Instead he’d sat there and watched the angle of her back, the tightening of her jeans against her ass, the way the denim had faded a little over time at her upper thighs – his own thoughts started sliding somewhere he wanted no part of.

Clack, chew, clack fucking clack–

“Jesus–”

By the time his chair had scraped back, the decision was already made.

She hadn’t seen him until he was there, his shadow cutting across the spines she was reading.

“You’re really starting to piss me off.”

She’d looked up at him from the floor, eyes wide, lips parted around the gum. Confusion, then a flicker of wariness.

“I was just trying to find a book–”

“What book?” he cut in, voice flat.

She pushed to her feet as she answered, brushing dust from her knees. “Kiel.”

He didn’t move back. As she straightened, she realised just how little space there was– shelves at her back, his body filling the gap in front. Her shoulder blades met wood with a soft thud.

He dragged his line of sight up to the shelf over her head, scanning spines. “Kiel?” he muttered.

She tried again, smaller. “Machiel Kiel.”

That got under his skin more than the gum ever had. Of course she knew who fucking Kiel was. Of course she got there first. He knew the name, the field, the various goddamn bibliographies; having her edge in and assume he didn’t know felt like being nudged even further out of his own territory.

“He– he was a specialist in Ott–”

“Ottoman architecture,” he cut her off, talking over her as he found the book and yanked it free. “I know.” He stepped in closer to shove it into her hands; the edge knocked her knuckles, her fingers brushing his.

“Thank you.” she murmured automatically, and that should’ve been it, except, she chewed once more.

The sound was small. He could’ve left it. But his sharp intake of breath suggested otherwise.

Up close, his pulse surged in his throat. He should’ve stepped away, but the mint on her breath and the warmth radiating off of her was all too compelling for his body to comply with reason.

“Spit that shit out.”

God.

That instruction shouldn’t even have formed in his head, let alone made it out of his mouth. But it did– sliding, bypassing his brain entirely and rising straight from whatever part of him was tired of being so irritated.

She blinked at him, stunned.

His hand lifted before he registered the decision. Palm up. Fingers curled slightly. Held directly in front of her lips.

She'd looked between his eyes and his hand, her breathing gone unsteady, her confusion melting into something closer to… anticipation? Obedience? Something pliant but bewildered in equal measure.

And that – that – was why he doubled down.

Because she wasn’t recoiling. She wasn’t pushing his hand away. She wasn’t telling him he was insane or arrogant or fucking gross.

She was waiting to see if he meant it.

And the part of him that constantly felt undermined; by her intelligence, by her quiet correctness, by the fact that she was here and couldn’t be dismissed, seized the smallest, strangest victory it had ever been offered.

“Now.”

She swallowed in response, and he tracked the motion of her throat with hungry, unwilling focus. The quickening breath. How her knees shifted but she didn’t step away.

Slowly – agonisingly so – she parted her lips.

His focus tunnelled.

A faint shine caught from the lamplight sat on her lower lip. Her eyes darted up to his – checking, gauging, seeing if this was really what he wanted – before sliding back down to the hand he held steady just beneath her chin.

Her tongue nudged the gum forward.

He took note of the way her mouth worked to deliver it exactly where he’d told her.

The little white wad had dropped into his palm, dented with teeth marks and shining with spit.

A thin string of saliva had stretched with it, clinging to her bottom lip for a fraction of a second before it broke and smeared across his skin.

He stared at it.

Then he stared at her.

She’d wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, cheeks burning.

It was repulsive how much some part of him liked this: her doing something so ridiculous seemingly just because he’d told her to; that heady taste of control had him in a sudden trance.

He’d watched her eyes coerce themselves down– his eyes, hand, chest, lower, down to his belt – and seen the exact moment she’d realised what that close proximity and the pressure at his zipper meant.

Her eyes had snapped back up to his, shocked, mouth parted.

They’d just stared at each other.

She’d looked cornered. She was cornered, but under the timidity, there’d been something else in her eyes – question, hunger perhaps. It had hit his bloodstream, doubling the tension already tearing through his body.

His own thoughts had skidded somewhere darker on instinct: the warmth of her spit in his palm, the grotesquely easy leap to imagining other uses for obedience in a different situation.

Reality had crashed in hard on the heels of that.

Bookcase digging into her back. Spit in his hand. Nothing about this was right.

He’d clenched his jaw and forced his fingers to curl around the gum instead of her neck, turned sharply, and dumped it into the bin before heading to the bathroom to scrub his hand clean, grateful he hadn't lost his mind completely and put her saliva to better use.

He'd left the pawn shop that night buzzing with the need to pace, to punch a wall, to chain-smoke or find a bucket of ice water to douse himself in, or anything that wasn’t the memory of her eyes dropping to the front of his fucking jeans.

They haven't spoken tonight. Not that they'd exchanged many words anyway, but today things feel even more cloying than usual.

His findings lie in front of him unchanged. The ink hasn’t rearranged itself into answers while his mind was busy replaying Humiliation 101.

He realises his hand is clenched around the pen so hard his knuckles have turned white.

His thoughts refuse to behave, Sam hates her for it.

And he hates himself more.

Because the memory doesn’t disgust him, or make him angry, as much as he can pretend it does.

It makes him want to do it again– want to see that look in her eyes again, want to feel her compliance land in his palm and–

"Shit.” he mutters quietly into his hands.

No. He wants her gone.

Wants her to fuck off and leave him alone with the work, with the silence, with the certainty that he’s the smartest man in the room again.

He wants her to look up at him and know – no more polite qualifiers, no more careful language – that he’s right and she isn’t. He wants her attention, sure, but stripped of all its quiet cleverness and turned into something simple and focused and–

He wants her to… look up at him and–

The thought sparks, but it’s doused just before it catches alight.

No, he – he doesn’t want that.

Nor does he want the image that follows; the parted lips, the blown pupils – rolled back into her head, all apologetic criticism shut out ‘cause there’s no room for it. Because he’s wringing it all the hell out of her.

God, what a headache.

I don't want this, he lies internally for the fiftieth time.

His pulse jumped when he saw the tether of spit stretching from her lower lip to his fingertips while she kept her eyes on him and obeyed, despite such a demeaning and stupid demand. He doesn’t want the dull ache that has nothing to do with his work and everything to do with the way he had her caged in, and – why? Why on earth did he go through with it?

Across the hall, he hears the faint clink of a spoon being set down. The kettle’s hiss dies away.

If he turns his head, he knows what he’ll see: her at the counter, two mugs, perhaps a quick, flickering glance in his direction before she pretends to busy herself with the tea she's politely making him, despite everything that transpired 24 hours ago. His neck feels warm.

He drops his pen, pushes back from the desk, and stands so abruptly the chair almost flips over.

He needs air. Space. Or else he's going to think with his blood-flow and fuck her right up against that shitty old sink just to get it out of his system.

He grabs his jacket, more for something to do with his hands than because he needs it, and heads for the door. As he passes the kitchenette, movement pulls at the corner of his vision.

She’s reaching up for the sugar.

Her skirt lifts just enough as she stretches, hem tugging up so he catches a glimpse he absolutely does not need right now – the underside of her ass, the soft line of thigh, darkened by a layer of nylon. Until today, such a sight has been purely a figment of his imagination. To see it feels like salt in the wound, and for a second his feet almost stop moving.

He looks away, but it's too late.

She turns and catches him looking almost, almost away, her hand tugging her skirt back down in haste. Her eyes dart past his, not quite making contact, cheeks a touch warmer than the drafty room warrants.

He doesn't trust himself to say anything of merit, so he turns and takes the stairs down two at a time, shoving through the fire exit into cooler air.

Don’t think, he tells himself.

His brain, predictably, hears that as an invitation to do the exact opposite.

The thing about trying not to think about something is that you end up circling it like a drain. And right now, the very thing at the centre of that drain is a girl willingly spitting into his hand with her back pressed to a bookcase.

He imagines – against his will, but vividly all the same– just… not stopping next time.

Not retreating. Not turning away to the nearest faucet.

Crowding her fully, nowhere for her to go but exactly where he wants her. Fingers under her chin instead of hovering in front of her mouth, tilting her face up until all she can see is him. Heat curling up her cheeks as he squeezes them, realising how ridiculous he's making her look and how she does nothing to stop him. Letting her feel, not just see what her compliance does to him. That he's happy to punish her for pissing him off.

Telling her to spit it out was nothing. Petty. A warmup.

He wonders viciously what she’d do if he told her to get on her knees instead. If he didn’t give her time to think it through; to wrap it in stuttered apologies. If he took that obedience she gave him in the most stupid possible scenario and pushed it somewhere that actually matched the way his cock had reacted to it. To her.

Would she hesitate? Look away?

Or would she do what she did yesterday – swallow, flush, and follow the instruction because it came from him?

He dips his hand into his pocket and pulls out his box of cigarettes with a drawn out huff.

The thought curdles and darkens as it clings to the recesses in his brain as he knocks one out of the box and puts it into his mouth: her eyes glassy, lips wet, brain too flooded to offer up a single careful caveat. No cleverness. No critique. Just instinct and reaction and the knowledge that he put her there.

Humiliation as solvent. Yeah. Grind it out of himself by grinding it out of her. Turn her into the drooling, asinine thing his pride wishes she was so this stops feeling like a loss every time she opens her mouth and proves she’s anything but.

He pats around for his lighter.

Because that’s the line, isn’t it? That’s the part that makes his stomach twist: not the fantasy itself, but the question that comes with it.

How far would she go, if he asked?

If he pushed?

Where would she say no?

He doesn’t know.

And he's left his fucking lighter upstairs.

Did she just catch him staring at her ass?

If he was looking, why didn’t he do anything? Say anything? Just one “pull your skirt down” and she could’ve had another week's material!

Oh for fuck's sake. She’s so pent up she can’t tell if she’s seeing what actually happened or what she wants to have happened.

Deep uncertainty and fetid, physical yearning, with nowhere to put either.

The irritation turns inward. She huffs under her breath, shrugs her sweater off, and ties it firmly around her waist. Makeshift coverage, flimsy protection against her own imagination.

Back to jeans tomorrow, she tells herself.

She carries the mugs into the office and sets her own down first, then she takes his toward his desk setup, placing it carefully near the ledger he’d abandoned. Something about the sight of his handwriting tugs her closer, makes her want to peer at whatever fragment of brilliance he’s been muttering over for the last hour.

So she leans. Just a little at first. Then fully, bracing her hand on the desk so she can angle her head and read the note by the corner of a page.

His handwriting is… not what she expects.

For all the callouses and brawn and morose, clenched–jaw attitude, his script is neat. Letters slanted just so, loops restrained, lines pressed with slight pressure rather than scuffed in with force. It’s oddly pretty – disciplined without being rigid, like he’s taking care not to damage the paper. Though, he doesn't seem the type.

She swallows, mind drifting from ink to how he holds a pen. Fingers. Skilled ones. Nimble, precise. The kind that know exactly how much pressure to apply and where.

She traces a word lightly with her fingertip before she can stop herself, heat shunting downwards again at the thought of those hands on her. In her, to be transparent.

The sound of the door slamming shut downstairs cracks through her head, snapping her out of her stupor.

She jumps.

Her forearm swings out as she startles–

and clips the mug–

which tips.

In one catastrophic instant, tea sloshes over the rim, spilling across the desk, absorbed by the map, racing towards papers in a doom–mongering amber tide. She gasps, and clambers to grab it, but it’s too late. The ink is already bleeding, the delicate strokes feathering into ruin.

“Oh god – shit, shit – ” she whispers, snatching her sweater from around her waist and lunging over the surface. She attempts to sponge up the spill like a woman possessed, barely breathing, heart in her throat. The sweater darkens, soaking through as she dabs and blots and presses harder, praying to every god she doesn’t believe in that the damage is fixable.

The ink is dissolving before her eyes. Blurring into unreadable smudges. Hours – days – of his work turned to sludge because she couldn’t put down a cup without letting her freakish obsession get in the way.

The sound of his boots coming up the stairs only flusters her further as she realises she's not got a cat in hell's chance of getting out of this unscathed.

“No, no, no –” she hisses, voice cracking as she lifts one of the sheets, holds it to the light, and sees the disaster spread. Panic claws at her ribs, squeezing tight.

She rubs harder, desperate, frantic, her sweater squeaking across the wood. He's going to kill her–

“The hell did you do?”

Her blood goes still.

Slowly, she turns her head over her shoulder, knowing before she even sees him that Sam is standing right behind her.

She swallows, throat suddenly dry. “I– I spilled–”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t fill the silence with a lecture or a disgruntled sigh. The quiet stretches, tight as wire, and she’s bent over his desk with her sweater bunched in her fists, tea soaking into priceless documents she knows he’s been poring over for days.

She knows the repertoire: irritation, the faint disdain at her presence, the flat disbelief when she corrects him. She’s used to taking the hit, biting her tongue, letting him underestimate her.

“I was just – cleaning it,” she manages, trying to sound like she isn’t spiralling.

“Mm.”

The sound is neither outrage nor forgiveness. Instead, interest, almost, like he’s tasting the word. Not part of the regular set list.

“And how’s that goin’?” he asks.

She glances back down at the desk. The spill has crept further than she thought, a thin line disappearing beneath the corner of a folder.

"Fuck." She mutters, nudging the folder up to mop up beneath it.

“Poorly, I'd say." he murmurs, voice low and maddeningly controlled. "It's gone under those papers, too."

She starts to straighten, instinctively moving to go around the desk to better reach the mess–

The front of him brushes the back of her, cutting off any attempt at retreat. His hands brace against the wood on either side of her.

Her stomach hits the desk edge as she stumbles into it.

“Stay there,” he says quietly, “Clean it up. Properly.”

She dares a tiny breath of defiance, words tumbling out before she can catch them.

“I– I said I’m cleaning it, if you’d just let me – ”

The sentence barely clears her lips before his hand snaps up and grabs her cheeks, fingers digging into the soft edges, squeezing just enough to force her mouth into a helpless little pout.

“Uh–uh,” Sam mutters, low and steady. “You don’t get to talk back right now.”

Her breath stutters. Her eyes go wide.

With his hand still on her face, he tilts her head down – aiming her eye line exactly where he wants it.

“Look,” he growls, coming in close, his chest almost flush to her back. His other hand comes down hard onto the middle of her spine – broad palm, firm, a command more than a touch. Not quite pinning her, but the sudden push knocks what little support she has out from under her. She drops onto her forearms with a soft grunt, cheek nearer the desk, sweater bunched uselessly in her fists.

His voice brushes her ear as his weight settles over her, heavy and inescapable. “At the hours of work you just fucked.”

Holy shit.

It’s the only coherent thought she has. Holy shit, she’s ruined everything. Holy shit, he’s furious. Holy shit, his hand is on her back and his breath is in her ear and her body is reacting like this is the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to her.

It’s harsh. Cruel, even. But she looks, because he tells her to; because every fibre of her being lights up at the feeling of being steered.

He leans over her, closer still, weight shifting until his thigh grazes the back of hers.

Then his knee nudges between her legs.

It slots higher, parting her just enough to feel how she tenses around the intrusion. She adjusts her stance to keep from sliding, widening without even thinking about it. The desk edge bites into her hips; his palm stays steady at her back, keeping her exactly where he put her.

For him, it’s the easiest thing in the world: a small shift of balance, a tiny decision he’s been holding off on for days. He’s been white–knuckling his restraint while she pokes and prods at every frayed edge he’s got – now she’s given him every excuse, and his body moves before his conscience can drag it back.

She gasps as her body scrambles to keep upright. Her feet slide wider, instinctively scrambling for balance. Her skirt rides up with the movement, the hem dragging over the tops of her thighs until the lower curve of her ass is a ghost of a suggestion in front of him for the second time today.

With her protective sweater now laying in a saturated mess in front of her, her hand flies back in panic, groping for the fabric, trying to tug it down–

His grip leaves her back and catches her wrist mid-reach, slamming it to the desk with a flat thud.

“Nope.” His voice is quiet and breath warm at her ear as the hand on her cheeks turns her head a fraction, forcing her to listen. “You made a conscious decision to dress like a whore today. That’s somethin’ you’ve just gotta deal with.”

Heat floods her. She might combust, she thinks.

Sam feels her go very still under him, not rigid with fear – he knows fear – but quivering with something else. The subtle tremor in her muscles. The way she doesn’t yank her wrist back when she could try. It feeds something in him that he’d tried to drown in nicotine outside. More fool him for heading out without his lighter.

His hand leaves her face only so he can trace its way down – thumb along her throat, knuckles brushing her collarbone, palm sliding over the line of her shoulder and down her ribs until it settles on the swell of her hip.

She can't breathe.

She also can’t move.

Not when his knee shifts higher, pressing just enough against the inside of her thighs to hold her open and remind her exactly where he is, exactly how close he could get if he wanted. Her stance widens another inch, her body answering the pressure before her brain can argue.

His thumb drags slowly across the crease of her thigh, following the line until the pad of it suddenly snags. He pauses, fingers adjusting, and pulls back the slightest bit to inspect where the tension in nylon gives way.

She doesn’t dare ask what he’s doing, what he wants, what the endgame is. Her mind is a riot of questions; her body, by contrast, is terrifyingly simple in its replies.

“Ripped tights, too?” he adds, tone dripping disdain as his thumb toys lazily at the edge of the run.

A bare inch of her skin meets his.

She goes very quiet. Shit. She must've caught the fabric in the kitchen.

“Christ. No wonder you got fired from your last job. Clumsy. Pain in the ass. Can’t even dress yourself.”

Her heart is pounding so hard she can feel it in her fingertips. His knee is just shy of discovering how embarrassingly wet she is, how thoroughly her body has betrayed her.

She hates that she wants it– to be perceived as pathetic. To be perceived. God, she has no idea where to put the feeling.

Her breath shakes.

His thumb dips again, deliberately catching the bare strip of skin where the ladder splits, circling once like he’s testing how sensitive she is there. Her thighs flex around his knee, a tiny shift in composure.

He could push a little more.

He wants to.

Instead, he lets go.

The heat of his hand leaves her thigh and hip, a rush of cold air taking its place. For a heartbeat, she thinks that’s it – that he’s done. That he’s proved a point, whatever it was, and is about to retreat to his side of the room and leave her to mop up the wreckage alone.

The thought makes her stomach drop in a way she absolutely refuses to examine.

She shifts, pushing herself a fraction more upright so she’s not folded quite so low over the desk, but she stays small. One hand is still pinned where he slammed it down earlier, palm flat on the wood; the other is clenched tight in the damp sweater, knuckles aching.

The floor creaks as he rounds the table. She keeps her eyes on the stain, on the blurred ink and the damp fabric, forcing herself to focus on blotting, salvaging something, anything, of what she’s ruined.

“Look at me.”

Oh.

She hesitates for half a second – old reflex, old fear – then obeys. Lifts her gaze from the ruined papers to his face, heart thudding so hard she half expects him to hear it.

He looks at her for a long beat.

Then he laughs.

A short, disbelieving huff, the corner of his mouth curling like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

He really can’t.

Her pupils are blown wide. Her skin flushed warmer, a sheen on her upper lip, throat, the fine line of tension along her jaw.

He’s certain he’s got her, right where he wants her.

Fuck it.

The realisation settles in slowly, horribly, like ink spreading through paper: she is into this. Not abstractly. Not hypothetically. This. Him. Laughing at her. Watching her. Making her feel ridiculous.

Her chest tightens.

Her eyes try to dart away, instinct begging for escape.

He bites down on his lower lip to catch the grin threatening to break. Then he shifts his weight, crouching slightly, close enough to reach for the sweater clutched in her fingers.

“Gimme that,” he says, not unkind, just done with how uselessly she’s wielding it. He pries it from her grip. As he leans in, his upper body comes over the desk, meeting her halfway but still looming, looking over her, not at the stain.

“What is going on in there?” he asks then, eyes flicking back up to hers. Not so much to her as at her, like he’s talking to faulty wiring. He taps her forehead lightly with one finger, before giving it a small, mocking waggle.

She opens her mouth.

Nothing comes out.

What is she supposed to say? I like it when you’re mean to me and tell me what to do and I'm also fairly certain I want you to touch me properly but I'm too scared to ask doesn’t seem like a survivable answer.

He watches the struggle, eyebrows lifting a fraction, clearly entertained by the fact that for once, she doesn’t have a neat, polite package of words at her defence.

His finger doesn’t leave.

It slides instead – down from her forehead along her temple, tracing the hairline, skimming to the hinge of her jaw. Her eyes track the movement automatically, straining as far as they can without moving her head.

He notices.

“Eyes up here,” he snaps, that edge back in his voice.

They jerk back to his.

His fingertip keeps moving, following the angle of her jaw until he hooks two fingers lightly under her chin. The pressure is minimal, but it owns the whole moment; her head tips exactly how he wants it – up, open, positioned.

He tilts her face, studying her. His own head angles slightly as if he’s working through a problem. She trembles, not from fear, but from the brutal anticipation of whatever he’s about to decide.

“Open,” he says, brushing her bottom lip with his fingertip.

Her lips part. Just a little at first.

He adds the slightest extra bit of pressure, thumb nudging under her jaw, forefinger resting against her lower teeth. When there’s enough give, he hooks it there, just inside, and draws down, guiding her mouth wider, casually dictating the motion with two fingers.

Her breath ghosts over his knuckles, warm and shaky.

For a second, he simply takes her in. Flushed, wide–eyed, mouth open because he told her to. She's pretty when she's compliant. When she's waiting silently for the next instruction.

“Keep it open,” he says, just shy of a whisper.

Up close like this, the image drags yesterday’s memory right to the surface – her mouth, the gum, the warmth of her spit in his palm. His blood heats in one clean surge and he swallows thickly. He lets his hand shift, fingertip leaving her teeth to skim down, tracing under her chin, then the soft arch to her throat.

Her pulse is waiting for him there, frantic under the tips of his fingers.

He grins briefly.

It’s more mocking than anything – and god help her, it only makes her wetter. The sight of his mouth curling at her reaction, even if it’s ridicule, punches right through to the core.

“Feel that?” he murmurs, thumb settling on one side of her neck, middle finger on the other, pulse thrumming away against his skin. “What’s got you so worked up, huh?”

Breath shudders out of her open mouth over his wrist. Saliva builds on her tongue as she keeps it parted, jaw starting to ache, but she doesn’t dare close it. He didn’t say she could.

Her eyes are still on his – huge, dark, a little glossy.

Then his hand tightens; His thumb and middle finger draw in, framing the line of her throat.

Her pupils flare.

Her body reacts as if he’s done far more than this – heat surging, a tight coil pulling low in her belly. Instinct makes her knees want to buckle, her weight tipping forward; his grip holds her upright when her own arms begin to feel like they’re made of nothing. She leans into the support without thinking, trusting his hand to keep her there.

Her reliance makes him inhale deeply, a hard, answering throb spiralling through him as he presses against the edge of his side of the desk.

She hears her own pulse pounding in her ears, feels the dizzy fuzz creep in at the margins of her vision – not panic, but a soft, woolly blur. Like her skull has emptied out every anxious thought to make room for sensation.

Her eyes stay on his. He makes certain of it.

She begins fighting against her eyelids after several seconds. Her mouth wants to make a sound – something utterly incriminating. She clamps her lips shut to trap it.

Sam, however, distinctly remembers telling her to keep it open.

The pressure at her throat vanishes; blood rushing back to her head in thick, pulsating waves. Her brows furrow in confusion up at him. Before she can fully register the loss, his hand cracks across her cheek in a quick, sobering smack.

Her head jerks, a startled breath punching out of her before he drags her back to him by her cheeks.

“I told you to keep your mouth open,” he snaps. “Did it sound like an option?”

Humiliation makes her lips part on instinct.

“That’s better,” he mutters. “Tongue.”

She blinks. “What?”

His brows lift. “Your tongue. Y'know? That thing inside your mouth that doesn't stop its wagging. Out.”

Heat crawls up her neck. This is ridiculous. Degrading. Completely unnecessary. And yet…

"You want another smack, sweetheart?"

Sweetheart? Oh, God. She feels herself pulsate, fighting every urge to adjust herself so she can squeeze her thighs together.

Her tongue slips out past her lips, tentative at first, then fully. She can feel how stupid she must look, slouching there with her jaw slack and tongue out on command – can feel her cheeks burn with the awareness of it.

Sam looks at her for a long, long beat.

“Hmm,” he says at last, a low, almost amused scoff spilling just after, finally relenting his grip on her cheeks to fold his arms and lean down to her level. “At least your face matches the state of your outfit now.”

Mortification surges.

His choice of words lance straight through her pride, straight through every careful little affirmation she told herself this morning about maybe looking put-together, maybe pulling it off. Still, her fingers curl harder against the desk. It’s like her body misheard him and took whore as a compliment.

Sam eyes her face. The sting on his palm from the slap is still fresh. He can only guess the darkening on her cheeks is a coagulation of being on the receiving end, alongside some sort of perverted need.

For the first time, he’s not the one getting knocked off–balance. His field of view snags on her mouth and his thoughts stagger. He can hear the fucking gum again, that wet little clack between her teeth, feel the phantom drag of her spit across his palm. It’s stupid how fast the image shifts: her on her knees instead of at his desk, jaw working around something far thicker than gum, eyes glassy and obedient. The wanting hits so sharp it almost makes him sway.

Buzzzzzz. buzzzzzz.

The sound of Sam's phone ringing slices straight through the momentary silence. He snaps out of the drift he’d been sinking into; his arms uncurl, hand leaving her for just a second as he fumbles in his jacket pocket.

He exhales once through his nose, frustrated, when he sees the name flashing on the screen. He clocks her shoulders shifting slightly.

“Stay still,” he says, finger pointing in warning. “Like that. You move, we got a problem.”

He keeps his eyes on her as she freezes, thumb hitting accept as he brings the phone up to his ear.

“Victor,” he says, shrugging his jacket off with one hand, tossing it over the back of the chair, phone tucked between shoulder and ear. “Little past your bedtime.”

As he turns toward the clock on the bookcase, the black t–shirt underneath pulls tight across his back and arms. She stares, helpless, listening to his voice smooth out as his hand raises to rub at the back of his neck.

“Yeah,” he says. A small, albeit genuine chuckle bubbles up at something that comes out muffled from the tinny speaker. The tonal whiplash nearly makes her dizzy. His tone is different with Victor. Warmer. Less defensive. He wanders out of her eye-line as he continues talking, circling lazily behind her.

She stares at the ruined papers, at her ruined sweater discarded to one side, heart racing.

This is insane.

Yet… if he told her to stay like this all day, she realises with a bolt of honesty so sharp it almost makes her groan, she would. Just to keep him interested. Just to see what he does next.

“Mhm,” Sam says, listening. “Yeah, I’m still on it. Coordinates aren’t goin’ anywhere, though, so– mm. Sure."

From his new vantage point, he takes in the picture she makes: bent over, skirt rucked just enough from their earlier struggle to leave very little to the imagination, legs not quite together, breathing uneven. Sully is rambling about some paperwork he left behind this morning, and Sam is muttering along, eyes absolutely not on the floor.

He lets the phone slide back between his shoulder and jaw so he can free his hands again.

His focus drifts down.

Over the curve of her back. Past the waistband of her skirt. Down to the back of her thigh.

His hands smooth up the backs of her legs in slow, fingertips dragging over nylon in kneading strokes. Meanwhile, her eyes flick sideways, glassy, willing the call to be over so he can get back to what he started.

He watches her fingers clench on the desk as, by touch alone, he finds the ladder in her tights, thumb tracing the ragged line with idle curiosity, like reading Braille. Then his fingertip slips into it– skin on skin again, a tiny wriggle that sends a shock up her spine, tongue still hanging out of her mouth like an idiot.

“Mm, yeah,” Sam says, as if nothing’s happening, mind focused on the warmth of her upper thigh; the contact between thread and skin. “Hey, look – I’ve got a… situation up here I’m handlin’, so can I call– Right, yep. No – no, tell me what you need.”

The tip of his finger hooks in the run and pulls.

There’s a soft riiip as the tear widens. She gasps and starts to twist–

His palm cracks across her ass.

One fast, punishing smack. She yelps, flinging her hand up to cover her mouth.

“Uh–huh,” he says smoothly into the phone, not missing a beat as he lurches to yank her hand back down to the surface. “No. Somethin’ just fell.”

Her skin stings, heat blooming under his touch. She trembles, blinking hard to stop her eyes from watering, tongue drooping uselessly over her lip as she tries to steady her breathing.

His hand settles again. Fingers sliding under her skirt with a casualness that makes her head spin, like he’s just straightening fabric rather than baring more of her.

“Yeah, it's uh…” he says, eyes narrowing on what he’s uncovering. “Big mess up here, if we’re honest. Somethin' spilled... got wet.” His fingers catch the edge of her underwear and tug it gently away from her skin. He huffs out a quiet laugh through his nose, enjoying the way her breath shudders, her hips fighting the instinct to buck.

He gently kicks her legs further apart and she almost falls flat on her front with a grunt.

“Sodden, actually,” he adds, tone bone-dry as he eyes the opalescent slick clinging to cotton. Her eyes squeeze shut as he lets go, allowing her to feel just how soaked through she is.

It's surprisingly difficult to swallow with your tongue out; proven by a thin string of spit starting to drip onto the wood below. She watches it roll, horrified and aroused in equal measure as her cunt mirrors the sorry state of affairs taking place up top.

On the line, Sullivan responds.

Sam’s fingers flex at her hip, now. His thumb presses into the flesh there, a proprietary squeeze that feels horrifically possessive despite its softness.

“Nah, no, just tea. Relax. I'm sure she can send over somethin' she's typed up.”

He shifts his hand, fingers moving aside from her wet–through underwear just far enough to make her feel the loss. She shivers, willing herself to gain the courage to just shift her hips slightly to the left to feel him again when his next words cut through her haze.

“Yeah, she’s here, why?” he says. Victor murmurs a response but any attempt to listen is quickly overruled by the feeling of the tips of his fore and middle fingers making a lazy attempt at plugging the leak.

Her eyes go wide. He stills. She knows without looking that his teeth are bared in entertained complacency.

A beat.

“Sure. Here you go.”

The world slows as he lowers the phone toward her, arm crossing her field of vision. He brings it to her ear without giving her time to close her mouth or wipe away the spit. The position doesn’t change. His expectation doesn’t change.

He wants her to stay exactly as he’s put her.

“Kid? You there?”

Her jaw is still slack, tongue wet, spit cooling on her chin. Every instinct screams at her to hide, to twist away, to sober up and wipe her face, but his hand remains settled low between her legs in warning. When she doesn’t answer fast enough, it bears down in a slow press over her clit that makes her jolt, a tiny, helpless sound catching in her throat. The message is clear: talk.

“Mhm–” she squeaks, then clears her throat hard enough she almost chokes on it. “Hello!”

Shit, she thinks. Too chipper. Not at all like someone, say, folded over a desk with her own drool on her chin.

“Just a quick one,” Sullivan says, all gravel and EQ–filtered. “I’m not keepin’ you from anything, am I?”

Sam’s fingers flex, dipping further inside her as the pressure from his thumb remains. Her eyes widen, head tilting down to the desk’s surface.

“No,” she lies, breath snagging on the word as he curls downwards and pulls. “No, you’re fine.”

“Wonderful. Listen, I’m meetin’ a collector first thing tomorrow. Wants to see what we’ve got so far. You remember those scans I asked you to print this morning?”

She stares at the map of tea stains under her palms, at the soggy stack of paper fanning out untidily at either side of her. One of the folders sits there that she remembers putting said printouts into, swollen and soggy and pathetic. Hilarious.

“Uh… y–yeah.” Her brain skips like a scratched CD. Colour. Folder. Right. “In the p… purple,” she manages. “Purple folder.”

Sam shifts his weight. More of him settles along her back, holding her in place, phone now practically riveted to her ear.

He huffs a sound that might be a laugh. His arm moves. The effort of whatever he’s doing travels straight through her; the motion's rougher now, rhythm finding some awful, steady pace that makes the edges of her vision prickle.

“Purple, huh?” Sullivan mutters. Paper rustles at his end of the line. “Yeah– yeah, that’s the one. There’s a list of coordinates in there. Think you can send ’em over to my email?”

“Yes,” she says too fast. “Mhm. Yep. I can– I’ll do that.”

Her words pile up on each other, tumbling headlong as she swallows a sharp noise that wants very badly to get out. More weight rolls onto her; he’s almost completely on top of her now, chest brushing her back every time he breathes. The sounds coming from between her legs start to feel disconcertingly loud in the attic’s hush, each tiny movement magnified as she tries and fails to tune it out.

Victor keeps talking. “He was sayin’ he wants to cross–check ‘em with the stuff he’s got in storage, so, uh… better sooner than later. You got my address, right?”

She bites the inside of her cheek. Think about something else. Think about anything–

His handwriting flashes into her mind as her eyes skim past some bled ink– pen pressed to paper, the mix of care and blunt force. Crosses ’t’s, dots ‘i’s, writes quickly but perfect in the way he curls and bends and– stretches– oh fuck, he adds a third digit, and she hacks up an untidy whine too sudden to swallow back. A different angle. A different sort of pressure. It hurts, almost, but she continues to swallow him up, greedily forsaking her dignity to bask in the feeling of being filled in such a way.

There’s a brief pause on the other end.

“You okay, kid?”

“I–” She grabs at the first thing she can think of. “Elbow. Just caught my elbow on the– on the desk.” She lets a grunt slip out, but at least it sells the lie well enough. Her voice rasps, sandpapered at the edges, each word coming out quieter than the last as she claws for the end of the conversation, so close now she can feel her focus starting to blur at the corners.

She feels Sam laugh on top of her, the rumble pressed into her spine.

He doesn’t slow down. If anything, the movement gets more intent, more focused. No hurry, just a grinding patience that makes her whole body hum.

“Right,” Sullivan says seemingly unconvinced, but he doesn’t let it stew for much longer, “So. Email. You’ll send it tonight?”

“Yeah,” she breathes. “I’ll send…”

Her voice drops, not out of discretion but because it feels like all the air in her lungs has been taken up by the way he’s working her over.

Silence pools for a second on the line. She can hear something – paper rustling – perhaps the shifting of a cigar being de–boxed. Whatever it is, she clings to it, tries to use it to get her bearings, but Sam chooses that exact moment to adjust his stance. His legs press more firmly into the backs of hers; his thumb skimming over her clit as the three deft fingers inside her change angle once more. He watches her give in so prettily, and he barely has a moment to think about how quick it's been when she curves her hips up to swallow more of him, all the way to the last knuckle. He’d add a fourth if he could.

Her mouth falls open. Nothing comes out, and she feels blood gather in her head as she holds her breath in a desperate attempt to keep schtum.

“I hope you two are playin’ nice up there,” Victor says, mild suspicion threading through the line.

Her brain scrabbles for neutral. “Yeah,” she manages, though it comes out as more air than feasible dialect. Sam, no longer just idly testing what he can get away with, yanks her closer to the brink with merciless confidence, turning each breath of hers into an exercise of restraint.

“Hm, well,” Sullivan continues, paper rasping near his mouth, “You’ll send those coordinates tonight?”

She’s nodding before she remembers he can’t see her. “Mm–” Her voice snags, she swallows, tries again. “Mhm. I’ll, um. I’ll do it now.”

Now is a stupid promise. Now is impossible. Now is the exact moment he ramps up the speed, chasing something only he can feel squeezing around him, the movement going from steady to surgical in an instant. Every nerve in her lower body seems to light up in synchrony, a vicious little constellation that pulls tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter–

“Good girl,” Sullivan says, not helping. “I’ll be keepin’ an eye on my inbox, so don’t leave an old man waitin’, you hear?”

Her head bobs again, uselessly. She can see his address in her mind’s eye, his name sitting patiently in the top of her contacts list, but the letters mush together.

Sam glances down at her – at the white–knuckled grip she’s got on the desk, the tremor in her shoulders – and has to bite back a laugh. He hadn’t expected it to be this quick, this easy. All that intelligence, all that professionalism, and right now she’s hanging on by a thread because he hasn’t given her permission to move.

He watches her dignity drip, drip, drip its way out of her. His cock throbs as he remembers how he intends to drain her of it completely.

Victor’s still fucking talking and she wants to cry. “Alright, then. I’ll let you get back to… whatever it is you two are pretendin’ to do.”

Her mouth opens to agree, to say yes, fine, send you the thing, anything to wrap this up before she humiliates herself–

His thumb adds a minuscule touch of extra pressure. Just a fraction. Just enough in just the right place to redraw the whole map of her body, and the thread that she's been holding onto snaps.

The sound that tries to rip its way out of her is nothing remotely human. Her spine bows; her fingers spasm on the wood with a squeak; knees bucking, legs squeezing together, trapping the offending hand between them.

Sam swears under his breath.

The phone clatters facedown onto the desk as he lets go of it, Victor’s voice abruptly muffled to a tinny buzz as he clamps his now free hand over her mouth, palm moulding to the shape of her jaw – she practically howls into it. He leans into her fully now, pinning her between his weight and the groaning wood as the climax crashing through her runs its course. He can feel every shudder, every tiny, desperate jerk, the contraction of muscle in her cunt, stuttering around his fingers – right down to the way those that are clasped over her mouth vibrate with the force of the sound he’s trapping inside her.

Her body can’t differentiate coming from being shoved off of a high ledge with no warning and no chance to grab on to anything. Her heart and stomach drop and shudder; every part of her pulling tight around the place he’s got her, spasming helplessly, body choosing for her what any ounce of pride would have vetoed.

There’s a relentless but ultimately useless part of her still trying to dig its heels in – not now, not with him on the phone, for God’s sake – but it’s drowned under the sheer force of it, breath and sense of self tarnished in the same stroke.

He huffs out a laugh that’s half incredulous, half flat–out delighted, forehead pressing harder into the space between her shoulder blades as he forces her to ride it out until she jolts, intensity of the stimulation veering into pain territory. He hadn’t meant to push her over quite that fast… but he’s not exactly sorry, either.

He glances at the screen. The old man’s already hung up. His attention drops back to her just as she bucks against his hand, a strangled, “Pl–please–” sputtered against his palm, overstimulation turning every twitch of his hand into agony.

His mouth curves, pleased. He finally relents, easing his hand away and watching the way she shakes through the aftershocks, muscles fluttering as she lets him go, fingers shining when he draws them back. He takes his hand from her mouth, too. Her head rolls to the side, cheek dragging over her own spit as she rasps for air, eyes screwed shut. He licks his lips, then brings his palm down in another sharp smack across her ass, more punctuation than punishment. She sobs lazily.

“Didn’t take much, did it?” he murmurs, hand smoothing over sore skin in a parody of something comforting.

She would give anything, in that moment, not to agree with him.

He doesn’t give her even a breath’s warning before he wrenches her upright. Her knees nearly go out. Paper slides and flutters to the floor as she's gracelessly spun in a rough semicircle, Sam taking advantage of her imbalance until the backs of her thighs hit the desk edge. He hikes her up so she's precariously balanced on the edge.

She catches herself with both palms on the wood behind her, blinking, dazed. The attic swims in and out of focus and she feels a wave of nausea hit her. What the fuck did she just do?

Sam steps between her knees as if it’s the most natural place in the room to be. One hand stays heavy at her hip, keeping her exactly where he wants her. The other doesn’t retreat far; it lingers low, the ghost of pressure remaining where her nerves are still sparking, enough to make every tiny shift of his fingertips feel threatening.

“Y’know,” he says conversationally, breath not even a little out of place despite his straining jeans, “for somebody who's tryn'ta up their professionalism, your telephone manner’s terrible.”

Her mouth opens, closes. Heat crawls up her throat as the last few minutes replay in excruciating clarity: the squeaks, the broken replies, the way her voice had turned to sand when he–

She swallows hard. “I– that wasn’t–”

He cuts her off with a small tilt of his head, like he’s heard a particularly entertaining excuse from a kid caught shoplifting. His face arranges itself into something that almost looks sympathetic, but the soft pout of his mouth doesn’t match the slyness in his eyes; there’s a sharp, glittering delight there, the same look a bully wears right before they push someone who’s already on the verge of tears.

“You couldn’t focus,” he reminds her, voice dipped in mock concern. “Forgot how to talk properly for what–”

His hand shifts the tiniest bit, just enough to make her flinch.

“–just one minute? Bad form, sweetheart.”

He draws his hand up between them at last, making sure to nudge against her sopping slit on the way up. She hisses at the mere millisecond of contact.

Even in her daze she can see the shine on his fingers, glinting faintly in the lamplight. Proof. Evidence. Her stomach drops clean through the floor.

She jerks her gaze away, cheeks blazing. His fingers catch her chin, redirecting. “Uh-uh,” he murmurs. “You did that. You look.”

She wants to slide off the desk, to fold in on herself.

Her pulse jumps at the sight anyway.

She says his name, voice thin. She doesn't know if it's meant to be a warning or a plea; it comes out as neither.

He hears the scrape of argument under her embarrassment and smiles, wolfish. She’s still stringing thoughts together. Still trying to defend herself. Not nearly done enough for his liking.

His hand drops back, landing with accuracy where she’s still overstung and twitchy. He doesn’t do much – just lets his palm sit there, thumb shifting in idle, almost absentminded strokes that make her thighs tense.

“N-no–” Her knees try to snap shut, instinct kicking in, but he’s faster. He wedges himself deeper into the space between her legs, prying them apart with implacable strength. She looks up at him with wide, pleading eyes, every tiny twitch of his hand making her jolt. She shivers as his other hand roams up beneath her shirt, fingers skating over the soft give of her waist before climbing higher. The swell of her breast fills his palm, nipple so tight he can feel it even through the fabric of her bra.

“You realise he could probably hear you breathing’, right?” Sam says, thumb nudging her swollen clit as the other toys up top; she chances a glance down before shaking her head back up at him in total denial. “All choked up, losin’ your train of thought. What d’you reckon he pictured?”

She makes a small, wounded noise, teeth bared in a grimace. “Stop it–”

“Oh, c’mon.” He leans in, crowding her back onto the desk by degrees, his chest brushing hers, riddled with amusement. “I’m just thinkin’ about optics.”

He hooks his arm around her to find the clasp, fumbling for only a second before it gives.

“Take it off.”

She just looks at him, breath stuttering– until his other hand lands in a sharp smack right between her thighs, the wet sound and sting snapping her into motion. She shivers, working the straps down under her sleeves, and he tugs the bra free in one rough pull.

For a beat he just stares, greedy, at the way her breasts move unbound beneath her shirt, nipples straining against the cotton like they’re reaching for his hands. His teeth. He grinds them together as another thought springs to mind,

His eyes go theatrically wide, like a light bulb flicked on. “Oh, shit. What would daddy say, if he caught wind’a this, huh?” he muses, tone almost idle as he pinches a nipple between two fingers. He tugs hard, dragging a whimper out of her as the pressure forces her further forwards. “If he heard his little girl was lettin’ her potential reference fingerfuck her when she’s supposed to be working?”

Her whole body goes taut around the thought. Mortification and heat and- his fingers scissor her open whilst his others twist at her nipple, hard. "Oh my g-" she swallows up to the ceiling as he crooks back up into her g-spot again. “Don't talk ab–” she starts, indignation flaring up through the fog as she ebbs and flows between wanting more and wanting to snap his wrist. She can't find the words.

“Look at you,” he says softly, almost in awe. “Absolutely wrung out and still gettin’ worked up at the thought of gettin’ caught.”

The softness drops out of his tone like a trapdoor.

“That it? That what does it for you?” His hand is merciless between her legs now, working her with a steady, grinding insistence that makes her thighs shake. “Why’d you wear this skirt today, huh? You wanna tell me that?”

His fingers relent their assault on her breast to instead curl in the hair at the nape of her neck and yank, dragging her face closer to his, making her spine arch away from the desk. The sting at her scalp lances straight down her back.

“Was it for me?” he presses. “Cause'a yesterday? You wantin’ another reaction outta me, is that it?”

“I– I didn’t– I just–” she stammers, words breaking apart around her teeth. Whatever answer might exist gets shaken loose by the rhythm he refuses to let up on; all she really manages is a breathless string of half-syllables and a choked little sound that could be fuck, could be don’t stop. It hurts now; she's oversensitive and scraped raw, nerves veering toward pain, but the thought of him taking his hand away is somehow worse.

He watches the push-pull move across her face: the flicker of shame, the flood of want. Still too lucid for his liking, but the edges are fraying.

“Y’know what I should’ve done ?” he murmurs, voice going vicious as he bends to her ear. His hand leaves her hair only to clamp back around her throat, thumb pressing into the soft hollow beneath her jaw. "Last night?" The wet schlk of his fingers working her is the only other sound she can hear, honing in her focus to her ruin. “Should’ve told you to get on all fours and open your fuckin’ mouth.”

Her knees knock against his hips. The idea hits like a blow; she feels herself pulse around him, inexplicably close again, everything in her tightening with a helpless, horrified oh, God. She’s going to– she can’t possibly–

“You’d have done it, right?” he breathes. “Just like you spat that gum out when I told ya to. Shouldn't've stopped there.”

A warbled cry tears out of her throat. Her fingers, useless for pushing him away, end up clutching at his shirt instead, hauling him closer even as her eyes squeeze shut against the hot sting of tears.

“Drooling. Pliant,” he goes on, amused, a breathless edge to his voice as he ruthlessly ruts his arm. “Just like this fuckin’ hole a'yours.”

The word makes her flinch, face burning as she whimpers. Her belly clenches so hard it almost aches. She feels like an object in his hands– something to be used, tested, pulled apart, a toy wound up and let go and wound again. Less than a person. A thing. Oh, how right it feels to be treated like that by him.

Every drag of his fingers is a confusing, intoxicating blur of pleasure and hurt: the stretch, the hot rasp of oversensitive flesh, the deep, dull ache building under the sharp pinch of pain. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes not just from the lingering sting in her nipple or the roughness at her throat, but from the sheer overwhelming moreish-ness of it– too much sensation, too much humiliation, too much relief in not having to think; and still not enough.

A sob rattles out of her, half frustration, half bliss. Her legs are trembling so badly she can’t keep them still; every time she tries to shy away from the intensity, his body is just there, immovable, forcing her to take it.

He feels her cling, feels the way she gives up that last tiny illusion of resistance to hang on to him, and it hits him like a shot of liquor. His cock throbs against the inside of her thigh, pressed tight where he’s shoved himself between her knees. His jaw tightens, breath hissing once between his teeth as he reins in the urge to just take.

Her answering sound is broken and wet and wordless. She couldn’t stop him if she tried.

When she comes for a second time, the sound that tears out of her is nothing shaped for language, a raw, high-pitched noise you’d expect from some cornered and dragged under creature, not a woman. Her whole body knots around it; she jerks against him, heels of her shoes scraping against the drawers, fingers clawing at his shirt.

"Ffffuh– ngh–"

To her horror, his hand doesn’t let up. If anything, he bears down harder, chasing every last shudder until she’s flopping against him; hiccuping little sobs, half–howls pressed into his shoulder, muscles firing off in useless bursts as the aftershocks batter through her one on top of the other.

“St–” she gasps, or tries to; it comes out chewed to pieces.

Only when she falls face first into his chest does he relent. Brusque, almost impatient, he drags his hand away and catches her under the ribs, hauling her forward off the desk. She has no warning, no balance left; her knees buckle and she tumbles, landing hard on her front on the thin rug, with a shaken grunt.

The floor is cold. The contrast to the fever in her skin makes her shake all the more. She lies there, cheek pressed to the boards, blinking against the hot sting in her eyes, chest heaving in sharp, broken pulls. Every tiny movement sends echoes of sensation lancing through her, little aftershocks that leave her trembling, absolutely wiped out.

He hasn’t even started on what he wants. Some of the things he pictures to her are the sort of things you confess to the law.

And yet his jaw still aches with the urge to bite, his fingers still itch with the need to mark and take.

He just looks at her for a moment, taking stock of the produce: skirt rucked up around her hips, tights ripped and darkened all down her thighs, hair a mess, shivering all over. What a gorgeous picture this makes. One that says very clearly who stands where in the food chain up here.

Doing her a favour, he thinks, letting her feel it. A lesson learned.

She, on the other hand, has no idea what to do with herself. Instinct makes her drag her knees together, but even that small movement sends a bolt of oversensitive protest through her and she hisses, thighs shivering. There’s nowhere to put her hands, nowhere to put her eyes. She ends up staring at the floorboards, distorted through thick tears.

She blinks Sam into focus as he drops into a squat in front of her. Fingers hook under her chin, rougher than they need to be, dragging her face up. The angle is uncomfortable; she whines and has to brace a hand on the floor to keep from listing sideways.

Heavy-lidded eyes meet him. Close up, he can see the tear tracks on her cheeks, the dazed glassiness, her pupils still blown wide.

“There she is,” he murmurs.

His thumb strokes once along her lower lip, a deceptively gentle pass, feeling the tremor there. Then the touch changes– more pressure, less kindness– as he pushes two fingers past her lips, filling her mouth before she can decide whether she’s going to speak, argue, or beg.

Her lips part on reflex. Whatever she had been about to say dissolves into a muffled whimper around his knuckles, eyes fluttering as she swallows down the instinct to flinch away. For a second, all she can do is look up at him and take it, throat working, the taste of tangy sweetness on his skin and the stickiness of his palm against her jaw hammering home that this is exactly what she wanted. She sniffles, grizzling around him and the sight makes his cock twitch.

His fingers press deeper on her tongue, knuckles nudging the hinge of her jaw until her eyes glass over. Her gag is involuntary; her eyes squeeze shut, lashes clumping, shoulders jerking against his grip.

“Pretty girl,” he says, almost absently, watching the way her face crumples around it, and just like that, her throat relaxes. Some part of her instinctively reaching for whatever he’s offering, however rough it is. "The things I'd do t'you…"

She inhales, trembling, like he’s absorbing everything he’s saying. Conditioning. That’s all it is. Muscle memory. He’s been doing this his whole life in one form or another– reading tells, finding buttons, pressing them until people move the way he wants. This is just… a different arena.

For a second her gaze slips as he presses deeper, irises vanishing as her eyes roll back, and that’s all he needs. He pulls his hand away, leaving her gasping.

He doesn’t let her close her mouth yet. Thumb and forefinger hook in, keeping her jaw slack. There’s a beat of eye contact as his tongue rolls against the back of his teeth– you know what I’m about to do– and then he spits. Warm wet hits her tongue, mingling with the taste of herself. She blinks rapidly as her mind attempts to catch up with the sensation.

“Hold it,” he says, fingers moving to allow her jaw to shut.

Her lungs burn. Tears gather again at the corners of her eyes, more from the strain of holding herself exactly as he’s put her than anything else. Then he brings his hand up in front of her face, palm open, the same way he did yesterday.

“Spit.”

Her aching cunt clenches at the command and she shudders. She tips forward, trembling, and, just like with the gum, eyes his palm, then his face, just to make sure, lets it go, emptying everything he’s put there onto his waiting hand. It’s messy and degrading and hurts her pride in ten different ways – and she does it anyway. Because he told her to. Because some part of her is desperate to get it right. To have someone bother to teach her how in the first place.

“That's right,” he mutters, fingers closing around the wet in his hand like he’s palming a coin. Training completed. Trick learned. Next time he tells her to do something in broad daylight, she’ll be soaked through in seconds.

This was always where they were headed– the two of them circling each other; lost causes, all hunger and bad habits, pretending they were anything other than what they are. Dogs, the both of them.

He sniffs once, his own body snapping him out of his trance, and rises to his feet. His fingers curl just enough to cup what she’s given him as he turns away. She stays where she is on the floor, shaking, listening to the quiet clink of metal and the slow slip of leather as he finally, finally deals with the ache straining at his zipper.

He pulls himself into his fist as he leans back against the desk; flushed, weeping, heavy in his slickened palm. He exhales, slightly shaken with lack of composure as he lets the mess he made with her - out of her - warm against his cock. Proof he got under her skin just as she did his. Proof, he thinks as he smooths a bead of precum into the mess, that he got in her head enough to make this mutual.

His hand moves without much finesse, more force than care, and his thoughts crawl right along behind it.

He thinks about the way she’d sounded on the phone, how fast she’d been coerced into making a fool of herself for his best interests. He rolls his shirt up his stomach as he squeezes his fist around himself, tightly enough that he has to hold his breath to stop making a sound as stupid as one of hers.

He doesn’t just want more; he’s past wanting. He feels stripped down; peeled back to something primitive, wanting so badly to bury himself deep in the heat he’s carved out of her that he forgets what got him here in the first place.

She sees the movement out of the corner of her eye and it guts her: his knuckles white around himself, the flash of skin above his waistband. Even through the choking overstimulation, her muscles seize up around nothing, body clenching reflexively like it’s reaching for him all over again. Shame licks up her spine; want answers, beat for beat.

Every time his eyes drag up her body he catches another detail: the red rims of her eyes, the swell of her mouth, the drenched, tangled material of her underwear, barely covering over-sensitive flesh beneath, the twitch of her thighs when a draft sneaks between them. All of it feeds the same gnawing thing in his chest. His grip tightens and his breath comes shorter, fixed on the ruin he’s made of her and the terrible, inevitable knowledge that this– this– is only the start of what he means to take in the long term.

He hits the end of his own leash in an instant; something in him just snaps. In a few rough, efficient movements he’s off the desk and behind her again, dropping to one knee to get a better angle. Cool air bites at her skin as he worries at the rip in her tights, tearing it wider with an impatient tug before dragging the ruined fabric aside, knuckles grazing over the slick mess he’s already made of her. Then he’s surging low, crowding in close. A hand at the hip, a knee prying her open, moulding her into what he wants, just as he's been doing for days, he lines himself up and nudges his tip against her clit. When she convulses, he sneers, prying her apart further so she wails at the sensation.

"I'm gonna fuck this puffy little cunt of yours," he breathes into her ear, teeth scraping the lobe as she feels the head of him bump into her. The room narrows to the ache and weight of him, the initial protest and subsequent yield of her body. She swallows thickly, choking out into the carpet and the wood, brows knitting, breath caught halfway between a sob and a sigh. "You're going to be a good whore and come for me again."

"Can't–" she wails into the floor, shuddering beneath him as she blubbers, burning up at the thought.

Beside her ear, he lets out a short, disbelieving huff of a laugh. It’s small, raw around the edges, almost boyish in how excited it sounds. "Nah," She feels his heartbeat where his chest is pressed to her back, thudding a rough counterpoint to the pulse hammering in her own throat. "It wasn't a question, sweetheart."

She sobs again, body shuddering, and he answers by scooping her up tighter; forearm banding over her shoulder, tucking in under her neck, gathering her in against him like he’s bracing both of them.

Sam draws back slowly, popping out of her, letting her hang, stretched thin around absence– then he drives into her with a rough, instinctive snap of his hips that punches a breathless sound out of her chest.

Her fingers knot in the edge of the rug, jaw slackening as he finds a rhythm that’s all impact and insistence, each sharp push shunting her a fraction further across the floor. The boards are unforgiving under her knees, the rug too thin to soften anything; the discomfort only seems to throw everything else into sharper relief. Every thrust wrings another sound out of her– strangled, half-swallowed whimpers that stack on top of one another until she’s not sure which are pain and which are pleasure.

Her body gives in shamefully fast, all loose heat and frayed edges. She sobs out an incoherent string of expletives and he laughs into the sweat-slick skin of her neck, pressing her down harder as if to pin the sound in place. Her body gives in so easily despite how used up it already is, molten heat spiralling away in her stomach, her overstimulated core oozing around him as she traps a scream behind clenched teeth.

Feverish, sick with depraved lust, he drives into her with a single-minded goal; Sam needs her fucked stupid, docile and soft. Pounding into her with a spiteful twist of his hips that he knows will leave her sore, and tender tomorrow. She won’t learn her fucking place if he doesn’t leave scars.

The dreadful overstimulation of it has her writhe and buck up, only swallowing him further.

“God,” he grits out, the words roughened and thin with focus. “Gonna cum in this pretty little cunt if you keep wrigglin’ like that-”

Oh, fuck - she wants nothing more. Arching up into him on instinct, taking him deeper, she hopes he’ll go through with the threat. The answering sound he makes is sharp, almost pained, and his grip tightens as if he’s holding himself together by the handful. There’s no point pretending, now, that this can go on forever; it’s there in the ragged pull of his breath, in the way each thrust lands with a little more weight, a little less restraint.

She can feel him changing against her; his hips start to hitch, the arm around her throat trembles once, his mouth brushing her ear when he ducks his head. Even the feeling of that makes her whimper.

One last, ugly little thought about her flickers across his mind: how neatly she’s been put in her place, how fast – and she shudders, as if she can feel it, too.

“Gonna– ” she gasps, in sheer disbelief that he's making her do it a third time, the word breaking apart, “cu–mm– again– ” she drags it out with a series of stuttered sobs, body locking, then writhing, then flat out convulsing beneath him as she screams into his arm, flinching from the same touch it’s desperate to keep.

"That's it," He fucks into her just long enough to feel every stuttering aftershock, to memorise the feeling of her clenching and streaming down on him, "that's my good fuckin' girl- shit-"

He tears himself away with a low, guttural noise, muscles bunched with the effort it takes to put even that much distance between them.

The loss of her heat is a shock, but he’s already past the point of no return; his heavy cock slaps against her sticky, soaked cunt as he heaves into her hairline, wrapping his tacky fist around himself until he comes in a brutal wave, ripping a sound out of him he barely recognises. Half growl, half broken exhale, teeth bared as he braces one forearm on the floor above her head and rides it out. His hips jerk despite himself, breath stuttering, vision going white at the edges as every last ounce of restraint burns out of his system, landing in thick, pearlescent ropes on her bunched up skirt, the backs of her thighs, and her torn up tights in a few violent, shuddering seconds.

When it finally lets him go, he’s left leaning over her, chest heaving against her spine.

Her cheek is slick where it’s pressed to the floor, a thin string of drool trembling from her open mouth to the edge of the rug and the boards. Her eyes are half-lidded, unfocused, lashes wet. She couldn’t pull a thought into shape if her life depended on it.

It creeps in slowly, fizzing upwards like blood back into a numbed limb: the awareness of what they’ve done, what they can’t take back. If she could string the idea together, she might realise there’s no version of tomorrow where she comes up here and pretends she's looked at as nothing but a nuisance.

He drags his eyes over the wreckage– the milky mess streaked over the backs of her thighs, past her to the floor beyond: smeared maps, tea-blotched notes, coordinates blurred under spreading stains. The chaos they’ve made out of the night.

He exhales through his teeth.

“You’ve ruined a lotta work,” he mutters at last, more contemplative than angry. Quiet. Still getting his breath back. She just about turns enough to make eye contact, and she can see, already, the part of him that lives in lists is sorting it all into columns: what she’ll have to fix, line by painstaking line– and, more importantly, what he wants to do to her while she does.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭

well yes <3

windowtotheabbey

this is the most beautiful thing i've ever read

#sam drake #samuel drake