by Alexa Day
“He pulled off my clothes,” she said. “Almost ripped my bra off.”
“You’re facing the window now, right?” Damn. He hoped he sounded like an impartial observer and not someone who was doing his absolute best to resist a hard-on as he visualized the scene.
“Right. His hands were all over me, hard. I felt his breath on the back of my neck.” She sighed and the sound went right to his cock. “I was so wet. I could practically feel my pulse beating in my clit.”
John lifted his glasses enough to rub the bridge of his nose. He slowly sucked a breath through his teeth. He didn’t dare look at her, couldn’t stand to know if she noticed the way she was turning him on. “And then?”
“I bent over for him and he ran his hands over me for just a second before he started fucking me. He was holding on to my hips so hard, but it felt so good. And then I looked up at the window and I could see our reflection there.”
From his imagined vantage point across the alley, John could see them too. Tal riding her hard as she gripped the desk with her unadorned nails. Her mouth would be open, her tempting lips parted as she panted and gasped beneath her lover. John shifted uncomfortably to accommodate the erection he’d tried so hard to avoid, helpless as Grace’s rich voice seduced him. When she reached the climax of her story, he could see her arching upward with delight, her irresistible mouth crying out her release. He made a show of taking a few notes before he turned to her again.
She was still casually leaning back in the chair, her legs crossed behind her interlocked fingers, but John could see the flush of deep rose beneath her dark skin. Satiation lay behind her half-smile. He might not ever see her like this again, postcoital satisfaction softly relaxing her gorgeous face, and he couldn’t stop to enjoy it now because of the brilliant predicament he’d put them both in.
“On a scale of one to ten…?” He let the question trail off, hoping it spoke for itself.
“Hmm. An eight, I think. Very good.” She bit her lip thoughtfully. “But I think there’s more to be had.”
John’s cock twitched, hearing a challenge in her voice. He swallowed hard as he turned back to his notes and wished for a cup of ice to chew on.
She’d come another three times that night—four seemed to be about average for her nights with Tal—and John let the recorder do most of the work as he wavered between visualizing her with Tal and concentrating on the notes he’d already taken. For a moment, he’d forgotten the pills had been slow to work at first. The delay didn’t seem to hurt their performance, but it troubled him all the same.
His response to Grace tonight troubled him too. He had his share of fantasies about her and then some, but tonight his thoughts of voyeurism had led his mind in a very different direction, and his body hadn’t minded the diversion at all.
He looked up from his notes and tried to get back on track. “You know, I really can’t thank you enough for your help with this.”
The sound of her laughter, empty of the heavy sexual tension that had made the room feel both intimate and confining, reassured him. “I should thank you. This has really been a game changer for me.”
“How so?”
“I feel kind of weird afterward. It’s really different now, since I don’t want to sleep anymore.”
John wrote, postcoital restlessness on his page of notes. “Good different?”
Grace’s mouth made that thoughtful curl again. “Just different. It’s like that feeling you get after a good workout. Tired, maybe, but not sleepy.”
He’d half-expected this after their last meeting, when she’d reported not feeling sleepy. Other women had reported having arguments—shortly before they left the study altogether—and maybe this was why. Without afterglow or fatigue, there’d be nothing left but honesty.
“Did you go home again?” He indulged the hope that she had, that she’d awakened late on Saturday morning in her own bed instead of Tal’s.
“No, I stayed. Tal wasn’t sleeping either, so we started talking.”
Without thinking, he asked, “What about?”
“You, mostly.”
John cast a sidelong glance across the table at her. Great. Just what he’d hoped for. “What about me?”
She leaned over and put her elbows on the table. “Okay, Tal thinks this is the best invention in the world. That’s why he has all these questions about it. I don’t think he was buying your reasons for not doing all the testing yourself.”
Tal would probably always be skeptical, naturally. John just couldn’t figure out why he’d keep complaining when things were coming up so well for him. He set the legal pad and pencil down onto the table and got ready to deliver the party line again, but Grace stepped in first.
“It’s all right though. I think I explained everything to him, so he gets it now.”
Why didn’t that reassure him? “What exactly did you explain to him?” John asked.
“I told him you weren’t like that. You know what I mean.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Sure, he’d surprised himself a moment ago by fantasizing about watching from an alley as another man bent his best friend over a desk. But surprises like that were intellectually healthy.
“Just that—”
“I mean, I’m not a Boy Scout or something.”
“No, no, of course not. I just meant that you’re not that type.” She seemed to retreat from the table, sitting on her hands. “You know. The type who would do it in the back of a convertible parked next to the boardwalk in the middle of the afternoon. Or on a park bench. Or something like that.”
Had she—? “Top down?” The question was out of his mouth so quickly, it was as if someone else had asked.
She blinked. “What now?”
“In the back of a convertible with the top down?”
“You tell me.” She raised her eyebrow and grinned, daring him to answer her. “Would you?”
“We’re not talking about me.” And before she could protest, he pointed at the tape recorder. “We’re talking about you.”
“Oh, okay. If you want to be like that, we are talking about me, but we’re only talking about last week.”
He shook his head. “No, no, no. You started this. Now you have to finish it.”
“Is that what you want?” She grinned. “You want to know if I’ve done all that?”
He wasn’t sure. But now he’d talked himself into a corner, hadn’t he?
“Okay then.” She pulled the tape recorder slowly toward her. “For the record, I have done it in the back of a convertible parked next to the boardwalk in the middle of the afternoon.”
“My question,” he said, “was whether you had the top down.”
“No. It was July! We needed the shade. Top up.” She raised her eyebrow. “Windows down.”
“And the park bench?”
“That didn’t happen last week either,” she said.
But when? With Tal? Why had he started this?
Now she was sliding the tape recorder back toward him. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“The way you asked about whether the top was down, it kind of sounded like maybe you’ve done that before.”
“In a convertible? No.” Did he even know anybody with a convertible?
“Or any car.”
“Well, I have done that.”
“I’m not talking about one time in college.”
“Neither am I!”
Her brow rose again.
“I’m not!”
“Okay, so you’ve been there and done that. I just figured—”
“You just figured boring old Johnny’s never done anything.”
“No, it’s not like that. I mean, maybe that’s just what you want. Maybe you’re just not into that sort of thing. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong or boring or anything.”
He’d said the same kind of thing hundreds of times, hadn’t he? So why did this bother him so much?
Because she said she a
nd Tal were talking about you. Probably about how you’d never done anything or been anywhere.
“Besides,” she was saying, “I’m sure you’ve done plenty.”
“Okay then,” he said. He looked down at his legal pad, trying to find his place. Where had he gotten so sidetracked? “I mean, I’ve—you know, tied people up.”
“People?”
“Women.” He sat up and dropped the pencil on the legal pad. “Girlfriends.”
“With what? Scarves?”
“Yes.” Twice. At their request. She didn’t need to know all that.
“Phone sex?”
He folded his arms. “Yes.”
“Done it outdoors?”
He had. While camping. Just out of college. With the tent zipped tightly shut, it had been like having sex inside a pizza oven, and he’d never do it again, but he’d done it. “Yes.”
“Well then! You have been around.”
“I have.” He took up the pencil again and then looked back up at her. “So you can just tell Tal—”
“No. I don’t think so.” She folded her arms. “I’m done carrying messages back and forth between you guys. I think you need to talk to each other.”
“I don’t know about that…”
“I do. It’d be good for both of you, and even better for me.” She leaned back in the chair. “I’m tired of explaining each of you to the other one.”
Did he really want Tal to become any more real for him than he was right now? As it was, he had enough trouble with Tal as a faceless, shadowy figure who was screwing his best friend.
Instead of, say, you screwing your best friend.
“I don’t know, Grace. I’m already having to try to stay impartial, and if I actually met Tal—”
I might wring his neck.
“If you actually met him, you might have an easier time being impartial. You know, you might even like each other. Wouldn’t it be easier to be impartial if you don’t hate him?”
That made sense. Dammit.
She looked up at the ceiling. “Oh come on. It’s not like I’m suggesting a threesome or something.”
John focused on the space between two words in his tangle of notes. A threesome. If he so much as glanced up, she’d know she’d gotten his attention and then she’d never let go of it.
She giggled. “I should have though. I bet you’d be more likely to agree to sitting down if I had.”
He started to draw a line along the margin, still not looking up.
“You’d get to observe all this in person.”
She was trying to convince him. Did she think he was really considering it?
Was he considering it?
“Come on,” she said. “I dare you. You’d satisfy all your curiosity. No holds barred and no questions asked.”
Satisfy all your curiosity. No holds barred.
No questions asked.
It was a good opportunity to see how this worked. There was so much to gain, and now, with Impulse, there was nothing to lose. It was just observation. It didn’t have to come to any more than that.
John shook his head. It didn’t have to come to any more than that. But it probably would, one way or the other.
“I’m not having a threesome with you and Tal.” John laughed. “And I can’t believe I just said that out loud.” He had to be in a dream, the very realistic kind that came with a clear moral.
Grace shrugged. “Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
John turned off the recorder and wondered whether he should erase their conversation when he reviewed the tape.
* * * * *
Drained after their long conversation, John didn’t have much to say as he and Grace made their way out of the interview room. Their companionable silence only made the building’s quiet more noticeable. A vacuum cleaner whined in the distance as they walked up to the reception area, where the cleaning crew had left the lights on.
At the front doors, he took her coat and held it so she could slide her arms into the sleeves, all the while so close that he could catch the scent of her glossy hair. “Can’t walk you to the car this time,” he said. “I’ve got some stuff to handle downstairs first.”
Grace turned to face him, replacing her purse on her shoulder. “Same time next week?”
He nodded. “Sounds good.”
She stepped toward him, as if she were about to give him a hug, but he backed just out of reach and offered her his hand instead. Before she could protest, he lifted his chin slightly and glanced away from her, toward the ceiling, where the security camera watched them, and then back down at her.
Grace’s conspiratorial smile accompanied a firm handshake. “Okay then. Thanks for everything.”
“See you next week.”
John unlocked the door with a twist of the thumb switch and held it open for her, taking another breath of her fragrance as she went by into the chilly air. He closed and locked the door behind her but didn’t move away, watching the shape of her moving down the stairs and into the parking lot.
“Man. Girls like that make me want to play a more hands-on role with all this testing. Know what I mean?”
The sound of his boss’s voice just behind him made spines of ice race over his skin. Neil had a talent for sidling up behind him, making him wonder how long he’d been hanging out and watching before revealing his presence. With no way to tell how much he’d seen, John was forced to play it casual and hope that all Neil had wanted was to make politically incorrect observations about the evening’s last interview. He looked over his shoulder and offered Neil a neutral glance. His boss generally needed little encouragement to start a conversation.
“Oh come on.” Neil lowered his voice, as if to protect them both from another unseen eavesdropper. “Like you’ve never thought about that.”
John shook his head and looked back out into the parking lot. Was his boss baiting him or did he suspect something? “That kind of shit’ll get you fired.”
Neil’s laughter was sharp and cynical. “Someone’s already doing it.”
Shit. “No way.”
“Seriously.” Neil rubbed the top of his head through thinning salt-and-pepper hair. “Somebody’s slipping pills out to people.”
Sweat slowly started to bead on the back of John’s neck. “People like who?”
“Who knows?” Neil sighed. “Friends, ex-test subjects, the media.”
John straightened. “The media?”
“I don’t know.” Neil shrugged. “I mean, it doesn’t really matter who else has the stuff. If it gets out at all, that’s a problem.” He blew out a breath that fogged the front door. “But shit. The media.”
John stared hard at him. The media getting hold of these pills was a much bigger problem than he had caused. First, there would be weeks of sensationalist coverage, shock journalism with all the sexual trimmings, and then the resulting media investigation would reveal what he was doing behind the scenes. He’d go down in the sort of spectacular crash people talked about for years.
“Maybe it’s nothing,” said John. “You know how rumors get around.” He scoffed. “This place is like a high school.”
Neil shook his head. “It’s not nothing. They’re going to start an audit committee. You know, just to make sure we’re all being good.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “There’s no reason to suddenly start that now unless someone’s already trying to game the system.” He slapped John’s shoulder. “That’s nothing you have to worry about though. Your nose is always clean.” Neil turned on his heel and headed back beyond the reception desk. “Don’t stay too late,” he called over his shoulder. “Good way to get the wrong kind of attention, and I’m not giving you a raise.”
John watched Neil go, laughing at his own joke until he disappeared down the hallway. Then John returned to his own office. He’d secured his other materials already—his notes, the supply of pills for his subjects, everything—under lock and key, but he had a separate ritual for Grace. He
r tapes went into his briefcase. The legal pad he’d used that night and a folder filled with other notes followed suit. He checked his office for anything he might have carelessly left out in the open on his tidy, squared-away desk.
John leaned on the file cabinet that stood just inside the door of his office. He pushed his glasses up and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. The important thing was not to panic. Panic would be noticeable. Panic also begat carelessness, and if the auditors didn’t catch on to his discomfort, they’d certainly pick up on carelessness.
Listen to yourself. You don’t even know there are auditors yet. You only know what Neil’s heard, and that’s not airtight information at all.
He let his glasses drop back down onto his nose and took a deep, centering breath before he turned out the lights in his office. He wouldn’t let Neil or his wild rumors bother him.
They did bother him, though, and by the time he got home, John was forced to admit that his efforts to shake off his nascent paranoia were not working. He sat on the couch and stared at his BlackBerry for what felt like a long time before calling Grace. Just as he started to wonder if it was too late to call, she answered.
“Hi.” She sounded cheerful. Not too late then.
“Hey.” What was he really calling for? He didn’t even have a suggestion, much less a plan. “Hey, Grace, it’s John.”
She laughed. “I know it’s you. You’re on the caller ID.”
“Right. Of course.”
“So what’s up?”
“Listen, I was thinking.” That was all he could say for sure, wasn’t it? That he’d been thinking. “I wanted to— I was thinking of a little change in plan.”
“About the threesome?”
Was she teasing? He couldn’t tell over the phone.
“No, not that.” He pressed his palms together and found them slick. “I meant about moving our meetings.”
“Oh. Like moving them earlier?”
In the background, a man’s voice asked, “Is that your friend?”
It wasn’t what he’d thought Tal would sound like. Not that he’d imagined anything in particular.
Grace’s muffled voice broke into the muddle of his thoughts. “I am on the phone.” Then, more clearly, she said, “Sorry. Did you want to move them earlier?”
