Ever Unknown (2 page)

He was good. If it was Walsh, he was very, very good. And he knew exactly the right things to say, too, because when she got back to her desk there was another message, waiting.

I knew you’d do it. Does it feel good?

She admired his economy with words. Too much and it would definitely push the whole thing over the edge into seedy or perverted, too little and the point would be lost amidst a myriad of other meanings that engulfed an office. Even now, he could have easily been talking about some promotion she’d just been given.

Though his next email veered ever so slightly on the side of
we’re just going to be filthy, now.
He replied almost immediately after her response to him—
it feels as if I’m wearing no knickers
—and not in the admonishing sort of tone she’d been expecting. She waited for the words “answer me properly,” but he gave her…

Just thinking about you walking around bare, so close to exposing your pussy, makes me want to go and masturbate again. I masturbated last night, you know, thinking about you. Thinking about you, deciding whether or not you’d do what I’d told you to. Thinking about how much it excited you, if it did at all—how wet it made you to wriggle in your seat the way you’re probably doing now, with barely anything between your clit and that firm cushion.

Rock against it,
then
tell me how it feels.

She thought about saying no. She thought about not replying. But the opportunity for doing so was obviously long, long gone. It was a distant memory, in which she acted like a normal person and almost never recognised when her body wanted something. There were days when she forgot to eat. She wasn’t in the least bit surprised to find she didn’t know what or when or how she got turned on.

Only that
him
saying the words “masturbate”
and “tell me” made it happen. They felt as if someone was squeezing the trigger on a gun. They felt as if a door was being opened.

She obeyed, and rocked, and had to cover her mouth with her hand. But typing out a description for him increased the sensation tenfold.

I can feel how slick I am, when I do it. It makes pressing down against the seat feel slippery and good, really good. When I did it, it made a little noise come out of me and I had to put my hand over my mouth. I really want to do it again, but I’m afraid of the sounds I’ll make if I do. I think I’m actually close to coming.

It felt good to type the unvarnished truth. No euphemisms, nothing flowery. Just straight and to the point and everything that her body was telling her to say. There was something very…
light
about that, and it lifted her up and made things easy. It should have been hard to talk so graphically to a stranger—and a probable maniac, at that—but somehow it wasn’t at all.

Oh, that’s good. You’ve exceeded my expectations, I have to say. I didn’t think you’d be so eager and responsive, but I should have known. I should have known.

It was embarrassing how good his praise felt. Everything grew another notch lighter, until her whole body seemed full of helium and any second, any second she was going to float right out of the office. Only her avid attachment to the computer screen kept it from happening, and said attachment doubled when his next message popped up. She wanted to scream at him to switch to some sort of instant messenger provider, but of course her demands were not what this was about.

If she made demands, it would shatter the whole game—and the game could not be shattered, now. Not when it seemed to be playing out like her favourite TV show, with her hooked all the way.

But now, Molly, I want you to prove yourself further. Do you think you’re up for it?

The word
yes
had never seemed to have too many letters in it before, but somehow it did right at that moment. She almost went with just a ‘
y
,’ then caught herself before she became the maniac. She’d felt sure, prior to this, that he was the one—but oh no.

She was the maniac. It was clear, now. She’d tried to write an email with just the letter ‘
y’
in it. You couldn’t get madder than that.

* * * *

Walking proved difficult. It should have been easy, really—the item in question was only small—but in practice, sliding a mean little vibrating egg into your pussy, then walking around your office as though nothing was going on…yeah.
Much harder than it looked.

And much more exciting than the simple suggestion had seemed.

Because of course he didn’t
order
. He’d made that clear a week or so ago. He wasn’t about
ordering.
He was about suggestions, and if she wanted to follow those suggestions, why, she could just go right ahead.

He was a sly thing, really.
A sly thing, full of the most awesome suggestions.

Of course they’d started off small—on a level with the knickers.

Wear stockings with tops that can almost be seen underneath a too short skirt, touch your left breast while talking to a client until you start to get aroused, brush a hand over
Gregson’s
ass when you’re in the elevator together, then pretend you did nothing.

That sort of thing.

Then progressing to slightly bolder, and more than one a day.
On Monday he’d tried for a biggie—cajoling and needling her into masturbating in the bathroom. Telling her how good it would feel, how much her juicy, swollen pussy needed attention. He knew, of course, that she’d been rationing her orgasms, refusing to touch herself too often because that took the pressure off and made it too weak. He knew, because she’d told him so. She’d told him in great and graphic detail, about the incredible climax she’d stroked herself to, thinking about him doing the same, or telling her to do worse things.

She figured it was those two words she’d used—worse things—that had triggered this slow tumble into insanity.
Bright, bubbling, glorious insanity.
The insanity was so glorious, in fact that she wanted to lick it off her fingers.

Just like he told her to, when he suggested she masturbate in the bathroom.

Then taste yourself, Molly, and tell me what exactly it is you taste of.

That had been the best one to date, because after she’d described the whole encounter—the firm feel of her clit beneath her busy working fingers, how slippery she’d been, so slippery that it had worked its way down to the crack of her ass, how electric the orgasm had been—he’d described for her what he was currently doing.

Like a reward. A reward that included such gems as…

I have my hand inside my trousers, and I’m stroking myself too frantically. Someone’s going to see, but I don’t care. And one day, I’m going to make you not care, too. I’m going to make you so wild, so wanton, that you’ll do yourself right at your desk and not think anything of it, and when you come you’ll call out my name
.

He was a little late, on that score. She already called out his name, almost constantly. The initials
E
and
U
had tattooed themselves on her tongue, until he became simply
Ever
in her head as though the initials just stood for his name, and Ever was it.

Of course, she knew that was ridiculous. Nobody on earth was called ‘Ever,’ and even if they were, her mystery man certainly wasn’t ridiculous enough to have that as his actual name. He had such a lack of ridiculousness, that he could say things like—
I’ve just licked my palm…you know, to make it nice and slick…and slid all of that slickness the entire length of my cock—
and not sound ridiculous at all.

Even if some of the things he asked her to do made her feel just ever so slightly that way. Some of the things like now, as she tried to reach towards the coffee pot in the lunch room and felt that slight pressure, that threat of something shifting just a little too much until…God.
God.
He’d said it would feel good, but she hadn’t really believed him.

No one had ever made her do something so lewd before. No one—but now he had. Maybe it was through anonymity and furtive emails and Lord knew what he looked like or who he really was—perhaps he didn’t even
work
in the office—but it felt real and as if his hands were on her, none-the-less.

When she touched her clit, she felt his imaginary fingers taking over the task. When she used the vibrator he’d told her to buy, sliding it in to the hilt, it was his cock she thought of in her and him she fantasised about having over her. If it was Walsh—and increasingly she was starting to believe it was, judging by his sneaky looks in the elevator—he was big, and would have absolutely no trouble pushing her into the mattress. He’d have zero difficulty doing what ‘Ever’ had described in email number 455,675…

I want to lay you out on your bed, face down. You’re not allowed to look at me, and know that if you do, I’ll stop. So you wait, and slowly, so slowly, I spread your legs.

She thought of that word a lot—spread. He seemed to know that variations of it—spread this, spread that, spread your legs—were some sort of hot button for her, but then, he seemed to know about a lot of things that were hot buttons for her.

Sometimes she imagined he’d found out through some creepy activity, like going through her rubbish and finding booklists she’d discarded, with titles on it like
Do Me Hard,
or
Kinky Things I Didn’t Know I Wanted
. Or maybe he’d just watched her that closely, and knew from emails he’d caught glimpses of, or YouTube scenes from hot movies she’d watched that he’d paid attention to.

But mostly, he just appeared to be that good. He was just clever, and she was just eager to overplay her hand, and he picked up on every little thing. He’d picked up on the greedy little push in one of her first emails, after all—it almost made her embarrassed now, to look at it.

And if I don’t?

At the time, she’d thought it so
bolshy
and rebellious! But even the word ‘rebellious’ suggested something very specific about her, didn’t it? That she wanted to rebel against restraints, and have them impressed on her even harder.

This felt hard. The trouble with it was—she’d known just by looking at it that it was one of those vibrating ones, but it hadn’t come with a remote. No button on it to press, nothing to set it going.
Just the silver egg, waiting for her in a box on her desk.

And all she could think was—
someone has the remote control
.
Someone has something that’s going to set it off any second, and all I have to do is pass by them or move too close to wherever they are and bam.
Fizzing, burring pleasure.
Probably more than she could take, too.

The thought alone was almost too much. She found herself clenching around it, waiting, strong threads of sensation pulling through her without any effort employed at all. Just walking past certain people—Walsh and
Gregson
, notably—made her cream and go weak behind the knees, until she had to sit down at her desk again and pretend to be concentrating on work.

He’d probably only press the button from a secret hiding place, anyway. Likely he’d had the whole thing planned out, and knew when the woman in the cubicle behind hers went to lunch. Then he’d duck down in the safety of said cubicle, and press and press and press until she did the thing he’d been hankering after.

Coming at her desk.
Moaning while she came.
Jesus, if this went on much longer, she was going to get in trouble for not doing any work. Her eyes wouldn’t focus on the computer screen and all her body wanted to do was clamp down hard on that needling little toy inside her. Everything felt flushed and swollen down there, and the slightest movement coiled pleasure tight in the base of her belly.

She felt pretty sure she’d informed a client that their paid would be monthly in instalments.

And the worst of it was, he knew! He even emailed her, to crow.

Having trouble concentrating?

She immediately wanted to get out of her seat, and look over the tops of the cubicles. At the best of times they felt like a prison, now they felt like a labyrinth
surrounding
a prison.
Inside a wardrobe.
Anyone could have been anywhere, watching from all sorts of vantage points. Peering round corners she wasn’t aware of, making sure they were in the right place at the right time so that they could catch her squirming, red-cheeked.

Though in all honesty, her red-cheeked-
ness
wasn’t limited to the time she spent at her desk. She was red-cheeked in the lunchroom and red-cheeked by the water cooler.
Red-cheeked in the morning and red-cheeked at clocking-out time.
Her entire body felt perpetually hot and full to the brim with exquisite pleasure. Until the real pleasure came, and she forgot what that ridiculous impostor had been all about.

He did it while she was sat in her little cubicle…that nerve-jangling buzz. It made her teeth knock together and her hands tighten around the edge of her desk, suddenly too breathless and brilliantly shocked. Of course she knew she shouldn’t have been shocked. She’d known this was what he was going to do right from the off, right from seeing it.

But it was, all the same. It felt too good to be anything but a shock. She bit her lip and tried to hold it in, only he chose that moment to do it again, so her plan didn’t work out quite as she’d intended. And the buzz went on for longer this time, too, so long that she felt sure she was going mad.

It was torture, plain and simple.
Like being electrocuted, only from the inside out and with an orgasm at the end, instead of death.
She clicked on her email, but he didn’t have any messages for her, no words of vaguely teasing advice or reassurance.