Overtime (3 page)

He found her clit with a finger and thumb. Pinching it, Valerie almost screamed at that line between pleasure and pain, white fading in around the corners of her vision. She could see the buttons on her blouse straining as she gasped for breath, and then, after what seemed an eternity, his moved his fingers. Her clit throbbed where he’d been.

As he moved his fingers lower, to her entrance, he leaned over her, putting his left hand on top of her right, putting weight on it, holding it down where she leaned back on the desk. She felt his weight against the bones in her hand, pressing them into the shiny, dark wood, just as his fingers pushed their way into her cunt.

Valerie’s eyes slid closed and she moaned, despite herself.
You’ve really fucked things up now,
said the voice in her head, but she didn’t listen. Those fingers felt too good as they curled around in her wetness, pressing themselves against the sensitive spots inside her. She hadn’t known how badly she’d wanted them until now, but they felt perfect.

His hand tightened around her wrist, his weight still leaning her bones into the desk. A pang shot up her arm from the pressure, as his thumb found her clit and began stroking it, back and forth, in perfect time with his fingers. Valerie made a high-pitched noise, somewhere between a moan and a sigh, and her eyes fluttered open again. Jasper was inches away, his pupils wide in the dim light, the blue around them almost iridescent. The city lights shone off his silver hair and he was watching her, intently, as though there were nothing else in the room or the world.

In her cunt, his fingers became more forceful, his thumb mashing her clit against her body, as though he were trying to squeeze her from the inside out, fingers against thumb. Valerie panted, maintaining eye contact, sensing that it was what Jasper wanted and, in that moment, wanting nothing more herself than to please him.

His hand tightened again around her wrist and she could feel her tendons rubbing together; in her cunt he squeezed hard and then Valerie felt him draw the orgasm out of her, coaxing, watching, his leonine face inches from her own as she kept her eyes open, crying out despite herself. She felt as though molten lava had pooled in her cunt and was setting her on fire, his fingers so rough the sensation was somewhere south of pleasure, toward pain.

Even after she’d come, he didn’t stop for several strokes, making her body jerk in response each time. When he withdrew his fingers he reached for a box of tissues that was on a side table, next to the whiskey.

Valerie looked at the setup and suddenly wondered how many times he’d done this. He seemed to have a pattern down: offer a drink, get a girl on a table, wipe off with the kleenex sitting right there.

She sat up, rubbing her wrist where he’d grabbed it. She hoped it wouldn’t bruise. She bruised easily. His hardness was almost totally visible through his gray slacks, a long curve leading from his legs up toward his belly.

Valerie hopped down from the desk, her ruined panties pooling around her ankles. Jasper’s back was to her now and she pulled her torn skirt down, awkwardly, realizing the gravity of what they’d done now that it was over.

He turned to her, showing her his cock through his pants, genteelly wiping down his fingers.

“I’ll call you a car,” he said.

Valerie looked down at his clear interest, looked back up at his face. “That’s it?” she said.

Jasper tossed the tissue into a waste basket and sat back in his big leather chair. He looked away from her, not meeting her eyes.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

Valerie didn’t move.

“Please,” he said, still averting his eyes from her.

She stared at him for a few more seconds, then picked up her things. “Don’t worry about the car,” she said. “I’ll take the subway.”

He said something behind her that she didn’t hear, as she took her phone and jacket from her desk and went to the elevator. Her back was to the office door so she couldn’t see if he went after her, and she got into the elevator without looking back. Down the twenty-three floors to the breezy Manhattan night, through the revolving doors and onto the sidewalk, in the direction of the subway.

A big, black car pulled up next to her, and a man in a hat jumped out.

“Miss Bridge?” he shouted after her. Valerie stopped and looked at him.

“Car service, Miss,” the man said again.

A breeze wafted down the street and lifted part of her torn skirt. She slapped a hand to her ass to keep herself covered. She was angry and confused and still more than a little drunk, but as the man walked around the car to open the door for her, she realized there was no reason she shouldn’t take the car. She didn’t want to wear this skirt on the subway, she didn’t want the wind showing her ass to her whole neighborhood.

Valerie got in the car. She gave the driver her address, and if it was a neighborhood he didn’t drive to often, he didn’t say anything about it. He didn’t say anything at all: didn’t ask why she was leaving alone with a torn pencil skirt at eight-thirty on a Friday night, didn’t ask why Mr. Declan had ordered her a car.

Valerie went straight to bed when she got home, still too drunk and overwhelmed to deal with what had just happened. When she woke up Saturday, she felt fine for about thirty seconds. And then, she remembered what had happened.

At least it’s the weekend
, she thought.

Then she thought,
I should probably just quit. It’ll always be weird. I was doing really well, though.

And, right before she got out of bed, she thought:
Why can’t I find a boyfriend who’ll fuck me like that?

Valerie stumbled to her bathroom, peed, wiped the rest of her makeup off. She had coffee and Lucky Charms, watched some trash TV, put together a list of her errands for the weekend. She got out the emergency sewing kit her mom had given her, compared it with the enormous tear in her skirt, and she decided there was no way she could salvage it. It had torn almost all the way up the seam, past the seat of the skirt and almost to the waistband. Valerie was no seamstress, but it didn’t look like something anyone would be able to save, much less her with one needle and about three feet of red yarn. She sighed and tossed it into her kitchen trash can, took another sip of her coffee.

Had the sex been worth ruining a $40 skirt over?

Maybe. Ethan had sure never fucked her like that. It had been so
intense
, and she’d felt so under Jasper’s power. Valerie’s head swirled. She didn’t think she was the kind of girl who’d just submit to her boss like that, but then she had.

Worse, it was by far the best sex of her life, and he hadn’t even used his dick.

She wished again that he’d let her take the skirt off, though. It was her favorite, the one she’d splurged on when she found out she got the job a couple of months ago.

There was a knock on her door. Valerie looked at the clock: eleven in the morning. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Through the peephole, she could see a young man in a bike helmet and some kind of uniform. Strange. She opened the door.

“Are you Valerie Bridge?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, pulling her robe tighter around her. The bike delivery man didn’t seem to notice.

“Package,” he said. “Sign here.” He thrust a clipboard with a notepad on it at her, then handed her a box wrapped in plain brown paper with her name and address on it.

“Thanks,” she said. He walked back toward her building’s stairs and she shook the package to see what it was. She never got things bike-delivered to her, but she had a premonition of who’d sent it.

Inside, she tossed the package onto her mattress on the floor and looked at it for a moment. Then, she sat down and pulled the paper off. Inside was a box from Saks Fifth Avenue. Valerie had only ever been to the sale rack there.
 

Slowly, she opened the box and removed the layer of tissue paper. Carefully arranged on top were several black thongs, and she picked them up with two fingers as if they were butterflies. Beneath them was a red skirt—no, three red skirts.

Valerie opened the card.

I wasn’t sure what size you wore,
so I got you a selection
.
 

Jasper

P.S. You said you could keep a secret
.

The tag on the first skirt said $250. Valerie dropped it back onto the bed, afraid to touch something that cost more than her monthly food budget. Each thong had been $25. She stood, not quite sure what to do, or how to interpret Jasper’s note: was this a game? A one-time thing?
 

If she went to work on Monday, would it happen again? Worse, how would she feel if it didn’t?

Valerie pulled on jeans, washed her face, and left her little apartment to run errands. She’d decide about going to work Monday later.

Valerie spent the weekend in a blur: running errands around Brooklyn, determinedly hitting every salvage and thrift store she knew of, determined to find herself a bed frame for a reasonable price. Saturday night she went out with Adrienne and spent too much on fancy burgers and craft beer; afterwards they went to a party at an artist’s loft that Adrienne’s other friend knew from college. It wasn’t quite Valerie’s scene, but she drank too much cheap beer and danced her ass off anyway—anything to keep her mind off of the nicely wrapped package from Saks that was sitting in her apartment, nearly untouched.

Monday morning, Valerie’s alarm went off at 6 a.m., just like every weekday. Usually she was pretty good about getting up: she’d lie around for a few minutes, enjoy lazing around a bit, but she kind of liked mornings. Today, though, she stayed in bed for twenty minutes, then thirty, then forty-five, ensuring that she had less and less time to get ready. Still, she didn’t get up.

Things were bound to get weird. Sex with your boss—even just getting finger banged by your boss—was definitely on the
don’t
list. Maybe she just shouldn’t show up. Then she’d never have to deal with it, though she’d have to deal with the near-impossibility of getting another decent job before her rent was due. She squeezed her eyes shut and wished she hadn’t let Mr. Declan finger bang her.

The alarm shrieked again and Valerie hit it, laid in bed for another ten seconds, and then started to get up. At least the sex had been good sex, she told herself, and she liked the job. The money was decent, especially for her first position out of college, and she liked working there. Valerie glanced at the clock, suddenly realized she only had twenty minutes to get ready, and flew into action. Black pants, gray shirt, hair in a bun, one coat of mascara. She grabbed a granola bar from the cupboard, tossed on flip-flops for her train ride and few out the door, mentally chanting
shit shit shit
the whole time.

She got to her desk only three minutes late, though her boss, the incredibly punctual Jasper Declan, was already in his office. Three minutes wasn’t a big deal, she thought. Three minutes was barely missing one train and having to take the next; three minutes was the train getting stuck underground for no reason.

She reached into her bag for her heels and realized, with horror, that in her rush she’d forgotten to bring them with her. They were still sitting in the bottom of her Ikea wardrobe, right where she’d put them the last time she took them off. Her ugly black Old Navy flip flops were the only footwear she had that day. Maybe she could run out at lunchtime, she thought, and get better shoes—not that another pair of shoes was in her budget right now—and until then she’d try to stay sitting at her desk, feet invisible as much as possible.

Her shoes weren’t her only problem. In her rush, she’d somehow picked the most ill-fitting outfit she owned, all items that had fit her better ten or even twenty pounds ago, before she’d gained the stress-weight of her final year in college. She and Ethan had been fighting a lot, and her thesis advisor had practically been Satan himself. The pants she was wearing dug into her waist uncomfortably and threatened to slide down her ass every time she shifted in her chair. Her breasts bubbled out the top of her bra, and her shirt kept riding up. Valerie was paying more attention to keeping herself decently covered for the day than she was to her work.