22. Just the Coworker
Just the Coworker
Atrendy restaurant, deafeningly loud and packed to bursting.
The entire project team sat around a scratched oak table, raising their glasses and celebrating the contract they had just closed.
Beer mugs clinked together, wheat beer foam ran over the rims, the sharp smell of schnapps hung in the air, along with that boisterous, slightly too-loud office laughter.
Markus only sipped at his pale beer. He had to stay sober. He was still driving, after all. But inside, he felt slightly intoxicated anyway.
The crushing weight of debt, the red numbers in his banking app, the pressure that had been sitting on his chest for months—at last, a good piece of it had fallen away. For the first time in a long while, he could feel his old strength returning.
He had landed a major contract. He still had it. He would become the successful man he had once been again.
The returning confidence widened his chest — and at the same time left him quietly receptive to things he would otherwise have shut down cold.
Sitting to his left was Leonie Brandt, an intern in her early twenties, fresh out of college, with the kind of young, carefree vitality that seemed to radiate from her. Her blond hair fell glossy over her shoulders. Her blue eyes sparkled whenever she smiled.
She drank freely, her cheeks already flushed. Every time she laughed at one of the boss’s lame jokes, she leaned toward Markus until her soft shoulder brushed his upper arm. The sweet scent of her perfume mixed with alcohol and shampoo and went straight into his nose.
Markus had to admit she was tempting. The animal part of him registered it at once.
Compared directly with his wife, she really couldn’t compete. Her face wasn’t quite as striking, her body was slimmer, her breasts and ass nowhere near as full as Nadja’s.
But Leonie was young. Hungry. And above all, new.
It was exactly that combination that made faithful husbands falter. Markus knew it. That was why he tried to keep his distance from her.
Around midnight, the group began to break up. The others staggered out onto the street and waved for taxis.
Leonie braced one hand against the table, got to her feet, managed three unsteady steps, then pitched forward.
Startled, Markus caught her. She clung to his shoulder, let her soft weight sink against him, and in a slurring voice begged him to take her home.
Leonie nestled against his chest. Markus could feel the heat of her body through the thin fabric of his shirt. Her narrow waist. The soft curves. The firm breasts pressing almost accidentally against his side.
It was the closest physical contact he had had in more than a year with a woman who wasn’t his wife. A hot shiver shot through his blood. He swallowed against a dry throat.
Then he immediately pulled himself together. She was drunk. She was his coworker.
He was about to flag down a taxi pulling toward the curb. But when he saw Leonie hanging so limply against him, her head repeatedly drooping as though she were barely conscious, he couldn’t bring himself to put her in a stranger’s car.
She couldn’t even clearly say her own address anymore.
His deep-rooted sense of decency pushed him toward the only decision that felt right: he would drive her home himself.
The car was dark and cramped. Leonie’s sweet feminine scent quickly filled the entire interior.
Markus drove slowly in the direction she had pointed with a murmured instruction.
But after two intersections, her head fell to the side and she dozed off.
Every now and then she mumbled contradictory street names, leaving him literally driving in circles through the empty nighttime streets of Frankfurt.
Yellow streetlight spilled through the windshield and slid through the car in regular bands.
Leonie lay half stretched out in the passenger seat. Her twisted position had caused the tight office skirt to ride up to the middle of her thighs. Her black stockings made her slender legs look even longer… her tight office skirt had ridden up to mid-thigh.
So different from Nadja’s full, mature femininity, Leonie’s body seemed narrower, more fragile. And yet there was something young and shamelessly tempting about exactly that.
Markus glanced at her. His throat went bone-dry. A dull pressure stirred between his legs. He tore his eyes back to the road and gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
I’m just taking a drunk coworker home. Nothing more.
He gently shook her shoulder. “Leonie. Leonie, where do you live?”
She made only a soft, indistinct sound.
But when Markus leaned toward her to support her shoulder and sit her upright again, her breathing changed for a moment. One corner of her mouth lifted for the fraction of a second.
Markus blinked and told himself it had only been a shadow from the passing streetlights.
It was far too late by now. He couldn’t let her sleep in the car on the street. Taking her home with him was completely out of the question.
Suddenly, the most sensible solution seemed obvious. The nearest hotel. Book her a room. Let her sleep it off there. Take a taxi home himself.
The hotel lobby was glaringly bright beneath white fluorescent lights.
Markus had one arm around Leonie’s waist to keep her from slipping off his shoulder while he fumbled for his credit card with the other hand.
The night clerk glanced at the two of them. An indifferent look that somehow still judged him harshly.
For the first time that night, Markus realized just how dirty the situation must look.
A man wearing a wedding ring. After midnight. A young drunk woman in his arms. And he was taking her into a hotel room.
“My coworker… she drank too much,” Markus said awkwardly.
The clerk’s greasy grin only widened. He gave a knowing nod. “Of course. Coworker.” Then he slid the key card across the counter.
The mocking remark made Markus’s stomach tighten. He swallowed his irritation and took the card.
Get her into the room. Put her on the bed. Leave immediately. He repeated it in his head like a prayer that might save him.
Markus opened the door, guided Leonie inside, and laid her on her back across the white hotel bed. Then he let go of her, turned around, and headed straight for the door.
Behind him, fabric rustled.
Leonie murmured as though feverish. She tugged at the collar of her blouse and pulled the buttons open.
The blouse fell open on both sides, revealing a black lace bra cupping her small, firm breasts.
Her pencil skirt had ridden all the way up to her groin, exposing the curve of her hips and her long legs in thin stockings.
In the warm light from the bedside lamp, her body lay there like an open invitation.
Markus stopped. His heart hammered against his ribs. He stared.
His gaze clung to the rise and fall of her cleavage, to the edge of the lace panties visible beneath the rumpled skirt.
He wanted her. The desire shot straight into his groin and made his cock painfully hard.
Any man in his position—alone in a locked room with a young, beautiful woman whose body was presenting itself so shamelessly, and worse, who seemed helpless on the bed—would have felt that brutal pull. The temptation was so overwhelming it made him dizzy.
He took half a step toward her. Then stopped.
No. Take advantage of a drunk woman? What the hell are you doing, Markus?
The animal inside him roared at him to take her. But what remained of the decent man in him held him firmly back.
Markus clenched his teeth. He turned abruptly, walked into the bathroom, and slammed the door shut. Then he turned the cold faucet at the sink all the way on and splashed ice water over his face.
He let it run down his skin as though it could wash away the filthy desire. As though it could clear his head.
The freezing water slowly brought him back.
Markus grabbed a towel, dried his face, took a deep breath, and looked at his own respectable face in the mirror.
Go back out. Pull the blanket over her. Take a taxi. Go home to Nadja.
He opened the bathroom door and stepped out. Then froze.
Beside the white bed lay Leonie’s blouse and skirt, carelessly tossed next to her shoes. She was lying on her back wearing nothing but whisper-thin black lace lingerie.
Her firm breasts, smooth narrow waist, and the curve of her hips were provocatively exposed in the light.
Leonie kept her eyes closed. Her breathing was even and calm.
An ice-cold realization slammed straight into Markus’s mind. Leonie wasn’t remotely as drunk as she had pretended to be. She was waiting for him.