Chapter Two
The elevator down was quiet.
Claire watched the numbers drop and let the party noise fade behind her.
She was still replaying the conversation over in her mind.
Xavier Morrow. New VP, starting Monday. She wasn't sure what she'd expected but it wasn't that.
The way he listened. The questions he asked.
The feeling of being actually seen, not just looked at.
She was a project manager at a party full of account executives and senior staff, and somehow he had found her anyway and made her feel like the most interesting person in the room.
Jason's hand was warm at the small of her back as they crossed the lobby. She leaned into it.
In the car he was quiet in the way that meant something was sitting with him. She gave him the time. The city moved past the windows and she watched it and waited.
"Sandra Holloway," she said finally.
"Yeah."
"When did that happen?"
"I don't know. Sometime in the last year apparently."
She shook her head slowly. "She got a boob job."
"I noticed," Jason said.
She almost laughed. "I could tell."
They were quiet again. The expressway opened up ahead of them, the city thinning at the edges, and Claire looked out the passenger window and thought about Sandra moving through that rooftop.
The way the room organized itself around her without her asking it to.
The men who forgot what they were saying. The ones who laughed too loud.
"I couldn't believe how okay Greg seemed with it," Claire said. "Sandra was talking to guys all night, leaning into every conversation, and he just watched her like he was enjoying it."
"He did," Jason said.
"Doesn't that seem strange to you?"
Jason was quiet for a moment. "No," he said. "Not really."
She looked at him. He kept his eyes on the road but there was a charge behind them she recognized. Something that had been there since the party and hadn't left.
"He looked happy," Jason said. "He was definitely enjoying it.
Proud of how she looked, proud of the attention she was getting.
" His thumb moved against the wheel. "It was hard not to think about you in a dress like that.
In that room tonight. "The way those men would have—" He stopped.
Started again. "You would have made Sandra Holloway invisible, Claire. "
"Wait." She turned to look at him. "You'd want me dressed like that? Like Sandra was? With everyone staring? Her body was practically on display."
"Yeah, I honestly couldn’t stop thinking about you dressed like that," he said simply.
She sat with that for a moment. It should have bothered her more than it did.
The idea of Jason wanting her dressed like Sandra, wanting other men staring at her body, should have landed wrong.
The problem was her body seemed to like that it was wrong.
She turned back to the window and didn't say anything else.
* * *
The bedroom lamp was on low. She had taken her hair down and washed her face and she came out of the bathroom to find him already in bed, not on his phone, just lying there looking at the ceiling.
She crossed to her side and sat on the edge of the mattress and he reached for her immediately, his hand at her hip, and she went to him without discussion because they both knew what the night had been building toward.
His mouth found her neck. She closed her eyes.
"Tell me what you're thinking," he said against her skin.
Claire smiled and teased him, "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking about Sandra's new body."
"I'm thinking about your body," he said. His hand slid down her stomach and she went still. "In that dress. At that party. Every person in that room looking at you the way they were looking at her." His fingers moved lower. "Imagine being that exposed for all of them."
She let herself. The tiny black hem. The neckline. All that exposure in a room full of people who would have noticed immediately and not been subtle about it.
Jason's hand slipped between her thighs and she felt him go still for just a second.
"Claire."
"Don't."
"You're already wet." His voice had changed, lower and rougher. "Just from thinking about it."
She said nothing. Her face was warm and her heart was going fast and she kept her eyes closed.
"Imagine walking through that room," he said. His fingers moved slowly and her body was losing the battle. "Every man in there turning to look. Not being able to help it. Your tits spilling out of that dress. Seeing their eyes on them."
She made a soft sound she hadn't planned.
"Imagine standing there," he said, and his fingers slowed deliberately, "in that tiny little dress. Your body on display and how naughty it would feel." A pause. His voice dropped further. "Talking to Xavier."
Her pussy flooded.
His breath caught sharp against her neck. His fingers pressing in slightly.
"There it is," he said quietly.
There was nothing to say. Her body had said it without her permission and the shame of that was somehow making it worse, making everything hotter and more unbearable.
"Admit it," Jason said. His fingers moved in slow circles and she was already close, embarrassingly close, her hips moving without her deciding to move them. "Tell me that the thought of dressing like that for Xavier turns you on."
She opened her mouth.
She didn't say anything.
She started cumming.
Hard and sudden and helpless, her hand gripping his arm, her face pressed into his shoulder, a sound escaping her that she swallowed as quickly as she could.
Her whole body shook with it. His fingers worked her through it without stopping and she rode it until she couldn't anymore and went still against him.
The room was quiet.
"Fuck me," she said. "Right now."
He was inside her instantly and she wrapped around him and he lasted about 30 seconds, which was not like him, his face buried in her hair and his breathing ragged and desperate, and when he finished he made a sound like something had been taken from him.
They lay there afterward. Her head on his chest. His heartbeat slowed under her palm.
Neither of them said anything.