Chapter 9
Jess
Iwas dead. Had I gone to heaven? Because this sated, blissed-out feeling was not of this earth.
Reality slowly returned. I realised I’d been so desperate to come that I’d basically begged him to go deeper and harder, and so he’d taken me from behind and I’d loved it.
I’d never been so vocal during sex in my life.
And yet here I was with a stranger, ordering him around. It felt heady. Decadent. Naughty.
Maybe the way forward was to be anonymous. Slightly impractical, no? I scowled at the voice of reason, wrecking my post-coital buzz.
He was still in me. Albeit, soft. As if only just now coming too as well, he lifted his weight off me, disengaged and pulled back. He tugged me up to standing upright.
‘Are you OK?’
I nodded. My hair was falling down. Mask askew. I pulled it off; it seemed a bit redundant now. I didn’t want to look at him straight away, too shattered after that orgasm. He let me go, presumably to see to himself. And the protection. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t still intact.
I pulled the shirt back over me, clumsy fingers doing up buttons as it fully hit me what had just happened.
An earthquake of the most carnal kind. I had just done the down and dirty with a total stranger.
I looked up then and saw the wall of shelves.
OK, so he hadn’t quite shagged me up against the books but near enough.
Had Tash put a spell on this fricking dress?
I saw my panties on the floor and stepped into them, pulling them back on. Isn’t that a bit like closing the door after the orgasm has bolted? snarked a little voice. I ignored it.
I tied the shirt in a knot at my waist again.
I took a deep breath and turned around. He was bent down, picking things off the floor. I cringed at him seeing my ancient lip gloss and badly scuffed phone that was about ten years out of date with a screensaver photo of me and Tash pulling funny faces.
‘You don’t have to do that, let me.’
But he’d scooped up the last of the things and stood up in a fluid motion, his bare back to me. I noticed what looked like marks across the top of his back and a wave of mortified heat flooded me, reminding me of how I’d gripped him. I’d marked him. Like some sort of wanton hussy.
He’d turned around and was holding out my bag to me before I realised that his mask had come off too. And now I could see his face. I felt a prickle of recognition. Did I know him?
And then I saw the raised skin of the scar that had been hidden under the mask, down the left side of his face from his eye almost to his jaw, near the hairline, and it hit me like a bucket of cold water. That’s why I’d felt a spark of recognition. I knew exactly who he was.
This was the guy who was the brains behind the redevelopment of our charity HQ. The guy who was having us evicted so that they could make as much money as possible. By fucking us over in the process. Or, in my case, very literally.