“That’s not begging.”
Ellsbeth swallowed hard, and he ran his fingers along her inner thigh.
“Will you?” His finger drifted away, farther down her leg. “I said beg, Ellsbeth.”
Ellsbeth pressed herself toward him. “Please,” she moaned. And in that instant, she was no longer thinking about whether she was being foolish or ruining any grand plans. All she could think about was his tongue inside her.
Rawlins needed no more encouragement. His arms braced againsther thighs, and Ellsbeth bucked back against the chair as he swirled his tongue around her clit. She had told boys she dated in college that she wasn’t a fan of oral sex—she found it awkward and stilted, a performance that she was required to applaud no matter how off-key the playing was. It turned out she just hadn’t been with someone like Rawlins yet. He moved his mouth confidently, with an insatiable hunger that caused Ellsbeth to squirm. When she did, he just held her thighs firmer. Her hands raked through his hair. She needed more of him. She pulled him up, glistening and gasping, and brought his face to hers, kissing him hard.
“Stand up,” Rawlins said when they finally separated. She did, enjoying the electric thrill of obeying him. She saw the outline of his thick erection pressing against his jeans and watched as he slowly unbuttoned himself and stepped out of his pants. He sat in his office chair and pulled a condom from the wallet sitting on his desk. He ripped the foil with his teeth and rolled it over his length.
Ellsbeth straddled him then, hovering a few inches above him, her knees balancing on either side of his thighs. She wanted him viscerally, in a way she hadn’t known was even possible. It was a physical craving, and no amount of logic was going to override the gravity that was pulling her onto him. She lowered herself until she felt the tip of his cock. “I want you,” she said. Rawlins wrapped his arms around her hips and thrust himself inside her.
She gasped then, so loudly that if he hadn’t already promised the office was on a private wing of the department she would have panicked. It was unlike anything she had ever felt before. How had she gone so long not knowing that it could feel likethis? It was a wholeness, a delicious stretching, pure pleasure with every thrust, and she just wanted more of him. Her hands were in his hair, and around his neck, and undoing the buttons from his shirt as quickly as she could so that she could feel his chest. Rawlins’s breath was heavy; he sighed into her neck.
“How does this feel so good?” Ellsbeth whispered. “How are you doing this to me?”
“You’re perfect,” he said back into her hair. “God, Ellsbeth, you’re perfect.”
Her pace quickened instinctively with her excitement, hips bucking as she ground herself against him. But his hands found her waist and slowed her, insisting on a deliberate rhythm.
It was impossible to know how long they were there, intertwined in that office chair, pressing into each other and kissing every available inch of skin. Her orgasm rose up slowly and then hit again and again until her head was buzzing and balance seemed like a foreign concept. Eventually, Rawlins’s self-control broke; his thrusts quickened, becoming jerky and forceful. He groaned and then collapsed in the chair. Ellsbeth lifted herself off him, and after a moment that felt like their souls returning to their bodies, Rawlins peeled the condom off and wrapped it neatly in a square of tissue paper before throwing it away.
Rawlins pulled his boxers back on and cocked his head, gesturing for Ellsbeth to come back. She curled on his lap, one arm around his neck, and kissed him deeply. The sex should have eased the wanting. It should have felt like a craving fulfilled. She should be satisfied. But no. A taste had only made her want him even more.
They were silent for a while, while the colors of the sunset through the slits of the window shades went from pink to red to navy blue. When Ellsbeth would go back to her own bed later that night, her mechanical, logical, list-making brain would remind her why she had just made a terrible mistake. But for the moment, the only thing that filled her mind was his smell, and how good his arms felt around her.
From:Rawlins.T.M
To:Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject:Obscuration
Ellsbeth,
It has been mere moments since you left my office, and already, embarrassingly, I am pulled away from work that is overdue and instead find myself writing to you. Some voice in my mind—pride, fear, common sense—tells me I ought to preserve dignity and wait until morning to send you a message, mild in its flirtation and measured in its tone. But other voices are louder, and there seems little point in denying what is patently obvious:I want you.To a degree I cannot explain or even understand.
So I will instead turn to the topic that supposedly brought you here this afternoon, which we somehow never quite got around to: obscuration. (Don’t worry, I will come back around to the other subject.) To understand obscuration, you need to start with the most fundamental question.What is it?Mysterious, certainly. A manipulation of the subtle forces that guide human thought and behavior. The unconscious, as Freud would have called it. Science gives us tools to understand some of those forces—psychology, biology, sociology, and more. We know that every thought and feeling and choice arises from the complex interplay of countless factors.
Years ago, I came to believe that obscuration was effectively impossible. Because our fates are written by deterministic forces, and we don’t even understand how those forces act uponourselves,much less anyone else. Obscuration, therefore, is like trying to play a symphony without any sheet music, on an instrument you can’t even see.
But today, I think otherwise. For two reasons. One is simplyyou.A force of nature, with the right combination of talent and intelligence and youthful audacity to unlock its secrets.
The second is because I am, at this moment, compelled to admit to the susceptibility and flexibility of the will. Whatever just happened between us demonstrates how the most staunchrational resistance can be melted away by ineffable forces we cannot explain, whether those are magical or merely what we call chemistry.
I certainly did not intend for any of this. Yet here I am, marveling at how desire can become a prism, perversely shifting my perception; the familiar office around me is warped through the lens ofwant.I will never again see my office chair without the glorious image of your thighs opening upon it, while every surface around me seems notable chiefly for the absence of you.
The desk is littered with books and papers, when the only thing that belongs there is your body, covered by nothing except my own. The bookshelf, strangely, looks like it was designed to press you up against it, to pin your wrists to the wood while I watch pain and pleasure intermingle in your eyes. The familiar floor beneath my feet suddenly seems made for you to kneel while I cup your chin and incline your face to look up atme.
Even my own fingers, at the moment, seem notable for the utter lack of your skin they are squeezing. They flex and tap the keyboard, wishing only to play, again, the instrument of your body, to trace a line from your lips down across the perfect terrain of your chest, and your belly, and beyond. To tease you to the breaking point and then conquer you with a fingertip.
Have I gone too far already? It is only a fraction of the depravity that springs to my mind now that you have burrowed under the skin and unleashed something inside me. I did not know this was possible at any age, least of all mine; I did not imagine anyone could feel this way, least of all me. Yet here we are. Proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the power of mysterious forces that sway the will, as my own bends powerfully toward you.
Yours,
Rawlins
From:Storer.Ellsbeth
