He finally leans in to my touch with a gruff noise, then nods stiffly.
I already knew the truth, but it sinks in now, opening up a wound in my chest. “My mother didn’t tell me. She said we were broke. It’s why I didn’t register for classes this fall.”
Rage crackles to life around him like a brush fire. “What?”
Heat presses to the backs of my eyelids. “I don’t know what she’s been doing with the money. Paying rent, yes, but—”
“I’ve been paying the rent,” Jack growls.
My mouth snaps shut, another shovel of hurt and betrayal dropping on top of the pile. “You pay her on Fridays. An automatic payment…and she immediately withdraws the full amount. She must be keeping the cash somewhere.”
“Away from her own daughter,” he bites off. “You. The one it was intended for.”
It feels like there’s an arrow piercing my heart. My own mother has been playing me. It’s no wonder I lash out. “It’s no different than what you’re doing.” I drop my hand from his face and back away. “Playing keep away with money. Manipulating me.”
Jack follows me, his expression tortured. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? You won’t come to me on your own. And you shouldn’t.”
“Because you’re a bad man,” I supply, my back meeting the glass door.
“Yes, goddammit.” His hands slap down on either side of my head, leaning down until only an inch separates our faces. “Why do you think I stayed away for six months when I wanted to kidnap you off the street and rope you to my fucking bed?”
My nipples turn turgid, achy. His mouth is so close, his mint breath caressing my lips and I’m almost dizzy under the sudden slug of heat.
“Now I can’t stay away, angel.” His right hand drops from the door, gripping the flesh between my legs roughly. “Not from this. And not from you.”
“Jack,” I moan, my thighs squeezing around his hold. “Wait…”
“Wait?” He shoves his fingers into my panties, stroking his middle digit through my wet folds, once, twice, before pushing it deep inside me. “If you didn’t want your pussy tickled, you wouldn’t have come here dressed like Daddy’s little girl.”
Those words are like kerosene on a fire. My tummy muscles twist like tree roots, my thigh muscles spasming around his hand. I know he’s trying to end our important conversation about his actions, about why he’s so determined to be the bad guy—and it’s impossible not to let him distract me. But I make one more attempt to reach him while our walls are dropping.
“Jack,” I whisper, right before he can kiss me. “I don’t think you’re a bad man. It’s an excuse to keep people away. Why?”
A line flexes in his cheek. “You refuse to believe I’m an asshole, do you?” His fingers pump in and out of me, twisting and delving. “Even after I came like a bull in this delicious little cunt? Even though I’m playing keep away with your money?”
“Yes,” I whimper. “Because you’re also the man who has been paying my rent without asking for credit. The m-man who would have brought me home on Friday night without l-laying a finger on me, if he’d been given a choice. Am I wrong?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he growls.
“I say it does.”
With my retort still hanging in the air, Jack spins me around to face the door—and there’s the whole office, right in plain view. Men sit at desks no farther than ten feet away, others walking past, so close their jacket sleeves brush the glass.
I can see out. They can’t see in.
That’s what Jack said when I arrived.
It must be true, as well, because Jack has me crowded up against the door, my backside nestled in his lap, his fingers still inside me, milking in and out. And no one has a look of shock on their face. It’s business as usual out there, while inside me, there is a well of lust that has been rising all weekend and now it’s threatening to burble over.
“If you’re having a hard time believing I’m a nasty motherfucker, angel, I’ll happily prove it.” His fingers leave my dampening womanhood, hard palm dragging up the front of my body and unbuttoning my dress with quick flicks of his wrist. I flatten my hands on the glass door and watch my labored breaths make condensation on the glass, more and more excitement flaring to life inside of me with every button Jack undoes…until the entire front of my dress has been completed.
He yanks the garment open, baring me to the office, showing my body off to the hundreds of employees on the main floor in nothing but white panties and red high heels.
And then, with a single finger in my back waistband, he slides my underwear down, down, leaving it around my knees, whipping my pulse into a frenzy.
“You see that switch on the wall, angel?” In my periphery, I notice a black panel with a tiny silver lever. “If I flip it, the whole office will see you. Naked with your little girl panties down.” He smooths a hand down over my bottom, kneading it roughly, his breath directly on my neck. “I’m going to give you two minutes to make yourself come. Or I’ll flip it.”
“What?” I breathe, reeling. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You better.”
I moan in my throat.
Two minutes? With nothing but the use of my fingers?
My mind is indignant, but my body is alive.
I don’t understand why I love this, why arousal is cascading down, down inside me, snaring me in its inferno, but my fingers gravitate toward the apex of my thighs. A man walks by the glass door, faceless. Another group stops a mere three feet away, their bodies angled toward the office, and the fact that I’m doing something to explicit, so bad, makes my heart pound, makes my flesh slippery and I begin to rub my clit, a mewling sound kindling in my throat.
“I knew it,” Jack breathes in my ear. “I didn’t imagine how hard you rode my cock in front of that crowd on Friday night, you closet exhibitionist.” His mouth suctions to the side of my neck, drawing on me, scraping me with his teeth. “I’m not letting you hide from it, Maisy. From what you need. I’m not that nice. One more minute.”
“No,” I cry softly, my middle and ring finger rubbing my clit in quick, light circles, my breath sawing in and out of my throat. Please. Please. There’s sensation gathering in my middle, but it’s too slow. It’s only the early signals of the storm.
“Christ, I can hear how fucking wet you are,” Jack mutters in my ear, his hands closing around my breasts, massaging them slowly, then chafing my nipples with his palms, making me cry out, propelling me further toward the finish line. Far enough? Fast enough? I don’t know. “Thirty seconds, angel. If your come isn’t dripping onto my carpet by then, this whole office is going to know what a horny brat you are. Strutting in here dressed to make dicks hard, pulling your panties down for their boss. Shame on you.”
The word shame makes my thighs tremble and I stroke myself faster, my bottom lip caught between my teeth, lust and need and excitement electrifying me. “Daddy,” I whine, pressing my forehead to the glass, fingers rubbing, rubbing. “Please!”
What am I begging for? I don’t know. Only that the pleasure is almost too searing, bearing down on me too fast, that I can’t handle it alone. Oh God, oh God.