I didn’t know what to say. I had shut out thoughts of him for almost a week. I thought about baseball, chord progressions, and getting a new manager whenever he came into my mind. So having him in front of me was like opening a closet door and having all the stuff come tumbling out.

I took a step forward, and he did, too. We were in each other’s arms in a second, mouths attached, tongues twisting. He reached back and closed the door.

Okay, I was going to get this over with now. Me and him. Right there. Just get it done so I could move on. He thrust me onto the desk and I opened my legs, wrapping them around his waist. He was pushing against me again, like on the hood of the Mercedes, a million years ago.

He put his hands up my shirt, across my stomach and to my breasts.

“Yes?” he gasped.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes to everything.”

“Yes,” he whispered in my ear, then pushed my bra up and cupped my tits, finding my nipples and rubbing them with his thumbs. My hips levitated from the desk, and I made some noise deep in my throat. Damn, he was good. Lots of practice. He knew exactly what to do.

He looked down at my chest, nipples hardening from his touch and the cool air. “My God, Monica, you are magnificent.”

I laughed, because being admired like that made me nervous, but he shut me up when he put his mouth on one nipple and his fingers on the other, pressing and twisting. My legs tightened around him, hitching my skirt up to my waist. With only my panties between me and his jeans, he felt harder and more forceful. He pushed against me, and I flowed with him, my hips to his rhythm as I gripped his hair. I’d almost come like that, eons ago, with some guy in freshman year I couldn’t even remember now, and it felt like it might happen again.

As if reading my mind, he pulled away. His own breathing was heavy as he looked at me, not as if he was undressing me with his eyes, but as if he was making plans for the body in front of him. He moved his hands down my sides and pulled my skirt up, bunching it at the waist. My underwear bottoms, which I hadn’t given a thought to when I’d dressed in the morning, were the only thing between me and the world.

“Listen,” I started, “I don’t know if Sam would think this is ok.”

He put his fingertips to my mouth, and I shushed. Let him explain to Sam. Let me get fired. I parted my lips and took two of his fingers in my mouth, sucking them down to the back.

“Ah, Monica,” was all he said as he pulled them out, slowly, and pushed them back in at the same pace. I cupped my tongue around them and sucked. Not too hard, just enough. I knew I was doing it right when his eyelids closed just a little, and he opened his mouth for something between a gasp and an aah. He rubbed them over my bottom lip, curling it back, then put them back in my mouth. I took them eagerly, tasting his skin, feeling his warm breath on my face.

He slid his fingers out and stepped back, taking his crotch away from mine. I suddenly felt exposed and started to close my legs, but he pressed them apart. I reached for his buckle, but he pulled away.

“I want to touch you,” I said.

“Not yet.”

“I’m going crazy.”

“No, you’re not. Not enough.”

With that, he moved the crotch of my panties to the side and put the finger he’d just removed from my mouth onto my wet folds. We both gasped. Then he slid two fingers into me. Slowly.

“Oh, God,” I whispered.

He slipped them out without a word and put his thumb on the thin strip of cotton covering my clit. Lightly. Barely touching it. Just enough so I knew it was there, and he leaned over to kiss me, flicking his tongue in time with his thumbnail as it gently scratched the fabric of my underwear.

I thrust my hips forward. His fingers went deep into me, but the thumb wouldn’t press down any harder. It just grazed the cotton as he glided his two fingers in and out.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want you to fuck me.”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Now?”

His fingers worked my body while he bent down to whisper into my ear. “You have three minutes of break left.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m going to spend hours fucking you.”

My hips pushed against his hand, but he kept control: a light touch of the thumb and a slow grind with the fingers. I was on fire. I thought I had known what that meant, but I didn’t.

“After your shift.”

“I have a gig right after. We have to do it now.” He might have considered it for the next three thrusts, but he didn’t give my clit more than a stroke through fabric. I couldn’t decide if that was pleasure or torture.

“After your gig,” he said. “I have a dinner meeting anyway. Meet me at the hotel tonight. Room 3423.”

“I have to take care of my roommate.”

“Figure it out.”

He pulled his fingers out of me. I felt the loss of them and his tormenting thumb so deeply I moaned. Sitting there, splayed and nearly naked on Sam’s desk, I felt foolish and exposed, not to mention ravenously aroused.

“Don’t.” I didn’t have anything more to say, except don’t stop there; don’t leave me like this. My eyes must have pleaded with him for some release, because his face, with its parted lips and heavy lids, shone with a lustful satisfaction. He knew I wanted him to fuck me for hours, starting on that desk. “You are despicable,” I said.

He pulled my skirt down, and when he leaned down to kiss me, I returned it with no little anger on my lips. “Too true. And tonight, you’re mine.”

“What if I don’t show?”

“You’ll show.”

After opening the door as little as possible, as if to protect my destroyed modesty, he was gone.

I had another three hours to work, and I couldn’t keep my mind on the task at hand: pouring drinks. A moron could do it. First example: Robert. A hunk by any measure, but dumb as a post.

He slid the tray over the service bar. Each had the requisite alcohol as listed on the order ticket, clockwise from twelve o’clock, where he’d put the ticket. My job was to fill each glass with mixers from the soda gun and juice bin.

Like I said, a moron could do it. But I stood there, with Debbie next to me checking stuff off the inventory list, and I put soda in a whiskey. I stared at the glass and watched it over flow and why? Because the pain between my legs was uncomfortable and exquisite, and I was counting down the hours before I could get home and release it.

“Whoa!” Robert shouted, waking me up. “You got soda all over the tray!”

“I’m sorry!”

“Monica,” Debbie said, slipping her pen onto the top of the clipboard, “come sit with me.”

She pulled me over to an empty table by the kitchen door. We tried to keep it clear until the bar got too packed. I pressed my legs together when I sat even though my skirt was long enough. I felt like she could see my arousal.

Debbie placed her clipboard in front of her and leaned forward. “What’s happening? You took the wrong order to Frazier Upton; you stepped on Jennifer Roberg’s foot. That’s not how we do service here.”

“Why did you do that, Debbie? Why did you set me up to meet Jonathan upstairs?”

“I saw you looking at him the other night. I thought it would be a nice surprise.”

“If you could avoid doing that again, that would be great.”

“Of course. I’m sorry, I thought I was doing you a favor.”

“You were. It’s just…” I looked at my hands in my lap. “He’s… I don’t know.” I felt suddenly embarrassed talking about a man’s hold over me with my manager. I should have been mad at her, but in the world I lived in, she had done me a kindness, and it wasn’t like he’d raped me. I’d loved it. I hated it ending when it did. “I just don’t need to be with anyone right now. Or ever. I had this boyfriend, Kevin, a year and a little ago. He wouldn’t let me sing. It was awful, but what I’m trying to say is, I don’t want to be that person again.”