She whimpers. "Right...now?"
"I want to watch." I drop my mouth to her throat, eager for the taste of her anxious sweat. "Do it, and I'll take your panties down."
As I continue to roll her clit, she pats her hand around on the desk.
"By the keyboard. That's it—good girl."
The scene that plays out before me is delicious: Leo, her smoked honey hair all soft and sweet under my jaw and her tight body hot against mine, makes frustrated sounds of pleasure as she scoops up the gift box and tugs at the ribbon. Her breath grows harder; her breasts rise and fall right beneath my eye line like some kind of swollen offering.
"Come on," I coax, half to her and half to the slick bud of flesh between my fingers. She keeps bucking forward, pushing herself harder against me, and I pull her clit into a pinch of a warning.
"Ow." She grinds her heel into my foot.
"Open the damn box."
After our heated discussion last night, it doesn't escape me that this might as well be makeup sex. I don't even know what to think about that.
The ribbon comes loose, drifts to the floor, and then she's folding the black lid away while I hold her clit firm and still. Then she's dropping it on the desk. Teasing aside the layers of black tissue paper I used to encase her treat.
"For my special girl." My words are muffled by her hair.
"There's nothing. I can't find—oh my G—fuck." The box falls, banging the desk on its way down and spewing its contents over the carpet. Leo jerks from my grasp in a single burst of movement, already sucking at her split finger. Wide black eyes stare at me in accusation. Not far behind her, a sliver of silver winks in the morning sunshine from its nest of shredded black tissue, a thin film of crimson dusting its blade.
"You asked me what I want," I say. "There's your answer."
She shakes her head, still suckling her index finger.
"Think about it, sweetheart. I don't go half way. But if it's what you want...I'll give you everything."
Poor girl. Her clit must still be throbbing, but she already looks drunk on the shock of her cut. Of course she knew all along what I wanted, but thinking it is one thing and seeing it is quite another.
"I can't," she murmurs. "I can't, not that..."
"What, you thought you could fix me instead?"
She yanks her desk drawer open again and wraps her finger in a tissue. "I don't know what I thought."
"Then I guess we're done here." I go to leave, but she grabs the sleeve of my shirt.
"Take it with you. I can't look at it."
"It's a gift, Leo."
"But I don't want it," she says through gritted teeth.
"Well I'm not fucking Target, and I don't do returns."
"I'm already bleeding. Isn't that enough?"
She's not even talking about her finger.
Things go a little blurry at this point. I'm not sure if she moves; all I know is she seems to rush up in my vision—probably because I practically throw myself at her. I'm aware of three things: the box lid crunching beneath my shoe. My pulse's raw stutter. And Leo, Leo gasping for breath and writhing in my forceful hands.
"You have no idea," I grind out.
There are a hundred other words I could say. I'd regret none of them, but Jesus, she'd never look at me again.
I leave before I irrevocably fuck something. My life. Her life. Just her. Suddenly, they all feel like the same thing.
***
For the rest of the day, desire haunts me. It started the moment I laid eyes on Leo, grew thicker as I stroked her through those thin mesh panties, and now it curdles into obsession as the hours go by, lining the back of my throat so viscously that I can almost taste it. Cherries and alcohol. Jesus. I'm not averse to masturbating in my office but my schedule is about as forgiving as a Playboy model with a paternity suit.
I sit through a conference call with my newspaper editors like a zombie, listening to them argue back and forth and pretending to be interested in the plethora of broadsheets and tabloids splayed before me. Normally, I lay into them about something like headlines or ad space sales, or the sheer snail's pace at which they appear to be gathering news—not today. I just let them get on with pissing each other off. Not one of them is getting a Christmas bonus for forcing me to listen to a diatribe on Kardashian versus Bieber column inches.
After that hour of fail, I sit through a briefing with Carson about some of the stories we need to run, reply to emails through lunch, and then do a walk-around in the main news room just for an excuse to go past Leo's offices. Fortunately, there's nothing like an extremist beheading video on a massive screen for getting rid of a hard-on.