Work Text:
Three of their boys are leaned up against the aluminum siding of the warehouse when Beth rounds the corner, heels clicking against the pavement. Plumes of smoke twist above their heads, glowing in the orange overhead light above the door.
Reflexively, Tito straightens, tipping his bald, tattooed head towards her in deference.
“Boss,” he acknowledges. “Didn’t know we were expectin’ you tonight.”
Tito’s right: it’s not her usual night. Typically she oversees pill distribution every third Monday and the counting of washed cash on Thursdays. Today’s an average Wednesday evening and she’s arrived fresh from closing up Boland Bubbles. Sometimes she drops by to bring Rio dinner and eat with him in his office, but tonight her hands are empty.
That’s not what she’s here for.
“Rio didn’t know I was coming,” Beth explains lightly.
“Uh oh,” Frankie says, grinning slyly, nudging Cal with his elbow. “Boss Man in trouble?”
Beth laughs, canine flashing. “Something like that.”
“What’d he do?” asks Cal, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Are we talkin’ forgot to pick up milk on the way home or forgot your anniversary?”
“I won’t bore you with the details of domestic squabbles,” Beth says playfully, nose scrunching, but her lip twitches. It’s funny—how far off he is.
“C’mon, tell us,” Frankie prods. “Knock him down a peg or two. He deserves it.”
“He deserves a lot of things,” Beth teases. Then, ignoring the bait, she singsongs “goodnight, boys,” as she swings open the heavy industrial door.
The sound of their laughter behind her is quickly drowned out by the whir of blenders, the slicing of paper cutters, and the rumble of dryers. As she makes her way across the warehouse floor, a few people nod and acknowledge her, but most are wrapped up in their work—busy preparing for tomorrow’s shipment, which was nearly double what they were producing just three months ago. At the top of the stairs on the way to Rio’s office, Beth takes a second to survey their kingdom, to watch as their now-impressive collection of presses spit out sheet after sheet of perfect pages of ten-dollar bills, rubber-gloved fingers plucking them up to be safety pinned to miles of drying lines. Beth hums, satisfied.
“‘M busy,” Rio mutters when she opens the door, gaze briefly flicking up from the ledger he’s got on his vintage steel tanker desk. When he realizes it’s her, he does a double-take, cocking his head back to fully appreciate the new green wrap dress clinging to her curves.
Beth smiles sharply, and he mirrors her, slow and lazy.
“No. You’re not.” She tosses her purse onto the hard black leather couch she’d refused to keep in their new house and crosses the room, flipping his ledger closed with a single finger.
(“We have five children,” she’d reminded him when he’d called her one afternoon to interrogate her about getting Mick to relocate the couch. “We need something you can actually sit on, not just look at.”
“Should’ve asked me,” he’d said tersely, but she’d only shrugged, plopping a piece of muffin in her mouth.
“You would’ve said no.”)
“I’m not busy?” he asks, eyeing the closed book with an arched brow. Swiveling to lean back in his chair, he opens his legs, and Beth slots between them, staring down at him as his eyes trail up from the hem of her dress to the golden Tiffany’s circle pendant lying a half-inch above the dip of her cleavage (a gift he’d helped the kids pick out for Mother’s Day). “Who says?”
“Me.”
“If I remember right...” His fingers trace up the back of her knee, up her thigh underneath her dress. “...you were the one that pushed this Coltello deal even though we weren’t ready to expand the order. Baby, you got everybody’s workin’ overtime.”
Then—suddenly—Rio slides his hand up to her ass and pinches her. Beth yelps, bouncing up the toes of her feet, nearly losing her balance in her heels. She scowls.
“I know patience ain’t your virtue, mamí,” he says, giving her a firm slap over the exact spot he’d just pinched, “but I’ll be home in a few hours.”
The chair squeaks as he pushes back to swivel away from her, but Beth hooks the toe of her heel around his ankle, locking him in place. Rio snaps his attention back to her, his tongue darting out to wet his lips.
“If I remember correctly,” she whispers, leaning over him, hands running over his chest to rest at his shoulders, “you couldn’t wait a few hours when you came by my office last week.”
She pulls back to read his expression, sees his gaze fixated on her breasts in his face before he grins up at her, smug.
Back from a week-and-a-half long trip to Memphis, Rio had shown up at Boland Bubbles in the middle of the workday. When he’d come into her office, she’d been on the phone, leaving yet another message with Margie, the secretary at SpaGuard, who had already heard her complaints about an order mixup no less than five times (they’d got twice as many bromine tablets and no mineral purifiers—one of their best-moving accessories).
“I’ve told you, Ms. Marks,” Margie had said tersely, “Mr. Welch will call you back as soon as he’s able and I’m sure we’ll get you all fixed up—”
“I’ve been waiting four days, Margie, and my customers—” Beth’s sentence had stopped short when she’d suddenly noticed Rio leaned up against the door frame, watching her. How long had he been there, she’d wondered? She hadn’t expected him—had thought she wouldn’t see him until dinner—but there he was, home. Returned to her, radiating warmth and quiet focus—like everything else had fallen away and she was the only thing he could see. Her cheeks had pinkened and Rio’s mouth had curved up in an easy grin, and then he’d stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him.
“He’s a busy man, Ms. Marks,” Margie had tried to explain, but Beth’s attention was on Rio intently moving around her office and drawing all three sets of blinds, twisting the wands so that the room became shadowed, no longer illuminated by the showroom floor.
She knew what that meant.
“I know that, but—” Beth had said distractedly, the zip of the last set of blinds crashing down to the window sill making her whip around to glare at Rio because as much as she was happy to see him, this wasn’t the time. “I’ll have to call you back.”
“No, we’ll call y—”
But Beth was already hanging up the phone and jumping up from her chair, squawking that Rio couldn’t just do that at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday. She had employees, they would know, they would talk, and—
And then he was kissing her, walking her backward until she’d bumped into her desk, and his mouth was so soft and warm and perfect that Beth’s protests had immediately died in her throat.
“Missed you, mama,” he’d murmured against her mouth, nuzzling his nose against hers.
Sighing, she’d uncurled the fingers she had clenching his shirt, inhaling the familiar woodsy scent of his cologne—the same she’d spritzed onto her own wrists that morning.
Her breath had hitched when he’d slid his hand up her dress and between them, ghosting over her cunt through her panties.
“You miss me too?” he’d whispered, his voice wrapping around her like a caress.
A flash of heat zipped through her and Beth felt herself grow unbearably wet unfathomably fast. He hadn’t allowed her to touch herself the entire time he was gone (though it hadn’t stopped him from sending her filthy texts—and even an old audio file from a video they’d made once when they were plastered. Their moaning was interspersed with laughter and Rio waxing on her how good her pussy tasted so that listening to it, Beth had squeezed her legs together alone in their empty bed. She’d considered pulling out her vibrator, games be damned, but then, like he knew what she was contemplating, he'd sent a follow-up message: Be a good girl for me, yeah?). After his absence and his taunting, she hadn’t needed much from him—the light graze of his fingers against her already had her clenching around nothing.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Beth had tried to say as he kissed down her jaw to her neck, her gaze skirting to the door, thinking of Eric—Tina—Joyce—her customers—on the other side of the flimsy office walls. But the words devolved into a low, throaty noise of want as he lightly circled at her clit through the cotton. It wasn’t enough.
“No?” Rio asked as Beth’s head fell forward, forehead pressed against his sternum as she tried to grind against his hand. “You want me to go?”
Beth didn’t answer, had only dug her nails into his shoulders as he teased tugging her panties aside.
“Gonna need you to make a decision,” he’d husked. “What do you want, mama?”
She’d caved immediately. Pressing against him, she’d whispered, “Touch me,” like she was desperate—like she’d never gone ten days without his hands on her.
Now, taking advantage of Beth’s position leaned over him, Rio hooks a finger in the fabric of the green dress to peek at the lacey black bra she’d picked out this morning just for him. “So what’s this, huh? Your idea of payback?”
“Exactly,” Beth purrs, closing the gap to kiss him.
He tastes like dark chocolate—one of his favorite snacks to graze on when he was focusing on tedious tasks. She knows if she peeked in his desk drawer now, she’d find a half-eaten bar with the ridiculous, hipster packaging from Casa Bosques. He ordered the bars online and always made sure he was fully stocked, hiding the candy up in the cabinet above the fridge where the kids couldn’t reach it.
Pulling back with his plump lip caught between her teeth, she nips at him, then says, “I was busy then, you’re busy now...”
Rio smirks. “Mmm, but I let you keep workin’.” His eyes sparkle. “Remember?”
And of course she does—first he’d teased her some more, just to be an asshole, just to get her squirming, and it’d worked right up until she’d moaned, “Rio, please.” Then he’d given up the game, seamlessly moving to yank her panties down to her knees and then hoist her up onto the edge of the desk before thrusting two fingers into her aching cunt. After so long of nothing, she felt heady with the fullness, completely overwhelmed when he swiped his thumb against her clit.
“Shit,” he’d sworn, easily sliding a third finger into her impossibly slick cunt, “I think you did miss me.”
Quickly—too quickly—her whines had become moans until Rio had clamped his other hand over her mouth, making her eyes widen.
“Quiet,” he’d commanded, eyes blazing, the fingers inside of her stilling. “Thought you wanted this to be a secret?”
Breathing heavily, Beth nodded against his palm, begging him, Don’t stop. She was so close. Between her employees only feet away, the wet sounds of him thrusting into her pussy, the soft twist of her silk panties now around her ankles, and Rio’s hand quieting her to mere whimpers, she could feel every bit of her body getting hotter and hotter like if she split open, magma would seep out of her.
Pressing deeper into her, Rio could feel it too: “Look at you. Barely even touched you and you’re about to fall apart.”
She didn’t even bother to deny it. Who cared? She was long past the point of pretending she wasn’t wrecked by him anymore—that was why she’d agreed to his demands, wasn’t it? Why she’d gone ten days without laying a hand on herself? She liked it better when he made her come. Loved how deep his fingers could go, loved the smell of him on top of her—and she loved to make noise for him too. Loved when he’d coax her closer, complimenting her as he watched her closely, his eyes turning a pearly black. She didn’t care if he knew how needy she was for him. She just wanted to come undone in his hands, and she was almost there—almost—
“C’mon, baby,” he’d murmured, thumb swirling around her clit. “Show me how much you missed me.”
And it was cresting, she was there, she was almost there—
And then the peal of her desk telephone sliced through the room, harsh and discordant.
Ripped out of the moment, Beth had gasped against his hand.
She had wanted to turn around and silence it—had wanted to tear the cord out of the wall, to shove the entire contraption straight off the desk so Rio could lay her on it and fuck her with her knees over his shoulders—but she’d twisted her neck to see SPAGUARD INC. flashing against the small green caller ID window.
“Shit—” she’d hissed, pushing him off her.
“Nuh—” he’d started, but she’d already hopped down and spun around, leaning across the desk to grab the receiver—
And then she felt Rio’s chest over her back, his fingers wrap around her wrist. He slammed her hand down onto the desk.
“Don’t answer it.”
Heat spiked through her at his tone.
The phone rang again.
“I have to take this,” she’d protested, but she made no move to struggle out of his grip. She was enveloped by him, could feel his cock on her ass straining against his jeans. Could swear that she could feel his heart thundering against her spine too.
“Call ‘em back.”
Another ring.
“I’ve been trying to get him on the phone for days—”
“Yeah? How long have you been waiting to come?”
Beth bit her lip, debating.
Another ring, then another.
“You can be quiet, yeah?”
She’d turned her neck, but she couldn’t see him. She could feel him, though, peeling himself off her back, dropping her wrist to hike up her dress and leave her feeling exposed. She felt herself get even wetter as he slid his hand back between her legs, pressing his fingers back into her cunt. From this angle, he was hitting new spots inside of her. Her eyes fluttered shut as she clenched around him, head dropping in ecstasy.
A final ring. Her last chance.
Then:
“Answer the phone, Elizabeth.”
And maybe she was over hiding how much she wanted him, but she didn’t think she’d ever get over the thrill that zipped through her when she surprised him. Nothing compared to watching his eyes widen, his smile spread slowly across his face as he drank her in—and she didn’t have to see it to know that’s exactly how he looked when she reached for the receiver.
“This is Beth,” she’d said, her mouth falling open with a swallowed moan as Rio curled his fingers.
“Good girl,” he’d whispered behind her. She’d had to cover the mouthpiece to hide a grunt.
“You want to keep working?” Beth asks now, straightening in front of Rio to mock pout, trailing a finger down his chest. “But I got all dressed up for you...”
“Layin’ it on a li’l thick, aren’t you?” Rio asks, amusement lacing his voice.
Beth ignores him, pushing forward. “I wore your favorite color… your favorite bra… your favorite…” She drops her voice to a whisper, like she’s saying something naughty: “panties…”
“Darlin’—my favorite panties are when you don’t wear any at all,” Rio corrects her.
But she just smiles.
“I know.”
Rolling his shoulders slightly, he glances towards the door. Faintly, she can smell the vats of nail polish remover from downstairs, can hear the whirring of machines and slicers and boxes being loaded up with red-banded bills.
“You’re not wearing panties?”
Beth shakes her head.
Like he’s unconvinced, Rio snakes his hands back up her dress, feeling around for her usual thong. He finds nothing in its place.
“How long?”
“All day.”
“All day, huh?” He nibbles on his lip, absorbing this information.
“Didn’t you get my text?” she asks innocently, playing it up by blinking what he likes to call her "big blue Bambi eyes."
("Every time you want somethin'," he'd complained once, "you flutter 'em all pretty like that, like that's supposed to work on me."
"But it does," she'd countered, and he hadn't denied it—but he had ignored her pointing it out).
Rio swears, twisting to pull open one of the metal drawers of his desk with a squeak. He unlocks his phone and when he sees the photo she’d taken of the green dress bunched up around her waist, her pointer and middle fingers shiny with her slick and pressed against her clit—with a simple message of seeing you soon attached—he makes a noise in the back of his throat.
“Where’d you take this?”
“My office.”
“When?”
“After I placed the order for eight new Narada Harmony Spas with the funny money.”
“You got this wet durin’ the middle of the work day?”
“Well, I was thinking about this…” She inches closer to him, ghosting a hand from his knee to his thigh. She can see the outline of his cock through his jeans. “So…”
“You touch yourself?” he asks, drawing his eyes away from the photo to look up at her. “While your employees were on the showroom floor, washin’ our cash?”
“Don’t worry. I was quiet,” she promises, and then she adds, just to bait him: “I’m only loud when it’s you.”
She sees him run his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip.
“You still want to work?”
Rio looks up at her, takes in her all-too-pleased grin, and then she sees it—the moment he decides this is a competition too. Because if there’s anything he loves as much as she loves to surprise him, it’s winning.
“Like I said,” he says, reaching for his own belt, “I let you keep workin’.”
Beth can’t tear her eyes away from watching him unbuckle, unzip, and pull out his half-hard cock. Stroking himself, Rio uses his chin to gesture at the floor between his knees: an invitation.
“Are you suggesting I blow you while you sit here and balance our books?”
He hums in agreement.
“That’s our money on the line,” she challenges. “A dangerous game.”
“What, you think you’re gonna suck my cock so good I forget how to do math?”
“Baby,” she says very seriously, pulling out the pet name she uses sparingly, knowing the effect it has on him. She leans down to put her hand over his, looking him dead in the eye as she replaces his grip on his cock. “I know I will.”
Rio’s lip twitches as he tries to keep his face carefully blank, but she spots it: the way his pupils blow.
Dropping to her knees, Beth ignores how cold and dirty the cement floor is. She focuses only on the feel of Rio hardening in her hand, the blaze of his gaze on her, and the barely audible inhale he makes when she lifts his cock to lick a line from the base to the tip. He watches her carefully, fingers clenched on the arm of the chair as she places sloppy, wet kisses along his length, until finally, she wraps her lips around the head, peeking up at him. She basks in it—his undivided attention.
“Yeah, baby, like that,” he praises when she finally takes him as far as she can, fisting his hand into her curls and then gently pressing his hand on the back of her head as she bobs, encouraging her to take him still deeper. Digging her nails into his thigh in response, she feels him at the back of her throat so that her eyes water.
She doesn’t stop—just starts moaning around him.
Rio lets out a harsh pant when she gags and pulls back, swirling her tongue around the head right before she takes her lips off of him with a loud pop. A trail of saliva links her mouth and his dick.
“I thought you were going to balance the books,” she challenges, swiping at the spit so that it snaps off and pools on her chin.
“I am,” he says, and he picks up the pencil from the desk, twirling it in his fingers as she pumps him. Then he reaches out, using the pencil to brush her hair out of her face. “Just wanted to watch for a minute. You look so fuckin’ good with my cock in your mouth.”
From another man, the words might offend her—but when Rio says them, she glows, heat pooling low in her belly as she rolls his balls in her hand before she resumes blowing him. She knows how he looks at her—and it’s the same whether she’s giving him head or wearing a turtleneck sweater, whether she’s sweaty and red-faced after Pilates or she’s just opened her eyes in the morning to find him already watching her. (Plus, she can’t deny the effect it has on her when he looks up at her when he’s got his head between her legs.)
Beth revels in the sensations: his slightly salty taste, the weight of him on her tongue, the squelching her mouth makes as she slides up and down his cock. Then she hears the quiet thud of the ledger falling open and the faint sound of a pencil scribbling on paper.
Determined to make him lose, Beth takes him out of her mouth to flick her tongue along the underside of the head. His lips part and she sees his sucking his teeth. She licks at his slit. Rio grunts.
“You like that, baby?”
Briefly, his eyes flutter shut and she sees his jaw tick, but he quickly opens them, smoothing over his facial features. Ignoring her, he tries to focus on the ledger.
She continues to stroke him.
“I couldn’t concentrate all day—thinking about this.” She kisses his shaft again, runs the blade of her tongue along it. “About taking your—cock. I take it so good, don’t I?”
She watches as the eagle on his throat shifts as he swallows thickly. He refuses to look at her.
“Where do you want to come? In my mouth? Or maybe—?” She briefly pauses and slides the sleeves of her dress down, throwing her shoulders back to push her breasts up at him. Rio’s eyeline flicks downward. “Maybe you want to get me all dirty?” She takes him in her hand again and presses another kiss to his cock. “Make me walk back out across that warehouse floor—” Another kiss, sloppier, “—with your come drying on my skin underneath my dress?”
The pencil lead snaps. He must’ve been pressing down too hard. Beth grins.
“I’m going to need you to make a decision,” she says, echoing him. “Because I don’t know how much longer—”
There’s a knock at the door and Beth and Rio both whip around to stare at the source of the noise. A shadow hovers through the frosted glass and Beth freezes, hand still wrapped around his girth.
“Boss?” a muffled voice asks. “You ready to go over the new delivery schedules?”
Rio looks down at Beth, bemused.
“Told you I was busy,” he says, reaching to peel her fingers off of him. “Better get up and get your dress back on before he catches you on your knees and then the whole warehouse knows who the real boss is, huh?”
Rio huffs out a laugh like this means he’s somehow won, and Beth scowls, gripping him tighter.
“Elizabeth.”
“You let me keep working,” she reminds him—because the game had escalated while she was on the phone with Mr. Welch as he tried to explain that she’d ordered no mineral purifiers while she tried to explain that was impossible—she’d ordered at least 50.
Bent over the desk, Beth had pulled the keyboard closer and propped the phone up between her ear and shoulder, typing in her password to look up her order form when Rio had stopped fingering her. She’d glanced behind her to see him sink to a kneeling position. Before she could process it, he spread her open, licking a line up her cunt so that she’d let out a stuttered breath.
“I don’t need you to look up the order form, Mrs. Boland,” Mr. Welch had said shortly. “I’m looking at it right now—”
“Ms. Marks,” Beth had corrected, sucking in a breath as Rio’s tongue slipped inside of her, hot and wet. “And—ah—I’m looking at mine too and—” She swallowed a grunt as Rio’s hands gripped at her thighs so that his tongue pressed deep, deeper. She could feel herself leaking on his face and she might have been half-embarrassed, but Rio hummed with pleasure and she felt everything inside her pull taut. “I’m looking—and—oh—it looks like—”
She didn’t know. Whatever she had registered on the screen mere seconds before had disappeared into the ether as Rio reached up between her legs to rub tantalizingly slow circles around her clit as he tongued her. Her vision went fuzzy and the order form blurred into unreadable blobs.
Mr. Welch had tched impatiently. “Regardless, the form we received said zero purifiers so I’m afraid there’s not much we can do besides have you submit a corrected order next Tuesday, in which case...”
The rest of the words in his sentence morphed into buzzing background noise. She was going to come, she could feel it building inside her as Rio fucked her unremittingly. Her hips gyrated, squirming away from his mouth and then returning to their original position so she could grind against him. She’d bit her lip—hard—forcing a moan back down her throat.
Just a bit more—that'd had been all she’d needed—but she’d wanted it as much as she didn’t, certain that she couldn’t possibly hold herself back from crying out. She’d started wriggling away from him, practically climbing onto the desk, but Rio rose with her, and then—
WHACK.
Rio had smacked her clit—not too hard, just enough to startle, just enough to sting—and Beth had let out a “No!” at the same time that she started coming, toes curling in her pumps, knuckles on one hand turning white as she gripped the opposite edge of her desk, propping herself up on buckled knees.
“No?” Mr. Welch had asked, startled.
“Yeah, come for me, mama. Like that,” Rio had encouraged quietly from behind her, frantically rubbing her clit now to prolong her orgasm.
He licked her, grunting, pleased. Her eyes had rolled back and she could feel a second orgasm building, everything in her body tensing. She locked her jaw and covered the mouthpiece on the phone.
“You gonna squirt for me?” Rio asked at the same time that Mr. Welch pressed, “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
Muscles jumping, cunt pulsing around Rio’s tongue, Beth realized she wasn’t going to make it through her second orgasm without making noise. She had to get off the phone—and fast.
“I mean—ah—” she’d gritted through her teeth, grasping for some explanation. “No. Either you—” She licked her lips, wriggling up and away from Rio’s mouth working at her cunt, desperate for relief. But he’d kept following her, rising and then gripping her hips to lock her into place. Relentlessly, his tongue slid deeper into her, his fingers worked at her clit even faster. “Either you get me my filters tomorrow or—or—” Legs flailing, she tried to kick at Rio, but it was no use. “Or we walk.”
“You can’t be serious,” Mr. Welch had protested.
“Call me back when you have a real solution,” Beth had said, words tumbling rapidly from her mouth. Then, frantically, she’d felt around for the hookswitch button. She’d bumped against three number keys first, the beeps sounding in her ear, but finally, she’d smacked it, the dial tone buzzing out of the dropped receiver as she let go, her orgasm crashing over her like a clap of thunder. She gushed like the downpour from a storming black cloud, moaning lowly in the back of her throat.
“Fuck,” Rio’d swore, delighted. He pulled away, slapped her ass, and then massaged it gently. “Look what I do to you.”
Legs jellied, Beth had slumped against the desk, completely spent.
Beth’s brought back to the present by another rap of knuckles against glass.
“Boss?” the person on the other side of the door asks again.
“What? Think you can keep your composure better than I did?” Beth challenges, arching a brow.
Eyebrows knit, Rio’s jaw rocks—considering.
“I mean, if you can’t handle it, that’s fine. I can go—”
“Get under the desk,” Rio commands firmly. His eyes blacken.
Something inside of her sparks feverish.
Was she really going to do this? she thinks. It was one thing to have people nearby—on the other end of the phone, but in the same room? The chances of getting caught spiked up tenfold, and she felt jittery with nerves at the same time that she wanted it. It was something dangerous—something fun.
“Now.”
Beth obeys immediately, feeling more wetness pool underneath her skirt. If she were wearing panties, they’d be soaked.
Rio slides in front of her, trapping Beth in the narrow, cramped space. It’s mostly dark, her knees are aching, and Rio’s jean-clad legs and thick, hard cock crowd her. She twists her neck slightly, reaching to touch the underside of the desk. She’s going to have to be careful not to bang her head.
“Come in,” Rio calls. There’s a creak and the cacophony from the warehouse floor gets louder. The man must be about to shut the door behind when Rio says, “Nah, keep it open.”
Good, Beth thinks. It gives her a little wiggle room for how much noise she makes.
“You still balancing the books? I can come back,” the voice says. It’s deep and Beth recognizes it—their boy, Axel.
“It’s fine,” Rio grunts as Beth begins to touch him, ghosting the pad of her finger up and down his cock—teasing, tickling. “Sit.”
Carefully, Beth leans her head forward to flatten her tongue against the slit, tentative. There’s a squeak of leather when Axel sits. Then:
“Your girl here?”
Abruptly, Beth freezes.
“What?” Rio asks, voice clipped.
Axel doesn’t respond and Beth panics. She hadn’t made a noise yet. There was no way he could see her—the desk’s legs and backing went all the way to the ground. Stupidly, she was still wearing her shoes so that the backs were grinding against her heel—creating blisters, she was sure. Her dress was still half-on, bra too—so it wasn’t like she’d left a trail of evidence.
Except...
Her purse.
It was on the couch.
Axel must be holding it up.
Rio will have to lie, she realizes.
Grinning, Beth takes the head of Rio’s cock between her lips. With her finger, she gently grazes her fingernail along the underside of the shaft. Just slightly, he shifts his hips in his seat so that his chair whines.
“She’s around,” Rio confirms, offering no further explanation. There’s no way that Axel can hear it, it’s too subtle—but Beth’s ears are trained for it: the slight strain in Rio’s voice.
Beth’s so wet, she swears she’s dripping. Reaching between her own legs, Beth runs two fingers of her left hand through her slickness. Her clit throbs, swollen.
With her dominant hand, Beth encircles her fingers around Rio’s cock, and as she begins to suck him—lightly, quietly—she twists her wrist, increasing the pressure as she bobs.
“What’d she bring for dinner tonight?” Axel asks with a sniff. “Did she bring any of those banana muffins, ‘cause—”
“Let’s make this quick,” Rio cuts him off when he bucks his hips, maneuvering so it looks like he’s merely shifting in his seat. “I got shit to do.”
“Right, yeah. Okay. Here’s what I got down.” There’s a crinkle of paper being unfolded. “They’re clearing good numbers, so we’re upping the drop at Utopia Gardens to 75G’s. We’re bumping Wheeler Dealer up to 500G’s, but switching to every three weeks instead of two. Detroit Food Mart is dropping down to—”
Slowly, Beth takes him further into her mouth, grazing her teeth lightly against his skin—not enough to hurt. Just enough to startle.
It must work.
“You okay, man?”
Beth pauses.
“Keep goin’,” Rio demands, and Beth figures the instructions are as good for her as they are for Axel, so she presses on until he hits the back of her throat again, focusing on opening it so that she doesn’t gag. Saliva pools under her tongue.
“Okay, you sure? It’s just—”
“Keep. Goin’.” His voice comes out rough like gravel and it makes Beth want to moan.
Her throat must tickle him because she feels him twitch. Beth sputters. Rio covers the sound with a cough, reaching down to wrap his fingers around Beth’s wrist. He squeezes: a warning.
There’s a pause and Beth imagines Axel hesitating as above her, unseen, Rio’s jaw ticks. Or maybe he’s grinding his teeth, gripping the pencil so hard that it’s about to snap into two pieces in his other hand. The mental picture thrills her. She increases the pressure against her clit, but pulls him out of her mouth, wiping the drool from her lips as she contemplates how to break him without making noise and giving up the game.
When Rio releases her wrist, Axel continues reading off the list, confirming numbers and places—eventually the names of who is responsible for what drop. His voice fades to a dull drone in the background, the individual words indistinguishable from each other, blending in with the sound of dryer buzzers going off and shouts across the warehouse floor.
She can’t deepthroat—it’s too loud. She can’t put on a show—he can’t see her. She can’t reach his perineum—not with the way he’s sitting in the chair still mostly dressed. An idea strikes—the obvious, logical choice.
Cupping him, Beth lifts Rio’s cock to give her better access to his balls. Gently, she licks at the spot where they meet his shaft. Then, slowly, she opens wide, enveloping one of them in the warm heat of her mouth.
“...and then Cal’s got Prime and Proper—”
Rio grunts, frustrated. Beth’s cunt clenches.
“No?” Axel asks like he’s surprised by the reaction. “But I thought you said—”
“Just—” Rio’s voice is strained now. Beth suctions. “It’s fine,” he says, clearing his throat, seemingly trying to wave Axel forward.
“But—?”
A harsh breath escapes Rio’s mouth, and it might sound exasperated to Axel, but Beth knows what it is. She can feel his balls tightening, his orgasm building.
As she sucks, Beth pumps him, coaxing him closer.
Come on, she thinks, moving faster. Gripping harder.
“Boss?”
Rio doesn’t answer—not verbally at least.
“Is Cal in charge of the drop at Prime and Proper, or—?” Axel asks, confused.
“Mick.”
“Huh?”
“He’ll know,” Rio grits out shortly, shoving his hand under the desk to pull Beth’s hair. It doesn’t stop her. She sucks and jerks him off, pushing him closer to the edge, waiting to shove him off entirely. She feels her cunt flutter; she’s close too. “I got—” Beth hears the smack of Rio licking his teeth. “I gotta finish the books. Ask—Mick. Go.”
Silence. Nothing happens. Rio wraps Beth’s hair into his fist and she feels a sharp, pleasurable pain as he yanks on it—and that’s enough to tip her over, her orgasm sparking and setting her aflame.
“Out,” Rio commands Axel. There’s a beat and then Rio growls, “Now.”
There’s the sound of scrambling, the scrape of jeans against leather, the scuff of a sneaker against cement, the soft click of the door falling closed—
And then Rio’s coming.
He makes a shamelessly loud, guttural sound in the back of his throat that Beth’s never heard before.
Moving swiftly, Beth positions herself in front of his spurting cock, opening her tongue wide to catch it with her mouth—only some of it splashes on her cheek, dribbles down her chin, drips down to her heaving chest.
“Fuuuck,” Rio groans, drawing out the word as he releases Beth’s hair to lean back in his chair as she works him until the last drop of come squirts out.
Beth gets on hands and knees, pushing Rio’s legs so that he wheels backward.
Panting, he lets his head fall back on against the headrest and his eyes fall shut.
He mumbles something. Another swear word, she thinks, as he tries to level out his breathing.
She’s unspooled him.
The fact of it makes something bloom in her chest.
“Look at me,” Beth demands. He peeks open a brow, sees her crawling to him, hips swinging, face stained, her breasts threatening to spill out of her bra.
“Goddamn,” he mutters under his breath, eyes sparkling. “What a sight.”
“I won,” Beth announces, using Rio’s thighs for balance as she pushes herself up off the floor. She rubs her hands together, brushing off the dust and grime. She doesn’t even want to look at her knees—figures they’ll be blackened, then reddened when cleaned off. She’s sore.
A strangled noise escapes from Rio’s throat, turns into an exasperated laugh. “What?”
“Payback. The game. I won,” she repeats, dropping into his lap.
“You’re a mess,” he counters, as if that proves something. “All covered in my come.” He takes his pointer finger and swipes at her chin, cleaning his come off of her by pushing it between her lips. She sucks on his finger, purring as she swallows him down. “What makes you think you’ve won? ”
Her jaw drops. “Because. You were too obvious—you gave it away.”
“Nah,” Rio protests dismissively, wiping at other spots on her face to clean her up. “No way.”
“Yes,” Beth insists. “He knew.”
“He doesn’t know shit,” Rio says, pushing past her lips to make her suck his fingers off again. “If anythin’, we’re even. No way Welch didn’t know—you could barely get out a sentence. All those ahs and ums, that li’l outburst at the end—” He imitates her, voice high-pitched and falsely feminine: “‘No!’”
Her face goes hot and she yanks his fingers out of her mouth.
“He didn’t know.” Her eyebrows knit and she looks down, noticing another stray fleck of come at her cleavage. She needs a towel, she thinks, as she collects it, feeding it to Rio who wraps his hand around her wrist as he clamps his lips down on her finger.
Her cunt clenches again and—tonight? Tonight she’s going to ride him, scrape her fingernails down his chest, set a torturously slow pace until she can’t take it anymore and she chases her orgasm with abandon. He owes that to her, at least.
“How do you figure that?”
“He called back before close and agreed to send us the fifty purifiers—priority mail. No shipping charge. He even threw in five extras for free. I won.”
Rio throws his head back and laughs. “Oh, darlin’—you got all that ‘cause he liked hearin’ you all breathless and shit. Thought you were flirtin’, puttin’ on a special little show just for him to get your way—he knew.”
“How dare—”
There’s a single, solid knock at the door.
Rio runs his tongue along his lip. “Yeah?”
“Good to come in?” a gruff voice asks. Mick.
He never knocks.
Beth grins, pulling up her sleeves and pushing off Rio’s lap. She positions herself so she’s leaning against Rio’s desk, her back to the door, while Rio tucks himself back into his jeans and rezips.
“Yeah,” he calls. “Door’s open.”
“Hi, Mick,” Beth says cheerily, peeking over her shoulder at him but careful to keep her face framed with her hair—she’s not properly cleaned up yet. Can’t even imagine how wrecked she might look—besides the come still on her face, she thinks her lips are probably swollen, her cheeks flushed, her pupils still blown.
He stares back at her, eyes hollow, face blank in that way that she knows means he’s exasperated.
“What’s up?” Rio asks, drawing Mick’s eyes away.
There’s a long pause, then: “Cal’s still good to handle the Prime and Proper delivery, yeah?”
“Yup.”
Mick grunts in acknowledgment.
“Anythin’ else?”
Beth can feel Mick’s eyes boring a hole in her back. She studies her nails, tamping down a grin.
“Nope.”
“‘Kay,” Rio says, exaggeratedly casual.
For a second, nothing happens. Then Mick sighs and turns around to exit—but at the last second he announces, “I’m just—gonna leave the door open.”
A giggle erupts out of Beth as she launches off the desk, ledger in hand. Rio huffs, rolling his eyes, but she interrupts it, gripping his chin to make him look up at her so that she can lean down and kiss him.
“I won,” she reasserts when she pulls away. “Now go find me a towel while I double-check your math.”
When Beth gets home, she kicks off her shoes and immediately runs a bath, too exhausted to even think about standing on her feet and starting dinner. She’d planned on making coconut macadamia crusted salmon with a side of lemony herb couscous and roasted brussel sprouts spiced with sweet chili sauce, Sriracha, and lime juice—one of their favorite things in the rotation for kidless weeks when they didn’t have to sacrifice flavor for mass appeal—but even a simple meal like that felt like too much now.
Leaning against the jets, soaking in the bubbles, eyes closed, Beth lets the memories of today—of last week—wash over her as she lazily rubs herself to another small orgasm. She hums, content, and reconsiders her plans for tonight.
Maybe instead of riding him, she’ll make him do the work. She imagines herself face down in the pillows, Rio pounding into her from behind—or Rio standing at the edge of the bed, holding her ankles at his shoulders as she lies there and takes it. That sounds nice. She’s certainly earned it.
I’m too tired to cook, she texts Rio when she drains the tub and slips on the robe he had picked up for her randomly one day—an olive green silk kimono handpainted with pale chrysanthemums (“Reminded me of you,” she remembers him saying with a shrug—but she’d started wearing more green after that). Takeout tonight?
He’d replied quickly: I got dinner handled.
Okay then, she thinks with a shrug, wrapping her hair in a towel. She could’ve ordered delivery, but if he wanted to pick something up, she wasn’t complaining.
Or she wasn’t… at first.
He’d told her before their tryst that he’d be home in a few hours, so she’d expected him to be late, but it’s nearing nine and he’s still not home. Her stomach growls.
If he’d just let her order in, she thinks to herself, she could’ve heated up leftovers for him.
Grumbling, she hits pause on the television to reach for her phone on the side table.
“Hey Siri,” she says into the microphone. “Text Christo—”
But then she hears a key in the lock and turns her neck to see Rio pushing open the solid oak door, wiping his shoes on the welcome mat.
Her phone beeps.
“Ready to send it?” Siri asks.
“Nevermind,” Beth says, clicking the phone off and eyeing the black plastic bag in Rio’s hand. It’s small—and it’s distinctly lacking a smell.
“What’s for dinner?”
“Get dressed,” Rio tells her, dropping his keys into the key bowl on the entry table with a clink. “Somethin’ nice.”
Beth balks, brow furrowing. “Why?”
“We’re goin’ out.”
“Out? It’s nine pm—”
“And we got a reservation for 9:15, so be quick, yeah?”
“A reservation—?”
“Prime and Proper’s squeezin’ us in.”
“I don’t underst—”
But Rio’s not listening, opening up the bag to pull out a small, black box. “Wear this, okay?” He tosses the mysterious item to her and, startled, Beth fumbles, barely catching it.
“What is it?” Beth asks curiously, turning the box over. And then she sucks in a breath because—okay. It’s a set of side-tie black lace panties—but that’s not all. Ergonomic Vibrating Panty Set, the label says—and she sees a round, silicone egg that she’s apparently supposed to slip up inside of her cunt for her to wear out to dinner with him. Her throat is suddenly dry.
20 different functions of vibrations, escalations, and durations! the package boasts.
It’s missing something, though, she notices.
Gulping, she looks up at Rio. He holds up his hand, unpeeling his fingers to reveal a round black controller that had been hidden in his palm.
“This,” he says, sauntering over to her with a smirk. He leans down to kiss her, then pulls away with a tweak of her nipple, “is payback.”
Jaw falling open, Beth blinks up at him.
“Go get dressed, Elizabeth,” Rio directs, reaching beneath her chin to press her mouth shut. “Now.”
And Beth? She obeys.