MR. STERLING'S TERMS

Chapter Four

NOVA

He was at the window when I walked in.

Back to me. Jacket off already, shirt sleeves rolled, hands in his pockets staring out at forty floors of city below. The Morrison file was in my hand and I'd told myself the whole walk down the corridor that this was professional, that he actually needed the Morrison file, that I was going to hand it over and go back to my desk and be a functional employee for the remainder of the working day.

He turned around before I finished the thought.

Looked at me.

Locked the door.

One smooth motion — hand behind him, thumb on the lock, eyes never leaving mine — and the click of it filled the office like a gunshot and my professional narrative dissolved completely.

"Mr. Sterling—"

"Did I tell you to talk?"

My mouth closed.

He crossed the room. Took the Morrison file from my hand without looking at it and dropped it on the desk and kept walking, kept coming, until he was behind me and his hands were on my shoulders and his mouth was at my ear and his voice was so low I felt it more than heard it.

"I've been thinking about something since Monday," he said.

"What," I breathed.

"Bending you over that window."

My cunt clenched so hard I audibly gasped.

His hands pushed my blazer off. Dropped it. Moved to my blouse buttons from behind — slow, one at a time, working down while his mouth stayed at the side of my neck — and I stood in the middle of his office and let him undress me and looked at the floor-to-ceiling glass ahead of us and the city spread out beyond it and understood what he meant.

Forty floors up.

The opposite tower sat close enough that anyone at those windows could see directly into this office. I'd noticed it my first week. Noticed the way the glass faced glass, close enough that on clear days you could see people at their desks in the building across.

Today was a clear day.

He pushed my blouse off my shoulders.

Unclasped my bra.

His hands came around and cupped my breasts from behind and I dropped my head back against his shoulder and felt his cock hard against my lower back through his trousers and his thumbs rolled over my nipples and I made a sound that was embarrassingly loud in the quiet office.

"Walk to the window," he said.

"Someone will see—"

"Walk to the window, Nova."

I walked to the window.

Stood in front of it. Bare from the waist up, the city sprawling forty floors below, the glass cold against my fingertips when I reached out and pressed my palm to it. Across the gap the opposite tower's windows glinted in the late morning light. I could see a man at a desk on what looked like the fourteenth floor of the building facing us. Another person moving behind glass two floors above.

Dominic appeared behind my reflection.

He unzipped my skirt and pushed it down and off and then my underwear followed and I was standing naked against forty floors of glass with the city below me and the morning light on my skin and anyone in that opposite building who happened to look up was going to see everything.

The thought made my cunt drip down my inner leg.

"Hands on the glass," Dominic said.

I put both palms flat on the window.

He ran one hand slowly down my spine — vertebra by vertebra, unhurried, deliberate — and then pressed between my shoulder blades and bent me forward until my forehead nearly touched the glass and my ass pushed back toward him and the city was directly below my face forty floors down.

I heard his belt.

His zip.

His hand pushed between my legs from behind and found my cunt soaking and he made a low satisfied sound. "Every time," he said quietly. Like he was noting it. Filing it. "Every single time."

He pushed two fingers inside me and I groaned against the glass and my breath fogged the surface in front of my face. He worked me fast this time — no patience, no deliberate thoroughness, just hard driving fingers that found the spot that made my knees buckle and hammered it until I was shaking and crying out against the glass and my palms were slipping and I came in under three minutes standing naked against his office window with the city watching.

He didn't give me a second to recover.

His cock pushed against my cunt from behind and drove in deep in one stroke and I screamed.

Not loud — the sound punched out of me and hit the glass and bounced back but it came from somewhere real, somewhere deep, the specific sound of being filled so completely and so suddenly that your body simply reacts before your brain can manage it. His hands gripped my hips and held me against the glass and I pressed my forehead to the cold surface and felt every inch of him buried inside me and shook.

"Don't move your hands," he said.

I kept my hands on the glass.

He pulled back and drove in again and the glass fogged with my breath and my nails scraped against the surface and below us the city moved in its ordinary morning rhythm, taxis and pedestrians and a thousand people who had no idea what was happening forty floors above their heads.

He fucked me against that window like he'd been planning it since Monday.

Long deep strokes at first that dragged against every nerve inside me, pulling almost all the way out and driving back in to the hilt, his hips snapping forward each time with a force that made the breath leave my body. I pressed my palms harder against the glass and pushed back to meet every stroke and heard him make a sound behind me that was low and rough and real — the sound of a man who was done being controlled, who had burned through the composure and was left with nothing but want.

I looked at the building opposite.

The man at the desk on the fourteenth floor had turned in his chair.

He was looking directly at us.

The knowledge hit me like electricity. My cunt clenched so hard around Dominic's cock that he cursed out loud — sharp and unguarded, the most undone sound I'd heard from him — and his grip on my hips tightened to the point of bruising and his rhythm broke and drove harder.

"Someone's watching," I breathed.

"I know." His mouth found the back of my neck. "Let them."

I came apart.

Completely. Violently. My whole body shaking against the glass, my cunt clenching and releasing around his cock while I cried out at the city below and my palms squeaked against the fogged surface and Dominic drove into me through every wave of it without stopping, without slowing, without mercy.

He came a minute later.

Deep inside me. His whole body shuddering, his forehead dropping to the back of my neck, his cock pulsing as he emptied himself with a broken sound that he pressed into my skin.

After.

The city below. Both of us breathing.

My forehead still against the glass. His chest against my back. The window fogged around my handprints.

I looked at the fourteenth floor of the opposite building.

The man at the desk had his phone out.

I laughed. Actual laugh, surprised out of me, and Dominic made a sound against my neck that was almost a laugh too — brief, low, real.

"He's taking a photo," I said.

"Let him keep it." Dominic straightened. Dealt with the condom. His hands found my waist and turned me gently around to face him and he looked at me — flushed, naked, fogged handprints behind me against forty floors of city — with something in his expression that wasn't composure and wasn't professional and wasn't managed.

Something else.

Something that looked like the beginning of a problem neither of us had budgeted for.

He picked up my blouse from the floor. Held it out.

I took it.

"Morrison contracts," he said. Voice almost even. Almost.

"You dropped them on the desk."

He looked at his desk. At the Morrison file lying where he'd dropped it without looking at it. At two hours of my morning's work he'd had absolutely no intention of discussing.

"I'll review them myself," he said.

"Dominic."

"Mm."

"Was there ever anything wrong with the Morrison contracts?"

He straightened his tie. Picked up his jacket. Looked at me with those dark eyes and the corner of his mouth moved.

"No," he said simply.

I stared at him.

Buttoning my blouse with shaking hands and staring at this man who had just bent me over his window in full view of the building opposite and was now standing there looking like he'd spent the last twenty minutes reviewing documents.

"You are an extraordinary problem," I said.

"I've been told." He sat down at his desk. Opened his laptop. "Lunch at twelve-thirty. I'll need you to book Caruso's."

I picked up the Morrison file.

Walked to the door.

Unlocked it.

Paused with my hand on the frame and looked back.

He was already working. Eyes on his screen. Completely composed. Not one hair out of place.

The man from the fourteenth floor opposite was probably still watching.

"Caruso's," I said.

"Table for three," he said without looking up.

Three.

I looked at the back of his head.

"Who's the third?" I said.

He looked up then. Found my eyes across the office. And the almost-expression did something different this time — not the controlled almost-smile, but something quieter. More complicated.

"My daughter," he said.

The door handle was cold under my fingers.

"You have a daughter," I said.

"Twenty-three," he said. "She's just moved back to the city."

He looked back at his screen.

I stood in the doorway of his office with the Morrison file and my fogged handprints still visible on the window behind him and the specific, cold, clarifying knowledge that lunch at Caruso's at twelve-thirty was going to be the most complicated meal of my life.

"Nova." Without looking up.

"Yes."

"Close the door."

I closed it.

Stood in the corridor.

Twenty-three.

My age exactly.