Becca Mercer whispered the warning inside the dark storage closet where she and her co-worker had escaped from the drudgery of their jobs to enjoy their dirty little secret in private. But even as they basked in the afterglow of their illicit act, she knew what she was saying was pointless. It wouldn’t be long before their sordid desires roared to life again. Those desires—nay, those needs—seemed to have lives of their own. For now, though, she lay back and relaxed, closing her eyes to better enjoy the pure satisfaction that curled through her.
She wouldn’t trade anything for these stolen moments with Turner. And she was so lucky to have someone like him, someone whose appetite for such forbidden behavior were as relentless as her own. With his blue, blue eyes and unruly black hair, he was wanted by many women. Leisurely, sensuously, she ran a hand through her own shoulder-length, tawny tresses, loving how the scent of their recent act still lingered there.
They often met in the tiny, cramped closet at the end of the hall, whenever the pull of their shared passion was too much to resist. Out of nowhere, the two of them would glance up from their cubicles opposite each other in the offices of Englund Advertising, and their gazes would meet, and they’d know they had to get in a quickie now. Sometimes, especially if they were working under the strains of a deadline, they’d have to escape to this closet three, four, even five times a day. That was how desperate they became.
“We have to stop sneaking around this way,” she added softly, knowing it was true, even if she dreaded putting a halt to their workday trysts. “What if someone catches us? What if someone finds out what we’ve been doing?”
“What if someone does?” Turner whispered in reply. “I’m tired of hiding it, anyway. We’re consenting adults, Becca. We’re responding to a natural impulse, that’s all.”
“It’s not natural,” she countered. “Not when it’s as strong as this. And we’re not responding to it, we’re…we’re succumbing to it. What happens to us is way too powerful to be a simple response.”
He murmured a satisfied sound and nudged her knowingly. “Yeah, and that’s just the way I like it, baby.”
“But we have to stop,” she insisted again. “It could cost us our jobs. And it could hurt us both in our personal lives. It’s getting dangerous.”
“It may be getting dangerous,” he agreed, “but you can’t stop any more than I can. We’ve tried, Becca. You know we have. But we always end up doing it again. It’s consumed us ever since that first time when we were teenagers. There’s no way we can stop. We’re both insatiable.”
True enough, she thought. Because she knew Turner McCloud as well as she knew herself. They’d become friends in first grade, when their shared last initial had landed them close together in classroom seating arrangements. And they’d discovered an immediate connection when both brought peanut butter and banana samwidges in their identical Star Wars lunch boxes. Year after year, thanks to the popularity and convenience of alphabetization, they’d ended up together, and over the years, their friendship grew.
Frustrated as teenagers by the restraints and conventions of small-town Indiana life, they’d experienced the usual adolescent flirtations with wild behavior. But one behavior in particular captured and enraptured them, and they’d enjoyed it as often as they could. Knowing they shouldn’t, they’d nevertheless been unable to resist. But they’d told no one about it, fearful others would try to make them stop. After high school, they’d attended Indiana University together and, away from parental supervision, discovered their compulsion only grew. As adults, they’d found work in Indianapolis just so they could stay together, and in an urban environment more tolerant of such things, they’d found innumerable ways and places to indulge their desires.
Unfortunately, their workplace wasn’t one of them.
However, that didn’t keep them from indulging here.
“Remember the first time?” Turner asked now, his voice slicing through the darkness the way it had that first night they’d been so overcome as teenagers. His voice became more rushed, more agitated as he added, “It was so forbidden, and we knew we shouldn’t. Everybody warned us about the dangers, told us we were too young, and we wouldn’t be able to handle it. But we more than handled it, didn’t we, Becca?” he murmured enthusiastically. “And it was so good that first time, we had to do it again right