the hemline rucked up as her bottom shifted back on to the desk.
He pulled his head back, breaking the kiss, and stared at her eyes, his mouth open, his breathing guttural, its rapidness keeping pace with her own. Melissa gripped his hair in both fists and drew his face down again. Fin buried his mouth in her throat, the side of her arched neck, his tongue flicking and his teeth lightly nipping.
His hands slipped down to her bottom and, more urgent now, he shifted her further back on the desk, the movement sending a pile of papers toppling to crash on the floor. Melissa clamped her thighs closed about his hips and slid both palms down his back, revelling in the smooth, broad expanse of the muscles there beneath his shirt, taut and sinuous. Crooking her fingers, she pressed her nails in, anchoring her hands.
She felt his hands leave her bottom and fumble between their bodies, heard the jangle of his belt buckle as he unfastened it and the rustle of material. She released her grip on his back with one hand and groped blindly at her own hip, finding the elastic of her panties under her rucked-up dress and pulling them down, shifting and wriggling her bottom to free them. Melissa was distantly thankful that she was wearing stockings, not tights. Fin moved his hips away as he lowered his trousers and pants and she kicked her panties off her foot, still clad in its kitten heel.
Melissa pulled Fin to her, the blood burning rhythmically through her entire body. She let him push her back on to the desk and drew him with her, feeling his hardness nudging between her legs. She was ready for him and closed her thighs around his hips once more as slowly, exquisitely, he entered her.
Fin sank down on to her, his weight pinning her to the desk. Melissa pressed her mouth and nose against his hair to stifle a cry, each thrust driving her to what she believed was the highest peak of pleasure she could bear before the next pushed her even higher. She caught his earlobe between her teeth, breathed into his ear, ‘Fin, Fin,’ and she heard his own breaths turn into gasps.
As she felt herself reaching the ultimate peak, Fin raised himself off her, supporting his weight on his braced arms, and stared into her face, his forehead sheened with sweat, his eyes on fire. Melissa let go, abandoning herself to the orgy of sensation that she’d been keeping at bay, and this time she did cry out, long and low, as helpless as if death had claimed her, tightening her legs around his waist as she watched his mouth stretch wide and felt him reach his own climax inside her.
***
They lay like that, in each other’s arms, for what seemed like an hour but must have been only minutes. Melissa was aware of a continuing flood of sensations, as though what had just happened had somehow opened the gates to a world of experience which had always been there, but which had been hidden from her by a film of ignorance. She was conscious of the slow deceleration and deepening of her breathing and Fin’s; of the hard, work-roughened wood of the desk surface beneath her back and bare bottom; of Fin’s weight, warm and solid and muscular, bearing down on her.
Just when his breathing had slowed to the point where she thought he might have fallen asleep, Fin raised his head to look at her. His eyes smiled at her. She watched them move over her features like those of an artist appreciating a painting. Then Fin lowered his mouth to hers and they kissed again, long and slow.
A thought struck her. ‘When does the cleaner come round?’
‘Eleven,’ he said innocently. She craned her neck to peer at the wall clock. It was five to eleven. Then she saw he was laughing silently.
‘She’s been already,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s going to walk in.’
Melissa slapped him lightly on the bottom, then felt strangely embarrassed. It was a curiously intimate thing to do, and despite what had just happened between them – one of the most intimate acts two people could share – she felt a certain shyness towards him still.
Slowly, unhurriedly, they disentangled themselves from each other, tidied up. Melissa stole glances at Fin’s face from time to time, caught him looking at her. There was a reserve between them that she could understand. She wasn’t used to reaching