Page 45 of Due Diligence

“Cassie,look at you,” I said. Hastily, never stopping my hand against her pussy, I kissed a path up her bare breasts, along her throat, and up to her lips. “Look at you.” I kissed her. “Pierced tits out, letting me fuck you with three fingers. You’re shameless. Do you like it like this?”

She wrapped her arm over the back of my neck, hooking her elbow around me. Nearly mindless, she kissed me again, nodding as she did it.

“You like being open for me like this? Exposed for me in a club? You would have let me fuck you out there, wouldn’t you? Right on the dancefloor.” I pressed my thumb harder against her clit, massaging it as my fingers pumped in and out of her.

“I’d let you take me anywhere,” she responded, panting now. “Marcus, it feels so good…”

“Go over the edge for me,” I murmured. I nipped her lower lip once and darted back down to take her nipple in my mouth again. “You want to. Your pussy is dying for release, Cassie. Come on my hand. Come for the guy you hate so much.”

I gave her nipple a hard suck, tonguing her piercing. At the same time, I flattened my thumb against her clit as I curled all three fingers in her pussy back towards me, pressing on the top of her canal. Seconds later, her body tightened. I heard her inhale sharply and she held her breath for several seconds.

Suddenly, Cassie threw her head back, banging it against the mirror over the sink. She didn’t seem to notice. She cried out, coming hard around my fingers. Her hips thrusted against my hand, begging me for more. I didn’t stop pumping. I kept going, working my fingers in and out of her until the pulsing against my hand subsided.

When she was done, she pressed her forehead against my shoulder and murmured, “I hate you for that.”

Chapter 13: Cass

The ride home from Shelf Atlas was an out of body experience. Or it was at least what I imagined an out of body experience would feel like. I wasn’t necessarily “looking” at myself as I sat in the back of an Uber, window open in the middle of the night because I couldn’t tell if I was drunk, horny, sated, or even hungry for that matter. I was just a thrumming mix of bewilderment and excitement—as far as I could tell.

After I came, Marcus lowered me down from the sink, fixed my clothes, kissed me so hard I forgot my own name, and called me a car. Then he walked me outside of the club and proceeded to wait with me.

While we waited, he bummed a cigarette off the bouncer and we passed it back and forth. To my surprise, the silence was comfortable. It gave me an opportunity to study him in the blue cast off from the Shelf Atlas sign and the dim light from the streetlamps that dotted the sidewalk where we stood. He was handsome in that moment. Quiet, unassuming—more like theguy I briefly knew back in college. I found it hard to reconcile them: Marcus fucking Fitz, the shy kid who used to study during dinner in the dining hall, and Marcus Fitz, the COO of Libra who just uttered an impressive string of filthy declarations while he fingered me in a nightclub.

He was studying me too, his green eyes lingering on me as he dangled that cigarette between his lips. His gaze traveled over my face and lower, along my body. I wondered what he was thinking about. I wondered if he was remembering the sight of my bare breasts and wet pussy. I wondered if he would remember them tomorrow.

I knew I would. I would remember every second of it.

Once we smoked the cigarette down to the filter, he threw the butt on the sidewalk and gestured for me to come closer. It was a beckon with one hand, casual and commanding. It was entitled and presumptuous. I didn’t care. Of course, I obliged. My body was still pulsating from my climax and I just couldn’t stop staring at that beautiful mouth of his. When I was close enough he pulled me into his arms, wrapping both of them around me and warming me in his embrace. He smelled like beer, weed, cigarettes, and my lipstick. And when his lips touched mine again, the entire world melted into a blur around me as I surrendered to his kiss. Even though I was nearly delirious with lust, I somehow knew with total clarity that I needed more of him.

Instead, he put me into the car alone and told me he would see me at work on Monday. I could have strangled him for that. But instead I found myself nodding and leaning out of the open car window so he could kiss me one last time.

In the car, I found my head throbbing with confusion as the aftershocks of my orgasm began to fade. I had just fooled around with Marcus—Marcus Fitz. Marcus fucking Fitz. A guy who shamelessly attempted to get me fired. A guy who passiveaggressively tried to drive me out of his office. A guy who today pissed me off so much that I went to a nightclub to screw a stranger because I was so pent up with frustration.

I wasn’t sure where my self-respect had gone, but I assumed she was on a raging bender with my common sense and impulse control.

When I keyed into the apartment, the living room was empty. I contemplated stopping by Bethany’s room to talk to her, but I didn’t know what I would say.Hey, remember that guy who was trying to sabotage my career? Yeah, I just spread my legs for him in a nightclub bathroom.

Abathroom.

***

I spent most of the night thinking about Marcus, begging sleep to find me. Sleep had always been my fickle mistress. She didn’t make an appearance until the early hours of the morning, when I had already replayed the bathroom encounter three times. When my alarm went off, my head was aching and my body felt impossibly heavy. Saturday was a lost cause.

Sunday was more of the same. I had errands to run and people to see, but still I found myself thinking about Marcus. His lips. His hands. His words. At brunch with some friends from business school, I completely lost track of the conversation because I was so preoccupied with the memory of his fingers pulling on my nipples. I then accidentally ordered myself a third bloody Mary, which was disastrous because I somehow associated the taste of alcohol with Marcus. And in a cruel karmic twist, I went home, collapsed on my bed, and ended up dreaming about that bastard.

By the time Monday rolled around, I wasn’t sure how to describe my feelings. This was unchartered territory. I was aone and done kind of girl. That was my thing—and I loved that about myself. That flippancy let me enjoy countless men without regret, shame, guilt, or longing. It was always just sex—no more and no less. So the fact that I was developing a borderline obsession with a guy who I hadn’t even slept with was nothing short of a catastrophe.

I needed to put a stop to this. Immediately.

He was there, of course, when I arrived at the office early in the morning. I entered through the front door and turned right, where he was the first thing I saw. The overhead light in the conference room shone down on him, where he was sitting at the table already working away on his laptop. He didn’t see me. Or maybe he did and he pretended not to. Both possibilities annoyed the hell out of me.

“Morning,” Marcus said when I walked into the conference room. To my chagrin, when I heard the sound of his voice my stomach felt like I was sitting in a car going from zero to sixty in three seconds flat.

“Hi,” I responded, as I rolled my chair back and dropped my tote onto it. “How was the rest of your weekend?”

“Pretty good.” He typed as he spoke and I noticed he still hadn’t looked at me. “What about you?”

I paused. I could tell him the truth: I spent all weekend thinking about his fingers in my pussy and his lips sucking so hard on my breasts that I had no fewer than three hickeys on them. But his tone couldn’t have been more blasé. To be honest, I’d had hotter conversations with my dermatologist. So, instead I lied and said, “It was fine.”

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