The mall was air conditioned, so Davis had no intention of leaving for another hour or more. He got another iced tea and settled back on the bench to watch the world go by for a while.

As one of the rare graduates who’d stuck around his old college town, he’d started work at a local games company just a couple of months ago after a chain of retail jobs. Finally he was getting to put his audio engineering degree to good use, but he drew the line at working Saturdays. Instead he came to the mall, browsed for a while, chatted with any friends who passed through, and otherwise watched the world go by.

To Davis, this was no bad thing - there was something for everyone in a college town, especially in that late summer period where everyone’s used to the warmth, nobody’s overdressed, and the whitest skin tone you see outside the little cluster of goths near one end of the mall is a deep, healthy tan.

He was watching two young mothers’ butts jiggle their way down the mall in tight leggings, the women deep in cheerful conversation, and remarking to himself how if women were happy even something as simple as the way they walked was sexier, when someone dropped onto the bench beside him. Looking round startled, Davis came face to face with Chelsea.

Like many students, Davis had tried his hand as part of a college band. Chelsea had worked behind the bar at the venue for one of their five gigs, and after Davis had stayed late to help get the place back in presentable condition, the two of them had struck up a friendship. Three years later, they saw as much of each other as they did of anyone else. Each of them saw the other as a confidante, someone they could tell anything. Admittedly, since Davis changed jobs, they’d seen less of each other, and one or two of their more recent meetings had ended in harsh words.

“Hi, stranger,” Chelsea said, grinning cheerfully. “What’s up?”

Davis had had to learn, over the past three years, never to let Chelsea see his eyes travel over her body. This usually took him some doing; restraint was not his strong suit, and if she’d just been walking along through the mall, her body would have been one of the ones he chose to dwell on.

Especially in this weather; what little he’d taken in from his quick and (hopefully) subtle glances below the neckline showed a plunging neckline on a tight tee in vivid lime green and the deep blue of a denim short skirt that was one of Chelsea’s most frequent choices on sunny days. That skirt hugged the curves of her rear and her upper thighs almost as much as the lycra tee clung to her chest. Along with bright, vivid colours at the tips of her many braids, Chelsea favoured vibrant colours against her dark brown skin.

“Protective colouration,” she’d said once, with a grin, “and a little bit of standing out to attract a mate. Nobody knows what to make of me but everyone likes what they see. Believe me, there are times when that’s exactly what you need.”

Davis had smiled and nodded and bitten down the wise-ass comments that had sprung to mind. Chelsea was one of his friends - probably his best friend - and you didn’t jeopardise that.

Not deliberately, anyway.

Davis shrugged. “Not much,” he said. “Just out here to see the sights.”

Chelsea rolled her eyes; he knew she considered his behaviour objectifying. She’d said so a few times, especially lately - which he privately assumed was due to tensions in her relationship with her boyfriend. Not that she’d mentioned anything of the sort - just, well, what else could it be? A woman didn’t disapprove of how a man behaved unless her own man wasn’t doing his job.

Davis chuckled. “Seriously - not much,” he said. “Just having some quiet time. How about you?”

“Ughh…” Chelsea’s face was always so expressive, and Davis could see clearly just how frustrated she was. She wouldn’t have been at work yet, not if she was out and about mid-afternoon. Had to be something else.

He decided to show her how well he knew her. “Jesus, did Neil tell you he was going to miss your mom’s birthday next week or something?”

Suddenly she was looking at him, really looking at him. There wasn’t frustration on her face anymore; there was anger. “The Neil thing? Again?”

“Well-”

“I have told you five goddamn times now, Davis. Nothing is wrong with me and Neil. Matter of fact, he picked out a birthday present for Momma last week. She likes him, remember?”

That last bit hurt, because he knew her words had been chosen to wound. The Thanksgiving before last she’d taken pity on Davis when he hadn’t been able to book a flight back home. She’d invited him to spend the holiday with her family. Had warned him what he might be in for, and cautioned him not to bring potato salad.

Davis wasn’t exactly a great cook, but his dad had given him the family recipe for buffalo chicken wings. That turned into the dumb idea to try buffalo turkey wings, and they’d been a hit - to the point that Chelsea’s mom had never quite forgiven him for getting more compliments than her at the table. Chelsea hadn’t so much been on his side as said there shouldn’t be sides, but it had always been something she’d brought up when she wanted to tease him.

The anger in her voice as she turned their little in-joke into a weapon made him wince. All the same, it didn’t occur to him to question his belief that Chelsea’s relationship was about to fall apart. “Christ,” he said, with feeling. “Sorry. I just worry, you know?”

Chelsea sighed. “You don’t know my life better than I do, Davis. Even if you think you do.”

“…Alright, point taken,” Davis said. It was easier to back down and half apologise than try to get to the bottom of these things. “So… family issues?”

“Work, actually,” she retorted tartly. After a moment she tried a smile, but the irritation beneath was visible. “You want to guess again, or should I just tell you?”

It worked, and Davis laughed. Chelsea had always been the one who reached out and repaired things. It wasn’t that Davis was unwilling; he just never felt like he really knew how. It wasn’t like talking to another guy where you could just make jokes about it.

…Although that was what she’d just done.

“I’m going to guess they’ve somehow managed to reduce your pay and give you more hours?” he tried.

“Basically.”

Davis pulled a face. “That sucks,” he said. “This all happened when the new guy took over, right?”

“Yeah…”

By now Davis’ eyes were back to watching the crowd, confident the storm had passed. Here was one woman with a top so small that her mane of blonde hair did a better job of hiding her assets, and who by the bounce might not believe in the benefits of a bra, either; a little older than Davis’ usual type, but he’d still let her eat cookies in the bed if she wanted.

So he wasn’t watching Chelsea’s reaction when he said “You really need to quit that place.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Chelsea said with force.

The two of them had built their friendship on years of mutual mockery, but they knew each other’s tone well enough to realise when they’d overstepped. “Oh, c’mon, Chels, I just meant-”

“It’s OK for you. Your dad funded you well enough you could afford to have a couple of years of crappy jobs. You know how hard it can be to save when you’re mostly serving cheap beers and onion rings to students who don’t have the money to tip properly?”

“But there’s plenty of other bars in town-”

“Davis, have you ever worked in a bar?”

“I - no, but-”

“Maybe don’t assume you know the score, OK?” Chelsea was standing up again, hooking her bag strap back over her shoulder. “In this town you need - you know what, I’m not going to get into this.” She was talking a lot louder than she had been, and now the world wasn’t passing by for Davis to watch. Mostly it was glancing curiously at the scene and moving on, but he was very aware that a number of the women he’d been admiring were watching more carefully. Keeping an eye out for Chelsea’s safety, he knew, but - well, as well as bewilderment he could now feel the burn of embarrassment and shame.

“Chels, I’m sorry, I-”

“No. Stop.” Chelsea drew a deep breath, and she was much quieter when she spoke next. “Davis, look, you were a great guy a couple years ago, but I’ve had to grow up in the past two years, and lately I’ve been waiting for you to do the same. I really thought you getting a proper job was going to be what did it; you’d start thinking before you spoke and you’d realise me and Neil solved our problems by talking about them because you’d learn to do the same thing.”

There were tears in her eyes, and he could see that even saying this was hurting her. Which seemed somehow unfair, as the shame he’d been feeling now had guilt layering on top of it. And as a sense of helpless inevitability stirred into the mix, it blended and curdled into a petty spite.

“You’ve been one of my best friends, man! But lately it seems like we only ever catch up if I call or if we run into each other and it’s left a bad taste in my mouth every time. I think… I don’t know if it’s that you haven’t grown up or just that we’ve grown apart. And I can’t do this any more.”

She turned her back on him. Over her shoulder she said “I’m not changing my number or my email. When you’re ready to try to fix this, you can be the one who gets in touch. But whatever you try had better be good.”

She was walking away as she finished speaking. Davis’ entreaty died in his throat. He sat there for a while and watched her leave, feeling the shame and spite burning inside him.

Chelsea was most of the way out of sight when he saw her pause and dip into one of the stores. A few moments later she re-emerged with her blonde friend Sarah in tow, the two in animated conversation.

Davis hadn’t been thinking of chasing after her in any case - she was visibly angry, and even if he’d screwed up, he wasn’t dumb enough to make it even worse - but dealing with Sarah as well wasn’t in the cards. It wasn’t like Sarah hated his guts - worse, she liked him.

He couldn’t face her explaining her disappointment.

But watching the world go by had also lost its savour. Too much of the world had just watched back.

He got up slowly and slouched out of the mall in the other direction.

*

By the time Monday rolled around, Davis had decided that the worst thing about the confrontation with Chelsea had been that it had happened on a Saturday in the early afternoon, giving him a day and a half (and, worse, two whole nights) to dwell on it before work surfaced on the horizon to distract him.

It would be nice to think that Davis simply gained a little perspective over the course of the working day, putting him in a better position to address Chelsea afterward. Sadly, that didn’t happen. In fact, by the time his working day was done, he’d completely forgotten about the incident and didn’t remember until one-thirty in the morning that Wednesday, when he suddenly awoke from sleep to a vivid replay of the whole conversation.

He’d forgotten this again by the morning.

*

The Friday evening was the first time it really hit him that things had changed. En route to town after finishing at work, he suddenly realised that if he went to his usual bar, Chelsea would be on shift. Even if they tried to avoid each other, they’d have to interact. The atmosphere would be awful. Neither of them would be able to enjoy the evening.

Davis wandered aimlessly for a while, looking at his town with the eyes of a changed man. Where could he go? Where was good? His habits had fossilised so deeply in the past three years he wasn’t sure what the quality or price were like anywhere else - and while Lizard Lounge was a dive, it was his dive, and he knew it well, loving its strengths and tolerating its flaws.

If anything, the Saturday night was worse. He wasn’t in the mood to sit at home, but when he’d approached his favourite club Chelsea had been in line to get in, as had Sarah, and both dressed to kill; Neil was stood just behind them, as was Sarah’s girlfriend whose name he could never remember. Davis almost ducked back around the corner when he caught sight of them, but he stood there for a moment, trying to understand how Chelsea and Neil seemed so happy together.

Could he have been wrong?

Just as he was asking himself that, Sarah caught sight of him, flicking him her middle finger with distaste. No help to be had in that corner, then.

Davis trudged back home.

*

At work Davis had been moved off the game he was excited about as the company’s always-online co-op combat game was ramping up for another zone release. They wanted a soundscape that would suit the new zone; it had to be “exotic and alluring”, the notes said, with “a taste of danger”. It would also have to blend well under the game’s existing score.

Davis threw himself into the composition and the sound design more than he usually would have done. Here it was a chance for him to stop thinking about Chelsea, about how he might have screwed up, about how this had changed the way he saw his town, the places he felt comfortable going.

What he got most interested in was blending the sounds to the game music. One of the areas he’d enjoyed studying during his degree was the idea of the ‘subliminal cue’ that suggested the presence of sounds with much less work than needed, and he decided to experiment with this technique. That way a few relatively minor cues could do the work of a broader soundscape without a lot of extras that might clash with the music.

And, when he tried to check his facts on certain bits of the topic, that’s when Davis found himself falling headily down the wormhole of subliminals in general - a very different field. It didn’t seem particularly relevant to his job until it occurred to him that it might be an interesting way to try to drive up microtransaction purchasing.

What followed was a certain amount of experimentation. The company would definitely be in trouble if anyone diving into the code or files found anything that could be proven as a subliminal message. But perhaps without saying anything, he could create a tone series that would subliminally prime someone to be a little suggestible…

He fiddled with the soundscape almost constantly for more than a week; kept trying new idea after new idea, and as he wasn’t comfortable telling anyone what he’d done or what he planned, his best indications were if he found himself feeling strange after a playback. On one occasion he sat in silence for three minutes as his head reasserted itself. Initially he was excited about that - but it wasn’t exactly something a video gamer would gloss over without noticing.

Four weeks into the project, a month and a half past the argument with Chelsea, and the coders, graphic artists, and QAs also working on the new zone were bracing for crunch. Davis had hoped to have this finished by now, and so had his boss; she’d actually discussed with him how useful it could be for both of their careers if they had the soundscape wrapped up and finalised ahead of the official start of crunch time.

Of course, now crunch time would give Davis an excuse for not heading out into town. That made it a tempting prospect just by itself.

It shouldn’t have surprised Davis that his boss came by to talk with him, considering, but it did. As Davis had failed to learn from his last conversation with Chelsea, his estimates of how people would behave weren’t often in line with how they actually did. He got wrong-footed by that over and over again.

“Davis,” she said cheerfully. “My line manager wants me to report into him tomorrow morning with a little summary of everything my team’s managed. I’ve got reports from most of them, but then most of them I already knew what they were doing.”

Davis blinked owlishly up at her. “Oh, shit - I didn’t upload my current progress last Friday, did I?”

“Or the Friday before that,” Marina told him, smiling gently, taking the sting out of it. She settled herself into the other chair in his working room, crossing long legs that Davis bet, under the loose business slacks, were shapely. Marina’s penchant for power suits stood out in a gaming company, but it also gave her an unguessable figure - she could be skinny, slim, or a little curvy, and the way her jacket and slacks fell nobody would know - and privately Davis assumed that was why she’d chosen the suit aesthetic.

“I covered for that, because you’re still pretty new but you’ve definitely got potential for us. But this is when you have to show me I made the right call.”

Davis nodded. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll upload the progress in a minute, but-”

“Play it through first,” Marina suggested. “That way if I need to offer any notes we can both cover our asses.” Davis suddenly realised that her smile and her way of talking had misled him. Marina had all the determination and focus needed to make a success in the industry; she’d just learned to cloak it with jokes and the illusion that the two of them were effectively working together.

He probably shouldn’t have considered her a lightweight he could ignore.

He turned back to his computer, cued up the soundscape, and loaded the zone concept video the graphics department had given him at the start of the project. Then he turned back to watch Marina’s reactions, something she was already used to.

Marina was nodding along thoughtfully. From time to time she ducked her head from the visuals and scribbled a quick note on the pad she rested on one knee, and Davis knew she’d found something either to critique or ask about.

He felt the embarrassment he’d been trying to avoid kindling itself again before he even heard her opinions. Not as bad as the way he’d felt humiliated when Chelsea called him out, but the same feeling all the same - in both cases, he knew it was his own screwup that had led to this. He didn’t want to be critiqued so soon after he’d been criticised for real.

Davis wasn’t entirely sure, afterward, what led him to make the decision. But as the soundscape came to an end, he said “I’ve got one other - can I play that before we review?” And he was already turning back to his screen, prompting Marina to agree. His voice was calm, he was pretty sure his expression gave no hints; inside, though, he was so worked up he had to fight to keep from shaking.

He queued up the soundscape he’d rejected, the one that made him zone out for too long, and turned back to watch Marina. He wasn’t sure what he was watching for, and wasn’t entirely confident he’d stay alert himself, but he knew what was coming - and that would have to be enough.

Marina’s expression was fascinating to watch. As the key sequence of tones began, her gaze unfocused; the thoughtful furrows on her brow smoothed back out into placidity. Even the hand gripping her pen held it more casually. By the time the sequence was halfway through, her lips had parted into a vacant lack of expression, her eyes starting to cross while gazing at something above her head.

“It’s good work,” he told her. “My work is good. No notes.” He fell quiet then, not sure this would even work, but not wanting to push his luck in any case. He had as little understanding why he blurted out the next thing as he’d had playing the subliminal soundscape in the first place. “You’re going to stop by my place tonight.”

He’d barely finished saying it when the soundscape ended and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He sat there, frozen, knowing he’d gone too far, as Marina’s eyes refocused and homed in on him.

She decisively drew lines through her previous observations on her notepad. “Fantastic,” she said. “No notes.” A pause. “I think the first suits the project better than the second, don’t you?”

Davis didn’t answer at first. Instead he worried she’d say something about his other comment. If she’d been close enough to her right mind to register the remark, it would have been sexual harassment - probably in sniffing distance of actionable, too. But as the seconds of silence ticked by, he nodded. “Right. I’ll archive the second for now,” he said.

“Good.” Marina smiled. “Nice work, Davis.” As she headed out of his room she said “I’ll see you tonight.”

Davis sat there for a few moments longer, calming his nerves, before he wiped the sudden thin sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He was going to have to be more careful.

*

Marina pulled up to the curb and checked the address on her phone. For the fourth time since leaving the office, she wondered why she was doing this. It wasn’t done to call on other staff outside work hours, not without an invitation. She hadn’t been invited, and she was Davis’ direct superior, which made it worse.

She didn’t even have anything to discuss with him; their brief catch-up in his workspace had been perfectly satisfactory. She had the nagging feeling that some of the notes she’d made had been right in the moment, but the piece overall had been good work. She’d had no notes when it was done.

To cap it all off, she’d actually had to poke around in the employee database just to find out where Davis lived. It made no sense for her to be there. But she’d decided, all the same.

She dithered for a few moments after locking up the car, standing on the sidewalk, looking around at a neighbourhood her kids were closer to fitting in with than she was. Self-consciousness won out, though, and she made her way up to his door and rang the bell. It looked like it was a tiny place; she hoped it wouldn’t be messy.

It proved, when he opened the door and she glimpsed it from over his shoulder, to be less messy and more cluttered. Boxes piled on boxes, but were packed against the walls, standing nearly waist high. For all the world, Marina thought, this was a student apartment that had been allowed to grow up a little. Davis stood in the doorway, looking somewhere between startled and excited to see her. Silence fell, and Marina tried to find an excuse to have turned up on his doorstep that wouldn’t be cripplingly embarrassing.

“I think you’d better come in,” Davis said before she could speak. She eased in and he closed the door behind her but, she was relieved to see, made no attempt to lock it.

His front door opened immediately into a small living room. Against one wall was a bookshelf filled in part with old college textbooks and mostly with XBox game boxes, a small assortment of Funko Pops, and a couple of dusty photo frames, with a sofa parked just in front of it. Marina would bet on them being his family - important enough to be there, not important enough for him to keep them dusted. Another wall was a stack of cardboard boxes, each of them obviously crammed full, which ran from just out of one door’s reach to just out of reach of the other. The wall with the window had a computer desk, a laptop, and an expensive speaker system; the last wall had a flatscreen, an XBox, and an old, worn beanbag with the console controller and TV remote on it.

“So, Davis,” she began, searching for something - anything - that would make this visit make sense to her, if not him. “I was thinking a bit about what we listened to earlier-”

“Right,” he said hurriedly. “Me too. Um, can I just play you something quickly? I was actually working on a piece just now.”

Well, if she didn’t agree she had nothing else to talk about, so why not accept the out? “Sure,” she said.

He hit Play on his music software and headed for the small kitchen. “I’ll put some coffee on while you listen,” he said.

The piece he played her was much more like the second soundscape, the one she’d rejected. It… well, if music was all about inspiring emotional reactions, this was definitely music, but the reactions didn’t seem to make any sense. It felt like someone tapping their fingers across the top of her scalp and all down her spine, and her whole being seemed to tingle - but most especially her thoughts, which seemed to tingle and freeze as the tones played.

From the kitchen doorway, Davis said “You’re really horny. And feeling kind of kinky, too.” The ideas in what he said tingled, too, and in moments they sat among her thoughts. Marina was briefly aware that new ideas had been placed in her head, that these weren’t her own. And then Marina was just horny - really horny - and kind of kinky, her excitement and arousal triggering associations and ideas and desires that had never given her conscious mind much to think about before.

Davis continued. “Of course, you can’t try kinky shit with your husband out of nowhere. That’s why you’re here. I’m an exception to the sexual harrassment rules.”

His voice had been calm to start with, but the words shook more and more as he continued. His voice cracked nervously over ‘husband’ and he nearly stumbled entirely. It was like an actor who could almost but not quite remember his script, in the middle of a community theatre show, who didn’t have the skill to cover it up.

But the tingling ran through it all, and before long they hadn’t been words she’d heard, but thoughts, ideas, knowledge indelibly in her head.

Her vision swam a little as the piece ended, and Davis was near her. His lips were a smirk, but his eyes seemed cagey and unsure. He was holding her a coffee, and she took it; as her attention was on the mug, his other hand slid in among her hair, closing lightly into a fist just above her ear, sending delicious sensation up and down the side of her head.

She was just catching her breath when Davis pulled her in for a kiss. Her mouth opened eagerly. It was such a relief to know Davis was willing to indulge her, to help her burn off the kinky lusts she could never now take to her husband.

“Are you going to be a brat?” he breathed. “Or will you be a good girl?”

The question temporarily threw Marina. Her incipient kinks had all been fantasies hastily conjured from what she’d seen or picked up on TV or elsewhere, and with Davis as her junior, her pictures had all placed her in an experienced, commanding, dominatrix role. Suddenly, while the shiny black leather and PVC remained in place in her imagination, they were cut differently, worn on a figure with a different attitude. Her puzzled expression seemed to worry Davis, and that was something she didn’t want to do; as her fantasies re-ordered themselves, she let out a sly giggle, smiling suddenly broadly.

“I’m a good girl,” she simpered, talking to someone not much older than her own kids. “But I thought you were looking for a bad girl.” Her head still guided and held firm by his hand in her hair, she gave him a coquettish, almost challenging glance from under lashes that seemed surprisingly long when she switched from businesswoman to beauty.

“I guess you’ll have to persuade me…” she purred.

There was a sudden sharp whack as Davis brought his other hand down on her rear. Her eyes widened with shock; a moment or two later the shock resolved into a strange, fizzing delight. She practically purred “Do that again,” and then wondered where all of this was coming from.

Davis’ expression was hard to read there. Somewhere between delight and concern. He seemed so nervous, too - not at all like he should be the one taking control.

She set the coffee down before she could spill it. Then she unbuttoned her suit jacket, shrugged out of it, and, after a moment’s uncertainty, she draped it over Davis’ computer chair.

Turning back to him she was pleased to see the greedy look in his eyes; she really had been unsure this visit would be any benefit, even though she was feeling the kind of kinky-horny she’d had Davis in mind for. The jacket was specifically cut to keep lecherous expressions off the faces of her superiors, but she’d always enjoyed her husband’s attention when he could see her figure better. The same, it seemed, was true for Davis, too.

She grinned. “Do you want to take off my next layer?”

Davis’ hands were on her with no more permission. He fumbled at the buttons of her blouse, but also at everything else her jacket had concealed, discovering her soft belly and her heavy breasts. She cooed encouragement as, bit by bit, he revealed and explored her torso.

“Fair’s fair,” Marina said lightly. “Let me see you.”

He was so nervous, but he took his shirt off. He’d been as fit as many students were a couple of years ago but a slowing metabolism was starting to hit him and a paunch was forming that would become a belly soon, unless he took action. It wasn’t the sort of thing she usually went for, but Davis was where she went for kinky fun - she’d make it work, just like she was having to push him to take the reins. She smiled.

“Alright,” she said. “I’ve got an idea on how to start, if you want it?”

Davis nodded wordlessly. She took him by the hand and led him over to the beanbag, handed him the controller. “Load up something fast and frantic,” she told him as she sat him down.

She settled to her knees in front of him, eyes on the tent he’d made of his trousers. “We’re going to see how good a gamer you are, Davis,” she said, eyes glinting. “If you’re good enough, you’ll unlock Bad Girl mode in me, and I’ll take you back into your bedroom. Understand?”

“You mean… what? I’ve got to beat the game while you try and distract me?” His eyes had gone greedily back to her breasts.

Marina laughed. “Sure,” she said. “Something like that.” She put her hand on his belt buckle, eased it open, and pulled it wide. Her hand found his cock inside his boxers as the intro music to Hades began to play behind her.

“Good choice,” she smiled. She waited until he’d begun to play, already enjoying the tense hardness in her hand, before she scooped an arm under her breasts, pushing them up into a cushion, and slid up his thighs until her cleavage cradled her balls and her mouth swallowed him whole.

As she began enthusiastically to nip and suck, she could hear her effects on his attempt to play, and it brought her an extra level of joy quite aside from the charge she was getting from this.

She would count really quite poor progress as him being ‘good enough’ this time. She was looking forward to pinning him onto the bed, straddling him, and riding him to their mutual satisfaction.

Maybe he’d have something in there she could get kinky with, close at hand.

*

Davis was awake still long into the night, going over the events of the evening. They’d all been excellent, but after a moment where he’d thought he was in full control of the evening, the reins had slipped from his grasp and he’d never got them back.

He was determined to have Marina back in his home, and next time, he swore, he’d figure out what he needed to do to keep control.

Maybe he just needed to react faster…

He smiled at the idea of, next time, pinning her down more. Spanking her. Making her beg him for it, maybe with the same glassy-eyed look she had when the soundscape played. Something about the way she looked then was almost as hot as that first unveiling of her body had been.

His hand closed around his tired, protesting cock, and he began to stroke himself, just slowly, almost teasing himself, half-dreaming of Marina’s little gasps of pleasure, the way her tits bounced as she rode him, the grin that was somewhere between fawning shyness and delighted passion.

But the more he stroked his cock, the less the woman he pictured riding him was Marina. Instead it was a woman he’d never had, who he’d always thought of as a friend, and rarely had considered as a sexual being.

Davis pictured Chelsea’s disapproving frown smoothing out into that glazed vacancy. He imagined the ways he might make her forgive him. The things he might tell her she needed to do to make up to him.

And suddenly his cock wasn’t too tired anymore.