Night Work

I suppose, like for a lot of women, Fifty Shades of Grey introduced me to the world of kink. From there I ground — no pun intended — my way through Twilight, thinking that anything that popular had to be good. I was wrong. Later I graduated to A. N. Roquelaure and The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, and some Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns. Then came late nights in chatrooms, perusing Literotica and Alt Sex Stories while feeling like any moment God was going to see what I was up to and strike me blind. Later — much later — I gathered up the courage to make a profile on FetLife. I put down that I was single, female, and curious about submission. Within two weeks I had enough dick pics in my inbox to convince me not to log in at all.

It didn’t stop me from being curious, or from exploring. I would bite my lip as I read through Christina Abernathy’s Erotic Slavehood, and squirm and try not to touch myself as I imagined that those people — those slaves — might be me. Could I do that? Maybe if I had a Master as amazingly poised as Miss Abernathy. Or a Mistress. I wasn’t bisexual, but after a few nights of self-exploration envisioning a tall, black haired woman with a crimson smile and knee high leather boots… I was pretty sure I could be, given proper motivation.

Motivation was easier to come by than bravery. ‘Motivation’ kept me at my keyboard, clicking through forums and websites, my eyes wide as I read the stories of others. Lack of bravery made my fingers freeze with fear every time I clicked ‘reply’ to add my own. The other stories I had read — the ones about abusive Doms grooming underage submissives, the ones about emotional manipulation, harassment, and stalking — they lanced through me like red hot iron. Add a picture to my profile? What if someone recognizes me? Send a message to DetroitDom43? What if he’s a creep?

Silence was safer; I’d rather be anonymous than brave.

I work at a hospital. A hospital campus: a network of buildings several stories high, holding dozens of offices, laboratories, and waiting rooms. The central complex alone covers three city blocks, and the towers are connected by a spider’s web of glass skyways for pedestrians and underground tunnels for delivery and freight. Half of it is under either construction or renovation: building new additions or gutting old ones to replace 1970s avocado green with cutting-edge modern sterility. To get from Point A to Point B meant memorizing this month’s elevator and staircase closures, and going from the first floor to the sixth to detour up, over, and back down to get to the third. Working late made it infinitely worse, since many of the access badge readers shut down at six p.m.

It was seven p.m., and I was on the eighth floor, when I got to the elevator I needed. Yellow caution tape and a Temporarily Out of Service Due To Construction sign told me I’d wasted a ten minute walk.  That elevator would have taken me back down to the basement of Harolds Tower, where the archived financial records were stored — records I needed to have for Legal tomorrow. Records I should have had today, if I wouldn’t have overslept and then spent the entire day playing catch-up. Would have, should have, but now couldn’t, unless I was willing to double-back. And I wasn’t.

Harolds had a staircase, of course, and eight flights down would still be less effort than finding another elevator. I leaned on the push bar and slipped past the ‘Exit’ sign, sighing as I started my descent.

———

Sex has particular scent to it, a particular taste: an essence like nothing else. You can see it in a person’s eyes, the lust when they look at you, the way they lick their lips when they want you on their tongue. There’s a sound to it: the rush of panting breath and rhythmic thrust of flesh against flesh, with primal, grunting accompaniment.

It was the sound of sex that I noticed first, as I was coming down from the fifth floor to the fourth. I didn’t recognize it at first; another human being was the last thing I expected to encounter in a closed-off stairwell at this time of night. I slowed my steps and slid my palm along the banister. I could hear what sounded like, I thought, machinery: some sort of pulsing ventilation, the squeak of metal parts. At the top of the third floor recognition hit me like a bolt of lightning and lit up my cheeks just as bright.

Someone was fucking in the stairwell. I could hear them panting and gasping, and a feminine voice, high pitched and wanton, pleading oh yes god yes oh fuck please.

I should have turned around and left.

Instead, I stood there transfixed. I couldn’t see them, but as I held my breath and listened, I could imagine what they were doing. I imagined who it might be: a doctor and a nurse? A nurse and a patient? Whoever it was, they were having a lot of fun.

Where were they? Second floor? First? I risked moving all of three inches, to try to look down the center of the stairwell. I couldn’t see anything. Which meant they couldn’t see me, either. They had no idea I was there, a silent audience listening in.

I wet my lips – both sets, as I felt parts of me clench in sympathy while I listened to the woman beg. Maybe a female security guard and one of the construction workers. I imagined a burly, shirtless man, still in a yellow hard hat, pinning a blond policewoman against the wall. In my defense, had this been a porno, it probably would have been.

She started to wail; it echoed up and down the stairwell shaft until her moan was abruptly muffled. A hand over her mouth? Something in her mouth? The sound of bodies thumping against the wall was still clear as day. My eyes were wide open and staring at the bottom-most step as I conjured up lewd images of what must lie beyond. I couldn’t hear the man: the strong, silent type. She was anything but. The crushed cries still echoed off the walls, higher and higher pitched. I knew those sounds; I’ve made those sounds. I was eavesdropping on a complete stranger on the verge of cumming like her life depended on it.  My hand clenched down on the banister hard enough to turn my knuckles white.

And then she came. No amount of gag could hide how she screamed. I could imagine her legs wrapped around her lover’s waist, and how big and thick he must be to make her sing those praises. Her orgasm tapered off into a stuttering mess of sounds that I couldn’t understand: words or names, both or neither. The content mattered less than the contour of her voice as exhausted satisfaction left her weak. I’d forgotten how to breathe and how to blink, and my sex tightened in sympathy.

The sound of a zipper yanked me out of it, and for the first time in five minutes I had a single, coherent flash of thought: They’re going to see me! I didn’t know whether they’d come up the stairs or down them to find their chosen spot, but if I didn’t get out now, they’d hear my footsteps beating my retreat.

My heart leapt onto the back of my tongue as I forced myself to move. I climbed back up to the fourth floor, then the fifth, as quietly and quickly as I could with my blood rushing in my ears and my lungs trying to explode. I leaned on the push bar and grimaced at the sound of metal unlatching. I’d never heard anything so fucking loud in my life. I didn’t know whether they’d heard me, and I didn’t wait to find out. As soon as I was out of the stairwell I ran, and bolted for another exit.

I made it back to my office, grabbed my keys, and hurried for the parking garage.  It wasn’t until I had collapsed in the driver’s seat, heart still pounding, that I realized my panties were wet and sticky — and that I still didn’t have those files.