He comes up behind her while she’s brushing her teeth and starts kissing her neck. She’s only wearing a tank top and underwear and can feel him already half hard pressing into her.

            “Jim, come on,” she sighs, but doesn’t push him away.

            “What? Future Miss Corporate doesn’t have time for the little people anymore?”

She raises her eyebrow at him in the mirror. His hands are on her waist and his mouth is still on her neck. “I thought you were gonna get the job?”

“It occurred to me that you have charm on your side.” Her head starts to hurt because he’s saying all the wrong things but his hands are sliding under her shirt over her stomach and his breath is in her ear.

He’s almost changing her mind, but she has to spit. No one feels sexy when they spit. “Jim,” she repeats it again and he takes a step back, lets go of her. She spits quietly into the sink and rinses her mouth.

“What’s the matter?” He has that look in his eyes. Like he might actually care what the answer is, but he doesn’t care enough to hear it. She decides to voice the lesser of her two concerns, lest he confirm her fears on the worst.

“Michael,” it sounds stupid immediately and she wants to take it back.

Especially now that he’s laughing at her. It doesn’t feel jovial, it kind of stings.

“Michael is the matter? Your secret crush on him rearing its head?”

She brushes past him quickly so he can’t see her scowl. Secret crushes aren’t really on the list of sweet talk for anyone, much less them. “You remember what he said in the break room.” She throws back the covers to the hotel bed and sinks between the too-starched sheets. He follows behind her.

“What, that we’re gonna do it?” He looks amused and she kind of wants to cry.

“Yes. And if we do, Michael will be right and he’ll know and I don’t want Michael to think about us having sex.”

She rolls so her back is to him. If she does start to cry, she doesn’t want him to know. He spoons up behind her and his hands are around her waist, fingers slipping under the hem of her tank and snapping the elastic on her panties gently.

Sometimes when he touches her she feels like maybe he might-- like he could one day-- so she presses back into him.

His lips are next to her ear, breathing gently but quickly. “But, if we don’t,” his hands rolls around her sides and up the back of her shirt, running back down till he’s resting on her hip, stroking his thumb. “He’ll still think that we did. So, we might as well.”

            “It’s just, sometimes he says things and I think that you’re going to stop him, but you don’t.”  She hopes that he mistakes her wispy breaths for arousal and not sadness.

            “Like what?” His hand is moving again over her stomach, up over her ribs and he cups her breast gently. She presses back into him harder because she still can.

            “Like right after the flasher, and he said that thing about seeing me from behind. And then just today, when he was talking about mooning each other, he was staring at me Jim.”

            His hand moves from her chest to her hip to her ass. He squeezes gently and she sighs despite herself. “I didn’t notice that,” he kisses behind her ear. She’s probably reading too much into that statement, she assures herself. “But you have a really great ass, so,” his hips press into her and he’s all the way hard now, “It’d almost be a crime of him not to notice. Seeing as he’s the self-proclaimed connoisseur of women.”

            His fingers hook the waistband and he tugs the fabric down gently over her thighs and past her knees. She doesn’t want to, she doesn’t want this. Not right now. But she doesn’t speak up.

            His knee presses between hers and she lets him because maybe if she could just give enough he wouldn’t need to love—no, she didn’t mean to think that, she meant to think like—someone else.  

            He pushes inside her slowly and she pushes back. His hand is still gripping her ass when he starts to move. He grunts quietly in her ear and hits that spot and she whimpers. His hand snakes around and he rolls heavy circles over her until she’s bucking back into him and coming. He follows right after her.

            He rolls onto his back not long after and she creeps into the bathroom, as quietly as if he were asleep.

            When she gets back to the bed, he’s waiting for her, throwing back the sheets so she can climb in next to him. She curls up into him and he kisses the top of her head.

            It’s one of the nicest days that they’ve ever had, but she cannot shake the feeling that it’s more of a goodbye kiss than anything else.