เธอปิดสัญญาด้วยร่างกายของเธอ — Chapter 4 The Top Floor

Chapter 4 The Top Floor

Tuesday's meeting was cleaner than Monday's. Han Yu had gone over to the shareholders. Lawyer Pei and Lu Chen came. Jiang Ruoxue let Zhou Heng read the structure aloud and only set the hammer down where it mattered. Payment moved from the thirty, forty, thirty she wanted, through the forty they wanted at the start, and in the end both sides wrote thirty-five, thirty-five, thirty into "provisional," with a note that nothing was a promise until the price closed. The relics stoppage was still sixty against ninety. Price was only brushed, out loud, as a range. She said the band the board could discuss in earnest sat a little above one and a half billion. He said that if Yanbei meant to live, it would be hard to fall very far below the middle of the one-point-fives. Neither sentence was written into the minutes. When they closed they shook hands. The length of the handshake was ordinary. Both palms were hotter than yesterday. She let go first.

The rest of the daylight she spent on the bank and on her father. On the phone Jiang Guoliang asked what sort of goods Yanbei really was. She said the goods were uneven, and the negotiator was a man who could hear a human sentence. Her father snorted and told her not to let a man who could hear a human sentence hold her up. A bank did not eat human sentences. She said she understood, and then left her father's urging outside the office door.

At eight forty in the evening Lu Chen appeared on the forty-first floor of Jiangcheng Tower. The desk downstairs had closed. Security had checked the visitor's name and sent the elevator to the top. Her office took the whole river face of glass. By day you could see the cranes and the barges. At night only lights. The sofa was dark, long enough for a person who did not mean to sleep. On the desk lay the papers on Cai Shufen and the Zhou steel shed, and beside them a plain massing model. The seven old warehouses had been cut down to blocks of wood. A green pin stood where the camphor was.

"Only these," she said, and shut the door. Said it for herself and for him.

"All right." He set a paper bag down. Inside were scans of the electricity bills and two versions of the relics clause. He took the coat off. Still the shirt. Cuffs rolled to the forearm. The tendons clear under the lamp.

They did talk. Whether the Zhou client list could be priced on its own. If Cai Shufen chose money instead of a place, how the timetable should be written so it did not read like a driving-out. Lu Chen opposed the word "proper," which sounded kind and, in use, meant nothing. Jiang Ruoxue agreed to strike it. She stood at his side and showed him, on the model, where the drain and the roots conflicted. He bent to look. His shoulder almost touched her breast. Both of them stopped. Neither pretended not to have felt it.

"The clauses are still on the desk," she said.

"Mm."

"I want to touch you. Not once, this time. I've decided. The decision covers tonight only. It does not cover the price. It does not cover sixty days or ninety. If you bring tonight into tomorrow's room, I will take it that I read the man wrong."

Lu Chen straightened. He looked at her whole, from the eyes to the buttons and back to the eyes. He did not smile.

"I need you to say it plainer," he said. "What do you want me to do."

"Kiss me. Undress me. Have me. Until I call a stop, or until both of us have had enough." Jiang Ruoxue's ears burned. The sentences stayed whole. "My husband is on a dig. This is my choice, not an opening you arranged. You didn't deceive me. I am not drunk. If you have a condom, use it. If you don't, we stop inside the clothes."

From the inner pocket of the coat he took a thin square packet and set it on the corner of the desk. Not into her hand. As if leaving her the space to refuse.

"Bought last night," he said. "Out of hope. Not because I had decided you would call me up. Tell me to go now and I go. The thing can stay in your rubbish as one extra piece of evidence."

She looked at the packet. She looked at him. Then she caught the front of his shirt, pulled him in, and kissed him.

The first kiss was not practiced. Their teeth touched, lightly. She laughed, short, and the laugh was taken into his mouth at once. His mouth was hotter than she had imagined. The lip a little dry. The tip of his tongue, coming in, paused at the line of her teeth as if it were asking. She opened. The opening was plain. No whisky. No rain. Only the lamp and the paper. His hand held her jaw. His thumb passed across the lip that had kissed his palm the night before. She heard a sound in her throat that was not a negotiation.

"You can go on," she said in the space of the kiss.

His hand slid from the side of her waist to her back and drew down the zipper of the skirt. The parting of the metal teeth was a fine sound. The suit skirt fell to the bend of her knees. She kicked it off. The white shirt was still on. Under it a nude bra, not chosen for anyone, an ordinary choice of the morning. The ordinary made her barer. Lu Chen's palm covered her breast and kneaded through the cloth. His thumb found the nipple already hard and pressed, not light, not heavy. Her waist went soft. Her forehead came against his shoulder.

"Here. You may," she said.

He undid the bra. In the conditioned air her breasts tightened a little. He bent and took one into his mouth. The flat of his tongue circled the nipple, then he sucked. Jiang Ruoxue's hand went into his hair. Not to push him away. The other breast he tended with his fingers. The pads were callused. When the callus crossed the nipple the top of her thighs tightened, and the wet turned into something she could not ignore. She swore, very softly, and the tail of it shook.

"The sofa," she said. "The desk is all originals."

He did look once at the originals, as if her sentence were an order, and then he took her to the sofa. The detail made her want to bite him. She bit, at the underside of his jaw, not hard. He breathed out, low. For the first time the voice was not entirely governed.

She pushed his shirt up. His chest and belly were solid. Not a display. A shape thirty-six years had lived into. A pale scar crossed the lower belly. Her fingers followed it. He caught her wrist and kissed her palm, an answer to the night before. Then he knelt on the carpet and opened her knees. The underwear matched. The center had already darkened. He did not pull it off at once. His thumb pressed the seam through the cloth and rubbed, slow. Jiang Ruoxue's head rested against the back of the sofa. Her eyes stayed open. She looked at the ceiling light, at his hair, at her own legs open beside his shoulders.

"Lu Chen."

"I'm here."

"Look at me while you do it. Don't take me for a sheet of paper that gets wet."

He looked up. Under the lamp the deep brown was bright. "You aren't paper. You are Jiang Ruoxue. If you don't want it, say so now."

"I want it. Take the cloth off."

He drew the underwear down. The movement was steady. Leaving her, the cloth pulled a thin clear strand. She saw it. She went red from the roots of her ears to the collarbone. He offered no remark. He only kissed the inside of her thigh. The stubble was not fully through. It scraped, and she shivered. Then he kissed farther in. The tip of his tongue traveled first, slowly, along the parting of her labia, in no hurry to push inside, as if making her acquaintance. When he found her clit he pressed with the flat of his tongue and sucked, lightly. Jiang Ruoxue gripped the sofa. The pleasure came straight and fast. The instinct to close her legs met his shoulder. One hand held her hip. The index finger of the other wet itself at her entrance and went in, slow. Inside she was hot and tight and took the finger. He bent the knuckle, found the slightly rougher place toward the front, and kept his tongue on her clit. The two moved together.

"There," her voice broke. "Don't move off it. Deeper. Slower. Yes."

She rarely commanded like this. With Lin Hao she had more often received. Receiving had held pleasure too. Only the pleasure had often come modestly, and after the modesty they slept, or he had a plane. She did not want modesty now. She said the requirement. Lu Chen followed it. The rhythm was steady almost to the point of cruelty. Heat stacked in layers. Her lower belly drew in. Her toes curled. The insides of her thighs began to shake. She said she was going to come. He said come. The word fell on the most sensitive place. When the orgasm arrived she bit the back of her own hand. Her vagina clenched his finger in pulses. Her clit jumped under his tongue. Sound spilled, and she pushed the sound down, remembering that though this floor was empty the elevator shaft would still carry it. The pushed-down sound was rougher.

He waited until she eased before he drew the finger out. He kissed her belly. He wiped the wet from his face on his own shirt sleeve. The gesture was foolish, and it was sincere. She looked at him. Her chest was still rising and falling. She reached for his belt.

"You as well," she said. "I want to see you. Come inside. Put it on."

When he stood and the zip came down, his cock sprang free, fully hard, the color deep, the head wet. The size tightened her throat. Not from fear. Her body already knew it meant to take him. She helped roll the condom from the tip to the base. Her palm felt him jump. His breath broke once. She liked that once.

"How do you want it," he asked.

"You sit. I want to come down on my own."

Lu Chen sat, his back to the sofa. She swung a leg over. Her knees sank into the cushion. One hand on his shoulder. The other held him and set the head against herself. She was wet there, and sensitive, just come, trembling at a touch. She lowered herself slowly. Being filled took a long time. She stopped twice and let her body open. When he was all the way in, both of them let a breath go. Her forehead to his forehead. Nose to nose.

"Move," she said. "Let me, first."

She lifted and came down. Slow at the start. Each stroke took him to the root. The condom dragged a little. Her own wet soon made it easy. Her clit rubbed his lower belly. She changed the angle so that point met every time. Lu Chen's hands held her waist and did not steal the rhythm. His thumb circled in the small of her back. He watched her breasts move with her, watched the lip caught in her teeth, and now and then rose to meet her, the force just enough to heat the rims of her eyes.

"You're hot inside," he said. The voice was low. The words were clear. "You grip me until I don't look decent. I want to watch you come again. May I."

"Yes. Touch me."

His thumb found her clit and rubbed while she rose and fell. The two together, and soon she was standing on the edge again. The office light was too bright. For a moment she did not want it that bright, and she did not tell him to kill it. She wanted herself seen. The second orgasm ran longer than the first. She shook where she sat on him. Her vagina sucked, tight. Her mouth opened. She said his name. There Lu Chen's endurance broke. He took her by the ass and thrust up, deep and dense. The sofa made a small sound. He asked if he might. She said yes, come, I want you to come. His face went into the side of her neck. A low sound tore out of him. His whole body locked, and he released in surges. She felt him jumping inside the condom. She felt his fingers nearly sunk into the flesh of her ass.

They stayed like that a long time. The air-conditioning became something she could hear again. A boat on the river. Light crossed the glass and vanished. Her legs began to ache. He helped her lift. When he slipped out, both of them made a small sound. He knotted the condom, wrapped it in a tissue, and put it into the waste bag she indicated, the one the cleaners would not open by mistake. The tidying was so ordinary it stung the bridge of her nose. Ordinary meant she was not a woman left in a wreck on the floor.

She put his shirt on and went barefoot to the washroom to clean herself. In the mirror her mouth was swollen, her eyes wet, a faint red mark on the collarbone. Thirty-four. Not an age at which someone else takes your judgment. She pressed water to her face. When she came back to the sofa Lu Chen had his trousers on again. His hair had been pushed back with a hand. He still looked like a man just undone.

"The clauses are still on the desk," she said.

He smiled, brief. "Do you want to correct them now, or do you want me gone."

"Correct them, then go. The base figure for compensation in the Zhou line. The version I had Ma Chi run this afternoon has a decimal wrong. If you've seen it, say so."

He sat down and looked. Three minutes. The pencil point stopped on a row. "Here. The thousands. Out by a hundred and twelve thousand. Not the hundred and ten you named on Monday. Another hundred and ten. Fix it, and the Zhou number can carry the moving period you want."

Jiang Ruoxue leaned in. The hem of the shirt came to the middle of her thighs. She knew he could see. She did not hide this time. She corrected the figure. Their heads were close. Breath met on the paper. Neither of them turned the nearness into a second time. The weight of the night was already enough to take home and admit, again and again, in a bed.

At twenty past eleven he put the coat on. At the door he stopped.

"In tomorrow's meeting I will not be soft," he said. "Director Han is back. He will press you. What I can yield will only be what I think ought to be yielded. Not because of how hot you were inside."

"I know," she said. "Yield the wrong thing and I will take you apart in the room."

"Nothing I'd like better."

The door shut behind him. She stood a while in the empty office. The tops of her thighs were still sticky. Her breasts ached, full, inside his shirt. She took the shirt off, folded it, and put it in her bag. She did not mean to give it back. Before the lights went out she looked at the green pin on the model. The camphor was still there. The price was not set. Her body had settled one matter of its own.

She played nothing on the drive home. At a red light she touched the mark on her collarbone and decided the collar would cover it tomorrow. The phone stayed quiet. Lin Hao had sent nothing more. Neither had she. Some sentences did not belong, on a night when another man had just been inside her, sent off into a far wind. She was not ignorant that this counted as hiding. She had only decided that the debt of hiding would be paid later, in full speech, and not drawn in advance by a midnight message that would hurt and would not be clear.