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Chapter 2 Glass
Chapter 2 Glass
Hengshi occupied the forty-second floor of a glass building on West Nanjing Road. Old Ding, the night guard, knew Lin Xi, and he knew the man who did not appear often. In the register, at the column for purpose, she paused, then wrote: family.
Old Ding turned the pen around for Xiaoyao to sign. "Mr. Jiang, it's been a long time. Ms. Lin has practically been living upstairs this month."
"I know," Xiaoyao said.
The elevator went straight up. When the doors opened, the only lights on the floor were the sensors coming on one by one under their feet. The workstations were empty. The monitors were black. The air smelled of coffee-machine dregs and paper. Lin Xi's office was at the corner, glass on two sides, one toward the street, one toward the firm. She went in first, set the box on the side cabinet, and did not turn on the main light. She turned on only the lamp on the desk, the shade a little yellow. The city was under their feet. Car lights were a statement without a sentence.
Xiaoyao stood inside the door. She turned, pulled the door shut, and the latch made a small sound.
"Zhou Ning will bring the materials up," she said. "After she drops them she'll leave. There's no one else on this floor."
"You kept me here to tell me the floor is empty?"
"I kept you here because if I go on like this, we will become two calendars that sync with each other." Lin Xi leaned on the door. The cold of the metal came through her shirt into her back. "You leave at seven to buy paper, if there's a proof to deliver that day. I leave at seven-forty. Your dinner is on the second shelf of the refrigerator. Mine is the club, or nothing. The longest we spoke last week was when you asked who was taking out the trash today. I said you. You said all right. Then we each lived until eleven."
Xiaoyao listened. He did not interrupt. Among the few habits of his she was still grateful for, this was one. Other people interrupted her to seize the floor. He did not interrupt because he was waiting for the sentence she actually meant.
She could not say it. The real sentence stuck behind her teeth, like a claim with no evidence under it.
He walked two steps toward her and stopped an arm's length away. He did not touch her.
"Then what do you want now. Say it specifically. In court you hate it most when people say 'taking everything into account.' At home that's all you give me."
Lin Xi's breath missed a beat. The yellow lamp made her cheekbones hard and her mouth soft. She looked at his throat, at the button he had not done up, and suddenly hated herself for still hunting for words.
"I want you to touch me," she said. "Here. The door is already locked. I don't want to go back to the apartment and queue again. Xiaoyao, I haven't properly asked for you in three months. Last time the light was off too. You came in, I made a sound, and when it was over you went to shower. I didn't even look at your face."
The air sank. Far below, a horn sounded once and was filtered out by the glass.
Xiaoyao lifted his hand. The first place he touched was not her mouth. It was the small patch behind her ear. His fingers were dry, warm, with the thin callus a person who works paper carries on the pads. Lin Xi closed her eyes. She hated how fast she closed them, like a concession. But when that callus scraped her skin, her knees actually went weak.
"Look at me," he said.
She opened them. His face was very near. Three years ago he had asked the same thing, before the first time they went all the way, before she was a partner and before he was the person who put dinner on the second shelf. Then she had laughed at him for putting on airs. Now she looked at him and suddenly wanted to cry, and felt that crying would be an even worse statement.
She kissed him. The kiss was fierce. Their teeth knocked once. The lipstick smeared completely. He took the kiss, his palm cupping the back of her head so she could not retreat and turn the kiss into another kind of work. When his tongue pressed in, she made a very small sound that was strange even to her. Xiaoyao's other hand was on her waist. The suit skirt was between them, but the heat felt as if it were against skin.
"The light," she said, muffled. "The building across—"
"Leave it," he said against her lower lip. "If you go pull the curtains tight now, you'll be managing risk again. This floor is high. The nearest lit window across is at least a street away. What you're afraid of isn't being seen. What you're afraid of is not managing."
Lin Xi swore, a short dirty word. She rarely swore. After she swore, she herself drew the inner blinds to half height. The outer glass stayed open. The city was still there. Her office was still there. When she turned, he was already sitting on the edge of the narrow sofa, knees apart, watching her, as if waiting for a sentence he could rebut.
She walked over and straddled his lap. The skirt bunched up. The edge of the stockings cut into her thighs. She had meant this position to take the high ground. The moment she sat, she felt that he was already hard, pressing up against her through his trousers. Hot, hard, the shape clear. Her breath broke.
"If you feel it, say so," Xiaoyao said, low. "Don't hand in silence and call it done."
"You're hard," she said. Her ears burned. "Pressing into me. I'm already wet inside. I've been reacting since our knees touched in the taxi. It's absurd. I was just signing papers in a hearing room."
"It isn't absurd." He put her hand on his belt buckle. "Undo it. If you want it, take it yourself. Look at me while you take it."
The metal opened. The zipper was too loud in the quiet office. Her fingers went in and closed around his cock. Hot, heavy, the pulse against her palm. The head was already wet in a small patch that got onto her thumb. Lin Xi looked down once, then forced her eyes back up. His eyes were dark. His mouth was calm, as if he had temporarily lent her the initiative on a note written very clearly: you may move, you may not run.
She stroked him twice. His stomach tightened. At last his breath was unsteady too. That unsteadiness excited her, and it softened her. She pushed the skirt higher and ground against him through her underwear. The cloth soaked through quickly, sticking to her labia, and every pass rubbed the clit that had already swollen. She set her teeth and still let sound out.
"Take the underwear off," she said, and only then realized she was giving orders again.
Xiaoyao was not angry. He only stopped her at the waist.
"Ask me."
Lin Xi stared at him. A lawyer's instinct lined troops up on her tongue: was this play or a charge, what happened if she answered wrong, should the definition be written clear. She withdrew every one of those troops. Her hand shook while she did it.
"Xiaoyao, help me take my underwear off. I want your cock against me with nothing between us. I want to sit down on you. May I."
"You may," he said.
He did not move at once. He kissed her first, slowly, so slowly that she herself pushed her hips forward and performed the request a second time. Then his hand went around behind her, found that small piece of cloth, and dealt with the stocking in the way. He did not take the stockings all the way off. He pulled the crotch aside, decided that was not enough, and simply had her lift one foot so he could peel that stocking and the underwear down to the bend of her knee. The shoe still hung on her foot. The heel knocked the wooden leg of the sofa, one dull sound.
When bare skin met his cock, both of them stopped. Wet, hot, the mouth of her cunt opening and closing against the head. Lin Xi held his shoulders. Her knees sank into the cushion. She wanted to sit all the way down at once and end this slowness that would not let her make a sound. Xiaoyao held her ass and would not allow it.
"An inch at a time," he said. "You were fast enough in court today. Here I want you to feel that it's me."
She cursed him. Her voice came out soft. The head pushed her open, stretched her, went in by the length of the head. Her walls clenched at once. Her forehead rested against his. Her breath broke against his mouth.
"It's too big. Go slow. No. Like this is just right. Xiaoyao, look at me. I'm taking you in. I'm sitting down on you myself."
"I see you." His thumb settled on her clit, not hard, only held there, tapping in time with her sitting down. "Lin Xi, your face is red. Court never had this color."
Halfway down, her legs failed. She stopped there, filled and not filled, stretched until her eyes went hot. Xiaoyao did not rush her. He kissed her eyelids. He kissed the bridge of her nose. His hand was bad. The thumb drew a very small circle. Pleasure burst from that point and climbed her spine. Lin Xi lost her voice and at last sank, taking the whole of him. Both of them made a sound at once. She was hot and tight inside, biting him until it hurt. His fingers sank into the flesh of her ass and left red marks that would certainly show later.
"Move," she said, then corrected herself. "Please let me move. I don't want to just sit here and endure it."
"Move," he said.
She began to ride. At first there was still a rhythm, the way she handled anything that needed control. Up, down, letting the head drag each time over the soft place on her front wall. The skirt was piled at her waist. The shirt was still neat. Only one button at the collar had been pulled open. Her nipples were so hard inside the cups that they ached. Through the cloth Xiaoyao took one in his mouth and let his teeth graze. A small patch of fabric went wet. Lin Xi's rhythm broke. She caught his hair, not to push him down, but because she was afraid she would float away.
Headlights swept the glass outside. A band of light crossed their bodies. For a dazed second she felt the whole city could see a partner at Hengshi with her legs apart, taking her husband as deep as he would go. The thought ought to have stopped her. It did not. It made her wetter. In the quiet office the sound of her became distinct. Every time she sat down it brought a small sticky sound.
"Listen," Xiaoyao said. "This is you. Not a schedule."
"Don't talk." Her voice came apart. "If you say anything else I'll cry out. This floor echoes."
"Then cry out. Old Ding is on the first floor. Zhou Ning has left. If even calling my name requires an application for leave, we stayed tonight for nothing."
She cried out. Not loudly. It was pressed through her teeth. Xiaoyao, Xiaoyao, there, harder. His thumb pressed harder. His other hand gripped her waist and pulled her down, and he began to thrust up. Their rhythms stacked. The sofa knocked the wall, lightly. The metal clasp on the archive box shivered once, like a piece of evidence produced at the wrong time.
Lin Xi came first. The orgasm arrived fast and deep. Her walls bit in waves. Her mouth was open and there was no sound, only tears that suddenly fell onto his collarbone. Xiaoyao did not stop. He held her and kept thrusting through the sharpest contractions, until she started to pull away and he pressed her back.
"I'm not done," he said at her ear. "Watch me come. Come inside you. You said that time at home you didn't look at me. Tonight you look."
She looked. Her eyes were wet. Her makeup was ruined. Her lips were swollen. She nodded. The nod was very small, and it was real.
"Come in me. Xiaoyao, come inside. I want to feel you finish. Don't pull out onto a tissue. That looks like cleaning a scene."
He swore under his breath, held her tight, drove in to the deepest point, and stayed there. His cock pulsed. Heat struck into her in surges. The pulse of it made Lin Xi clench again, and out of the aftershock a second, lighter tremor rose. She held his head. Her face was buried against the side of his neck. She smelled ink, sweat, and her own perfume after body heat had gone through it.
For a long time neither of them spoke. On the glass their shadows were blurred, laid over the sea of lights along West Nanjing Road. Her legs were still open. He was still buried in her. What he had come inside her slowly spilled, wetting his lower belly and the edge of the sofa. Lin Xi reached down, wiped a little onto her fingertip, looked at it, and wiped it back onto the inside of her thigh. The gesture was so obscene that her ears burned. She did not explain it.
Xiaoyao kissed her temple. It was the same kiss as years ago, outside a courthouse door.
"This doesn't count as a talk," he said quietly. "This only counts as you still wanting me. Lin Xi, you want me, and I'm glad. But we can't hand in only this. You cried just now."
"I know." Her voice had gone rough. "I didn't cry because it hurt. I cried because I found out I'm still here. I thought that part of me had been scheduled out of existence."
He did not smile. When he pulled out, both of them flinched, oversensitive. His come followed, running down her leg. He took tissues from the coffee table and knelt. He did not wipe her off in a rush. He held her knee and cleaned her carefully, almost with respect. When he reached her clit she drew a breath. He stopped.
"More, or enough."
"Enough," she said, and then told the truth. "My body still wants it. The person ran out first. Get up. Hold me for a minute. Don't talk. One minute is enough."
He stood and pulled her in. A minute passed. Two minutes passed. The yellow lamp was still on. The city was still running below them. For the first time the corner office at Hengshi did not feel like a place where someone could win. It felt like a place where two people had at last not put each other on tomorrow's list.
