Beautiful Stranger

my hand up her thigh to slip between her legs.
    Voices echoed in the hall, pulling us out of our dark corner and back into the reality of where we were, and how we both eventually needed to return downstairs. I rolled a condom down my length and reached up to press my thumb to her mouth, slipping it inside.
    She answered wordlessly, wrapping her legs around my hips and trying to pull me closer. I watched myself slide into her just as the door to the ballroom creaked open.
    As it had before, the brightness from the hall spilled into the room, filtering through the screen and painting her torso with its ribbon of light. Her breath caught but I didn’t stop, instead lifting her chin and motioning for her to stay quiet as I pushed into her again. Heat spread from my cock up my spine at the feel of her around me.
    She closed her eyes tight and I gripped her hip to steady myself, thrusting into her harder, pulling her farther down the table toward me. The light from the city was just enough for me to capture a sensual, dark photo of my hand on her skin. Footsteps crossed the room toward the window, and her legs tightened around me as if to keep me from pulling back and away.
    I watched her nipples harden, her lips part in excitement. Don’t worry, I thought with a smile. I’m not stopping.
    My movements were shallow and I gripped her breast, pinching her nipple. “They’re right there,” I whispered, bending to kiss her neck and relishing the wild rhythm of her pulse under my lips. “They could see us if they wanted.”
    Her breath caught and I pinched again, rougher this time. “I’m not pulling back. I just want to push farther and farther and farther in.”
    “Harder,” she begged in a whisper.
    “My hand, or how I’m fucking you?”
    “Both.”
    I swore against the skin of her neck. “You’re fucking dirty, you know that?”
    Her mouth opened in a silent gasp as I rocked into her, wishing I could get even deeper somehow. I felt her stomach tense against mine, her hips roll up with greater insistence. Fuck, she was warm and slick and if she didn’t get there soon I was going to go before her. Thankfully, with a squeak, she dug her nails painfully into my shoulder, her body tensing as she came apart around me. I felt lightheaded, euphoric, as if something inside was about to explode.
    The sound of footsteps returned, and then came to a quiet stop just on the other side of the screen. I felt my orgasm barrel down on me, white hot and enough to make me see stars. It went dark as I pushed one final time, my head buried in her neck as I let myself drown, lost to every other sensation as I came deep inside her.
    And then silence, the collective moment when we struggled to contain our panting breaths, and nobody dared to move.
    I became vaguely aware of the sound of breathing just beyond the screen, the stillness of someone waiting. Listening. I turned my head and saw Sara’s wide eyes, her teeth buried into her bottom lip. A moment passed, and then another before the footsteps moved on, the light slipping along our sweaty bodies just as the door closed.

Five
    Monday morning, I found Chloe in her suddenly cluttered office, staring out the window. Her furniture and all of her boxes had finally arrived, and her pacing and mumbling told me that she was more than a little overwhelmed at the prospect of unpacking.
    I’d spent most of the weekend alternating between horror and celebration over what I’d done at the fund-raiser, and had come in to work to get my mind to stop looping through and looking too closely at what my actions said about me. I stayed until midnight on Saturday and, unfortunately, made my way through all of the contracts and invoices I needed to get done this week. Other than a handful of phone calls, I had nothing to do, and these days an idle Sara was not a good thing.
    “Need help?”
    Chloe laughed, flopping down on her couch. “I don’t even know where to start. We just finished unpacking our apartment. Plus, I feel like I just packed all of this up.”
    “Start with your bookshelf. I never feel organized until I can see the neat rows of books all set up.”
    Shrugging, she slid from the couch and crawled to where a few boxes were stacked against a wall. “Did you have fun at MoMA?”
    I opened a box of supplies and pulled out a box cutter. “Definitely.”
    I could feel her look up at me, and her lingering attention pressed into the side of my face. I probably should have