My eyes cracked with the grime of sleep. I reached over to shut off the alarm and instead touched the breathing mass asleep next to me. I was on the wrong side of the bed and Maxwell was asleep beside me. He reached out a hairy arm and turned off the siren that had woken us.

"Morning, sweetie," he said, blinking.

"Hey," I said.

He threw a leg over me and edged closer. I could feel his morning wood pressing into my side.

I came home from work yesterday to find him at my doorstep, so I hustled him inside. He'd brought me flowers and a bottle of wine. He came straight from work. We got into the bottle and then we got into bed and he got into me.

Sex at work has been few and far between recently and I admit I haven't been with a man the way I am with Maxwell in a long time.

I don't remember if I asked him to stay or if it was his idea. I remember him going to the bathroom, listening to him on the phone with his wife, telling her he had to go out of town - last minute business trip - and him coming back to find me naked on the couch.

"I have to go to work," I said.

"What am I going to do all day?"

"Go to work?"

"I called out of that. I thought we could take the day."

I pushed off the covers and got up. 7:00. He pinched my ass.

"Hey!"

"Sorry, honey."

I wished he wouldn't call me that.

"I have to get moving," I said.

"They can get by without you," he said.

I walked to me ajoining bathroom and flicked on the showerlight and vent. I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was frazzled and would need to be washed, really washed. There were hickeys on my neck. 'What are you, sixteen?' I thought, rubbing the bruises anxiously. I got in the shower.

The water spilled down my hair and over my shoulders. I felt like a new woman. I soaped up my arms, my legs. The suds gathered in the drain by my feet.

Through the marbled glass I saw Maxwell's pink figure in the doorway.

"So, maybe I'll come in for a nooner," he said.

"A what?"

"You know, a massage. During my lunch."

So he hadn't called out. Why did he offer to spend the day before? Was he hoping I'd just skip work for him on the spot? Maybe it was just a brief fantasy of his, a lie. I knew it wasn't.

"Oh, okay," I said.

"If that's okay with you."

It's not that I don't like seeing Maxwell at work anymore. But now that I know him on the outside. Jesus, now that I've shared a bed with him, it's somehow different. Now it was like someone special coming, like a boyfriend.

"If you're busy, I'll see someone else," he said. "I just want to visit, you know?"

I let the soap run over my breasts to my belly button.

"Maybe that Karissa girl," he said. "I don't know."

I sensed a trap. I held my tongue.

"If that's okay with you."

There it is. He wants to come to work to catch me fucking someone else. Jealousy. He wants to know if I feel it too.

"Fine with me," I said.

"Okay," he said.

Maxwell crossed to the shower door. He opened it and stepped in. I turned away and he held me, his hands falling on my breast, his head on my shoulder. He kissed my cheek.

I reached back and felt for his penis. It was hard.His pressence was suddenly comforting, his mass hovering behind me. Warm. He was something like...

I turned into him and kissed him on the mouth. I held his pecks with my hands and touched his body. Last night, I never saw him in the light. He stood out like a marble statue, but his skin was soft.

I lifted a leg and let him inside of me. He fucked me against the shower wall with his face close to mine, the steam pouring around us almost suffocatingly. He held his body tight to his chest.

I released all grip on the shower and he held me up, throwing my body back and forth into him, into me. My spine arched away, my wet hair fell across his face.

I came.

"Love you," he said. "Love you, love you."