The stairwell

I was not working that night. The office building was a place I had come to see a friend, an adult who was out, the buzzer unanswered, the lobby empty. I was not on a job and nobody there signed my hours. Kostas had walked me from the bar, thirty-four, a stranger with good shoes and the sense to stop at the sidewalk until I said he could come in. I said the stairwell, not an apartment I do not have a key to. He said yes.

Concrete, a plain light, my flannel, short black hair, work pants, the line of ink uncovered. I stood under the light and let the echo test us. A door somewhere above closed and did not open again. I told him I wanted to be fucked against the rail and I wanted to stay quiet. If I tap twice, his cock comes out and we look like people waiting on a ride. He repeated the tap. I turned, hands on the rail, and nodded.

He opened my pants and pushed them to mid-thigh. Cool air, then his fingers, then his cock. I was wet. He pushed into my cunt slow so I could keep the sound in, then fucked me in short strokes that still reached. I bit my own sleeve. The stairwell would have carried a moan all the way to the lobby, and I liked knowing that while refusing to spend it. His cock filled me. I rocked back, quiet, greedy. He kept his mouth near my ear and did not narrate. Good. I rubbed my clit with a shaking hand and came without a voice, cunt clamping his cock, eyes shut, the plain light buzzing. The quiet made it sharper.

I tapped once, not twice, a stay, and then I said out, on my ass. He pulled his cock free and stroked it. Cum landed hot on my ass, stripes, a muffled groan he caught in his teeth. I stayed bent until he was done. He had a handkerchief. I took it and wiped myself, folded the cloth, and put it back in his pocket because the mess was his to carry out. I fixed the pants. My cunt throbbed in the quiet. Nobody had come into the stair. The risk had stayed a risk.

He asked if the friend would be back. I said that was not his business, and the friend was not part of this, and he should take the lobby while I took the stairs the other way. He went down. I went up one flight, then down a different exit, alone, flannel straight, heart fast. Twenty-two, off the clock, nobody's apprentice in that concrete. I walked to the basement room with the handkerchief memory on my skin and a fuck I had kept quiet on purpose. I like an echo. I like deciding not to fill it.