For Rebecca it already is a battle.

Sean stepped into the office and pulled the door shut behind him, laptop under one arm, while Rebecca remained half out of her chair with one hand braced on the desk and the other flattened over the front of her blouse, the fabric that had fit that morning now stretched hard by the new weight of her breasts until the top buttons pulled open at the gaps.

“Morning, Ms. Thomas,” he greeted her in a curt professional manner, setting the laptop on the corner of the desk and opening it. “Slides are ready, the regional breakdown the way you usually want it, plus a second version with the Q3 projections if they push on the southeast numbers.”

Of course he sounded normal. Rebecca stared at him a second too long, irritated that she was even noticing the way his sleeves sat rolled to the forearms when she had never cared about his forearms before, and now her mind kept forcing him between her thighs with his shoulders holding her open and that same flat concentration while his mouth worked her and she tried to stay quiet, which was disgusting and also making her wet, so she sat before standing there became suspicious and the movement dragged the blouse tighter across her chest.

The blouse she’d worn that morning yanked tight as Rebecca sat and a button snapped free with a small hard sound, bouncing once off the desk beside the laptop before she even registered it was gone. Sean’s eyes flicked down at the unexpected noise, searching for the cause of it. For a moment Rebecca froze, then she lunged, snatching the button up and shoving it back through the hole with her thumbnail while the new weight of her breasts kept the fabric straining so hard her thumb slipped against the underside and she had to catch it again, the blouse still stretched open at the gaps even after she finally got the button through.

“The presentation,” Rebecca managed, the word coming out far less confident than she wanted, and she hated that he could hear it. “You can start. We’ve got twenty minutes before the call.”

Not missign abeat, Sean clicked to the first slide. “Actuals through August. I left the margin notes in. The client keeps asking about underwriting on the mid-Atlantic accounts, so I put the source numbers on the right.”

Rebecca forced herself to look at the slide instead of Sean. The margin notes were crowding the figures on the right, close enough that the loss-ratio column looked cramped. She leaned in for a better look, felt the blouse tighten again, and kept going.

“The notes are too far right,” she said, and felt an ugly little flicker of relief at finally finding something wrong with his work. “Move them left before we send it.”

“Got it.” Sean made a note, then picked up the projector remote. The image on the wall sat slightly off-centre, so he crossed the office and pulled the presentation board a few inches to the left.

As she watched Sean make her valid corrections, Rebecca didn't quite catch herself as her eyes had dropped to his backside. They stayed there as Sean fussed with the board, tracing the firm curve of his ass under the trousers, the way the fabric pulled across it when he shifted his weight, and how easily she could step in behind him, grip those hips, and bury her face between them. Oh, for God’s sake. She dragged her attention back to the figures on the wall, irritated by how quickly some part of her wanted another look.

Sean changed slides. “Page three is the adjusted projection. I held growth at four instead of the five in your draft. The client flagged the assumption last quarter.”

Four percent. Rebecca ran her eyes over the table again and found, annoyingly, that Sean was right. “The regional manager said the pipeline supported five.”

“He did,” Sean confirmed.

“But?” Rebecca questioned try to remained focused.

Sean brought up the supporting figures, “two of the larger accounts slipped.” One Richmond, one Baltimore. Damn it. She had written that draft Tuesday night while Raina stretched across the couch, one heel hanging off the cushion, asking every few minutes whether Rebecca was nearly finished. Rebecca remembered exactly what they had done when she finally was, and the memory slipped into something she hadn’t done, Sean bent over the conference table the way he was bent over the laptop now, her mouth on him the way Raina’s had been on her. Biting the inside of her cheek to focus Rebecca managed, “keep four.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Glancing at him, she saw that was all he said, no knowing look and no awkwardness and no sign that there had been anything unusual about this morning whatsoever, and she licked her lips. The bastard.

Clicking the slides forward Sean conitnued, “this is the contingency case. Same accounts, two percent growth, Richmond pushed into Q4. I can drop it if you think they’ll read it as us walking back the base case.”

Rebecca already knew the answer and she also knew that her hand had somehow ended up beneath the desk, and for God’s sake she pressed two fingers against the seam of her slacks more out of desperation than intent and immediately wished she hadn’t, the brief pressure cutting through everything else so cleanly that her eyes nearly closed as the image of Sean’s head between her thighs returned sharper and the new weight of her breasts shifted as she breathed while Sean was still talking about Richmond, counsel delays and revised close date and Q4 exposure, not Sean’s mouth on her, Richmond.

“I can move the sensitivity table into the appendix,” Sean offered.

“No.” Rebecca withdrew her hand and settled it on the chair arm, using the movement to collect herself before Sean could make anything of the sharpness in her voice. “Leave it where it is. They’ll ask about Richmond as soon as they see the base case.”

He considered the slide. “Probably.”

“They always do.”

“Fair.” Sean added the note and moved on to the variance against forecast.

Seven slides remained, which was manageable if Rebecca could keep her attention where it belonged. She followed the first column while Sean talked, lost several seconds watching his hand move over the trackpad, and had to find her place again when the figures changed.

Apparently they were down to six.