i work night audit at a hotel off the interstate. a traveling nurse came down for 2:14am coffee for a month, so i wore my thigh-highs to his place and swallowed

Friday · October 2

at 2:14 a.m. the lobby belonged to me, a cleaning robot named elena, and sometimes devon, who kept coming downstairs for coffee that was honestly criminal.

i work night audit at a hotel off the interstate. i count money nobody paid in cash, i fix the printer, i tell drunk people their key stopped working because they’re on the wrong floor. i also wear a little eyeliner under the name badge because nobody’s awake to say anything, and a pair of black thigh-highs under my slacks because nobody’s awake to see them. the graveyard shift is the only place i’ve ever felt like i could get away with myself.

devon was a traveling nurse on a six-week contract at the hospital down the road. scrubs, lanyard, big forearms, the tired mouth of somebody who’s been kind to strangers for twelve hours straight. the first time he came down he asked if the coffee was fresh and i said “define fresh,” and he laughed so hard he had to put his hand on the counter.

after that it was every night. 2:14, give or take. i learned how he took it without asking. two sugars, splash of milk, no lid, because he hated the smell of the plastic. i started making it before the elevator even opened. it’s in the audit log if anybody ever checks, which nobody does.

“you know this coffee is free,” he said one night, leaning on the desk.

“i know.”

“so why do you act like you’re doing me a favor?”

“because you keep coming down here to get it from me.”

he went quiet. his eyes dropped to my mouth and then back up like he hadn’t meant to. four weeks of that. four weeks of him standing too close to the counter, me handing him the cup so our fingers touched on purpose, elena the robot bumping into the wall behind us like a chaperone with a head injury.

that night he finally said, “when do you get off?”

“seven.”

“breakfast?”

“is that a date?”

he thought about it, honestly thought about it, rubbing his jaw. “yeah. i think it is.”

so we did breakfast at the diner across the lot after i clocked out, and i sat there in my wrinkled uniform shirt eating eggs next to a guy who had been looking at me for a month and now got to do it in daylight. he kissed me in the parking lot afterward, against the side of my car, hand on the back of my neck, tasting like syrup and bad coffee. i almost dropped my keys.

then his contract moved him out of the hotel and into a furnished apartment for the last two weeks, which meant he wasn’t a guest anymore and i wasn’t staff to him, just a guy with a night off. he texted me the address. i stood in my kitchen for ten minutes deciding whether to wear the thigh-highs.

i wore them.

he opened the door in sweatpants and a gray t-shirt and said “hi” like a man who had practiced it. i said “hi” back. then he kissed me before the door was even shut, one hand flat on my chest, the other pushing my jacket off my shoulders, and i kicked the door closed with my heel because i was already walking him backward.

he pulled away. “too fast?”

i laughed into his neck. “four weeks of lobby coffee, devon.”

“fair.”

we made it to the couch. barely. his shirt went on the floor and i got my first real look at his chest, the chest hair, the scar under one rib, the way his stomach moved when he breathed in. i put my palm on it. he was warm and he was shaking a little, and i loved that, a nurse who could take a bleeding stranger’s pulse all day shaking because i was touching him.

i pushed him back into the cushions and sat down between his knees.

“marcus.”

“mm.”

“take your shirt off. please.”

i did. eyeliner, slacks, the whole thing, and when he saw the thigh-highs rolled at the top of my legs, the black band and the pale skin above it, he made a noise i’m going to remember until i die. he ran one thumb along the edge of the elastic.

“were these for me?”

“they’re always for me. tonight they’re for you too.”

his cock was hard in his sweats already, a long thick shape pushing at the cotton. i looked up at him and smiled.

“coffee did this?”

“terrible coffee.”

“impressive.”

i hooked my fingers in the waistband and pulled until he lifted his hips and it all came down, and his dick sprang out heavy and flushed, a bead already shining at the tip. i wrapped my hand around the base. it was hot and it pulsed against my palm. he let his head fall back.

i licked a slow stripe up the underside, root to head, and he swore, quiet and wrecked. his hand went into my hair and fisted, like he’d been thinking about doing it across the front desk for four weeks.

i took him in my mouth.

everything i’d noticed for four weeks went into it. two sugars, splash of milk, no lid. i pay attention to people, it’s the only thing i’m really good at. so i went slow first, tongue flat, sliding down till the head touched the back of my throat, then back up with my lips tight around him. down again. when i got to the underside and swirled my tongue right under the ridge, his thighs flexed and he breathed out so hard it was almost a shout.

i remembered it. i did it again.

“fuck,” he said. “fuck, marcus.”

i pulled off, wet-lipped, and grinned up at him. “technical feedback?”

“very positive.”

“good. i take notes.”

i went back down. i stopped being careful and started being greedy, taking more of him each time, until my nose pressed his stomach and my eyes were watering and i could feel him swelling in my throat. i hummed around him. his hips jerked up off the couch and i let them, let him fuck my mouth in short helpless thrusts while i held his thighs down with both hands and moaned on purpose.

the apartment was quiet except for the refrigerator and the sounds we made. wet, filthy, close. no camera over the desk. no badge. no lobby. just me on my knees in thigh-highs and the nurse from 2:14 a.m., finally allowed to want something besides coffee.

his fingers locked in my hair. “i’m close.”

i looked up with my mouth full of him and my eyes streaming and i didn’t slow down at all.

“marcus, i’m gonna—”

i sucked harder and he broke. his whole body locked up, a hoarse cry, and then heat flooded my tongue, thick and salty, pulse after pulse, and i swallowed it all and kept my mouth on him while he shook and said my name over and over like a prayer he was making up on the spot. i stayed until he went soft and oversensitive and pushed at my shoulder, laughing, gasping, begging me to quit.

for a minute i just stayed there with my cheek on his thigh, licking my lips, feeling him twitch against my jaw. he was still stroking my hair. i could smell him, soap and sweat and the faint hospital-hand-sanitizer smell that never left his skin. i’d been thinking about that smell on the night shift for weeks, which is a deeply embarrassing thing to admit about a man’s hands.

i climbed up into his lap, mouth swollen, my own cock aching in my slacks. he kissed me hard anyway, tasting himself on my tongue, and got a hand down between us.

“your turn,” he said.

he got my slacks open and my cock out and wrapped his big careful nurse’s hand around me. it took maybe forty seconds. i was already so far gone from sucking him, from the thigh-highs and his hand in my hair, that i just put my forehead against his and let him jerk me off, slow, tight, thumb sliding over the head. i came all over his stomach with a sound i wasn’t proud of. he kept stroking through it, murmuring “there you go, there you go,” like i was a patient, which made me come harder.

we lay there afterward in a heap on the couch. my thigh-highs were twisted and his stomach was a mess and i didn’t care about either.

“coffee?” he said after a while.

“at this hour?”

he picked up his phone and looked at it. “2:11.”

“three minutes early.”

i laughed until my ribs hurt.

the next night i worked my shift like a person with a secret. elena bumped into the desk. the printer jammed. at 2:14 my phone buzzed.

i clocked out at seven, drove to his place, and proved it.