Dare by Olivia Aycock

Chapter 1
    P izza and a movie ?
    She stared down at the screen of her phone, thumb hovering, waiting for her neurons to fire properly to send off a response. Yes? No. Should they?
    It was code, of course, for “wanna fuck after you get home from work?”
    Wasn’t the most original code, but it worked for them.
    And it really worked for Melanie. Whenever her coworkers suggested they order in pizza, she invariably spent thirty minutes in the back conference room with her thighs clenched together, trying to hold at bay the memory of the last time Will had driven into her.
    “You’re ridiculous,” she muttered to the phone. But she was the ridiculous one. Mention pizza and she went off, a regular Pavlov’s dog.
    Yeah, a horndog.
    Pushing some papers around on the ugly laminate desk did not help Melanie ignore her cell. The subtle buzz had her desperate to read the second text. Would it be her “order” for the evening?
    Her coworker Sue always ordered pepperoni and mushroom on her half. Benign, and rather pedestrian, pizza toppings. But pepperoni and mushroom was code for blowjob. Add green peppers to that order? Sit on my face.
    When Sue ordered a combination pizza—complete with sausage and onions—Melanie typically had to excuse herself from lunch and run to the ladies’ restroom on the fifteenth floor for some emergency alone time. Because combination pizza? I’m going to tie you to my wrought iron headboard and fuck you so hard for so long our pizza will be stone cold when I let you go.
    Melanie loved combination pizza night.
    She loved all the pizza nights with Will.
    And that was the problem.
    Looking over her shoulder to make sure Sue or some other office busybody wasn’t groundhogging over the cubicle wall, she set her thumb to the sensor. Phone unlocked, she checked her latest text. Crap. It was from her sister Pam. No, she couldn’t manage to drive out to Paradise Valley at the last minute so Pam and her husband could go to the movie. On a school night. Melanie had pizza and a movie waiting for her. Pam could figure something out.
    And before she could figure out what she was doing with Will, she texted back maybe and hit send before she could change her mind.
    It wasn’t fifteen seconds before her phone buzzed in her hand. Will must be working on his computer.
    What if cheese and Star Wars is on the table?
    Fuck. Cheese and Star Wars . He played dirty. How did he know she needed a nice, easy comfort fuck on the couch and a movie she could watch with her eyes closed?
    And that was the precisely the problem. Will was starting to be eerily in tune with what she needed. And that was—well, that was not good. Oh, it made for great sex. But it didn’t make for great emotional health.
    She liked their arrangement the way it was. Polite, cordial neighbor-to-neighbor hellos in the mornings in the apartment complex gym. Friendly waves in the parking lot, maybe an extra pair of hands if she’d made a warehouse store run. Small talk at the mailboxes.
    And absolutely filthy fucking when either wasn’t otherwise engaged.
    When Melanie and Will had started enjoying friends-with-benefits status, oh, maybe eight months ago when they’d fallen into bed after an apartment complex barbecue, it had been easy. Casual. Gorgeously fun. She’d just broken up with a dud of a boyfriend and he’d been recently cut loose by his long-term girlfriend, who picked an East Coast lateral transfer over a shiny gold band.
    Yeah, she might have felt a little guilty about jumping on Will’s cock so soon after his heartbreak, except his cock was magnificent. It was enough to make her forget hooking up with a neighbor never ended well.
    A voice cleared pointedly behind her. Looks like it was magnificent enough to make her forget she was at work too. She shuffled a few more papers and turned around, faking surprise when she saw busybody Sue was, indeed, poking her head up over the sad greige wall of her cubicle.
    “Melanie, did the boss