Author: Akiko

← Back

The water was scalding and perfect. I sank in up to my chin with a glass of prosecco from the terrace bar and told myself that I was thinking about spreadsheets.

“Mind if I join you?”

It wasn’t Kat. It was Tamsin from Finance, twenty-nine, round glasses, red lipstick and a navy swimsuit, a woman who had said maybe eleven words to me in three years. She slid in opposite, pink with embarrassment and heat.

“I saw the mat,” she said. “I mean, everybody did. Dani, can I tell you something? There’s a sweepstake. Whether you two will kill each other or…” She trailed off and went redder.

“Or?”

“Or the other thing.” She took her glasses off and wiped them on her wrist. “I’ve got a tenner on the other thing. I think about it more than I should.”

I stared at her. Under the water, her bare foot found my shin and stayed there. She was looking at my mouth.

“Is this okay?” she whispered.

Before I could answer, a tall shadow fell across the steam.

Kat stood at the edge of the tub in the hotel robe, a bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other, a lazy smile on her face. She looked at Tamsin. She looked at me. She looked at Tamsin’s foot, which had not moved.

“Room for one more?” she said, and let the robe slide off her shoulders.

→ I tell Kat to get in and make it three

→ I tell Tamsin to leave us, I want Kat alone

← Back

The sauna was a cedar box at the bottom of the spa, dark and glowing orange, with two tiers of benches and a bucket of eucalyptus water. I got there at nine, in a towel, and made myself comfortable on the top bench with my eyes shut.

At five past, the door opened and Kat walked in.

She was wearing a towel too, black, knotted high on her chest, and nothing else but the ink. The swallows and peonies on her arm, the star behind her ear, a line of script along her ribs that vanished into the towel. She sat on the opposite bench and stretched her long legs out in front of her.

“Terms,” she said. “First one out buys the other breakfast and admits the other is better at something.”

“At what?”

“Whatever the winner decides.”

The heat pressed down like a hand. Ten minutes went by in silence. Sweat ran between my breasts and pooled at my navel. Kat’s skin was shining, her hair stuck to her neck, and I did not look at her thighs. I looked at them twice.

At fifteen minutes I was dizzy. At eighteen, Kat tugged the knot on her towel loose and let it fall open around her, her small tits bare, nipples tight in the heat.

“It’s hot,” she said innocently. “Isn’t it?”

I could stay and outlast her. Or I could cross the room and tell her it was a draw.

→ I stay put and outlast her

→ I cross the room and call it a draw

← Back

The gym at ten at night was empty, humming and lit like a fridge. Behind the free weights was a corner of crash mats left from the morning’s yoga, and Kat was already there in a sports bra and tiny shorts, tying wraps round her knuckles, tattoos catching the light.

“Shut the door,” she said. “Gareth does rounds.”

I did. It clicked, and the little light by the handle went from green to red. A laminated sign informed me, far too late, that the fitness suite fire door locks automatically at ten and can only be released from reception, which is unmanned until six.

We both read it. Kat looked at me. I looked at her.

“Well,” she said. “Nobody’s coming to stop us.”

I tried the handle for show. Then I put my phone on a bench, kicked off my trainers and walked onto the mat.

We circled. Kat fights like the gymnast she used to be, all springs and angles, long limbs everywhere. I’m shorter and stockier, built out of spin classes and spite. She got me in a headlock. I got her in a scissor hold with my thighs round her waist. We rolled, grunting, sweat soaking through our clothes, her breath hot in my ear, my knee wedged high between her legs.

Then we stopped, tangled and panting, her hand twisted in my hair and mine fisted in her bra strap, our mouths an inch apart.

Neither of us moved away.

→ I throw my weight and take the top

→ I go limp and let her take the top

← Back

I didn’t open it. I sat down on the carpet on my side of the door, put my back against the wood and my knees up under my T-shirt, and said, “Say it again.”

“Which part?”

“The sorry part.”

“I’m sorry, Dani.” Her voice came through the wood close and low, as though she’d turned to speak against the door. “I mean it. And I’m not only sorry about tonight. I’ve been a cow to you for two years.”

“Why?”

A long pause. The carpet rustled. I imagined her on the other side, tall, folded up on the floor, fiddling with that star behind her ear.

“Because the second I met you, I wanted to be on your team,” she said. “And the only way I know how to want something is to compete for it.”

I didn’t say anything. My heart was pounding so hard I thought she might hear it through the wood. My thighs were pressed together, and I was aware of my body in a way I really hadn’t asked to be.

“Dani?” she said. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“Are you angry?”

“No,” I said. “I’m turned on. It’s very annoying.”

A silence. Then, softly, so softly I almost didn’t catch it: “Me too.”

The hallway light flickered under the door. I could see her fingers, long and ringed, lying on the carpet in the gap, close enough to touch.

I could talk her through exactly what I wanted, with a door between us. Or I could be sensible, say goodnight and be on the early train.

→ I tell her what I’d do to her

→ I wish her goodnight and pack for the early train

← Back

I took the chain off and opened the door.

Kat was sitting on the carpet in the corridor with her back against the wall, holding a bottle of red wine by the neck. She was wearing a grey hoodie and joggers, her hair loose, no make-up, and she looked younger and more tired and a great deal less like a woman who had ever beaten me at anything.

She got up slowly. She took in the T-shirt, my bare legs, the wet hair, and I watched her swallow.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“I’ve got one glass,” she said. “Obviously I didn’t plan this well.”

I stepped aside and let her in.

She apologised properly, sitting on the end of the bed with the bottle between her knees. She’d always gone hard on me because she’d seen what I could do and it scared her. She’d gone for every promotion because she’d thought I’d get there first. She’d called me “Dani” in that tone a hundred times because it was the only way she could say my name without it coming out soft.

“You could have just said that,” I said.

“You’d have hit me with a stapler.”

“Probably.”

She laughed. I laughed. I took the bottle off her and drank from it, and she watched my throat move. Then she put her hand on my bare knee, quite lightly, and waited.

“I don’t want to fight tonight,” she said. “Unless you do.”

My heart was going like a drum. I could let her kiss me and make this tender. Or I could pick up the pillow beside me and hit her with it.

→ I kiss her and take her to bed

→ I hit her with the pillow

← Back

I looked at Tamsin. “I’m so sorry. I think I need to talk to her.”

“Oh, thank God,” Tamsin said, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “I mean, no. I mean. Of course.” She clambered out in a flurry of steam and flustered dignity, wrapped herself in a towel and paused, glasses fogged. “For the record, I do think you two should kiss. I’ve got a tenner on it.” She winked, which on her was devastating, and left.

Kat watched her go, then slipped into the tub opposite me, put the champagne on the edge and handed me a glass.

“I’ve never been so jealous in my life,” she said.

“You? Of Tamsin?”

“Of anyone who got to sit this close to you without it being a war.” She sipped, then smiled at the bubbles. “Two years. I’ve been so bloody scared of you. You’re better at the clients than I am, you know that. You walk into a room and they trust you. I only beat you on paper, because I’m sharper with the numbers.”

“Don’t you dare be nice to me.”

“I’m trying to be honest.”

The steam rose. The water slid hot over my collarbones. Her foot slid up my calf under the water and rested lightly on my knee, and her eyes were so serious, so open, that I forgot what I’d been angry about.

I could kiss her right now. Or I could ask what I’d been dying to ask for a day: whether the promotion was really, finally hers.

→ I lean across the tub and kiss her

→ I ask her about the promotion first

← Back

The robe hit the tiles. Kat stood there in a black bikini, tall and tattooed and utterly shameless, and lowered herself into the tub with a long sigh. She sat to my left. Tamsin sat to my right. Between the three of us, the water boiled.

Kat poured champagne into a glass and handed it across me to Tamsin. Her arm brushed my breast, slowly, on the way past.

“Tamsin,” she said. “You’ve been staring at us for two years. Tell me you didn’t bet on this.”

Tamsin went crimson. “Ten pounds.”

“On what?”

“On the other thing.”

Kat threw her head back and laughed, a real laugh, loud and delighted, and I realised I’d never heard it before. I’d only ever heard the smirk. Under the water, her hand found my knee, and the other found Tamsin’s. I felt Tamsin shiver beside me.

“I propose a new game,” Kat said. “No whistle. No Gareth. We’re all adults, we all say yes out loud or we stop. Dani?”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice cracked.

“Tamsin?”

“God, yes.”

Kat’s hand slid up the inside of my thigh. Tamsin’s mouth was on my shoulder. Kat looked at me, eyes dark.

“Now,” she said. “Do we help each other, or do we make it a competition?”

She was looking at me. It was my call.

→ I tell them we all take care of each other

→ I propose a competition, and Tamsin judges

← Back

I stood, crossed the sauna in three steps and sat down on the bench right beside her, our thighs sticking together.

“Draw,” I said.

Kat turned her head. Her face was inches from mine, wet, flushed and a lot softer than I’d ever seen it.

“A draw,” she said slowly, “means nobody’s winning.”

“It does.”

“So what do we do with our hands?”

I didn’t answer. I put one hand on her jaw and kissed her.

It was nothing like I’d imagined, and I had imagined it, God help me, more than once in a meeting. Her mouth was hot and salt and unexpectedly gentle. Then her hand fisted in my hair and it was not gentle at all. She hauled me across her lap, my knees either side of her thighs, my bare chest crushed to hers, and kissed me like she was trying to drink me. My towel was long gone. I felt her fingers on the backs of my thighs, the swallows on her arm flexing as she gripped my arse.

“I’ve been wanting to do this,” she said into my throat, “since the Hargreaves pitch.”

“You absolute bitch,” I gasped, and kissed her again.

Outside the cedar door, voices. Laughter. Two people from Accounts, arguing about whether the sauna was too hot to go in. The little window in the door had steamed up, but not much.

Kat’s hand was between my legs. She didn’t stop.

→ I slip us out the staff door to my room

→ I keep kissing her and let them see

← Back

I stayed exactly where I was and stared back at her, and I didn’t blink.

It was a mistake and I knew it. Twenty minutes in, the air felt like soup. My heartbeat thumped in my ears and the cedar slats shimmered. But Kat was sitting there naked, long and lean and shining, the tattoos on her arm dark against her skin, one leg hooked up on the bench so that I could see everything. She was neatly trimmed, pink and glossy, and as I watched, she let her hand drift down her stomach and rest, deliberately, on her thigh.

“Cheating,” I croaked.

“There are no rules about where I put my hand.”

“There are rules about where you put it next.”

She laughed and her fingers slid an inch closer to where I could not stop looking. My towel was sticking to me. I peeled it off and dropped it, because it was either that or pass out in it. The heat licked over my bare breasts and my nipples went hard as pencil tips. Kat’s eyes dropped to them. Her breath caught.

“Twenty-five minutes,” she said, her voice thin. “Dani. This is stupid. I’m going to cook us both.”

“Then leave.”

“You leave.”

The room swam. I couldn’t tell whether I was dizzy from the sauna or from her. I could grit my teeth and hold on until she cracked. Or I could admit my head was spinning and make a stand for the door.

→ I hold on until she cracks

→ I stand up and make for the door

← Back

I stopped fighting. All at once I let my body go slack, and Kat, who’d been braced for a counter, tipped forward and landed on me, pinning me flat with her whole weight.

“You’re giving up?” she said, suspicious.

“I’m reconsidering my options.”

She straddled my hips, wraps still on her fists, and trapped my wrists with one forearm. Her knee pressed up between my legs, right where I was already aching, and my hips jerked before I could stop them. Kat felt it. She went very still. Then she smiled.

“Oh, Dani,” she said. “Is this what you wanted all along?”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

I tried. I bit her lip. She kissed me back with a growl, dragged my top over my head and my sports bra down, and took my tits in her hands, pinching my nipples until I swore. Her mouth went to my throat, my chest. She held me down with one hand and slid the other into the front of my leggings, rubbing me through my soaking knickers, slow and purposeful, like she was proving a point.

“Look at you,” she whispered. “Two years of that mouth, and you’re dripping.”

I could lie back and let her do exactly as she liked. Or, if I’m honest, I had one trick in my back pocket, an old judo throw from university that might put her flat on her back.

→ I submit and let her have me

→ I try my judo throw