**Part 1: The Emerald Lounge – lots of context setting and tension building here. If you want the goods, skip to Parts 2 and 3.**
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Markus looks even taller on stage, his six feet three inches making him more than stand out from the rest of the band, and that’s before you even get a good look at his face.
It’s a Friday evening after work and a bunch of us have clocked out to see Markus’s band at The Emerald Lounge, the bar near the office which doubles up as a music venue. It smells like cheap beer and a sweet mixture of other people’s sweat and perfume. Around me, my colleagues are laughing, shouting over the music and demanding to know each person’s office crush.
Or at least I think that’s the topic at hand – I’m hardly listening, too absorbed in what is happening on the stage, one foot tapping along to the rhythm of Markus’s electric guitar, my chest thudding along with the bass. He catches my eye from the stage and holds my gaze as he sings the next line of his song:
*You turn my name into something electric. Say it again, say it again, say it again.*
I feel a smirk play on the edges of my lips and watch a bead of sweat travel from his hair, along his jaw, down his neck, and disappear beneath his black t-shirt. I can practically taste it. My mind wanders and I’m imagining trailing my tongue along his neck, his chest, his stomach, his —
“Sarah, what about you?”
I blink myself out of my thoughts and turn at the sound of my name. “What?”
Joseph, my desk neighbour at work, steadies my red wine glass in my hand before I can spill it. “Woah,” he laughs. “We were just wondering who your office crush is…” His eyes land on Markus on the stage behind me and then return to me, “But I guess we all know the answer.”
I roll my eyes and gently knock into his arm with mine. I don’t need to confirm or deny. It’s no secret that Markus is a popular pick where this discussion is concerned – if I were listening, I was sure he would have topped the list of every other woman and at least three men standing with me right now. Even our boss – a woman fifteen years his senior – had drunkenly admitted to wanting to sleep with him. Markus isn’t just tall; he is undeniably, unequivocally *sexy.* His eyes and smile are gorgeous and his body is all hard angles and lean muscle, sure, but his quietly authoritative nature combined with his charisma just makes him nothing short of magnetic. We are all prey to it. Before I can change the subject onto something else, though, everyone’s eyes rise to my right.
“Enjoy the show?” Asks a low, husky voice. Markus. I hadn’t noticed the final song end. There are a bunch of loud, drunk, congratulatory wails from our colleagues. After a few moments of exchanging a few rounds of “*sick show, dude”* and “*thanks for coming, man”,* the group’s attention divides and I feel Markus’s eyes on me. Before I can look at him, his arm finds my waist and he leads us a small distance from the group. My chest fizzes with something that feels like excitement.
“Well, this is rather anti-social,” I tease, looking over his shoulder at our colleagues, who are watching us intently. A few wave.
Markus chuckles under his breath, holds my eyes. The next band begins playing. “So, Sarah, you didn’t tell me,” he says almost too quietly underneath the thrash of drums, making me step closer to hear him. “Did you enjoy the show?”
“I liked watching you,” I answer him. My eyes flicker down to his lips and back again. He mirrors the action.
“I always like watching you,” he admits. His arm is still around my waist. We stand too close, our thighs touching. “I watch you a lot.”
“I know,” I tell him, which earns me that smirk again. With his free hand, he strokes a curl of my blonde hair behind my ear. His touch makes me bite my lip.
“Watching you is probably my favourite office activity,” he says, and his eyes dip to my cleavage and back to my face so quickly I wonder if it happened. I press my chest into him and he exhales slowly, squeezing my hips with both hands. “Or just generally my favourite activity.”
We’ve never openly acknowledged our mutual attraction like this. Other than the many times we’ve caught one another staring across the desk, we’ve kept it fairly professional. *This*, however… This is not feeling professional anymore. I can feel his breath on my wet mouth. It’s like thirteen months of neatly packaged tension is slowly starting to come undone and I wonder if we’re just going to let loose right here.
Around us, the crowd begins to jostle as the music picks up. I look around and our colleagues are completely out of sight now – they must have moved to get a better view of the main band.
“Let’s go to my hotel room,” I tell him before I can talk myself out of it.
His eyes flash with something I haven’t seen before and he’s already shrugging his guitar case onto his shoulder before he has finished saying, “Lead the way.”
Source: reddit.com/r/gonewildstories/comments/y1jobw/i_f24_fucked_my_gorgeous_colleague_m27_in_a_hotel