Neither of them moved for about four seconds.
Ellie had her legs locked round the backs of his and her nails in his shoulders and her face turned into the side of his neck.
She was breathing like she had run up the Kop.
He was holding himself up on his forearms above her with his jaw set and his eyes shut, because he had worked out about a second and a half ago that if he looked at her he was going to be finished.
"Alright?"
"Mm."
"Words."
"...Yeah."
"Do I come out?"
"No."
"Because I can, if you want."
"No." Her heels dug in behind his thighs. "Move."
He moved.
He got it wrong straight away. Too fast, too short, all of it in the wrong place, and she made a noise that had nothing good in it, and he stopped dead.
"Sorry."
"...S'alright."
"Tell me."
She screwed her eyes shut. It took her a couple of goes.
"Slower."
"Yeah."
"And longer."
"Like out and back?"
"Yeah."
He did it slower and longer, all the way out and all the way back, Squelch, and her breath came out of her in one piece.
"Oh."
"That?"
"Mm-hm."
So he kept doing that.
He looked down between them, because he could not help it, and watched it happen.
His cock sliding out of her cunt, wet all the way down, and then back in, her pussy stretched tight and pink round him, her lips dragging on him on every stroke. The sight went through him like a current.
"Oh God," she said. "You looked."
"I'm looking."
"Keep looking. I like it."
He kept looking. At that, and at her boobs moving with every stroke, the nipples hard and dark against her fair skin, and at her face, open and wrecked and watching him back.
The room was completely silent apart from her, and after about a minute she stopped trying to hold the noise in at all, because there was nobody in that building to hear it and both of them knew it.
Her knees fell further open.
Her hands came off his shoulders and went flat on the cold tile above her head, and she started making a sound at the bottom of every stroke, small and rising, and it stopped having any consonants in it.
Ka-thunk.
Next door the machine dropped into a new cycle and started up again, and neither of them noticed.
He got his hand under the back of her knee and pushed it up towards her shoulder, because he had no idea what he was doing but that seemed like it would work, and it worked.
Her pussy opened deeper round him, and now he could see everything, the whole of her, her clit standing out at the top of her where they joined, glistening, and she went up off the floor with her mouth open, and a noise came out of her that he felt in his chest.
"Ah. Ah. There."
"There?"
"Don't move it. Don't move anything."
He did not move anything.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
The sound of it came up off the wet tile and filled the room.
She had her heels locked and her back arching and her boobs going with every stroke, and her blonde hair was stuck to the side of her face, and she was looking straight up at him with her eyes wide open and completely gone.
Squelch. Slap.
"I need to tell you something," he said.
"What."
"I'm going to last about thirty seconds."
Ellie's eyes focused.
"Now?"
"Any second."
"Oh."
She decided inside a second.
"Then go faster."
"That will make it happen sooner."
"I know."
She got a hand round the back of his neck and pulled him down until his forehead was on hers, and her voice went to nothing.
"Go faster. I want to feel it. I want all of it, in me."
He went faster.
Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap.
He lasted about twenty seconds, not thirty, and it came up on him so fast that all he managed was her name, once, and then he finished inside her with his forehead against the tile above her shoulder and his whole body locked.
His cock jerked in her, again and again, and she felt it go into her in three hot pulses, her vagina drawing on him through every one, and she held onto him until it stopped.
Then it was quiet, apart from the machine. Whirr. Whirr.
He stayed exactly where he was for about five seconds with his eyes shut. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. He could hear his own heart in his ears.
Twenty seconds. Twenty. And she never got there.
"Sorry," he said.
"Don't."
"No, that was twenty seconds."
"Reece." Her hand came up and flattened on the back of his neck. "Don't. I felt you finish. That's what I asked for, and I felt all of it."
He got up onto his elbows and made himself look at her.
She was red from the collarbones up, and her blonde hair was everywhere, and her eyes were wet, and she was smiling at him like somebody who had got away with something enormous.
"Was it alright?" he said.
"...Yeah."
"You're being kind."
"It was really alright," Ellie said, and pulled his head down and kissed him, badly, on the corner of the mouth.
Ttk. Ttk. Water off the pipe, into the drain.
He came out of her, Squelch, and she made a small sound about that, and he looked down and saw it run out of her, thick and white, down her and onto the wet tile.
Drip. He had done that. He was inside her and now it was coming out of her, and he could not stop looking.
"Stop looking at it," she said, going red again.
"No."
"Reece."
"You told me to keep looking. I'm keeping looking."
She covered her face with her arm, and she was grinning under it, and he sat back on his heels and pushed his wet hair off his face.
And because she could not see him doing it, he looked at her. Really looked, for the first time all night.
She was small all over, small enough that the towel would have wrapped her twice.
Fair skin, gone pink across her chest and her throat, with a line of freckles under one collarbone that he had never been close enough to see before.
Her boobs rising and falling with her breathing, the nipples still tight. Her stomach jumping a little every time her breath caught.
Her thighs open and shiny, her pussy swollen and wet and still holding the shape of him. And her beautiful blonde hair spread out on the tile in a fan, dark at the ends where the water had got to it.
He had walked past this girl a hundred times, in corridors, over a laundry cart, and he had never once seen her. He saw her now, and he memorised all of it, every line of her, because he understood even then that he was going to need it.
Then he pushed his wet hair off his face, and the panel was still there.
[QUEST: GIVE HER WHAT SHE CAME IN HERE FOR (1/1)]
[NEW QUEST: LET HER ASK YOU FOR THE SECOND THING (0/1)]
So it's real.
Or it's what Marcel had, and I'm in a bed in Nottingham by Christmas, and that was the last good hour I get.
He made himself look at it properly for the first time. It had her name on it. He had never asked her name.
There was nothing in that room with her name on it, no lanyard, no bag tag, and he had not gone anywhere near her coat.
It knew before I did.
Then the rest of the room came into his eyes.
Bloody hell.
The towel was still folded on the bench where he had put it, which struck him as the most useless thing he had ever done.
There was a wet patch spreading out from under her and another one two feet away that he could not account for.
Her leggings were under the bench.
Her polo shirt was behind it.
The kit basket had gone over at some point without either of them noticing, and there were fourteen black and white shirts fanned out across the floor like a hand of cards.
Somebody's got to be in here at eight in the morning with a mop.
His eyes went to the trolley in the corner. Then to the girl on the floor with her arm over her face.
Then back to the trolley.
There's a cleaner right here.
He laughed once, out loud. Ellie said, "what" without moving her arm. He said "nothing". She said "liar", and let it go.
She had her knees together now, and she was coming back to herself. There was a mark rising on the side of her neck where he had had his mouth, and about four things went through him at once, and one of them was the obvious one.
No.
She had asked for one thing, and it had taken her ten minutes and both hands on his wrist to ask for it.
There was a version of the next twenty minutes where he pushed for another, and she said yes because she was twenty and on a floor and had not got her breath back.
He was going to take only what she offered. He had spent eighteen months on the wrong end of people taking more than was offered.
He took the towel off the bench, finally, put it over his lap, and sat down. Creak.
It took her about four minutes.
Then she sat up, saw the floor, and turned into a completely different person.