Chapter 265: After the Last Truck

Thursday held.

The corridor stayed quiet enough that Sandra did not cancel. No seal games on row three. No exploratory calls into the pool.

Liam cleared the villa by late afternoon, ignored the look Jack gave him at the gate

half question, half count of what was leaving the property and drove the industrial fringe while the light went amber and flat against the warehouse walls.

Heat still sat on the road.

The air smelled of tar and exhaust. He reached the yard as the last trailer took its seal with a metallic bite and rolled toward the exit in a grind of gears and a wash of white floodlight.

Insects ticked against the lamps. The night guard at the far post put his phone away the moment the owner’s car showed in the gate camera.

Sandra was already at the office door, tablet under one arm, radio silent on her hip. Dark trousers. Fitted blouse. Hair pulled tight enough that the evening could not touch it.

She waited until the trailer cleared the gate and the dust settled, then stepped inside, killed the office feeds with two precise taps, locked the side door, and turned as if the calendar had always been a contract and not a favour she could revoke.

"You’re on time," she said.

"You said not to be late."

"I also said not to be early in a way that makes the shift talk.

You managed both." Her eyes moved over him once clothes, hands, the fact of him in her doorway after the last truck. "Sit down or don’t. I don’t care about the furniture argument tonight."

They did not use the desk.

She crossed the space, put her free hand flat on his chest, and pushed him toward the low leather couch until the backs of his legs hit the cushion. The tablet went on the shelf.

Then she straddled his lap fully dressed and kissed him like she was closing a hard negotiation no soft lead, no check-in, mouth firm, breath already uneven.

Liam got her blouse open, buttons complaining under his fingers, and shoved her bra up so he could get his mouth on her breasts.

They were heavy in his hands, nipples tightening under his tongue. Sandra’s fingers were impatient on his belt, the zip, the open front of his trousers.

When he slid his hand between her legs she was already warm through the fabric; she cursed once into his mouth and bit his lower lip when he pressed her clit in a slow, filthy circle.

She shoved her trousers and underwear down far enough to work one knee free, lined him up, and sank onto him in one controlled motion hot, tight, the slick drag of her taking him to the hilt while her forehead rested against his for a second of stolen quiet.

Then she rode him with the same efficiency she used on a loading bay. Hips steady. Breath measured through her nose. Until the measure broke and her fingers dug into his shoulders through the shirt.

He gripped her ass full, heavy, the argument that had lived under those dark trousers for months and met her pace from below. The leather complained.

The office filled with the wet sound of her moving on him and the faint diesel that lived in her clothes and on his skin from the yard air.

Sandra came first, biting down on the sound, clenching hard enough around his cock that he had to grit his teeth to last, her whole body tight and shaking through the peak while she held her mouth against his shoulder.

He gave her a moment only a moment then stood with her still wrapped around him, her thighs locked at his waist, and put her back to the wall beside the half-drawn blind.

The plaster was cool through her open blouse. He fucked her there upright, deep strokes that punched the breath out of her, one hand under her thigh and the other braced on the wall.

Her breasts moved against his chest. Her eyes stayed open and dark on his until they fluttered.

When she came again it was messier forehead against his collarbone, a broken sound she could not fully swallow, wetness slick between them and only then did he bury himself to the hilt and finish, grinding through every thick pulse while she held on and cursed against his neck, her breath hot and uneven on his skin.

Afterward she did not sprawl.

He eased out of her; she put her feet on the floor with care, as if testing the reliability of her knees, and fixed her clothes before she fully looked at him. Trousers tugged up.

Blouse buttoned to the throat. Hair scraped back into something that would pass under a streetlight. .

The professional silhouette rebuilt itself in under a minute. Only her mouth still looked kissed, and a faint flush lived at the edge of her collar.

"You’re leaving soon," she said. Not a question. She leaned against the desk, arms folded, tablet already in reach like a tool returned to a belt.

"The date’s in your face. You’ve been running the yard like a man closing tabs. Fine. Yard stays covered.

Emergency line stays on. If the rival grows teeth again, I handle the first bite and send you the bill. I don’t need you on a plane mid-sentence while a seal is open."

"I’ll be reachable."

"Reachable isn’t present. I know the difference. So do my drivers." She checked the camera status out of habit, powered the office zone down again, and set the tablet flat.

"When you get back, you rebook. You don’t assume the calendar survives your absence out of courtesy. You ask. I accept or I don’t. I’m not a holding pattern."

"I’ll ask."

Sandra nodded once. "Drive me home. I want the early morning without your car on my block. Night shift already has enough stories they don’t get to use."

He drove. The industrial fringe gave way to ordinary streets, warehouses thinning into blocks and shuttered fronts.

She argued with him about a carrier invoice for three minutes

numbers, a late fee she intended to extract, a name she wanted remembered when he was back in the country and then went quiet, bag on her lap, knees together, eyes on the road.

The silence was not soft. It was the silence of a woman who had already filed the night and was conserving energy for the dawn radio check.

At her building she had the door open before the car fully settled. The interior light cut across her knees and the edge of the tablet in her bag.

"Don’t miss their date either," she said through the open window. "Split men drop both sides eventually.

I’d rather you put the other thing down clean than drop my routes mid-bleed while you’re trying to be everywhere at once."

A beat. Her eyes held his. "Come back with your head in one piece. I don’t retrain owners."

She shut the door and went inside. He waited until the third-floor light came on, held, and steadied behind the thin curtain.

Then he pulled away from the curb into the warmer dark of the city.

The villa was mostly dark when he returned. Jack’s wing still showed a lamp; the bag was quiet. Liam did not stop to explain the hour.

He showered until the yard and her scent left his skin, checked the coast outbound once on his phone under the bathroom light, and lay down with the calendar lighter by one held Thursday and heavier by the date Sarah had made him say twice on the house line.

The yard was fed. The house line was owed. The next hard thing was no longer paper teeth or a couch after floodlights it was stepping onto the transport on time, and not making either woman invent a story for a gap he had promised not to open.