Petty Officer Riley Quinn had learned early in her career that ships had personalities. Some were chatty: bulkheads that pinged and popped with every temperature shift. Some were sullen, quiet as coffins. The USS Harrington fell somewhere in between, a tired cutter with salt ground into her seams and a permanent smell of hydraulic fluid no amount of ventilation could clear. Quinn liked her. Old ships felt honest.
Which was more than she could say about her commanding officer.
Commander Evelyn Strass strode down the passageway like the deck plates owed her money. Her boots hit steel with a slow, deliberate rhythm that made junior enlisted flatten themselves against the bulkheads. Quinn did as everyone else did: snapped to the side, braced, kept her chin tucked and her expression dead neutral.
Strass didn’t look at her. Strass never looked at anyone unless she had a reason to, and Quinn was unlucky enough to be one of the crew members who drew that gaze far too often.
“Quinn,” the Commander said without breaking stride.
“Ma’am.”
“Your division report was late. Again.”
Quinn grit her teeth. “It was submitted at 0803, ma’am.”
“The deadline was 0800.” Strass stopped walking. Quinn could feel the heat of the woman’s eyes on her cheek. “I suggest you learn the difference.”
There it was. Same dance, different morning. Quinn swallowed the smart-ass reply rising up her throat, that maybe Strass should consider a three-minute margin of error in a ship where chronometers drifted constantly, but biting down on her own tongue was part of wearing the uniform.
“Yes, ma’am.”
A tiny nod, the kind that meant Quinn was dismissed, and Commander Strass moved on, her broad shoulders filling the narrow corridor. Quinn watched her go for about half a second longer than regulation allowed.
What the hell is her problem with me, anyway?
Nobody else got half that level of scrutiny. Strass rode Quinn harder than she rode her senior chiefs. Any minor slip, any half-inch deviation from regulation stance, any stray lock of Quinn’s short-cropped hair: Strass spotted it, dissected it, and filed it away like ammunition.
If Quinn didn’t know better, she’d think the Commander hated her guts.
If she really didn’t know better, she’d think the Commander was something else.
But Quinn understood the Navy. Attraction didn’t fit into the chain of command; neither did whatever was happening behind Strass’s granite stare. So she chalked it up to personality conflict and went about her day.
The engineering berthing was already humming when Quinn stepped in. The deck vibrated with the thrum of the main engines. Sailors grabbed coffee in stained mugs, clipped radios to their belts, shoved on their coveralls. Routine chaos.
“Hey, Quinn,” Machinist Mate Harper called from the tool bench. “Strass ding you again?”
“Take a wild guess.”
Harper winced. “Jesus. She’s got it out for you.”
Quinn shrugged like it didn’t bother her. It bothered her plenty, but sailors didn’t bleed in front of other sailors. “Nothing new.”
The division chief announced muster with a voice like a grinder on bare metal. They circled up, boots creaking on the non-skid. Standard briefing: maintenance rotation, fuel consumption estimates, scuttlebutt about a storm front building ahead. The usual.
But halfway through the rundown, Quinn felt eyes on her. Not from the crew. From the upper deck.
She didn’t need to look to know who it was.
Commander Strass stood on the catwalk above the division, arms crossed behind her back, shoulders squared like she’d been carved out of bulkhead steel. Watching. Evaluating. Waiting for Quinn to breathe wrong.
Quinn kept her gaze locked forward.
After muster, Quinn was halfway through logging a diagnostic on a cooling manifold when the call came through the ship’s intercom.
“Petty Officer Quinn, report to the CO’s stateroom.”
Harper shot her a look. “What the hell’d you do now?”
“Apparently existed,” Quinn muttered, stripping off her gloves.
She made her way through the ship, tension coiled tight in her gut. She knocked twice on the stateroom door.
“Enter.”
Commander Strass sat behind her desk, uniform immaculate, dark hair pulled into a regulation bun that probably had more discipline than half the crew combined. The room was small, functional, and spotless, just like its owner.
“Petty Officer,” Strass said, not inviting her to sit. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“No, ma’am.”
Strass slid a tablet across the desk. A maintenance checklist appeared on the screen. “You logged an inspection as complete without verifying the secondary coolant line. Explain.”
Quinn blinked. “Ma’am, I did verify it. I signed it after the check.”
Strass’s eyes narrowed. “Then why is it missing from the digital log?”
Quinn’s stomach dropped. A system glitch. The logging software was famous for eating updates. Everyone knew it.
But Strass wasn’t asking for facts. She was asking for blood.
“It must not have uploaded properly, ma’am. I can redo the-”
“You will redo all of it,” Strass cut in sharply. “And you will do so before end of watch. If that means staying awake past midnight, you will not complain.”
Quinn clenched her jaw. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And another thing.” Strass’s voice dipped into something colder. “Your attitude lately has been borderline insubordinate. I don’t tolerate that on my ship.”
“My attitude has been professional, ma’am.”
“Professional would be learning punctuality,” Strass said flatly. “And discipline. Dismissed.”
Quinn turned, fists tight at her sides, face burning.
Normally, Strass was strict but not cruel. Today felt personal.
And Quinn couldn’t figure out why.
By lunch, everyone had heard the rumor of Quinn getting dragged into the CO’s stateroom for “corrective guidance.” Sailors whispered in the line for eggs, snickered over metal trays.
Quinn ignored them, sliding into a seat.
Harper joined her with a grimace. “Word is the CO chewed you out hard.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“You piss her off somehow? Look at her sideways? Breathe too loud?”
Quinn stabbed her fork into a piece of chicken that somehow managed to be both soggy and dry. “No idea.”
But she could feel it: Strass watching her across the mess, expression unreadable. The Commander rarely ate with the crew. When she did, she didn’t linger.
Quinn didn’t look up, but she felt the weight of that stare like a hand pressing against the back of her neck.
Late afternoon, the ship rolled through a patch of heavy swell. Quinn rounded a corner and nearly collided with Strass head-on. Quinn caught herself on a bulkhead.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
Strass’s hand shot out, gripping Quinn’s upper arm to steady her. The hold wasn’t gentle. Her thumb pressed hard, just shy of painful.
“You need to watch where you’re going, Petty Officer.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
But neither moved.
For just a heartbeat, Strass’s gaze dropped from Quinn’s eyes to her mouth, then to the line of her collar. A flicker. Barely visible. Gone in an instant.
Quinn blinked. Strass released her and stepped past without another word.
Quinn worked through the evening, redoing every inspection the Commander claimed she’d screwed up. It was tedious, unnecessary, and clearly punitive. By 2200, her back ached and her eyes burned. She wanted to curse, scream, punch a bulkhead, anything that wasn’t quietly suffering under Strass’s heel.
As she closed the last panel, she muttered under her breath, “What the fuck is her damage?”
But when she headed toward berthing, she passed the CO’s office just as the door clicked shut behind Strass. The Commander looked strained. Harsh lines around her mouth, a fire beneath her stoicism that Quinn had never seen before.
For the first time, Quinn wondered if this wasn’t just military discipline or personality conflict.
Maybe Strass’s frustration wasn’t about Quinn’s work at all. Maybe it was about Quinn herself.
Nights aboard the USS Harrington were never truly quiet. Even when the ship ran darkened and the crew was down to skeleton watch, the cutter hummed like a living thing; engines murmuring deep in the hull, ventilation whirring, loose fixtures tapping with the rhythm of the swells. Quinn had learned to sleep through most of it. But tonight she couldn’t sleep at all.
Commander Strass’s face kept flashing behind her eyes, the clipped tone, the bruising grip on her arm earlier, the way Strass had looked at her like Quinn was something she wanted to reprimand and devour in equal measure.
Quinn rolled out of her rack with a sigh, careful not to wake the other sailors in berthing. She tugged on a T-shirt and uniform pants, slipped into her boots, and headed into the passageway. Air tasted like metal and recycled sweat. Pretty standard for 2300 aboard a tired old cutter.
Halfway to the mess, she realized she’d left her tablet behind. She’d checked an ops schedule earlier on the observation deck and never grabbed it on her way out.
“Great,” she muttered, turning around. Another walk through the ship. Another chance to run into Strass on night rounds. Just her luck.
But the observation deck was empty, lit by a single green night-light. Her tablet sat where she’d left it, wedged crookedly under a chair. She powered it off, tucked it under her arm, and started back.
That’s when she heard it.
A faint, rhythmic sound, soft at first, then unmistakably human. Not conversation. Not breathing. Something private. Something intimate.
Quinn slowed her steps.
The sound came from behind a partially closed door down the corridor. A door she knew by heart.
Quinn’s pulse picked up. She didn’t mean to get closer, but her feet moved on autopilot. Sailors were nosy creatures by nature. More importantly, Quinn knew Strass still had paperwork pending tonight. That meant she was inside.
And whatever that sound was… Strass wasn’t alone. Or she was alone but not acting alone.
Quinn’s hand brushed the bulkhead as she leaned a little closer. The door wasn’t fully latched. A thin crack of light spilled across the passageway carpet.
Inside, someone gasped. Not a pained gasp. Not startled. A pleasure-wrecked one.
Quinn froze.Then came the whisper:
“…Riley…”
Quinn’s name. Her full name, not her last.
Her heart slammed once, hard enough she thought she’d stagger.
She didn’t mean to look. Hell knows she shouldn’t have. But her hand nudged the door a half-inch wider, just enough to see the CO’s desk, the chair, and the broad, naked back of Commander Evelyn Strass.
Strass sat tipped halfway out of her chair, thighs spread, one hand buried between them, the other gripping the armrest like she wanted to tear it loose. Her muscles stood out like steel cables under sweat-slicked skin. Short hair disheveled. Her chest rising and falling in sharp, starving pulls of air.
Strass leaned her head back, eyes shut tight, jaw clenched as she whispered again, Quinn’s name, barely a breath.
And then she came violently, silently at first, then with a ragged sound so unlike the controlled commander Quinn knew that it sent a jolt straight up her spine. Strass’s whole body arched, every tendon pulled taut. One more gasp tore out of her:
“Riley-”
Quinn snapped away from the door, pulse roaring in her ears. She pressed herself flat against the bulkhead, breath held like she was hiding from incoming fire.
Her Commanding Officer. Her six-foot-three, muscle-bound, cold-as-ice CO. Touching herself in her office. Saying Quinn’s name while she came apart.
Quinn didn’t know whether to laugh, run, or pass out.
She didn’t breathe until the office went quiet again, just the faint scrape of the Commander adjusting her chair, calming her breathing, regaining that rigid self-control she wore like armor.
Quinn backed away step by slow step, adrenaline buzzing under her skin. When she finally reached the ladderwell, she grabbed the railing to steady herself. Her knees still felt like rubber.
“H…holy shit,” she whispered.
A minute ago she’d been pissed, confused, and exhausted. Now she felt like she’d stepped on a live wire.
Strass’s treatment of her suddenly made sense. Tthe nitpicking, the disproportionate discipline, the emotional short fuse.
The Commander wasn’t angry at her. She was angry at herself for wanting her.
Quinn made her way to berthing on autopilot, barely aware of her surroundings. She lay awake long after the ship’s lights switched to red night-mode, mind spinning so fast she thought she’d rattle apart.
The Commander wanted her desperately enough to whisper her name with her hand between her legs. And Quinn, Hell help her, wasn’t disgusted she was dangerously flattered. Somewhere between exhaustion and adrenaline, a grin crept across her mouth.
“Forgets my damn deadlines, chews me out in front of the crew,” Quinn whispered into her pillow, “but she wants me that bad? Oh, Commander… that’s interesting.”
She knew she shouldn’t think about it. She knew this line was one sailors didn’t cross. She knew the power dynamic made it a minefield. But she also knew herself. Quinn had never in her life been able to resist pushing a button once she found it. Tomorrow, she told herself, would be a very, very interesting day.
Quinn woke before reveille, which never happened. Her mind was too loud, humming with the memory of Strass’s voice whispering her name like a confession ripped from somewhere deep.
Quinn sat up, rolled her shoulders, and let a slow, wicked little smile creep across her face.
“Alright, Commander,” she murmured. “Let’s see how much control you really have.”
The morning passageway was tight as always, sailors threading through the ship half-awake. Quinn timed her walk perfectly, slipping into the corridor right as Commander Strass rounded the corner. She pretended she didn’t notice her. That alone was a violation Strass would never overlook.
Quinn brushed past her, actually letting her shoulder skim Strass’s arm, close enough that Quinn could smell soap and the faint salt of sweat. A deliberate breach of distance, of military decorum. Strass froze mid-step.
Quinn didn’t even look back. “Morning, ma’am.”
Strass’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing. She just watched Quinn walk away with a stare that could have cut through steel.
Easy, Commander, she thought. You’re not the only one who can push.
Later during drills, Strass evaluated the engineering division from the catwalk. Her posture was perfect as always, spine straight, boots planted, arms folded behind her back, but something in her stance was brittle.
Quinn made sure to place herself where Strass couldn’t ignore her. Close enough to watch. Close enough to be watched.
When Strass called out, “Petty Officer Quinn, status report,” Quinn stepped forward. She did so slowly. Intentionally slowly.
She put her hands behind her back and squared her stance, but just a little too wide. Enough to draw the eye. Enough to remind the Commander that Quinn was smaller, shorter, and absolutely unafraid to stand out.
“Cooling manifold steady, ma’am,” Quinn said. “Within expected parameters.”
“Then why is your test pressure indicator misaligned?”
Quinn blinked. “Ma’am, it’s not-”
Strass pointed with a clipped gesture. Quinn looked. It was aligned. A fake mistake. Strass was provoking her. And Quinn smiled.
“Must have shifted back into place while I came to report,” Quinn said smoothly. Strass held Quinn’s eyes for a full two seconds too long.
“Fix it,” she ordered coldly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
And as Quinn bent down to adjust the perfectly fine valve, she let her back arch just enough to pull tension across her shirt. Not exaggerated. Not obvious to the crew. Strass saw it.
Quinn didn’t have to look to know. She felt the Commander’s stare like a hand sliding down her spine. She straightened, saluted, and gave Strass the smallest smirk, gone in an instant.
In the mess at lunchtime, Commander Strass took her usual seat at the table for officers. Quinn should have sat in the enlisted section. She didn’t.
She passed by just close enough, tray in hand, and murmured-quiet, low, just for Strass.
“Ma’am.”
Strass looked up sharply.
Quinn paused beside her, tapping her tray with one finger. “Shame you missed breakfast. It was satisfying.”
The word hung in the air with deliberate weight. Strass’s throat worked in a silent swallow. Ensign Hargrove looked between them like someone had just spoken an unrecorded war crime. Quinn walked off without another word. Strass didn’t eat a single bite.
By late afternoon, Strass was visibly unraveling. Her crisp commands came out sharper than usual, her patience razor-thin. She snapped at the navigation team over minor errors, then stormed onto the engineering deck to demand timelines Quinn already sent hours ago.
Quinn stood at attention as Strass tore into her.
“You think this is funny, Petty Officer?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You think you’re clever?”
“Never said that, ma’am.”
“You-” Strass stopped herself, jaw flexing. “You are testing my patience.”
Quinn didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
“Ma’am,” she said quietly, “I would never test anything that isn’t rated for pressure.”
Harper choked on a giggle behind her.
Strass’s face went taut; not angry, not shocked, but caught between two instincts fighting for dominance. Quinn knew exactly which one was winning
That evening, Quinn found a moment alone on the main deck, leaning on the rail as the sun went down. Salt spray misted her face. The sky was bruised purple.
Strass approached from behind without a sound. Quinn didn’t turn.
“Petty Officer.”
“Ma’am.”
Strass stepped closer. Too close. Quinn felt the heat radiating off her. The air tightened between them like a pulled wire.
“You will stop whatever it is you think you’re doing,” Strass said quietly. Her voice was deeper than usual. Strained. “This is not a game.”
Quinn didn’t move.
“You hear me?” Strass pressed.
“Loud and clear, ma’am.”
But Quinn’s voice had an edge: soft, amused, cutting. A dangerous little blade hidden in a velvet sheath.
Strass inhaled sharply. “Petty Officer Quinn-”
Quinn turned, leaning her back on the rail, looking up at the towering Commander with open challenge in her eyes.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said softly. “Not my fault if you’re sensitive.”
That landed like a strike.
Strass flinched. A crack in the armor so small most sailors would’ve missed it, but not Quinn. The Commander turned away abruptly, shoulders stiff, hands clenched tightly behind her back. She left without another word.
Quinn watched her go, satisfaction curdling slowly into something heavier.
Maybe that was too much.
She hadn’t expected Strass to look wounded. Not embarrassed, not frustrated, not angry, but wounded.
Like Quinn had cut somewhere she wasn’t supposed to. Quinn swallowed, the taste of victory gone metallic. She leaned her elbows on the rail and stared into the darkening water.
“Shit,” she whispered. “Did I push her that hard?”
She didn’t know. And she didn’t know if she regretted itBut she did know one thing, Strass wouldn’t let this go. Whatever came next wouldn’t be subtle.
By the next morning, the USS Harrington felt tight. Not physically, it was the same cramped steel coffin it had always been, but socially. Atmospherically. Like the tension between Commander Strass and Petty Officer Quinn had seeped into the ventilation system and was now circulating through every deck.
Quinn walked into engineering muster with the uneasy awareness of someone who’d poked a sleeping bear and wasn’t sure how fast it could run. Chief already looked nervous. Harper even more so.
“You alright?” Harper whispered.
“Fine.”
“You sure? Because Strass has been stomping around since 0500 like she’s ready to weld someone’s head to a bulkhead.”
Quinn swallowed but kept her face neutral. But the look she’d seen on Strass’s face last night had crawled under Quinn’s skin in a way she hadn’t anticipated.
The entire engineering division lined up on the deck plates as Commander Strass approached. Her uniform was crisp enough to cut skin. Her expression was carved granite. Not a crack. Not an ounce of warmth or humanity.
Quinn snapped to attention like everyone else, eyes forward. Strass stopped directly in front of her.
The air went silent. Then, in a voice cold enough to frost steel, Strass said:
“Petty Officer Quinn.”
“Ma’am.”
“Step forward.”
Quinn did. One measured step. Strass circled her. Slow, deliberate, predatory, like she was evaluating not a sailor but a piece of equipment that had failed catastrophically.
“You’ve been slipping,” Strass said, loud enough for every sailor in the room to hear. “Repeatedly. Your performance is below the standard required for continued service aboard this cutter.”
Quinn’s stomach lurched. This wasn’t a reprimand, was a spectacle.
“Ma’am, my performance-”
“Is unacceptable,” Strass snapped, cutting her off. “Your attitude is unprofessional. Your conduct borders on insubordination. Your work ethic has declined. And I’m done tolerating it.”
Whispers rippled through the ranks.
Quinn fought to keep her breathing steady. She wanted to fire back, to remind Strass that she’d been performing above standard for months, that she hadn’t missed a single watch, that her diagnostics were the cleanest in the division.
But Strass wasn’t here for the truth. She was here to make Quinn small. Quinn swallowed the words burning up her throat.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Strass stopped in front of her again, towering over her, looking down with eyes that held no trace of softness.
“I am assigning you to extra duty,” Strass said. “Effective immediately. You will scrub the cooling bays by hand. You will log every inspection personally for review. You will redo last week’s maintenance reports from scratch. And if you miss a single deadline-one-”
She leaned down, voice dropping into something deadly.
“I will have you off my ship within seventy-two hours. Do you understand me?”
A quiet, horrified stillness filled the room.
Quinn’s pulse hammered. Her mouth went dry. Strass wasn’t disciplining her. She was destroying her.
“Ma’am,” Quinn forced out, “with respect-this isn’t warranted. My records-”
Strass barked, “You will speak only when spoken to, Petty Officer.”
Quinn’s jaw clenched. Her throat tightened. But she stood at attention, refusing to let Strass see her crack.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Strass straightened, voice rising again to professional volume.
“For now, you are dismissed from muster. Report to my office tomorrow at 0900 for a formal evaluation of your conduct.”
A low murmur swept through the ranks. An evaluation behind closed doors. Everyone knew what that meant. Quinn knew what it meant, too.
Strass stepped back, folding her hands behind her back.
“Go.”
Quinn turned sharply, walked off the deck, heat rising behind her eyes. The humiliation hit her like a delayed blast. The stares, the whispers, the pity, the speculation.
She marched through the corridor, boots hitting steel harder than necessary, swallowing down the pressure in her chest before it could turn into anything wet. By the time she reached the ladderwell, she had to grip the railing to steady herself.
“Fuck,” she whispered under her breath.
She’d wanted to tease Strass. Push her buttons. Test her composure. She hadn’t meant to humiliate her. Not really.
But Strass had been humiliated, by her loss of control, by desire she couldn’t contain, by the crack Quinn had exposed. And Strass had chosen revenge that Quinn couldn’t laugh off. Quinn leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the ladderwell and breathed out slowly.
“Damn it,” she murmured. “What did I start?” She wasn’t afraid of Strass, not exactly, but she understood something now that she should have understood days ago:
Evelyn Strass wasn’t just frustrated. She wasn’t just closeted. She wasn’t just controlling. She was dangerous when cornered, and Quinn had cornered her. Tomorrow’s meeting wasn’t going to be procedural, it wasn’t going to be administrative.It was going to be personal.
And Quinn didn’t know whether she’d walk into that office ready for what Strass had planned, or whether she’d walk into something she’d finally gone too far to pull back from.
Quinn didn’t sleep much the night before. Not because she was anxious but because every time she closed her eyes, she saw Strass’s expression during that public humiliation. The kind of look a superior gave a subordinate they intended to break.
By 0900, Quinn was cleaned up, uniform pressed, jaw locked, trying not to think about how this would go. She never made it to the office on her own.
Quinn had just stepped out of engineering when a shadow filled the passageway. Heavy boots. A rigid posture. A fury so controlled it vibrated through the steel around her.
Commander Evelyn Strass.
No greeting. No command. Just a hand closing around Quinn’s bicep, yanking her forward.
“Ma’am-”
“Save it,” Strass growled.
Her voice wasn’t calm. It wasn’t controlled. It was low and trembling with the kind of rage that meant she’d been stewing in it for hours.
Quinn stumbled as Strass dragged her down the corridor, sailors flattening themselves against bulkheads as the CO hauled a petty officer like contraband she was confiscating. No one dared speak.
Quinn’s heart thudded, adrenaline rising. Strass reached the CO’s office, shoved Quinn inside, and slammed the door closed.
The door hadn’t even finished reverberating when Strass grabbed Quinn by the collar and shoved her back against it, breath hot, eyes wild. There was nothing controlled or officer-like about her now, this wasn’t the Commander who walked the decks with iron posture.
This was a woman who had snapped.
“You think,” Strass growled, her fingers curling tight in Quinn’s shirt, “you can embarrass me in front of my crew-”
“You embarrassed me first,” Quinn said, voice calm, too calm, the words a deliberate knife twist.
Strass’s nostrils flared. She stepped back, not out of restraint but to strip. She tore her uniform off with deliberate precision: top first, boots kicked aside, trousers peeled down those thick, disciplined thighs.
Quinn watched, pulse pounding. Strass wasn’t just undressing; she was shedding rank, shedding control, burning off the last boundary between them with each piece of clothing that hit the floor.
When she was fully naked, she stood there, tall, broad-shouldered, muscled like someone carved her out of the ship’s own ribs. Her chest rose and fell in sharp, barely managed breaths. Her nipples were already hard, flushed. Her thighs were tense, shifting with the need she refused to voice.
“Strip.” The word came out like a threat.
Quinn took her time. Deliberate eye contact the whole way down. Then Strass was on her.
She grabbed Quinn’s waist, lifted her, picked her up like she weighed nothing, and pressed her back against the door. Quinn’s legs instinctively wrapped around her hips.
Strass kissed her hard, teeth scraping, lips pressed. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t tender. It was punishment, the kind Quinn had asked for without ever saying the words.
Quinn bit her bottom lip in return. Not enough to hurt. Enough to challenge.
Strass yanked her away from the door and carried her across the room with uncompromising purpose. Quinn’s back hit the desk and Strass shoved her flat onto it.
“Don’t move,” she ordered.
Quinn didn’t. Not because she feared Strass, but because Strass’s voice, trembling on the edge of desire and fury, made stillness feel like obedience-as-foreplay.
Strass hooked her thumbs into Quinn’s underwear and tore them sideways, fabric ripping with a violent little snap. Quinn gasped, heat flushing through her.
“Careful,” Quinn breathed, “that’s government property.”
Strass delivered a slap between Quinn’s thighs - not hard, but sharp, the sound snapping through the office like a reprimand.
“Don’t joke with me right now.”
“Why not?” Quinn asked, breath catching. “You’re finally being honest.”
Strass’s face tightened. She wasn’t used to being read. She wasn’t used to losing the upper hand. And Quinn saw the exact moment the facade cracked.
Strass pushed Quinn’s legs apart with her forearms. Not painful, but forceful, commanding, spreading her wide across the cold desk until Quinn could feel the chill all the way up her spine. Then Strass leaned in, one hand gripping Quinn’s hip, the other sliding down, knuckles brushing sensitive skin.
Quinn’s breath hitched.
“You think this is what you want,” Strass muttered, voice shaking as her fingers found slick heat and pressed in with deliberate slowness, “but you don’t understand what you’re asking for.”
Quinn arched against her touch. “Explain it to me.”
Strass pushed deeper - two fingers burying inside Quinn with a controlled, punishing firmness that made Quinn’s eyes flutter.
“This,” Strass said, curling her fingers just enough to pull a sharp sound out of Quinn’s mouth, “is not affection. This is not gentle.”
“Good,” Quinn gasped. “Don’t be gentle.”
That broke Strass completely.
She slammed her mouth against Quinn’s again - tongue deep, hungry, claiming - while her fingers worked with ruthless precision.
Quinn’s hands clawed at the edge of the desk, hips jerking helplessly into each thrust of Strass’s fingers. Her breath grew ragged, heat pooling low and fast.
Strass pulled back to watch her face - to watch Quinn react to every movement of her hand. Her voice dropped to a trembling, electric whisper.
“Look at you…” Quinn forced her eyes open, meeting Strass’s stare. “Look at you falling apart for me.”
Quinn’s breath caught. “Maybe I like falling apart.”
Strass pushed deeper, harder, pace increasing - not violent, but intense, overwhelming.
Quinn let out a helpless moan.
Strass froze for half a second, startled by the sound - then shoved her thumb against Quinn’s clit and worked her with devastating, coordinated pressure. Quinn’s back arched off the desk.
“Evelyn-”
That name almost undid Strass on the spot.
“Don’t,” Strass breathed, voice breaking. “Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
Quinn grabbed Strass’s face, pulled her down, kissed her hard. “I mean it.”
Strass groaned - a low, shaken, unbearably human sound - and drove her fingers faster, deeper, grinding her palm against Quinn until Quinn was shaking, thighs trembling around Strass’s waist.
Her orgasm hit like a snapped cable - sudden, forceful, tearing a cry from her throat that Strass caught in her mouth with another fierce kiss. Quinn clung to her shoulders, nails dragging across solid muscle as her whole body jerked under the Commander’s hands.
Strass didn’t stop. Not immediately. She worked her through every aftershock, watching with raw, undone focus, like Quinn’s pleasure was the only thing anchoring her to the present.
When Quinn finally shuddered into stillness, panting, Strass pulled her hand away - staring at it like it was a crime scene and a miracle.
Quinn looked up at her, dazed. “Your turn.”
Strass swallowed hard, composure was gone. Quinn sat up slowly, slid off the desk, and pushed Strass back until her hips hit the edge. The height difference was obscene - Strass towering over her, trembling from restraint rather than strength.
Quinn sank to her knees. Strass’s breath stuttered. “Quinn…”
“You punished me,” Quinn murmured, lips brushing the inside of Strass’s thigh. “Fair’s fair.”
Quinn took her time, teasing with lips and tongue until Strass’s control unraveled completely. The Commander’s hands tangled in Quinn’s short hair, grip tightening each time Quinn pushed her closer. It didn’t take long.
Strass came hard, a broken sound ripping from her throat as her whole body arched, thighs trembling around Quinn’s head, fingers clawing at the desk behind her to stay upright.
It was the sound of a woman who had held everything in for too long, the sound of surrender.
She sagged back against the desk, chest heaving, sweat beading at her temples. Quinn rose slowly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, smirking.
Strass looked wrecked and terrified of it.
“We’re not done talking about this,” Strass whispered, voice shot through with fear and desire. Quinn kissed her again, not mocking, not smug.
“I know.”