Kaleidoscope

The metallic rattle of the doorknob echoed like a gunshot in the silent storage room. Jay’s hand clamped over Mandakini’s mouth, his other arm wrapping around her waist to pull her back into the deepest shadows behind a stack of CRT monitors.
“Security,” he breathed into her ear, the word barely a vibration.
The heavy door groaned open. A beam of a flashlight cut through the darkness, a sharp, clinical white light that danced over the dusty filing cabinets and the very desk where, moments ago, their world had been nothing but heat and friction.

Mandakini’s heart hammered against her ribs so violently she was certain the guard could hear it. She was acutely aware of the disarray of her clothes—the satin of her skirt was twisted, and her skin still burned from Jay’s touch.
The heavy footsteps thumped on the concrete floor. Clack. Clack. Clack.
The flashlight beam swept toward their corner. It illuminated a skeletal metal rack just inches from Jay’s shoulder. Mandakini squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her back into the solid warmth of Jay’s chest. He didn’t flinch; his body was a statue of disciplined tension.

“Hello?” a gravelly voice called out.
The guard paused. The silence was agonizing. Then, the sound of a radio crackled—a burst of static that made Mandakini jump.

“Basement clear, Sector 4,” the guard muttered into his shoulder mic.
The beam lingered on the crate they had just occupied, then finally swung away. The heavy door thudded shut, followed by the unmistakable click of a deadbolt.
“He locked it,” Mandakini whispered, her voice trembling as Jay released his grip. “Jay, we’re locked in.”

Jay didn’t panic. He reached for his phone, but his face darkened as he looked at the screen. “No signal. This place is a Faraday cage of lead pipes and concrete.”
He moved to the door, testing the handle. It was solid. He turned back to the room, his eyes scanning the cluttered graveyard of technology. “We can’t call for help. If we’re found here in the morning by the facility manager, there’s no explaining this away.

Our careers are over before the sun rises.”
Mandakini felt a cold sweat break out, replacing the lingering warmth of their encounter. She looked up, her eyes landing on the small, rectangular ventilation grate near the ceiling—the same one that had provided the dim light for their tryst.

“The vents,” she said, pointing. “They have to lead to the main HVAC trunk. If we can get up there, we might find a maintenance hatch that opens into the hallway.”
Jay looked at the height of the vent, then at a stack of heavy equipment crates. “It’s a tight squeeze, Mandakini. And it’ll be a long drop on the other side.”

“I’ve spent months navigating logic gates,” she said, a flash of her firecracker spirit returning as she straightened her skirt. “I can navigate a vent. Better than sitting here waiting for a scandal.”

Jay nodded, his expression shifting back to that of the decisive leader. He dragged a heavy wooden crate toward the wall, the wood scraping harshly against the floor. “Get on my shoulders. If you can pop the grate, I’ll hoist you up, then follow.”

As Mandakini climbed onto his broad shoulders, the physical proximity reignited a flicker of the previous tension, but it was now laced with the adrenaline of the hunt. She reached for the metal slats, her fingers straining.
“I’ve got it,” she hissed, prying the rusted screws loose with the edge of a discarded metal ruler.

She pulled herself into the dark, narrow tunnel, the scent of cold metal and old dust filling her lungs. She reached back down, grabbing Jay’s hand to help guide his climb. In the cramped, echoing darkness of the ventilation shaft, the stakes had changed. They were no longer manager and subordinate, nor just lovers—they were fugitives in a labyrinth of their own making.


The air inside the ventilation shaft was frigid and tasted of stale iron. It was a claustrophobic contrast to the expansive heat of the storage room. Mandakini led the way, her satin skirt bunching around her thighs as she crawled on hands and knees. Every movement caused the thin sheet metal to groan and pop beneath her weight, a sound that felt deafening in the hollow silence.

Behind her, Jay was a constant, heavy presence. The shaft was barely wide enough for his broad shoulders; she could hear the rhythmic rasp of his breathing and the occasional scrape of his skin against the rivets.
“The main trunk should be up ahead,” Jay whispered, his voice muffled by the metal walls. “Look for a junction. If we head toward the vibration, that’s the fan room. We want the opposite way—toward the exterior wall.”
Mandakini reached a split in the duct. To the left, a low-frequency hum vibrated through her bones. To the right, a faint, rhythmic tink-tink-tink sounded—the cooling of the building’s exterior cladding in the night air.
“Right,” she decided, pushing forward.

Suddenly, her hand slipped. A section of the ducting, weakened by years of neglect, buckled downward. Mandakini let out a strangled gasp as the floor beneath her gave way. She slid forward, her legs dangling into a vertical drop.
“Jay!”
In a flash, his hand shot forward, his fingers locking around her wrist with bruising strength. He anchored himself against the ceiling of the duct, his biceps bulging as he arrested her fall. For a heartbeat, she hung there, suspended over a dark abyss that led straight down to the furnace room three floors below.

“I’ve got you,” he growled, the raw authority in his voice steadying her panic. “Find a foothold on the side bracket. Slowly.”
With her heart hammering against the metal, Mandakini found a narrow ledge. Jay hauled her back up into the horizontal shaft, their bodies momentarily pressed together in the lightless tunnel. The adrenaline was a different kind of high now—sharp, cold, and desperate.

They continued for what felt like miles, their knees bruised and skin coated in a fine layer of gray soot. Finally, a glimmer of light appeared through a circular vent cover. Mandakini peered through the slats.
“It’s the janitor’s closet on the ground floor,” she whispered. “It’s empty.”

They worked together to kick the vent cover loose. It fell with a soft thud onto a pile of cleaning rags. Mandakini lowered herself first, landing lightly on her feet, followed by Jay, who dropped with the silent grace of a predator.

They stood in the cramped closet, surrounded by the scent of lemon ammonia and industrial soap. Mandakini caught her reflection in a small, cracked mirror on the door. Her hair was a wild nest of tangles, her face streaked with dust, and her white satin top was ruined—stained with grease from the ducts.

Jay stepped up behind her, looking equally disheveled, his black t-shirt torn at the shoulder. He didn’t look like a manager anymore; he looked like a man who had survived a war. He reached out, his thumb wiping a smudge of soot from her cheekbone.

“We can’t walk out the front door looking like this,” he said, his eyes dark with the thrill of the escape.
“The gym,” Mandakini realized. “The employee gym is just down this hall. It has showers and spare branded t-shirts. We can clean up there and leave through the 24-hour side exit as if we just finished a late-night workout.”
Jay leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “Brilliant as always, Mandakini. Let’s go. Before the ghost of our ambition catches up with us.”

The gym was a sanctuary of sterile tile and the hum of vending machines. They moved with frantic efficiency, scrubbing the soot from their skin under the stinging spray of the showers. Mandakini pulled on a generic navy-blue company hoodie she found in a lost-and-found bin, the oversized fabric swallowing her petite frame. Jay appeared a minute later, damp hair pushed back, looking remarkably composed despite the jagged tear in his own shirt which he’d hidden under a light jacket.

They exited through the side door, the brisk British night air hitting them like a cold realization.
The walk to his car was silent, the previous heat replaced by a heavy, shared secret. Once inside the Audi, the click of the central locking felt like the final seal on the night’s events. Jay didn’t start the engine immediately. He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white, before turning to her.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” he said, his voice low and raspy. “But I’m not going to lie and say I regret a single second of it.”

Mandakini leaned her head back against the leather seat, her body finally beginning to tremble from the comedown of the adrenaline. “We almost lost everything, Jay.”
“Almost,” he countered. He reached over, his hand covering hers. His touch was no longer the aggressive mauling of the storage room, but something deeper, more possessive. “But we didn’t.”

The drive to her apartment was a blur of orange streetlights and rain-slicked pavement. When he pulled up to the curb, he didn’t lean in for a kiss. He simply looked at her, his gaze intense enough to burn. “See you at 09:00, Mandakini. Don’t be late for the sprint review.”

The Next Morning ;The Office
The fluorescent lights of the UK headquarters felt ten times brighter than usual. Mandakini sat at the long mahogany conference table, her laptop open, lines of code blurring before her eyes. She had spent an hour applying concealer to the faint bruises on her neck and the dark circles under her eyes.

The door opened, and Jay walked in.
He was the picture of corporate perfection—crisp white shirt, tailored trousers, and a sharp, professional smile. He looked like he had slept for ten hours, not like the man who had been pinning her against a dusty filing cabinet just twelve hours prior.
“Good morning, team,” Jay announced, his voice steady and commanding.

He walked around the table, stopping briefly behind Mandakini’s chair. To anyone else, it looked like he was checking her progress on the screen. But Mandakini felt the heat radiating from him. As he leaned down to point at a specific line of code, his hand rested momentarily on the back of her neck, his thumb grazing the exact spot where he had bitten her.

“Excellent work on the logic gates, Mandakini,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, meant only for her. “I see you’ve handled the stress testing quite well.”
She caught his eye in the reflection of her screen. He wasn’t just praising her work; he was challenging her, reminding her that while the world saw a manager and an engineer, they both knew exactly what lay beneath the satin and the suits.
A colleague, Sarah, looked up from her notes. “You guys look a bit tired. Long night at the office?”
The silence stretched for a heartbeat too long.

Sarah’s eyes narrowed, her gaze flickering between Mandakini’s high-collared scarf—unusual for the stuffy office—and the slight tremor in Jay’s hand as he adjusted his cufflink.
“Actually,” Sarah said, reaching into her laptop bag, “I went down to the basement storage this morning to look for that old server rack. I found something… interesting.”
Mandakini’s breath hitched. She stared at the screen, her fingers frozen on the keyboard. Beside her, she felt Jay’s posture stiffen, though his face remained a mask of professional indifference.

Sarah placed a small, shimmering object on the mahogany table. It was a silver filigree earring, one of the pair Mandakini’s mother had gifted her before the trip. It must have snagged on Jay’s shirt during the frantic escape through the vents.

“I think this belongs to you, Mandakini,” Sarah said, her voice deceptively sweet. “Funny place to lose a piece of jewelry, don’t you think? Right next to the old filing cabinets.”
The room went cold. The other developers paused their typing, sensing the shift in pressure. Jay didn’t miss a beat. He picked up the earring, examining it with a detached curiosity before handing it back to Mandakini.

“I asked Mandakini to help me inventory the legacy hardware late last night,” Jay lied smoothly, his voice projecting the perfect level of authority. “The lighting is terrible down there. It’s no surprise things get misplaced. Now, back to the API integration. Sarah, I believe you’re behind on the documentation?”

The redirection was masterclass, but the seed was planted. Sarah didn’t look convinced; she watched Mandakini tuck the earring into her pocket with a look of predatory interest.

As the meeting broke, the adrenaline that had been simmering in Mandakini’s veins turned into a desperate, frantic need to disappear. She stood up too quickly, her chair scraping the floor. “I need a minute,” she murmured to no one in particular, heading for the exit.

She ducked into the unisex executive washroom down the hall—a sleek, modern space with heavy oak doors and floor-to-ceiling marble. She splashed cold water on her face, her square jaw set in a line of mounting anxiety. The reflection in the mirror showed a woman on the edge of a breakdown—or a breakthrough.

The door behind her clicked shut. The heavy deadbolt turned with a finality that made her spine tingle.
Through the mirror, she saw Jay. He hadn’t bothered to take off his blazer this time, but his tie was already loosened. The professional facade he’d worn in the conference room was gone, replaced by the same dark, possessive hunger that had fueled the basement encounter.

“You’re reckless,” she whispered, turning to face him. Her back hit the cold marble vanity.
“And you’re vibrating,” he countered, stepping into her space until the scent of his expensive cologne and the faint, lingering metallic musk of the vents overwhelmed her. He placed his hands on the marble on either side of her hips, pinning her. “Sarah is smart. But she’s also competitive. She won’t say anything until she has proof. Which means we have to be… more careful.”
“Careful?” Mandakini let out a jagged laugh. “You’re locking us in a bathroom ten feet away from her desk!”

“Exactly,” Jay growled, his hand moving to the nape of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair. “The last place they’d look is the most obvious one.”
He leaned in, his mouth hovering just an inch from hers. “Now, tell me… did that scare in the meeting make you want to run, or did it make you want this even more?”
Mandakini didn’t answer with words.

She grabbed the lapels of his blazer and pulled him down, her lips meeting his in a clash of teeth and tongue that tasted of danger and suppressed fire. The sterile, lemon-scented air of the washroom suddenly felt as thick and charged as the storage room.
Jay’s hands left the vanity, sliding down to the hem of her satin skirt, his touch a bold claim in the bright, unforgiving light of the bathroom.


A sharp, rhythmic rapping on the heavy oak door shattered the silence. Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Hello? Anyone in there? I really need the good soap before the client arrives,” Sarah’s voice chirped from the other side, sounding suspiciously close to the wood.
Inside, the world froze. Jay’s hands were still bunched in the silk of Mandakini’s skirt, and Mandakini’s breath was caught in a jagged sob of frustration. Jay pressed his forehead against hers, his eyes dark with a silent, frustrated promise. He slowly released her, stepping back with a predatory grace, smoothing his blazer as if he’d just been checking his reflection.

Mandakini straightened her skirt, her heart performing a frantic percussion against her ribs. She cleared her throat, trying to find her “engineer voice.”
“Just a second!” she called out, her voice a pitch higher than usual.
Jay winked—a gesture so brazenly confident it made her toes curl—and slipped into one of the private stalls. Mandakini checked the mirror one last time, tucked a stray hair behind her ear, and unlocked the main door.
Sarah stood there, holding a makeup bag, her eyes scanning Mandakini’s flushed face like a high-resolution sensor. “Long ‘minute’ in there, Mandakini. Troubleshooting a difficult… bug?”

“Something like that,” Mandakini replied, her sassy fire returning as she pushed past. “Some systems are just more demanding than others. Hard to get them to settle down once they’ve been properly… activated.”
The rest of the afternoon was a slow-burn torture.

They were back in the open-plan office, seated at a long bench. Every time Mandakini leaned over her keyboard, she felt the phantom pressure of Jay’s hands. The “longing” was a physical ache, a hum in her blood that made concentrating on C++ nearly impossible.

Jay was on a conference call at the head of the table, his voice deep and authoritative.
“We need to ensure the entry point is secure,” Jay said, his eyes flicking to Mandakini across the room. “If the connection is too shallow, the whole system will fail under pressure. We need a deep, sustained integration.”

Mandakini bit her lip, her fingers flying over the keys. She typed back into the shared team chat: “I’m worried about the ‘friction’ in the current setup. It seems to be heating up the hardware.”

Jay glanced at his monitor, a ghost of a smirk playing on his lips. “The friction is a known variable, Mandakini,” he said aloud to the room, though his gaze remained locked on her. “In fact, I find that a bit of heat often makes the components… more pliable. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Sarah looked up from her desk, frowning. “Are we still talking about the API?”
“Of course,” Jay replied smoothly. “What else would we be discussing? Mandakini, I’ve noticed your ‘back-end’ processes are running a bit slow this afternoon. Perhaps you need a private session to… optimize your performance?”

The room went silent for a beat. The double entendre hung in the air like a heavy cloud.
“I think a private session is exactly what I need, Jay,” Mandakini shot back, her voice dripping with a sassy, desperate edge. “I’m having trouble with a stiff requirement that just won’t let up. It’s very… distracting.”
“I’ll clear my schedule for 5:00 PM,” Jay said, his voice dropping to a low rumble that vibrated right through her chair. “Make sure you bring all your… documentation. I want to be very thorough.”

As Sarah watched them with mounting suspicion, Mandakini felt a slick heat pool between her thighs. The clock on the wall seemed to be moving in slow motion. 4:15 PM. 4:16 PM.


The office clock finally ticked to 5:00 PM. The air in the bullpen was thick with the scent of ozone and the restless energy of people desperate to escape the workday, but for Mandakini, the real work was just beginning.

She stood up, her white satin skirt rustling—a sound that, to her ears, was as loud as a scream. Jay was already at the elevators, his back to the room, the broad expanse of his shoulders pulling the fabric of his blazer taut. He didn’t look back. He didn’t have to. He knew she was coming.
The bell chimed. The silver doors slid open to an empty car. They stepped inside, the space immediately feeling too small, too pressurized. As the doors hissed shut, Jay didn’t wait. He didn’t even reach for the buttons.

He slammed his palm against the Emergency Stop.
The elevator jolted, a sickening, thrilling lurch that threw Mandakini forward. Jay’s arms were there to catch her, but instead of stabilizing her, he spun her around, pinning her back against the cool, brushed-metal wall.
“You’ve been a very vocal critic of the ‘system’ today, Mandakini,” he growled, his voice a dark, velvet rasp against her ear.
“The system is… unresponsive,” she gasped, her hands flying to his chest, bunching the expensive cotton of his shirt. “It needs a hard reset.”

Jay’s mouth crashed onto hers, not with the tentative grace of a manager, but with the territorial hunger of a man who had been starving for hours. His tongue plundered her mouth, tasting of coffee and the sharp, metallic tang of shared secrets. Mandakini’s knees buckled; the square line of her jaw dropped as she let out a jagged moan that echoed off the stainless steel.

His hands were everywhere. One went to her throat, his thumb tilting her head back to expose the delicate line of her neck, while the other dove beneath the hem of her satin skirt. He didn’t hesitate. His fingers found the damp, silk-covered heat of her, the fabric already clinging to her skin from the hours of agonizing anticipation.

“You’re soaking,” he whispered, his hot breath ghosting over the bruises he’d left that morning. “Did my ‘performance review’ get you this excited?”
“Fuck you, Jay,” she whimpered, her head thumping back against the metal wall as his fingers hooked into the edge of her panties and dragged them aside.

He didn’t use finesse. He used power. He found her swollen, dripping core and drove two fingers inside her with a blunt force that made her vision go white. Mandakini’s back arched, her fingers digging into his biceps, her nails piercing the fabric of his suit.
“Yes… right there… oh god, Jay!” she shrieked, the sound muffled by the hum of the idle elevator motor.

He worked her with a rhythmic, punishing precision, his thumb grinding against her clit while his fingers pumped deep inside her. The friction was incredible—the contrast of the cold metal against her back and the furnace of his body against her front. She was a firecracker mid-explosion, her breath coming in short, frantic hitches.

“You wanted it hard, didn’t you?” Jay muttered, his teeth grazing her earlobe. “You wanted to see if the manager could handle the engineer.”
“Show me,” she challenged, her voice breaking. “Show me how you… optimize the load.”

Jay’s eyes darkened to charcoal. He reached down and unzipped his trousers, his turgid, heavy cock springing free, pulsing with a life of its own. He grabbed her thighs, hoisting her petite frame upward. Mandakini wrapped her legs around his waist, her heels kicking against the elevator walls as she guided him to her entrance.
He entered her in one swift, unrelenting thrust.

The scream she let out was swallowed by his mouth. He began to fuck her right there, suspended between floors, the elevator cables groaning in sympathy. Every thrust was a pile-driver, slamming her back against the metal, the vibration of the building adding to the chaotic friction.

She was coming. She could feel it building—a tidal wave of honeyed heat and electric nerves. “Jay! I’m—”
Suddenly, the elevator’s internal intercom crackled to life.
“Elevator 3, this is Security. We’re seeing a localized power surge and an emergency stop. Is everything alright in there?”


The intercom’s crackle was a chilling reminder of the world outside, but inside the steel box, the air was thick with the scent of sex and raw, unadulterated skin.

As the security guard’s voice repeated the query, Jay’s hands moved with a sudden, rough finality. He didn’t just want her; he wanted the truth of her. He reached down between their fused bodies, his fingers hooking into the waistband of his briefs and shoving them down, freeing his cock entirely.
Mandakini felt the sudden, searing contact of his bare skin against her inner thighs.

The realization hit her like a jolt of electricity. “Jay, no… not bare,” she whispered, a flash of Chandigarh-bred caution flickering in her eyes. “We don’t have… you can’t…”
She made a half-hearted attempt to push against his shoulders, her hands trembling. But Jay was past the point of corporate policy or careful planning. He ignored her token resistance, his fingers digging into the flesh of her glutes as he repositioned her.
“Too late for logic, Mandakini,” he growled, his voice a low, vibrating chord of dominance.

He lunged forward, burying himself deep within her in one smooth, liquid motion. Mandakini’s eyes flew open, her breath catching in a silent scream. The sensation was transformative. Without the barrier of latex, she could feel every pulsing nerve along the length of him. His cock felt like a rod of living, velvet-wrapped steel, the heat of it radiating through her entire pelvic floor.
She could feel the ridged texture of his anatomy, the way the corona of his head hooked against her most sensitive internal spots with every punishing thrust. It wasn’t just friction anymore; it was a total, invasive merging. Her own pussy, already swollen and slick with her frantic desire, felt like it was melting around him, her internal walls convulsing in a desperate attempt to grip every millimeter of his bare skin.

“Oh god… Jay… it’s so… hot,” she whimpered, her resistance dissolving into a puddle of primal need. She wrapped her arms around his neck, biting her lip so hard she tasted copper to keep from screaming as the security guard’s voice droned on.
“Elevator 3? Please respond.”
Jay ignored the intercom, his pace becoming frantic, animalistic. He was a man possessed, his muscles rippling under his suit jacket as he hammered into her. The sensation of his bare skin sliding against hers created a suction, a wet, rhythmic sound that filled the small space. Mandakini was drowning in the feeling—the way his pulse seemed to sync with her own, the way the heavy, rhythmic thud of his hips against hers felt like the heartbeat of the building itself.
She felt the build-up—a tightening of her core so intense it was almost painful. Her pussy began to spasm, the warm, honeyed juices overflowing as she reached her limit. “I’m… I’m going to…”
“Come for me,” Jay commanded, his voice a guttural rasp.

He delivered three final, blindingly fast thrusts, his own body tensing as he reached the point of no return. Mandakini shattered, her internal muscles clenching around him in wave after wave of rhythmic, agonizing pleasure. At that exact moment, she felt the hot, pulsing surge of him filling her—a thick, searing deluge that felt like liquid fire against her sensitized walls.

He groaned, a deep, masculine sound of total conquest, slamming his forehead against the metal wall as he finished.
Just as the last of their tremors subsided, Jay reached out with a shaky hand and hit the ‘Reset’ button. The elevator lurched back into motion.

“Everything’s fine, Security,” Jay said into the speaker, his voice miraculously level, though his chest was still heaving. “Just a glitch in the sensor. We’re moving again.”
By the time the doors opened at the lobby, they were standing a foot apart, clothes straightened, the only evidence of their war being the faint, unmistakable glow in Mandakini’s eyes and the slight dampness of her satin skirt.


The silver doors hissed open to the silent lobby, but as Mandakini stepped out, the cool air hit the damp silk of her skirt like a confession. She didn’t look back at Jay, but she didn’t have to; the security monitor behind the desk was glowing with a frozen frame of Elevator 3, and Sarah was standing right next to the guard, her eyes fixed on the screen.
Mandakini’s heart, which had just begun to settle, spiked into a frantic, uneven rhythm. She kept her head down, her heels clicking rhythmically against the polished marble as she aimed for the glass revolving doors. Every step felt heavy, her thighs still slick with the cooling evidence of Jay’s conquest.
Beside the security desk, Sarah leaned in closer to the guard, pointing at the monitor. The guard’s hand hovered over the playback controls.

“Wait,” Sarah’s voice carried across the lobby, sharp and inquisitive. “Go back thirty seconds. The vibration on the sensor… look at the way the car is swaying.”
Jay walked several paces behind Mandakini, his gait steady, his face a mask of bored executive fatigue. He didn’t even glance toward the desk, but Mandakini saw his jaw tighten—the only tell of a man seeing his empire teetering on a precipice.
“Hey, Jay! Mandakini!” Sarah called out, turning away from the monitor with a smile that didn’t reach her predatory eyes. “The guard was just showing me the ‘glitch’ from Elevator 3. It’s funny… the footage looks a bit distorted right when the emergency stop was hit. Almost like someone was… obstructing the lens.”

Mandakini reached the revolving door, the cold night air just inches away. She forced a polite, strained smile. “Must be the old wiring in this building, Sarah. Like Jay said, the system is overdue for an overhaul.”
She pushed through the glass, the street noise of London swallowing the office silence. She didn’t stop until she reached the corner, her breath hitching in the fog. Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

It was a text from an unknown number, but the tone was unmistakably Jay’s:
“Don’t go home yet. Look at your reflection in the shop window. Now.”
Mandakini turned slowly toward the darkened window of a closed boutique. In the reflection, she saw her own pale, square jaw and wide eyes. But then she saw it—caught in the high collar of her navy hoodie, stark against the dark fabric, was a stray, bright white thread from the underside of Jay’s expensive dress shirt.

And then she saw the black sedan idling at the curb. The tinted window rolled down just an inch, revealing Jay’s dark, intense eyes.
“Get in,” his voice came through the gap, low and urgent. “Sarah didn’t just find the earring. She followed us to the gym. We’re not the only ones who stayed late tonight.”
As Mandakini stepped toward the car, she glanced back at the office windows high above. A single light flickered on the executive floor—a floor that should have been empty.
Someone was watching from the top, and they weren’t looking at the code.