Black Friday Backshot
Ten Minutes of Reckless Desire
The stockroom smelled like cardboard, cleaning solution, and Marcus’s own stress sweat. He leaned against the metal shelving unit, tablet clutched in one hand, and tried to remember how to breathe like a normal human being.
2:47 PM. Three hours and thirteen minutes down. Four hours and forty-seven minutes to go.
Through the stockroom door, he could hear the muffled chaos of the sales floor—raised voices, the insistent beep of scanners, someone’s child screaming about wanting the display sweater. His walkie-talkie crackled with overlapping requests, complaints, and one very frazzled cashier asking if they could institute a “one customer per associate” policy.
Marcus had escaped back here under the pretense of checking inventory levels on cashmere sweaters. Really, he just needed sixty seconds where no one was yelling at him about doorbusters or asking if they could speak to a manager when he literally was the manager.
The door opened.
Marcus didn’t look up from his tablet. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it for at least thirty more seconds.”
“Not even if I’m here to hide with you?”
That voice made Marcus’s thumb slip on the screen. He looked up.
Ethan closed the stockroom door behind him, and the chaos dimmed to a distant murmur. The sudden quiet felt obscene, intimate. Ethan’s hair was disheveled, his carefully pressed shirt coming untucked on one side, and there was a smudge of something—lipstick? coffee?—on his collar. He looked exactly like someone who’d been on the front lines of retail warfare for six hours.
He also looked unfairly attractive.
“Thought you were on the floor,” Marcus said, aiming for professional and landing somewhere near strangled.
“I was. Customer asked for a medium in the charcoal cashmere v-neck. We’re out on the floor.” Ethan’s eyes flicked to the shelves behind Marcus, then back to his face. “Figured I’d grab one from back stock.”
“Right. Inventory. That’s... that’s why you’re here.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Ethan agreed, but he didn’t move toward the shelves. He just stood there, three feet away, with that slight smile that had been driving Marcus slowly insane for the past six weeks.
Ethan had started as a seasonal hire in mid-October. Professional enough, good with customers, showed up on time. Also: gorgeous, charming, and possessed of a truly devastating smile that he deployed with surgical precision.
For six weeks, Marcus had been professional. Appropriate. Had definitely not noticed the way Ethan’s dress pants fit, or how he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows during his shifts, or the way his eyes lingered just a beat too long when they talked.
Definitely hadn’t thought about him during his morning shower. Multiple times. This week alone.
“You hiding back here too?” Ethan asked, taking one step closer.
Marcus’s grip tightened on his tablet. “Taking a tactical break.”
“Smart.” Another step. “It’s a war zone out there.”
“Black Friday usually is.”
“Yeah, but this year feels different.” Ethan was close enough now that Marcus could smell his cologne under the retail-floor scent of recycled air and customer perfume. “More... tense.”
Marcus’s mouth had gone dry. “Tense.”
“Mm.” Ethan’s gaze dropped to Marcus’s mouth, then back up. “Like everyone’s just waiting for an excuse to do something reckless.”
The tablet was going to crack if Marcus gripped it any harder. “Ethan—”
“I saw you watching me earlier. During the rush at the sweater display.”
Fuck. “I was supervising the floor.”
“You were staring at my ass when I bent down to grab the extra mediums from the bottom shelf.”
“That’s—I wasn’t—”
“Marcus.” Ethan’s hand came up, fingertips brushing the front of Marcus’s shirt. “We’ve been dancing around this for weeks. You know it. I know it. And we’re finally alone.”
Marcus’s brain was short-circuiting. “We should get back out there.”
“Probably.” Ethan’s fingers traced down to Marcus’s loosened tie. “Or we could acknowledge that we’ve got maybe ten minutes before anyone notices we’re both gone.”
The acknowledgment of the time limit hit Marcus like a shot of adrenaline. Ten minutes. They had ten minutes, and Ethan was right here, and Marcus had been holding himself back for six weeks of professional boundaries and appropriate workplace behavior, and—
“Fuck it,” Marcus breathed, and grabbed Ethan’s collar.
The kiss was immediate, desperate, weeks of tension exploding in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Ethan made a sound against his mouth—surprise, satisfaction, relief—and kissed back just as hard. His hands fisted in Marcus’s shirt, pulling him closer, and Marcus dropped the tablet on the nearest shelf so he could get both hands on Ethan properly.
God, he felt good. Solid and warm and real, nothing like the fantasies Marcus had been trying not to have. Better. Ethan kissed like he did everything else—confident, skilled, with just enough edge to make it interesting. His tongue traced Marcus’s lower lip, and Marcus opened for him immediately, groaning into it.
They stumbled backward until Marcus hit the metal shelving. Boxes rattled overhead. Ethan pressed against him, one thigh sliding between Marcus’s legs, and the friction against his hardening cock made Marcus’s hips jerk forward involuntarily.
“Fuck,” Ethan breathed against his mouth. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.”
“Since October fifteenth,” Marcus managed. “Your first shift. You smiled at me during orientation and I forgot how to explain the POS system.”
Ethan laughed, low and pleased. “I noticed.”
