The gym door clicks shut behind Gianna with a pneumatic hiss that sounds too loud.
She rolls her cart across the rubber flooring, the wheels catching slightly on the transition between the corridor's marble and the gym's specialised surface.
Her tablet shows 7:15 AM—early enough that most residents are still sleeping off whatever indulgences the night before demanded.
She tucks the tablet into her apron pocket and reaches for the spray bottles. The gym smells of eucalyptus cleaning solution and yesterday's sweat.
She notices the treadmill display is still lit; the numbers frozen at 4.2 kilometres. Someone was here recently.
The shower runs in the adjoining washroom, a steady white noise behind the thin wall.
Gianna ignores it, focusing on the mirrors first, always the mirrors. She pulls out her microfiber cloth and starts on the upper left corner of the main wall, her arm moving in efficient circles, the motion automatic after eight months of this work.
The shower cuts off.
She doesn't turn. Footsteps, heavy and slightly uneven—that hip she's heard the other maid's gossip about—cross from the washroom into the main gym space.
Still, she doesn't turn. Residents are half naked in their own spaces all the time; she's learned to make herself invisible, to become part of the furniture, the fixtures, the service.
"Sweetheart."
The voice carries that particular gravel of decades of cigarettes and screaming into microphones.
Gianna's hand halts mid-circle on the glass.
She turns slowly, professionally, expecting to find Axe Vaughan in a towel at minimum, perhaps in those ridiculous leather pants the other girls laugh about when he's not around.
He's naked. Completely, unapologetically naked.
Sixty-two years of rock-and-roll excess displayed without shame, the snake tattoo on his forearm seeming to writhe as he shifts his weight.
And between his legs—her eyes snap up to his face, but the image is already burned in, the heavy sway of him still half-hard from the shower's heat, the dark thatch of grey hair, the thickness that makes her throat tighten involuntarily.
His real snake!
Her hands fly to her mouth. She steps backward, her sneakers squeaking on the rubber flooring, and her shoulder blades hit the mirror she'd been cleaning.
"Never anything over eight inches," Axe says, his voice casual as if discussing the weather.
He doesn't cover himself. He doesn't move to retrieve the towel she'd seen him wearing yesterday from the bench.
"Well, don't go shy. You've seen a cock before, haven't you?"
Gianna's hands drop from her face, but her fingers find the edge of her apron and twist there.
The dolphin charm under her collar presses cold against her sternum.
"I should—I'll come back later, Mr Vaughan. When you're—"
"You're here now."
He takes a step toward her, that slight hitch in his gait more pronounced without clothes, without his leather and his swagger.
"And I'm not Mr Vaughan. Axe. Call me Axe when you've got your lips around me."
"I have a boyfriend," she blurts, the same reflexive defence she used with Freya, the words tasting hollow even as they leave her mouth.
As if that matters. As if anything matters but the heat suddenly pooling between her legs, the traitorous response her body gives to his confidence, his shamelessness, the way he looks at her like she's already his.
Well, what girl doesn't want to try nine and change?
Axe laughs, a dry bark that turns into a smoker's cough.
"Sweetheart, I've had wives. Plural. I've had groupies who'd cut you for a night in my trailer."
He closes the distance between them, close enough that she can smell the whiskey on his breath from last night, the cedar of his soap, the particular musk of an older man's skin.
"I don't care about your boyfriend. I care about that mouth. Pretty lips, darlin'."
His hand rises, thumb tracing her jawline, and she lets him.
She's letting him.
The arousal, the knowledge that she's weak, that she's exactly what this uniform makes her look like, a toy for wealthy people to use and discard.
Fuck! Fuck! He has a big cock!
Cocky bastard, but he's got the cock to back it up!
"On your knees," he points.
She goes. The rubber flooring presses hard against her kneecaps.
From this angle, he's enormous, the veins standing out along his shaft, the head flushed dark and already leaking.
Sheez! It's like craning your neck lookin' up at a skyscraper.
Geez, the mercy rule with one!
She thinks, I'll gag for sure.
Gianna opens her mouth.
"Spit sweetheart, spit on my snake."
She's generous.
It's lubed and glistening.
He doesn't wait for her to adjust any longer.
His hand knots in her ponytail, pulling hard enough that her eyes water, and he thrusts forward, filling her throat in one movement. She gags, spit flooding her mouth, and he pulls back just enough to let her gasp before pushing in again, deeper this time, her nose pressing against the wiry hair at his base.
Gug, gug, gag, gag, gag, gurgle, splutter!
"That's it," he groans, his hips setting a rhythm that she struggles to match.
"Fuck, that's a good girl. Try again. Take it all."
Gug, gag, gug, guggle, guggle, gag!
She can't. He's too thick, too demanding, and the gagging is constant now, tears streaming down her face, her mascara running in black rivers.
She reaches up to steady herself against his thighs, feeling the tension there, the old strength still present beneath the loosening skin.
Her fingers brush the snake tattoo, tracing its faded scales as he uses her mouth with increasing desperation.
Tilts her head.
Fucks her skull.
The sounds are spluttery—wet, choking, the slap of his hips against her chin, his grunts mixing with her strangled noises.
Gug, gug, gag, gug, gug, guggle!
Drool spills down her chin, onto her uniform, staining the white apron with strings of saliva that connect her lips to his cock when he pulls back to let her breathe.
Some primal reflex occurs.
She finds a depth she frickin' never knew she had.
Fuck, Gianna takes the aging rock star bloody throat deep.
"Look at you," he pants, his thumb wiping through the mess on her face, smearing it across her cheek like war paint.
"Fucking beautiful. You want this, don't you? Want me to fill that pretty throat?"
She nods before she can stop herself, the amazing episode complete, and he laughs again, gentler this time, almost fond.
Uses his schlong to smack her left and then her right cheek.
He pulls her up by her hair, her knees screaming as they leave the floor, and spins her around with surprising strength for his age.
"Hold the mirror, sweetheart," he commands, pressing her forward until her palms flatten against the glass she'd been cleaning, her breath fogging the surface.
"Don't you dare let go."
He lifts her skirt with one hand, the other tearing at her underwear—cotton, the kind she buys in six-packs at Target—and she hears the fabric rip, feels the air hit her exposed snatch.
She's wet, super wet, and he notices, his fingers sliding through her folds with pussy connoisseur appreciation.
"Soaked," he murmurs, positioning himself behind her.
"Knew you would be. Little maid slut, walking around here in this fucking outfit, teasing everyone—"
"I'm not—" she starts, but the denial dies as he thrusts into her, splitting her open, her fingers scrabbling against the mirror for purchase.
He doesn't give her time to think.
Thinking time is the enemy of great dirty sex.
His hands grip her hips, thumbs pressing into the dimples above her ass, and he pulls her back onto him as he drives forward, a collision that sends wobbles through her body.
The angle is brutal, his cock dragging against her front wall with every stroke, and she can feel herself clenching around him, her body fully engaged in fem-joy.
The swelling, swelling filling.
"Legs," he grunts, and before she understands, he's lifting her, his hands sliding to her knees, pulling them up and back until she's folded in half, her ankles near her ears, her weight supported entirely by his strength and her palms against the glass.
From the mirror's reflection, she sees herself—sees them—her uniform rucked up, her tits spilling from the low bodice, her face contorted with pleasure she can't hide.
Spread eagled.
Holy Hell!
She's wide!
He pounds into her like this, deep and hard as he'd promised, each thrust forcing a cry from her throat.
"Uhh! Ah! Ahh! Yes! Yes! Fuck, yes! Ooohh! Uhh! Uhh!"
The mirror shakes in its frame. Her sneakers dangle in the air, ridiculous, scuffed, the one constant in this surreal moment.
She watches his face in the reflection, the concentration there, the desperate need of a man fucking like it's the last time, like every time might be the last time now.
She sees her own eyes roll and dilate.
The door to the washroom opens.
Gianna's eyes snap to the movement; her body tries to stop jiggling and wriggling but can't.
Axe continues his rhythm, too lost to notice or care.
Mallory stands in the doorway, her cleaning tray balanced on one hip, her mouth forming a huge perfect O of shock.
They stare at each other—Gianna spread-eagled in the air, legs pointing to the ceiling, Axe's cock visible where it disappears into her; Mallory, her cross necklace already in her fingers, twisting.
The tray falls.
Glass cleaner bottles shatter on the tile.
Mallory doesn't look down.
She backs away, one step, two, her eyes still locked on Gianna's, and then she turns and runs.
Axe laughs, a genuine bark of amusement, and his rhythm falters only momentarily.
"Friend of yours?"
"Co-worker," Gianna manages, the word torn between moans.
"She—she saw—"
"Let her watch next time, or even better, join in," he growls, and his hand finds her throat, not squeezing, just holding, claiming.
"Right now, you're mine. And I'm going to paint that fucking cute face."
He pulls out with a wet sound that makes her flush darker, lowers her legs roughly, and spins her again.
She's on her knees before she can process the movement, his cock in his hand, pumping furiously, his other hand gripping her jaw to hold her still.
"Open for Axe."
She opens.
Her eyes are closed when the first spurt hits her cheek, hot and thick, but he taps her face with his free hand, sharp, commanding.
"Eyes. Look at me."
She looks.
He comes across her face in ropes, her forehead, her nose, her chin, her open mouth, the taste salty and bitter and somehow appropriate, somehow exactly what she deserves for letting this happen, for wanting it.
He's the overfull load.
He keeps pumping, keeps coming, more than she would have thought possible for his age, or any bloody male, until she's glazed, dripping and coated.
He looks down at her.
"Fuck, sweetheart. You needed that. I needed that."
She doesn't answer. Her knees ache. Her face is wet with him, with her own tears, with the spit from earlier.
She can feel it cooling on her skin, can smell herself on his cock where it still twitches near her lips.
Axe steps back, finds his towel, cleans himself with casual efficiency.
Then he finds his leather pants on the bench, the material protesting as he forces his still-half-hard cock into the tight confines.
He zips, adjusts himself with the ease of a man who has dressed in a hurry a thousand times.
Gianna remains on the floor. She watches him dress, watches him become Axe Vaughan again, the rock star, the resident, the man who will nod at her in the elevator next week as if this never happened.
He doesn't look back as he leaves.
The gym door hisses shut behind him.
She stays there for a long moment, her breath slowing, her heart still hammering.
Then she reaches for her apron, finds the small pack of tissues she keeps for emergencies, and begins to wipe her face.
The tissues shred against the mess, inadequate, and she gives up, using her ripped underwear instead, then stuffing the ruined knickers in her cart's trash bin.
Her hands shake as she buttons her uniform.
Three buttons.
She'd only undone three.
It feels like more.
The windows are still smudged where she'd stopped cleaning.
Gianna picks up her spray bottle, her microfiber cloth, and returns to the upper left corner. Her arm moves in efficient circles.
The motion is automatic.
She focuses on the glass, on the reflection of the ocean beyond, on the taste still coating her tongue and the memory of Mallory's shocked eyes.
Then the certainty: that this job, her life, is slipping through her fingers like cum trickling down her thigh.
Live for now?
Some fuck will be your last.
She cleans the windows until they shine.