“I’m fed up! You don’t know what you are talking about: sex is fantasy, and fantasy is woman!” Dana said, almost shouting in direction of her colleague.

For the past week, she had been arguing with Rick about who of them had more imagination during their hot encounters. They had never been together, of course, they were just colleagues and had never been intimate in any way. Not even with words, until a week before when by chance, drinking a coffee alone in the coffee room of their office, the topic had arisen.

“And I’ll tell you again – and every woman that had sex with me can confirm – that sex with me is never the same,” replied back Rick, calmly. “I respect women, but I push their boundaries more than they can even imagine.”

“Oooh, you’d never have any boundaries to push with me!” Dana proudly said, without realising she was getting caught in Rick’s trap.

“And you’re ready to prove it, I bet.”

There was a moment of silence, in which Dana waited for a smile, a laugh, a pat on her back or any sign meaning that Rick was joking. But nothing: Rick leant on the wall sipping his coffee slowly, looking straight into her eyes and didn’t speak.

“You’re crazy,” Dana said, looking away.

“No, I’m not. But I’ll wait tomorrow for your answer. Be aware this will just be an experiment, nothing more, and no one will ever know about this, except us. Decide wisely,” he said, winking at her. And then left the room.

Dana stood there, stunned, for a while. She had wanted to shout at him that he was a jerk, that he was stupid and that she wasn’t a bitch he could use to vent his urges.

But she couldn’t do it, and the more the time passed, the more the initial anger faded away. She had always been proud, yes, but also rational, and Rick was a handsome man: tall, short hair and short beard, brown deep eyes and muscular enough for all girls in the office to like him. From what she had heard, pretty much all of them would have liked to fuck him.

And he was single. And Dana was too.

There was no risk to ruin any family, even in the unfortunate case their rendez-vous had become public domain. Moreover, she needed sex! It had been months since a man had embraced her… she didn’t like sex with strangers, she needed someone she liked and that made the chances to get it very rare. She liked Rick though, at least physically, and she trusted him to some extent.

But Dana couldn’t, really, just couldn’t say “yes” like that, and so she decided that if he had brought up the topic again the next day, she’d answered with a firm “no”.

The next day, she supposed Rick wanted to be alone with her and did everything she could to be alone with him in the relax room. She waited until all her colleagues had gone on a break already, and when the room was empty she purposely went there, alone, making sure that Rick could see her passing in the hallway.

Rick took so much to reach her, though, that she had almost finished her coffee already. They spoke about some work, about a colleague, about the weather and the plans for the weekend to come – that meant “no plans” for her, and “lots of fun” for him – but Rick didn’t bring up the topic of the previous day again.

When they left to their own offices, she felt almost disappointed. She had spent most of the previous day, the night and the morning to find the right words to refuse him… all for nothing.

For the rest of the day, Dana didn’t see him but her thoughts were still roaming around his proposal. She had been wet, the night before, fantasising about what could have been – even knowing she was going to eventually refuse – and now the fact she hadn’t even had the chance to say her answer was somewhat bugging her.

She arrived home late, that day, and fell on the sofa exhausted. It was only the next morning, when preparing her bag for the day to come, that she noticed the small, white envelope inside it.

It wasn’t hers, but there was her name on it. Curious, she opened the envelope and extracted the little sheet inside it. There was written a single row:

“One rule: the safeword will be ‘I love you’.”