by Aria Ford
She grinned at him. “How are you, Mr. Geroux?”
“Very good, thank you.” He leaned against the wall as the elevator carried them down fifteen floors.
The intern chuckled. “It’s treat day in the customer service department. I lost a bet, and it’s my turn.” She jostled the tray of coffee and hissed as a few drops of dark roast stung her bony arms. “Maybe I should stop betting.”
He eyed her and typed something out on his phone instead of responding. The girl drummed her fingers on one of the coffee cups and hummed to herself as they approached her floor.
She smiled sweetly. “Nice talking to you, Mr. Geroux!”
“Mmmhmm,” he intoned, not bothering to look at her as she exited the elevator.
Two floors later, Gabriel stepped into the lobby. He maneuvered through the mass of bodies and finally made it outside just as it was starting to rain.
His driver, Mitchell, opened the back door of a Cadillac and Gabriel slid in. Once they pulled off, Gabriel quickly typed a text that read:
I’ll be there. You should be ready.
************
The restaurant was a quieter scene compared to most places worth eating at in Los Angeles. CEOs conducted business dinners here with executives from overseas. Winchesters was the place to bring anyone you wanted to charm the pants off of.
After the waiter poured his wine, Gabriel turned his attention to Charlotte sitting across from him. She had taken her hair out of her work hairdo, and was allowing her curls to cascade around her. She wore a tight black dress, and she smirked as she opened the menu to pretend to read the specials.
“What do you think about the new campaign that I proposed?” she asked.
“It won’t matter,” he replied.
Charlotte swirled the wine around in her glass and bit the inside of her cheek. “Excuse me?”
“It won’t matter because I met with some of the editors from the newspaper and they are going to include a weekly piece that highlights one of our successful matches, and the kind of experience we gave to the client.”
Charlotte cackled. “Are you advertising behind my back, Gabriel?”
He drained his wine glass and then pointed at her. “I am looking to doing much more than that behind you. How about you finish that?”
“No need to liquor me up, I was already willing.”
“Hmm, so you won’t be a challenge. Pity, I rather like a challenge.”
Charlotte raised her eyebrows, and then knocked back a full glass of chardonnay as if it were lemon water. “We can leave now.”
Gabriel waggled a finger at her. “I need to talk business with you first.”
“Couldn’t you have done that while I was sober?”
Gabriel reached down beside him where a small black briefcase leaned against his leg. He opened it, and slid a portfolio on the table between the two of them. Charlotte blinked hard, trying to analyze the document correctly.
“What is this?”
“This is the agreement we’re signing with the newspaper. I need you to get it notarized sometime between tonight and tomorrow afternoon.” He idly scratched his stubble. “Will you do that for me, Charlotte?”
She rolled her eyes as the waiter refilled her glass. “I’m making a mental note of that. I’m running your company just fine, and I will run it just as well when you have to go overseas next month.”
“Peter’s in charge,” he said, looking at her pointedly.
“Excuse me?” she said, trying hard to mask her anger.
“Can you hear tonight, Charlotte? Peter will be in charge, he handles the money so I know that everything will be stable by the time I get back.”
“I’m going to run to the restroom, Gabriel.” She stood up and pushed her chair in. He watched her disappear around a corner to the women’s restroom.
Why would she think she’s watching the company when I’m away? She hasn’t even mastered the part of her job that requires her to not fuck her boss, he pondered and the waiter came back.
“Are we going to be enjoying one of our delicious specials tonight?”
Gabriel shrugged. “I guess I’ll have the Alfredo.” He looked toward the restroom. “The woman will have an order of scallops. Thank you.”
“No problem, Mr. Geroux.”
After they had finished a rather awkward dinner, the car picked them up outside of Winchester. Gabriel waved at Mitchell and said, “I got it!” He opened the door for Charlotte and she grinned as she slid onto the cocoa colored leather seats.
The car eased down the boulevards and Gabriel’s fingers inched towards Charlotte’s thighs. Charlotte offered a tight-lipped smile and Gabriel relaxed. The car rocked them as they drove towards Gabriel’s apartment. Charlotte sighed when they were a block from Sunrise Condos and her hand drifted over to Gabriel’s fingers. She guided his fingers inside of her dress. Gabriel’s long arm reached out and his fingers peeled her dress down, the strapless outfit stalled around her large breasts. He maneuvered the dress past them and cupped both of them in his hands.
Mitchell’s eyes flickered to them and then immediately went back to the road. It was not a scene he was unaccustomed to.
Charlotte groaned as she spread her legs open, and her fingers toyed with the belt buckle on Gabriel’s pants. He shook off his suit jacket and knocked her hand away.
“Wait for it,” he whispered.
She whimpered as he bent his head, pulled her dress up and ran his tongue along her thighs. He inhaled a sweet musk; the combined effort of Charlotte’s favorite fragrance and the smell of her arousal wafted from between her legs, hidden underneath thin, black lacy panties.
Charlotte inhaled sharply when the sound of Mitchell’s throat clearing bounced around the car. Gabriel smirked as he righted Charlotte’s position and she tugged her dress up and over her breasts. As Gabriel opened the door, Charlotte didn’t look to the cab of the car but called out “Thank you, Mitchell.”
Gabriel admired her like a rare sculpture and for once, she felt the urge to enjoy being wanted in this way. Men leered at Charlotte every day, she watched how they eye-fucked her.
Gabriel had been the only person to make that look feel like a privilege. She watched his perfect ass as he lightly jogged up the steps leading to his front door.
Her skin tickled with anticipation as he opened the door. The lush white carpet greeted her and she slid her heels off.
Gabriel unbuttoned the sleeves of his white dress shirt and crooked a finger toward her. She slid her dress back down as she stepped closer to him. He ogled her breasts as she unbuttoned each button on his dress shirt. She reached the last one and fanned her hands out across his chest.
You could give me years and I still wouldn’t have enough time to properly appreciate all of this space, she thought as she glanced around the large room.
For once, the big boss was vulnerable. His erection pressed against her thigh and he massaged her breasts, rolling his fingertip over her nipples, yet he wasn’t going to ask her to do a thing.
That was half of the fun. Charlotte smiled to herself. It’s almost charming how he lets me think I’m in control. Charlotte fell to her knees and wrapped her fingers around Gabriel’s cock. He sighed and she slowly licked it from shaft to tip, carefully running circles around it.
Gabriel bit his lip when Charlotte took all of him inside of her mouth. She sucked him off until his huge hand rested on her forehead and he pushed her off. Charlotte’s eyes traveled up the length of him and rested on his. He gently tugged her into standing by her arms and led her to his bedroom down the hall.
He turned the lights on, and swept his arm out in a dramatic gesture toward the bed. Charlotte smirked as she turned the lights back off.
They didn’t make much use of the bed.
***
Gabriel rolled over onto his stomach and reached his hand over to his end table where his phone had been glowing for the past fifteen minutes. He glanced at Charlotte who mess of curls
. He could still smell the sex in the air.
A new email had been sitting in his inbox for over an hour. It read:
Good Morning, Gabriel. I’m very excited with how our discussion over lunch went yesterday. As soon as you get those contracts notarized, we’ll start making arrangements at the paper. You can send it by fax or have someone drop it off and just ask for me, Allen.
Thanks again!
Allen West
Chief Editor of the LA Note
“Fuck,” Gabriel muttered, as he shook Charlotte awake. She slowly awoke, and squinted, eyes focusing on him.
“What is it?” she asked.
Gabriel hopped out of bed and tugged on his briefs. “We need to get started for the day.”
She picked up her phone and glanced at the time. 6:45 AM. “So, we’re a little off schedule, who cares, you’re the boss,” she said, laying backdown .
Gabriel huffed. “Get up. Now. The contracts are in my briefcase in the living room. Go to the LA Note’s office and drop it off once you’ve gotten the contracts notarized. Put on something nice.”
Charlotte grunted. “Seriously? Just straight to work? No breakfast?”
He was already slipping into a pair of sweats for his morning jog. “It’s not like you’re not paid to do this. Come on, get up and get out.”
With a moment of hesitation, Charlotte slipped into her dress from the night before and her heels. She pinned her hair up and told Gabriel, “I’m going to have Mitchell stop by my place so I can grab a fresh suit. Can you call him, at least?”
“I’m texting him now- but if he’s busy you can just call a car service. Expense it.” He finished tying his sneakers and walked out of the bedroom, calling out, “Make sure to lock up!”
Charlotte tapped her foot as she waited for Mitchell to pull the Cadillac up outside. She smoothed her dress walked to the bathroom connected to Gabriel’s master bedroom. She looked at the mess of a woman that judged her from the wide mirror in the bathroom.
Come on, Charlotte. You’re better than this. How long are you going to be the office whore that everyone is just waiting their turn on? There’s not even a promotion in it for you.
She sighed when she looked at the smudged eyeliner and eyeshadow from the night before. “Here goes another day.”
Chapter 2
A waterfall of chocolatey coffee came bursting out of Megan’s coffee cup and all over the files that poor Bruce from homicide happened to set down on her a desk for a moment. Megan’s eyes darted around the office; Georgina looked at her with mild interest. Bruce was nowhere to be seen and Megan crumpled up one of the napkins from the coffee shop, attempting to rub all of the chocolate and espresso off of Bruce’s files.
She made eye contact with Georgina and said, “Hey. No one told him to set his files down here, everyone knew that I was moving to my new department today.”
“We all knew,” Georgina drawled, “You’ll notice that you don’t have a single desk right next to you because we didn’t want chocolate all over our work.”
“It was an accident! No one offered to help me move all of this stuff here, and so some of it got hard to balance.”
Georgina pushed her grey rolling chair back and stood up. She swept her strawberry blond hair into a bun, and tried to dry off one of Bruce’s files. “You need to ask sometimes, Megan. “
Everyone else was hunched over their standard sized desks, drinking their coffee without even looking at the cup to know that they were grabbing it. I may not be very dexterous but I’m still a good cop, she thought.
“Thanks, Georgina,” she said, as she wiped off the rest of the desk and Georgina delivered Bruce’s files to him. Megan sat down at her new work station, and dragged the chair further in. Her fingers fidgeted with the seat adjustments for a bit, as her feet wouldn’t touch the floor with how it was currently.
The sound attracted another look from Georgina, and Megan threw her hands up. “Whatever, dangling feet are fine,” she mumbled.
She sighed and looked up as Chief Cole came walking in with a living sex fantasy following him. Behind Chief Cole was a slightly tanned man that couldn’t have been older than 32, with tousled and wavy chestnut colored hair. The stubble on his face was charming, but his good looks aside, Megan wondered, Is he a perp? Or a witness? Either way, I want that case.
“Megan!’
Megan jumped, and her eyes met the burning dark ones of Seargeant Bruce. His long finger jutted out at her nose. “You’re the only one that drinks that ridiculous children’s coffee. You couldn’t help but spill them all over my case files? You could have set me back weeks.”
She drifted back to Earth. “I’m so sorry, Bruce. It’s just that I had so much stuff to carry and no one was helping me carry any of it.”
“I helped her clean it up,” Georgina offered.
Bruce sneered. “We’re not going to be able to keep anything in order with you here.”
“I said I was sorry about your files, Bruce. But why did you leave them there?”
“It doesn’t matter why I left them there, I wasn’t relying on anyone to spill sticky, sweet, and horribly chocolate coffee all over my shit! Let me tell you a few things Lowe-”
Megan’s mind floated back to the man walking out of Chief Cole’s office, and Chief Cole slapped him on the back, between the shoulder blades. The handsome man flashed the chief man a smile, and he vanished.
“Lowe? Lowe? Are you even listening?! Detective Lowe!”
“Yes, I spill things; I’ll try to cut back,” she answered, annoyed.
Megan rose out of her seat and jogged through desks and cubicles until she was standing outside of Chief Cole’s office. She rapped her knuckles on the door frame and he called out,
“What.”
“What do you mean what? You don’t talk to any else like that around here, especially people that have been freshly promoted.”
“I needed to fill the spot, Lowe. We’ve gone over this, you were not at all my first choice but Robinson wanted to stay on patrols.”
“Yes, and my feelings are still hurt every time you say that, Chief.”
“Come in and shut the door, huh?”
Megan entered his office and shut the door behind her. She sat down on the ratty, black couch he insisted on keeping in there. It smelled of corn chips.
“So, who was that man?” she prompted.
The chief’s grey eyes flicked up at her and he put on a dubious expression. “You’re kidding. Your first day as detective and you want a date?”
Megan jerked back and frowned. “No, I do not want a date with him. Is he a suspect or a witness?”
Chief Cole sipped some coffee from his LA Lakers coffee mug and leaned back in his chair, letting his belly enter the conversation as well. “That man was neither. He was making a report.”
“About what?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“What if I want his case, chief?”
Chief Cole’s belly jiggled with a hearty laugh. “On your first day? I have eight other competent detectives.”
“Listen, I know you don’t want me here – as you’ve stated many, many times- but you’re stuck with me now so you might as well put me to work. Think of it this way, the more I’m out of the office on a case, the less of a mess I’ll make,” she offered.?”
He twirled a bit in his brown leather chair, and his fingers ran along the fine dark wood of his desk. “Alright, Lowe. He is the owner of LoveConnect, and his head of advertising has been missing since yesterday afternoon. Given that he’s so high profile, we can’t treat this like any missing persons case. Yes, there is the obligatory 48 hours to declare a person missing, but the police department can’t afford to not be on his list of places he’d like to drop a charitable donation.”
“So, we’re putting him ahead of the thousands of people in this city who pay taxes for our livelihood?”
“Yes. Do you need anything else?”
“I would love to pr
ove myself on a high-profile case, boss.”
He pulled out a folder and began leafing through it. “And I would like to sail to Hawaii naked with Cindy Crawford,, Lowe.”
Megan stared at her boss, unblinking, trying to wear him down.
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. If you somehow manage to solve a case this huge, you won’t ever get shit from me or anyone in this department again.”
Megan shrugged. “Sounds great, I’ll get started with questioning-”
“No, there’s more, Lowe. If you do not solve this case, I will demote your ass back to patrols. Understood?”
“That doesn’t really seem fair.”
He shrugged and began to focus on the files in front of him again. Eyes still on the paper he mumbled, “Take it or leave it, Lowe. I’m busy.”
“Alright, then. I’ll prove you wrong.”
“I hope you’re as good at solving missing person’s cases as you are at making a mess of things.”
“Have a good day, Chief,” she said, all but slamming the glass door to his office and strutting back to her work station. Bruce and Georgina kept their questions to themselves.
***
Megan pulled her loose auburn curls through her fingers as she walked into LoveConnect Corporate.
Questioning people was routine, and something she was particularly good at. She may not be the most graceful of human beings, but she paid attention to detail and could usually spot a liar a block away. Despite this being something she was used to doing, this was her first official case as a Detective and a lot was riding on it. She found herself suddenly nervous.
Her sneakers shuffled through the sliding doors and she approached a receptionist that looked like she came straight to work from a photo shoot.
“Can I help you, Miss?”
Megan nodded and fished around her back pocket for badge but her hand only grazed the round curve of her behind.
Shit. “Um, just a second, I have business here.” She rifled through her purse and a few chocolate wrappers went sailing out of the bulky designer bag.
Finally, her fingers touched something hard and metal. She gripped it and tugged it out of her purse.
“I’m a cop.”