by Katy Kaylee
I couldn’t take my eyes off her, utterly intrigued by what she could possibly want. The soft fabric of her dress had a slight luster to it, tempting me to reach out and feel just how lush her curves were. My excitement ramped up and I took a step forward, just for her to suddenly veer in a different direction entirely.
I stood there for a moment, surprised, and watched as she crossed over to the punch bowl like we weren’t even there. Was… was she playing me? Or was I so hard up that I had imagined the whole thing?
I wasn’t sure, but I was definitely miffed. I didn’t like the idea that I was being toyed with, but at the same time I didn’t think that she was the type to play games.
Huh.
“You alright there?”
I looked to Samson and shook off my shock. “Yeah. Just thought that I smelled something strange.”
“Hopefully it’s not the kitchen. Remember the shrimp salad from our first year?”
I gagged and ribbed my friend with my elbow. “Ugh, don’t remind me.”
“It was certainly a lesson for all of us.” Samson laughed ever slightly, remembering the disastrous first year where the food hadn’t been that great and neither had the party. But it had been our first one and we were just so thrilled to have made it out of our first year in the black that we really hadn’t minded back then.
Except with three of our fifteen employees got food poisoning.
“Come on, let’s make our rounds and then we can make use of the open bar.”
“We’re billionaires,” I countered. “Does it really matter if the bar is open or not?”
Samson shrugged. “With your habits? Absolutely.”
“Uh-huh, you say it as if you didn’t once drink all of our alma matter under the table at the charity event of o-nine.”
“That was just most of the alma matter, and they were all old, pompous men anyways.”
“And now that’s exactly what we are,” I joked before doing just as we said.
It was pretty easy to do our walkabout. Most of the lower level employees didn’t approach us -although I could feel their gazes, and since we only had a little over a hundred employees, that didn’t leave a lot of upper management.
I found myself repeatedly looking to where Tabitha was sitting at a table in the corner with several others, wishing that she would be the one to come up and talk to us instead of everyone else, but she didn’t answer my mental requests.
Sighing, I told myself I was being more than a bit silly. I had just met this woman, and she was just a team leader in our ranks. I’d learned that she did good work from her reviews that I had skimmed in the week since she had been in my office, but that wasn’t really enough of a reason to be so focused on her.
And yet I was absolutely focused, even as the food came out, even as people drank more and got progressively more at ease.
Eventually, the food was cleared, and the conversations stalled, then the employees came to clear the dance floor. It was something we added in our second year and I told Samson there was no way the employees would go for it, but it turned out there was almost nothing the average salaried person loved more than the electric slide or the Macarena.
Surprisingly, however, it wasn’t one of those the DJ played right off the bat. Instead it was a slower, more couple-y song. The dulcet tones gave me an idea, and I stood up suddenly.
“What are you doing?” Samson asked me, looking at me in surprise. The other three at our table were also giving me a curious glance and I realized that I had interrupted the middle of an entire conversation.
“Have you ever heart of an interactive exhibit?” I asked, knowing only Samson would know what I meant. “There a thing, you know, in lots of different museums.”
“Xavier,” he said warningly.
I just gave him a little salute. “Never know until you try.” I said before striding over to Tabitha’s table.
She didn’t notice me until I was almost upon her, her very full table going from crowded to just her and another couple. When she did see me, however, her eyes went wide, and that flush returned to her cheeks.
That had to be an interested flush, right? No woman looked at me like that who wasn’t interested.
Right?
“Mr. Mannon,” she said, her perfect lips opened in a gasp. The couple next to her sat up straight too, as if surprised, but I couldn’t really care less about them. The only thing that mattered was the beautiful woman in front of me.
“Please, outside of the office you can call me Xavier.”
“I…uh… okay.” She swallowed and I watched her throat move as if I was entranced. “Is there something I can do for you, sir?”
It wasn’t ‘Xavier’ but I did like the sound of that word as it tumbled from her lips. “I was wondering if, perhaps, you’d like a dance before we descend into the normal party songs?”
“You want to know if I… if I would want…” she swallowed again and the flush on her cheeks spread to the rest of her face and down her neck. I watched it, enraptured, and wondered if she would look so pleasantly pink spread across my sheet at ho- “…want to dance with you?”
“Yeah, that was the idea I was toying around,” I answered, sending her what I hoped was a charming smile.
“Uh, I… uh, I’ve never been much of a dancer.”
“That’s alright,” I comforted. “I’m sure I could teach you.”
Thankfully, she seemed to catch what I meant by my tone and her lips curled ever so slightly. “You know, I feel like I hear that from every guy trying to convince me to dance.”
“I’m sure you have,” I took another step closer until my thighs were touching the edge of the table. “But unlike those others, I actually know how to instruct.”
She sat back and I could tell that she was now in her element, bantering back and forth with someone and using those full lips to caress each comeback that issued from her mouth. “I’m sure you do. You do seem like the type. But who said I was interested in learning?”
“Are you not?”
“Uh, honey! Let’s go dance!” the woman beside her said suddenly, grabbing her partner’s hand and rushing off. I watched them go, amused, before looking back to Tabitha.
Her mismatched eyes looked like they were staring through me, one intense and sharp while the other was more cautious. I could look at them all day, trying to solve the dichotomy, and never get tired of it.
“You scared off my friends,” she said flatly. If it weren’t for that still-present curl to her plush lips, I might have thought she was annoyed.
“Did I? Or were they just giving you some privacy so you could say yes?” I liked playing this game. Too often women were willing to fall all over me, eager for either my body or my money or the notoriety. Eager to use me.
Tabitha didn’t seem like that at all. Maybe that was a silly thing to think, considering that I hardly knew her, but it was just the impression that I got.
“What gives you the impression that I want to say yes?”
“Don’t you?” I said, leaning forward slightly. I felt like I could almost smell her, the pleasant scent of pomegranate and citrus.
“Actually,” she said with a dramatic pause. “I don’t. I love this outfit, but it’s not really the dancing kind.”
“Well, if the outfit’s the problem-”
A shrill sound issued from her cleavage and at that she turned crimson. She whipped away from me, but I didn’t miss how she pulled her phone from the side of one of her breasts and quickly answered it.
“Hello?” she whispered, finally turning to face me again. “Mom? Hi, yeah, I’m a bit busy right now, can I- what? I can’t hear- hold on, Mom. Let me move.”
She looked up to me guiltily, her hand over her phone. “Sorry, I have to take this,” she said before getting up and quickly moving past me.
I watched her go, feeling like someone dumped cold water over my head. I had been so sure that she had been about to agree to a dance. Was like against me sudd
enly or did I just have terrible luck?
I wasn’t really sure, so instead I contented myself with crossing over to the punch bowl, filling up a glass and draining it as I watched her quickly exit. It tasted well enough, but it wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was…
Not currently available. Couldn’t be available.
I poured myself another cup and quickly drank that too, enjoying both the fruity taste and the pleasant burn.
Samson was right. There was no reason to flirt with or pursue an employee. It was a bad business decision, especially considering that there were beautiful women everywhere and I usually had no problem getting those beautiful women into my bed.
But it wasn’t that I wanted Tabitha in my bed, was it? Sure, I wouldn’t complain, but there was something else about her that was drawing my attention. Some sort of personal magnetism that made me want to unravel her like a mystery, to see what that brain of hers was like.
I drained yet another glass of punch then, feeling pleasantly warm, I followed her out the door she had disappeared through.
It was probably rude, and maybe a bit creepy, but I just wanted to try to talk to her once more. It wasn’t like she had turned me down. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to. That call had interrupted before she could make a decision one way or the other.
Really, what I was doing was giving her a chance to answer me without any prying eyes around. I knew sometimes women felt pressured to say yes when others were watching, and I didn’t want Tabitha dancing with me because she felt like she had to.
No, in fact the very idea made my stomach lurch.
I found her out on one of their mildly lit balconies, one that we would rent if the mosquitos didn’t like to eat everyone alive, even with all their preventative torches out. I had expected to stay back until she was done, out of earshot so I wouldn’t accidentally eavesdrop on her private conversation, but she was just hanging up.
I still paused, wondering if I should maybe stop before I did something stupid, but then I heard her sniffling lightly.
“Are you alright?” I asked, approaching her slowly.
Maybe she just had allergies. Maybe she was just one of those people who got teary when they yawned. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I approached her, but none of it was along the lines of her whirling around and hugging me tightly.
Her face was pressed against my pectorals and I stood there a moment, completely surprised, before wrapping my arms about her body as well. I could hear her sniffling, and I felt the front of my shirt grow slightly damp.
She was crying.
I held her there, gently patting her back, and I was too concerned to even enjoy the feel of her body pressed against mine. All the thoughts I had about her figure or what she’d look like spread out on my sheets disappeared as I worried about what could have upset her so quickly.
It was only a moment or two later when she pulled away enough to look up at me. Her pretty eyes were red rimmed and shining, while her nose was a ruddy sort of pink. If she wasn’t so upset, I would have thought her particularly adorable.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m being stupid.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” I said, my voice barely a rumble. The longer she held me, the more my other thoughts began to trickle back in. It was like they were feeding off my desire to protect her. My desire to make her forget whatever was making her cry.
“It’s just that… our family dog passed away. We’d had him since I was in middle school. He’s been sick and I was supposed to visit in a couple of weeks so that we could say goodbye, but he didn’t make it. He passed away in his bed tonight.”
She looked up at me like she expected me to tell her that was moronic, and it was just a dog, but that was the furthest thing from my mind. I’d had a dog when I was a very young boy, and I remembered how he had been just as much of a friend to me as Samson. Losing him had been so hard for young me, but at least I had been there to hold him when he went.
“I’m sorry,” I said, giving her a gentle squeeze. “What an awful thing to find out on a night like this. Or any night really, but especially tonight.”
She sniffled and her face pressed against my chest again. “I just… he was such a good dog. He got me through high school and college more than anything else. Mom always complained that I was his favorite, and he only slept in my bed up until I moved out.”
“Sounds like he was one of a kind.”
“Yeah,” she murmured and the vulnerability in her voice called to something primal in me. She was just so sweet, so open, that I wanted to whisk her away and protect her from the cruel, relentless world. “He really was.”
I moved one of my hands from her back to under her chin and tilted her face up to me. “Don’t ever think you’re stupid for mourning someone you love. He was lucky to have a human like you.”
Her eyes went a bit wide at that, and that flush returned to her face. I swore that I could see starlight dancing within her gaze, and I felt like she was sucking every last bit of my soul in.
And the next think I knew, I was kissing her.
She let out the softest gasp, her lips parting for me like an invitation. I was aware that my arms were crushing her to me like a vice, but she just seemed to melt into my embrace, her own fingers clutching the front of my suit.
Fire lit in my belly, my entire body reacting to her presence, rejoicing that she was just as sweet and soft as I had imagined, if not more so. I felt like I could grip her as hard as I could, and her flesh would just give and cushion and comfort like it was created to do that and only that.
It was a heady, intoxicating feeling, dragging me down into a furor that I hadn’t known in ages. My heart was thundering, and my blood was rushing in my ears. I could feel my pants tightening as I started to harden, while suddenly my fingertips seemed almost hyper sensitive.
Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it was over. Tabitha let out a horrified little sound as she ripped away. I dropped my arms immediately, staring at her like she was a ghost, and she rushed past me without another word.
Shit.
What the hell had I been thinking!
I didn’t know, even as I stood there on the balcony, trying to figure things out. But the only thing my mind kept returning to was the feel of her lips giving way to mine and the way her body formed to me like it had been waiting for my touch and my touch alone.
God, I really was an idiot, wasn’t I?
Samson
After what seemed like forever, the party finally ended, and I was free to go home. There were still a few stragglers, people having too much fun to turn in just yet, but I was most certainly done.
It wasn’t that I disliked the parties that we threw, it was just that they were for the people I worked with, not for me, and my job was to play the affable host rather than actually enjoy the event. It was work, in a way, although definitely not the worst work in the world.
But still, I found myself wanting to get home, get out of my overly formal clothes, maybe lift some weights in my work out room and then go to bed. In fact, nothing sounded better.
I looked around for Xavier, the more social of the two of us having disappeared a couple of hours earlier. Normally I wouldn’t care what he did -while we were friends, we weren’t each other’s keepers- but we had carpooled to the party for convenience sake since we lived in penthouses about a block away from each other. There was a chance that he had just called a cab on his own, but it seemed unlikely. We almost always checked in with each other if one of us decided to change our transport. It was a hold over from our childhood days, when kidnapping was a real threat, but it worked well enough for us.
Curious, I wandered the perimeter, trying to see if I could spot him talking up some waitress or other worker. Instead, I spotted him standing on one of the outside balconies, his suitcoat draped over a chair as he overlooked the city with his hands in his pocket.
“Something wrong?” I asked, coming up alongside him.<
br />
He sighed and looked to me with a guilty expression. “Yeah.”
I looked around, as if there was some sort of clue to what was amiss around him. I didn’t spot anything out of place. “Did something happen at the party?”
“Uh… yeah. Kinda.”
I knew when he was being cagey so I leaned against the railing so I could look at him. “Out with it.”
“You’re going to be mad at you.”
“I’m always mad at you. You’re too smart for your own good and too impatient to use all those smarts.”
He chuckled dryly at that. “You know, you may be right.”
“I know I’m right,” I countered. “So, what’s up? How’d you mess up this time?”
“This time?” he asked snarkily.
“Stop dodging.”
“Fine.” He sighed. “You know how you told me that employees were off limits?”
“Yes. It’s never been a problem until-” I almost said ‘since you saw Tabitha’ but that seemed too personal. Like I was acknowledging her existence, which I definitely didn’t want to do. “-recently,” I finished lamely.
“Yeah. Funny how that works.”
His silence was telling, and I let out a long sigh. “Xavier, what did you do.”
“Well… I might have, you know… kissed her.”
I forced myself not to react immediately, breathing in through my nose and then out through my mouth. “Huh, you were right.”
“I am?”
I nodded. “I am mad at you.”
He managed a tight chuckle. “Yeah, I guess I deserve it.”
I wanted to say more, but my mind was stuck on the thought of kissing Tabitha.
Dammit, the thought was so appealing. Her full lips, feeling the press of her body against my own. While she wasn’t a tiny woman by any means, she would be in my grip. She would be precious and supple and perfect, I had no doubt.
A bit of jealousy flared in my middle at the thought that Xavier had been bold enough to take what I so desperately wanted. But at the same time, I would never kiss an employee. Even if I wanted her so heatedly that it felt like I was going to be sick. As much as I could nearly get drunk on the idea of giving her pleasure and receiving it in kind, I wasn’t nearly stupid enough to do that.