I lay still as a mouse with my body draped over the back of the chair, immobilized by the surreptitious crime of peeking, and worried that he knew I had. “Yes, sir,” I answered his instruction as an afterthought.
He spoke coldly, I thought, although it was difficult to judge his mood. Did he have moods? Or was he always the same, coolly distant, somewhat haughty man. Did he always speak in the same passionless monotone, or was there a more animated personality beyond the persona he used while interacting with me?
He had left me without saying another word and with no more knowledge of his identity than I already had. The clue of the cufflink created a terrible feeling in me. Thankfully, I didn’t have enough knowledge of the men I worked with to know exactly which man wore cufflinks like the one I saw. I would spend the next few days avoiding the men in the office. Suddenly, I didn’t want to know. I wanted only the surprise.
***
A week later, I had dinner with my friend Cassandra, at Morrow’s Seafood Grill. She’d flown in from Philadelphia the day before and I couldn’t wait to see her. We were college friends, though I’d dropped out of University of Pennsylvania while she finished her degree in architecture. She had a fabulous career and a husband who made big bucks in radio station advertising. When I first met him, he seemed to think we had something in common since we were both in advertising. I set him straight real quick. I was in research, not advertising, and the difference was obvious. Advertising was simply the business in which I worked.
Initially, I was envious of Cassandra, but that was only until I met the ‘man of her dreams’. One glance at him, I doubt she’d ever dreamt about a man like Howard Weston. He had thinning hair, a pudgy build, big jowls and a sappy smile. He was far too busy and self absorbed to be romantic. But he did supply her with every material wish that popped into her pretty head—and that made her happy. I mean really made her happy. Money was important to Cassandra beyond anything else. Happiness, contentment, success were all wrapped up in the same package, covered with dollar bills.
Her values might have grated on my more Spartan sensibilities, but since we met only twice a year, I could tolerate her yen for material wealth while enjoying her grace, her lovely eyes, and the way she raved about her life. She gave me a yardstick by which to measure myself—not that I came up lacking next to her checkbook; it was more the reverse. As the years passed, I gauged myself by the shallowness of her life… comparing myself favorably for the books I had read, the acting in community plays, gardening, yoga … the overall balanced nature of my life. That was all before I started meeting my email master and following his orders. My new secrets made me wonder if there was something more to Cassandra’s relationship with Howard than meets the eye, a reason beyond money for their seemingly hollow marriage.
Cassandra looked like her name—if Cassandra could mean graciousness and elegance. She was tall, thin, with dark gleaming hair—although she changed the style so often that I never knew what she’d look like on her next bi-yearly visit. I loved to watch her face, the poised red lips—the smirk, of course the smirk that would define if she approved of you—and the hooded eyes that looked as if they were seducing prey. They seduced me, not just the day we made love in college, but every time I saw them.
Typically, I felt frumpy in my efficient but simple wardrobe. Cassandra’s wardrobe grew enormous in size, augmented with yearly visits to the designer salons in New York, London and Paris.
The night we met for dinner at Morrow’s Seafood Grill, she was dressed in a bright red suit, which was trimmed in black leather. The ‘V’ neckline of the jacket descended nearly to her navel. Because her breasts were so small and unobtrusive, she could decently show all the flesh between them with just the tiny swell of skin to either side. I remembered licking that creamy flesh when I was nineteen and we were experimenting with bodies and physical feeling. I remembered her nipples, the way her skin smelled of expensive perfume and tasted sweet, as if she’d doused herself in lemon-sugar. The same pungent desire I experienced then, came back to me as we dined, making me feel slightly faint.
She was telling me about her first trip to Rome.
“Benito…”
“And who was Benito?” for a moment I’d lost track of the story while I stared into lovely, gentle cleft between her slight breasts.
“My lover, silly,” she droned. “Aren’t you listening at all?”
“Yes, it’s just that your dance card gets so complicated. So, he’s your lover in Rome?”
“Yes. Hummm, what he can do to the inside of my thighs with his tongue is brilliant.”
“And there are other lovers?”
“A few. They come and go.”
“You ever make love to Howard?”
She laughed, a lilting sort of giggle, as though it was a preposterous idea to make love to her husband. “We gave that up the first year. He has his mistresses and I have my lovers.”
So much for my theories about a secret sex life!
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it? All my friends do the same thing.”
“All but me.”
“Yes,” she lowered her eyes, though not condescendingly. I could tell that she put me in another category of friend from the ones in her jet-set crowd. Maybe I wasn’t even a friend anymore, just her eccentric old pal from college. This wasn’t the way it used to be. There was a time I could tell her everything. We shared every secret fantasy, every physical thrill. I remembered that warm and lazy spring afternoon, just after my last final and before hers, we kissed… warm and passionately. My surprise and arousal couldn’t have been greater. But I was grateful for that brief moment…
“Don’t you have to study?” I asked her.
“I already have. You are what I want right now,” she informed me, as her one hand traced the line of my thigh and hip delicately, and her wet lips leaned in to kiss me again. At the start, we had been dressed, but soon the layers of clothes disappeared. We lay together, flattening our bare skins along the curves and valleys of other body, finding that we fit, my brown voluptuousness cradling the thin white contours of her willowy form. Our thighs scissored, legs entwining, so that her pubic mound pressed mine, wiggling in and soon quickly frantic for some culmination. Rubbing into her, my labia lips opened. Hers did the same and our sensuous lovemaking continued as the feelings began to swell. We climaxed—not together but within minutes, groping and writhing as if we could claw our way inside the other’s body. She was a first for me. Yes, my first woman, but more importantly, my first real passionate lover. I think I was embarrassed, which was why I couldn’t be with her again. It seemed too awkward to start something deliberately, and the circumstances were never quite the same again. The spirit of spring, its sensuous warm bath of light, its airy fragrance, and our mutual need could never be duplicated in the same way. I knew we’d be disappointed if it weren’t as perfect as those few luscious moments on her dorm room bed, atop a clutter of hastily forgotten books and papers.
It was on my mind to share my mystery man with her, but it took only sixty seconds in her presence—twelve years removed from our dorm room—to know it would be a mistake to attempt such an intimate revelation. She may enjoy the glamour of her lovers, but I’m not sure she enjoyed the sex at all. Until we made love, she swore she didn’t think sex was all that interesting. It appeared I did little to change her mind. After our moment of spontaneous combustion, Cassandra resumed her indifference to physical pleasure. Maybe she really wanted women, not men. But I suspect she was afraid of women, afraid of how a woman could strip her emotionally naked so she couldn’t hide behind her fancy clothes. Whatever the case, I knew she would find my email lover odd. She’d interrogate me until she had all the facts she wanted, then turn up her nose and say something like, “I think that’s really weird, Skye” or “You’d better be careful,” of even more insensitive, “You nuts?” I’d hate her for not understanding my pleasure—even though I can hardly expect an
yone to understand this when I don’t understand it myself. Giving up the idea of confiding in her, I attempted to enjoy our meal.
I gazed around, a little nervously. The restaurant was Cassandra’s choice and not particularly my style. Linen tablecloths, crystal, waiters dressed like old school butlers—all pretty fancy for a seafood grill. And there, to my great surprise, on the sidelines sitting by the window was Ellington Lloyd. I gasped. He didn’t seem to notice me; in fact, he was so focused on his conversation with two similarly dressed businessmen that he hardly let the waiter serve his meal. Then, even with a full plate of lobster and crab legs in front of him, he didn’t miss a beat in his animated monologue. Sales pitch, I’m sure, and this was the hard sell. I could see the dollar signs in his eyes, and he wouldn’t let up until he held success in his grubby fist.
Whether he noticed me or not, his presence in the restaurant made me uneasy. It had been nearly three days, and I’d avoided all the suspects in my email game. Suddenly caught off guard, I accidentally glanced at the man’s wrist and there it was, the gleaming gold cufflink so very like the one I peeked at in the 5th Conference Room. Good gawd! Ellington Lloyd!
Of course, I’d suspected him from the start. His swagger, his confidence, if anyone could pull it off, he was a likely candidate. Even the noted coldness in our exchanges was part of his character. Twice at the office, I’d seen him zero in on someone with the cruel eyes of a barbarian and the cutting words of a trial judge. It was enough to make me tremble at the time, while a sexual shiver zoomed up my spine. It was one of the things that made me want my mystery man to be him. And yet, I just never thought he had the time to initiate and play the game.
Maybe his fancy dressed society wife was a cold fish with no imagination. She sure didn’t look like a passionate lover. Actually, she and Cassandra would have a lot in common in that regard, I decided when my glance returned to my friend.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“No, not really. Just one of the bosses.”
“Oh? Who?”
I discreetly pointed to Ellington. “The one with the gold cufflinks,” I whispered. I couldn’t help but stare again. But it didn’t matter how long I looked, Mr. Lloyd was too preoccupied with his filibuster to respond to such extra-sensory input. At least that’s what I thought.
“Interesting looking man. Rich, I’ll bet,” Cassandra noted.
“Filthy.”
“You like him?”
“He’s married.”
“As if that should matter.”
“Well, it matters to me. Besides, he’s definitely not my type, and he’s way too old, and it’s…” I shook my head, dwelling seriously on the ridiculousness of Ellington Lloyd as a lover in any guise. The cufflink? Was that proof enough, I pondered to myself.
“If I were looking, he’d be the kind I’d pick. Nice gifts.”
“Is that all that men are to you, nice gifts?”
She shrugged, then eyed me a bit circumspect, “You don’t like me much anymore, do you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“The derisive way you speak of me.”
“I’m not being derisive. We just have different priorities. Of course, I like you. I love you, Cass. I just don’t understand you.”
“Maybe I feel the same about you.”
“I’ll bet you do. You never have gotten over the fact that I enjoy being a lowly research assistant.”
“You’re right,” she completely agreed, then sighed. “Now, I have to go to the powder room. Care to join me?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“You’ll stay for dessert?”
“Of course. It’s always the best part at restaurants like this,” I flashed her a great big grin.
She smiled warmly—a good signal that she’d forgiven me. I watched her moving away, swishing her ass inside its expensive clothing, wishing I could get my hands on it just one more time.
I leaned back feeling reasonably content with my meal and this latest meeting with Cassandra, thinking that we might just be on for another year. Even now, I planned to pump her for the juicy details of her romances, if she’d give them. Just as I relishing the idea, and forgetting the man across the room, I was suddenly pulled from my pleasant musings by the arrival of a waiter, carrying a silver try, carefully covered with a lace edged linen napkin. On top a note.
“If you’re looking for my dinner companion, she’s in the ladies room,” I offered.
“This is for Miss Sinclair.”
“Oh? That’s me.” He nodded as I reached for the envelope. “Thank you.”
He nodded again and left me alone to read the disturbing contents of the message:
At the end of your meal, once your dinner companion has left, descend the backstairs of the restaurant and enter the restroom there. Remove your clothes, turn out the lights and lean against the wall, palms stretched high above your head, your legs wide apart. Leave the door unlocked and wait.
No. No, no, no, my frantic mind began to pace like a caged animal. I glanced toward Ellington Lloyd across the room, seeing him, as if in slow motion, still gesturing broadly, still deep into negotiations with the other parties at the table. I stared around looking for another face I recognized. There were none. Yes. It must have been him. There just weren’t any other possibilities.
My fear was mounting rapidly, stirring my tummy with arousal, dampening my pussy, making my body ache and my skin tingle with the expectation of my master’s touch.
No, please! Not in a public place! My rational mind tried reasoning with this insanity, but that had already proven useless.
By the time Cassandra returned to the table, I was both anxious to leave and afraid to. I didn’t know whether to drag out the dinner with dessert and coffee, or change my mind and abruptly excuse myself to complete the inevitable assignment. I elected to stay, but my mind was hardly on my friend. I took two bites of the gooey chocolate cake and then pushed what was left around the plate with my fork. Cassandra noticed my odd behavior—I could tell by the look in her eye, the way she raised her eyebrows—but chose not to say anything. I could sense the questions she wasn’t voicing. I’m sure my sudden change in behavior was suspicious and it surprised me that she let it pass. Maybe she understands that some things just need to be overlooked. In the past, she let no unusual behavior go quietly. But our relationship had changed with time, so that neither one of us wanted to invest in intimacies with someone so far apart in morals, opinions and lifestyle. Sure, I’d see her again, though I realized how insignificant she’d become to me. I spent that last half hour wishing that dinner were over. I was so titillated by the suspense of what would come next that I chose to leave first. I took the bill myself, which I hadn’t done for a couple of years since the inequity of our financial situations had become appallingly obvious. I could afford the gesture this year, however. In fact, it gave me back some power I’d lost to her. She was shocked and I so enjoyed her startled expression. I paid in cash, discreetly laying several bills inside the leather folder as I excused myself.
“You know I really have to go. Can I drop you somewhere?”
“Oh, heavens no!” she recouped quickly. “I’ll take a cab, though I wanted to look in the windows of that boutique down the street. Oh, well, maybe I’ll stop there tomorrow before my flight leaves.”
“Well, it’s been peachy, as usual, hon,” I gave her my 100-watt smile. “Our lives just seem to clip along in the same old ways.”
“Yes, I suppose they do,” she replied. For a brief time, she looked at me so longingly that at any moment, I expected her to proposition me.
“Until next time,” I threw in hastily, giving her a womanly hug, nothing intimate, just the expected gesture of affection. Afterwards, I’ll remember that hug for the tremendous pulse I felt between my thighs. I swear it wasn’t just my master calling me to the scene below. The real heat came from Cassandra. Maybe she wanted to relive that a
fternoon in the dorm room, but I knew then that the time for such things had passed. Oh, we could have been so much more! But the direction my life was moving in was so much more satisfying. I would have declined any offers—of course, none were extended. Cassandra understood, just as I did that the times had vastly changed.
We parted with her heading out the door to hail a taxi, and me on the way to the ladies room. Although as soon as she was on the street, I scooted out of the restroom alcove and made my way through the bar to the back stairs, finding them exactly where I expected them to be. My heart was pounding in my chest and my hands trembled so that I almost stumbled on the first stair. Good thing I didn’t; it was a long way down, a steep straight, narrow, rail-less staircase. I would have tumbled to my death for sure. For a few seconds, I stood at the top of the stairs hanging on to the doorframe, assessing my behavior, trying to get a grip on my wits. Deciding that there was little difference between my previous assignments—and surely my mystery man had taken care of any risks—I finally, carefully, descended into the dim basement of the building.
At this point I was certain that Ellington Lloyd was my unknown master. All the clues pointed to him. The coincidence of his being at the restaurant only signaled the obvious fact that our relationship had progressed significantly, and he was ready to make himself known. One mystery solved. That I had prior suspicion of my master’s identity took a bit of the pleasure away, but I reasoned that Ellington Lloyd was, with his presence in the restaurant, giving me assurances, something to trust, particularly in this unfamiliar territory.
What intrigued me was that he knew of my plans for an evening with an old friend! I don’t recall mentioning my dinner date to anyone at work. How he arranged the meeting with his clients at the very same restaurant was another mystery yet to be solved.
At the bottom of the stairs, I turned, peering through the dim light, trying to decide which way to turn. By the sound of clattering dishes and the rich smell of garlic mingled with the aroma of cooking food, it was evident that the restaurant kitchens were in this part of the building. The wait staff obviously used another staircase, because the corridor where I found myself was completely deserted. I moseyed past two open doors as if I belonged there, then stopped in front of a door marked ‘Restroom’. A hundred ‘what ifs’ raced through my brain for some seconds. Leave the door unlocked. It would have been easy for anyone working in the kitchen to walk right in. On a naked woman?
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