So strange to think of Debbie, dead now over a dozen years. What was truly bizarre was not her mortality, but the idea that he was old enough to remember when a company needed a typing pool . . . that such an antiquated occupation was not a relic from the twenties and thirties but as recent as 1990. Then again, the whole place was antiquated now, wasn’t it? Even the occupation of CEO. Outmoded.
His father had kept a bottle of Wild Turkey in the desk and taken a single drink on Christmas Eve and one on his birthday. That was another tradition that Craig had kept up. He did not believe in drinking on the job. In his life outside of this office, what little of it there was, he rarely drank alcohol of any kind. But every year on Christmas Eve and on his birthday—Dad’s, not his own—he had one drink.
Tonight that was yet another bit of his integrity that he had thrown away. The glass on his desk was half empty, but he had topped it off twice already. He had not bothered to turn on additional lights in the office as the night had fallen and so aside from a small lamp in one far corner of the room the only light was the glow of his computer screen. Open on the screen was Sam Small’s human resources file. The others were all there as well, just a click away. Before him on the desk was a yellow legal pad and a pen. He had made a list of all of his employees, trying to figure out which would lose their jobs and which would remain, and whether or not he could save one or two more, making their positions seem more vital to IllumiNet than they probably were.
He wasn’t having much luck, not because these weren’t valuable people, but because IllumiNet didn’t value much.
Also on his desk, in a thick manila folder, were all the documents for the finalization of the deal with IllumiNet. He’d had his lawyer send them over but so far had not been able to bring himself to look at them. Craig took another sip of Wild Turkey and the whiskey seared his throat, opening up his sinuses. He ran his tongue over his teeth, licking away the slick sugary film that covered them.
“Alcohol won’t do it.”
The voice was enough to startle him nearly out of his chair. He half-turned abruptly, his hand barely missing the chance to knock whiskey all over his computer keyboard. Anita stood in the open doorway, leaning against the jamb in that breathtaking red dress. For all that she had been stunning before, she was more so now that he saw her entirely. Her body was petite, though she was taller than he had imagined, and her legs were strikingly sculpted below the hem of the short dress.
“What’s that?” he asked, confused by her arrival.
“Alcohol. If you’re trying to distract yourself or soothe your soul, alcohol isn’t the answer.”
Through a slight whiskey haze it took him a moment to evaluate his reaction. She was a charming woman and as lovely as he had ever seen. But she was not supposed to be here.
“Anita.” He frowned. “I don’t mean to be rude, but how did you get in here?”
Her smile was almost shy. She shrugged her shoulders as much as her posture, leaning there in the doorway, would allow. “I can be pretty persuasive.”
Craig could not help laughing at that. He had no idea what she had said to the security guards downstairs, but the mischief in her eyes was infectious. “I have no doubt of that.”
Then his humour was gone. He reached out for his whiskey but hesitated with his fingers an inch from the glass as he glanced up at her.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she said. “Every man has his poison.”
His throat was dry. He licked his teeth again and settled back into the chair without touching the whiskey glass. The bottle of Wild Turkey seemed an ominous presence there on his desk, out in the open, but he ignored it.
“What brings you here? Does . . . does your husband know where you are?”
Her gaze shifted away from him for a moment that was filled with doubt, and then she tried on a mask of a smile. “Of course he does.”
A lie. Craig sat up a bit straighter in his chair, the whiskey haze clearing away now just enough for his interest to stir. What was she doing here late at night without her husband’s knowledge?
“You still haven’t said why you’re here. What is it you want?”
Her eyes narrowed. No trace of a smile remained on her face. “To make a deal.”
“I’m afraid I’m not following you.”
“Oh, but I think you are.”
Stunned as he was—this was, after all, the sort of lurid thing he would never have imagined himself involved in—Craig was not a stupid man. Anita had been kind to him at lunch, nothing more. A sweet, intelligent woman who apparently had a bit more in common with her negotiator-husband than it had seemed at first glance. Craig was relieved that she was managing to avoid falling into the role of some Humphrey Bogart movie femme fatale. Along with the mischief there was eagerness and desperation in her eyes, and more than a little sorrow as well.
But she wasn’t going to bullshit him.
Anita entered the office at last, stepping away from the threshold and taking up a stance before him reminiscent of some errant schoolgirl called down to the headmaster’s office. She had her hands behind her back and though her breasts were small this made them more prominent. Her back arched slightly.
Her eyes never left his. Those mischievous eyes. Awkward though she might seem, something about her was amused by the scenario they were playing out.
“You know this deal is going to happen,” Anita assured him. “IllumiNet is acquiring your company.”
“Then why are you here?” The question was purposely blunt. No games.
“At lunch I got the distinct impression that you might turn your regret into the need to do something to make it difficult. To impede the process. My husband . . . has had enough impediments in his work lately. He’s had a couple of big deals go sour. He needs this one to close smoothly. And, frankly, I think you do, too. From everything he’s told me about your financial situation most of these people would lose their jobs even if you didn’t sell. You can help some of them or none of them. I just wanted to talk to you . . . to make sure you do what’s best for everyone. This thing should be easy, not ugly. But you could make it ugly.”
A bitterness rose like bile in the back of his throat. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and the dress seemed to caress her body. He had been becoming increasingly aroused by her presence, but now his cock went rigid.
“And you . . .” he said in a rasping voice, “you could make it beaut-iful.”
At last her smile returned. “Something like that.”
“No build-up to it, then?” he asked, amazed and entranced by her. “No talk about how you were attracted to me at lunch, no more bullshit about my integrity.”
Her brow knitted and she winced as if hurt. A new boldness arose in her. “All right. If you want frankness, I don’t find you especially attractive. But I wasn’t playing you at lunch. I do admire your integrity, the way you’ve tried to take care of people here. There should be . . . there should be more of that in the world. And I could see how painful this all is for you. I’m not going to lie. I’m here selfishly. My husband needs this deal to keep his career afloat, and I can’t afford for him to mess it up. But I thought you might benefit as well. I thought with all that’s been happening in your life, you could use a . . . distraction.”
Craig’s chest rose and fell too quickly. He stared at her in disbelief. This place, this company that had been his home since his boyhood, seemed to hold its breath, wondering what he would do. It was on its deathbed, and his poor management had put it there. Yet it was still all he had in the world, and this woman’s husband was the one orchestrating its removal from his hands. He was reminded of a book his father’s secretary, Janine Wylie, had given him for his seventh birthday. The Giving Tree, it was called. It concerned a boy who loved to climb a particular tree, to swing from it and eat its fruit, and the way it offered him everything it had only to try to make him happy, no matter what, an
d in the end can only give a very old man a stump upon which to sit and rest. And yet at the man’s advanced age, the stump is all he needs to be content, and both he and the tree are happy.
Craig had envisioned himself and NEESS as the boy and the tree. Growing old together. Himself knowing that wherever he went in the world and whatever he did, the company awaited him back home. But IllumiNet was taking that contentment from him, and the negotiator was the one making absolutely certain there wasn’t even a crumb left behind for him, or the employees he had watched over for so long.
In his long silence, Anita had shifted anxiously several times and now her face flushed with embarrassment and she turned away from him. “Obviously it was a mistake even coming here. Forgive me for making such a fool of myself.”
She was so damned beautiful, so delicate and perfect. He was even more aroused now at the sight of her vulnerability.
“Wait!”
With one hand on the doorframe she paused, head hung low, her hair a silken black curtain sweeping downward, but she did not turn to face him.
“It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t a mistake.” His whole body trembled, his skin tingling. It seemed like eons since he had made love to a woman and if he was honest with himself he had never made love to a woman as fine as Anita.
“What . . .” he licked his lips now, but it wasn’t from the whiskey. He felt embarrassed by the eagerness that rose in him, but his cock was so hard in his pants that it hurt. “What did you have in mind?”
“We talked about art,” she whispered. Then she stood straighter and turned to face him, the mischief back in her eyes and her chest rising and falling in quick rhythm. “I thought I might show you my collection.”
What are you doing, Craig? he thought, almost giddy. You’re complicating everything. You’re going to make this whole thing even messier than it already is.
But deep inside, a part of him he had sublimated for most of his life was waking up. He was through doing everything for others and not watching out for himself. This was where that had gotten him. A whoring wife, a failing company, and the public humiliation of losing both of them.
Yeah, he thought, grinning. Yeah, I am.
“Where?” he asked, surrendering to temptation. In the roiling chaos of his bitterness and resentment, he did not have the strength to overcome it, and deep down part of him was glad about it. “Where do we go to see your collection?”
Anita warmed to the role of seductress now. Her thin smile was knowing and sweet all at once. Here he was, this shattered man, and she was going to ease his pain. She seemed to like that idea, and he was not about to disabuse her of it.
“We don’t have to go anywhere,” she said. “You can see it all right here.”
She moved toward his desk again, came around the side to stand only a few feet away. Her fingers came up and slipped the straps of her dress aside and she let it glide down her body, sliding to the floor to pool around her red heels.
Craig could not breathe. His chest hurt. She wore nothing beneath the dress. His heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings and it was like the very first time he had seen a girl nude all over again. That had been Sara Dobler, two years older and two years wiser, after the freshman dance in the fall of his first year of high school. Sara had let him touch her all over. And back then, touching had been more than enough. He had stammered and held his breath and marvelled at the soft smoothness of her, at the hardness of her nipples and the way in which her body responded to his hands.
This was that awe of discovery all over again.
Anita’s body was perfect, her skin a bronze Asian hue, her small breasts tipped with long nipples. Her belly was taut and her hips were round. Her legs were supple and between them, her pussy was completely shaved, the lips tucked away like the petals of a flower just about to blossom. He had heard that this was the style now, the trend, but had never been with a woman before who shaved.
And yet in spite of all of that perfection before him, all of that raw sensuality so powerful that it nearly stopped his heart, his eyes lingered only briefly on her breasts and her sex. There was so much else for him to look at, to admire.
There was her art.
Her skin was the canvas. From just above her breasts to her upper thighs she was nearly covered in illustration, tattoos in gold and black and red, in jade green and sky blue, the richest colours he had ever seen. The images ran together as though her torso was a Ming vase, and yet there were enormous stylistic differences, and some of the tattoos seemed fresher, more vibrant. Some of the illustrations on her flesh were beautiful and some terribly disturbing. Her left nipple was the eye of some Raven god in whose talons there were human beings, gored and bleeding and screaming. Her right nipple was the eye of a coyote that stood upright, a sly grin stretching his snout.
There were dozens of other figures on her skin, all of them imposing. Some were sensual creatures, exposing themselves, while others wielded axes and bloody daggers and weapons of war. Some were wreathed in fire while others emerged from the ocean onto stony shore. He saw Egyptian influence and what he thought was Greek. There were oil-black gods in African headdress and a thing with many arms and shrunken heads dangling from its belt that he thought was some Indian deity, Kali or Shiva. There were simply too many for him to take them all in.
“My God,” he whispered.
“That’s almost funny,” Anita replied.
Craig gazed up at her, eyes wide in astonishment, and he saw doubt in her eyes.
“Are you repulsed?” she asked.
“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “No, it’s . . . it’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen. What made you do it? All of this?”
Her fingers caressed her stomach, showing off the figures there, presenting them to him as her pride and joy. “Ancient cultures from around the world all have their own gods. I’ve been fascinated by it all since I was a little girl. I started with the conventional ones. Roman. Norse. Egyptian. But the more I researched the more I wanted to know about others. Inca. Mayan. Etruscan. The gods of Sumeria and ancient Babylon. African. Mesopotamia. And from each culture I chose at least one god to keep with me permanently. It was what I studied in college, where I met my husband. He always encouraged my passion. Later, I received my Master’s in myth and folklore. I wanted to know them all.”
“I don’t recognize most of them,” he confessed, hypnotized by the gentle motion of her fingers moving across her own flesh. There was a scent coming off of her now, a strange combination of musk and damp copper and summer rainstorms. It was a rich, earthen odour and it quickened his pulse. He had to shift in his seat and pluck at his pants to relieve the ache of the hardness of his cock.
“The further I searched the more I wanted to find. The old gods. The forgotten ones. Every single tattoo has a story of its own, a myth. Its own history.”
“And this one?” Craig asked, bending close to point to a small figure just above her navel. “This doesn’t look like an ancient god. It looks . . . modern.”
The moment his eyes had been able to focus, to pick apart the images and examine them for themselves, he had noticed that one illustration. The tattoo was finely detailed, much more so than most of the others. The god wore a black top hat with a bright red band that was dotted with tiny gleaming blades. His teeth were like two rows of shiny needles and he had knives for fingers. His clothes were leather and upon his feet were a pair of human heads.
“What is it? Aztec? But what about the hat?”
“Modern?” Anita asked, and when she laughed it was a hollow, rasping sound like the dry rattle of a smoker on his death bed. “Oh, no. It’s one of the oldest of them all. There have been names for it in many cultures, but none of the scholars know where it originated or what its true name was.”
Craig gazed up at her eyes at last, awed by her. “You’re exquisite. Truly. I’ve never met a woman like you. Never imagined a
nyone like you existed. I always thought of tattoos as . . . as low . . . crass. But this—”
Anita beamed with pleasure, flattered by his words. She ran her hands over her breasts, over Raven and Coyote, and touched her nipples with just the tips of her fingers. “Thank you,” she whispered. “They’re meant to be seen. That way they won’t be forgotten forever. Usually they’re only for me . . . my husband doesn’t really see them anymore. Doesn’t even notice when I’ve added a new one.”
“He’s a fool, then. It really is art.”
His hands hesitated, hovering in the air. He wanted to touch her, to have his hands follow the paths trailblazed by her own fingers, but he did not know where or how to begin. He was long out of practice and would have been awkward even with an ordinary woman. But Anita was far from ordinary.
There was magic here. Magic that tingled his skin and stole his breath and made him feel thirteen years old again. She was another man’s wife and this moment was not born of genuine emotion but of need and desperation and surrender. And yet the magic swept such concerns away. He thought he would come just from the touch of his fingers upon her skin.
She took his hand and led his fingers between her legs. He felt the smoothness there, that unblossomed flower, and as she pressed his fingers into her he found her warm and glistening wet, and she sighed and leaned down to put her weight on him, sliding her red heels apart so that he could explore her properly.
Anita reached for his belt and hurriedly unbuckled him. She reached inside his pants and gripped him firmly in her hand and he groaned, a noise that came from so far down inside him that he did not recognize the sound as his own. He bent to her, tongue thrusting out, licking the Eye of the Raven, then taking it into his mouth. His free hand slid over her back and cupped the rounded flesh of her ass and he knew he had to trace every line of her art, to study her, to consume her.
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