Has anyone told you that you are beautiful today? If not they should be fired ;)
It was Caleb. Just a simple text message that made my day just feel so good.
I just fired the entire department. LOL! What are you doing?
Just as I set my phone down, Ava came in my office with a white take out box. She still had the same grin on her face, I think that it was permanently placed there and I hope that it stayed that way.
“Thank you so much, Ava! My stomach has been growling so loud, I thought that animal control was going to be called for a suspicious animal wandering around!” I joked. “Well dig in, I need to go say goodbye to Brantleyand then I have a few more emails to take care of for Mr. Rogers.” She laughed. “I always laugh about his name. Anyway, he sent an email asking that I make sure your schedule is open for next week so he can view the proposal that he sent you on Friday. Would it be okay if I scheduled it for next Tuesday? You have a conference call on Monday morning and I don’t want to cramp your schedule.”
“That would be perfect. Can you just Cc me on the email so I can mark it down as a reminder? Thanks again for lunch. I will get some cash this evening and pay you back tomorrow, if that’s okay?” I quickly started digging into the fries.
“Don’t worry about it. This was on me.” Ava quickly left my office to say her goodbyes to Brantley. My phone buzzed as I took a bite of my chicken. My fingers were covered in the sauce but managed to hit the message with my knuckle.
Just finished up my paperwork on my house. Have time for lunch?
I quickly licked my fingers and wiped them off with a napkin. I was enjoying my office lunch time but I wanted to see him so bad.
Really busy today, eating lunch at my desk. Sorry.
It was not even a moment later.
I would love to lick that sauce off your fingers…
I looked up and Ava was at my door. “There is a gentleman named Caleb Martin here to see you.” She had a cheesy grin on her face. She directed him in. I noticed that I could see him out my inner office window. He had been watching me eat my lunch. Ava showed him and shut the door behind her.
“I was just thinking that either you had set up a video camera in my office or you are just that good.” I laughed. “Sit down, want some of my lunch?” I asked.
“Nah, I would like to lick it off of you though.” Caleb said with a devilish grin and a wink. I nervously laughed wiping my mouth and hands with my napkin. How was it that he could make me feel so innocent? I looked him up and down, he was dressed in some business like black slacks and a white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his arms looked so tan and muscular. The top button was undone to show just a little bit of his collar bone, which just drove me nuts.
“What are you doing here? I mean, I am happy to seeyou, but just thought that I would have to wait until later to see you.” My voice sounded flustered. “I was thinking about you all morning and I couldn’t wait until later.” He leaned in over my desk and lightly kissed my forehead. “Don’t worry; I am not going to do anything inappropriate here. I did want to let you know that later, after seeing you in this dress, I can’t promise that I am going to behave myself. Ryleigh, you look absolutely gorgeous in it. You look gorgeous in nothing at all, though.”
“Caleb, you are making this hard not to think so many dirty thoughts right now.” I said in a whisper. He got up from the chair and turned the blinds. “Ryleigh, you are making it hard for me to behave myself in your office. How do you not have guys jumping all over you all day long? I have been here for just a couple of minutes and all I want to do is pull you up on to this desk.” He gently pulled me up from my chair to a stand. “Lay you down and kiss every inch of your body.” He began to kiss my cheeks, jaw and my lips.
I moaned as he pushed his tongue into my mouth, welcoming the taste of him. His hands guided themselves up and down my back. He gripped my ass and pulled me closer into him. I could feel he was already hard against his slacks, like he was going rip them at the zipper.
We pushed my food carefully to the side to give us enough room to have me sit down. He reached up my dress and grabbed my lacy underwear, guided themdown my legs and tossed them on the ground. He leaned into me and began to fiercely kiss my lips.
“Caleb, I could get in trouble for doing this, but you have no idea how much I want this right now!” I whispered in his ear.
“I can’t wait until later. I have to have you now!” He growled.
He quickly unbuckled his pants and I heard his zipper coming undone. He shoved down his pants and leaned into me. I could feel him slide into me. “Ryleigh, you are so wet and so tight. Let’s lift up your dress a little bit so we don’t get this pretty thing dirty. I wanna see it on you later.” He scooted my dress up around my hips and began to thrust into me harder. He knew that we had to be quick, I didn’t think I was going to last very long anyway with these pushes into me.
I moaned into his shoulder, biting it harder so I wouldn’t be so loud. I couldn’t risk having Ava, or worse a board member, walk in as I had one of the best orgasms of my life. “Ryleigh, you feel so fucking good. I am so damn close and I want this to go on for the rest of the night, even if it meant staying right here on your desk.” He pushed into me three more times into me, each of them harder than the last. I could feel my nails dig into his back and I bit down hard on his shoulder.
He began to kiss me gently again. I could feel that my lips were swollen from rubbing them along his shirt. He stood up and began to pull up his pants and straighten up his shirt. I quickly cleaned myself up and smoothed out my dress. I slipped my underwear into my purse.
“You aren’t going to put those back on?” He asked with eyes starting to widen. “Nope, it will give you something more to think about.” I said with a wink, walking to my door to open it up. “Thank you so much Mr. Martin for considering our firm to handle your financial needs. We look forward to handling your future accounts.” I shook his hand as I began to walk him to the elevators. “Well you come highly recommended Mrs. Andrews. I think that my money and my business will be in great hands.” He said with a cheeky smile. The elevator door closed behind him and I walked back towards my office.
Ava had watched every second from the time I walked out of my office until now.
“Oh dear Lord, who in the world was that? I don’t see an appointment for him, was he a last minute client?” She asked pulling up the calendar on her screen.
“Yeah, last minute. He is an old friend of mine and I…” Ava interrupted me. “Ryleigh, your lip gloss was all over his shoulder.Do you want to tell me who that really was?” She looked at me seriously. That smile she had most of the morning had now gone away. My face had dropped as well.
“Come into my office.” I said walking in. “Close the door, I really don’t want this to get around. I need you to promise me that you will not say anything. Shit really has hit the fan and I don’t want it to become office gossip.”
“You can tell me anything. Ryleigh you may be my boss, but I really think of you as a friend and I don’t want to lose either of those.” Ava said as she sat down.
“Look, I’m just going to tell you the shortened story. It was too much drama to sum up into a few minutes. Liam has been cheating on me.” Ava interrupted again.
“What?! How?!” Her eyes about popped out of her sockets. She even slammed her hands on my desk. “Ava, calm down. I haven’t exactly been the best person either. I have been seeing Caleb as well. He and I never dated in high school, but he was my first love. We hooked up last week and things between us are, well, I don’t know what they are. Either way, Liam and I are still trying to figure things out. It has been just a shit weekend. That, my friend is drama in a nutshell.” I tried to search for a hint of what Ava was thinking but she was just a blank canvas.
“Wow. I think that I have been speechless twice in my entire life and you just took spot number three! Why are you trying to figure things out with Liam?”
She looked very puzzled.
“I honestly think that we should give it a chance. Maybe figure out if this is what we really want.” I began to bite my nails.
“Quit biting your nails. Do you really want to be with him? Liam that is, well for that matter, Caleb?”
“They both have their amazing qualities…”
“No, Ryleigh, what does your heart say? Not what your brain says.” Ava interrupted again. “I don’t know.” I put my head in my hands. “I didn’t mean to make you cry, I just am trying to help you figure this whole thing out. I know I only heard the summarized story, but Ryleigh, this is a huge situation. The guy I was with when I had started here, he was cheating on me. But that wasn’t the first time that I had caught him. This was the fourth!” Ava began to tear up and I could just look her without saying a word, I was in shock. “Yeah, the first time he said ‘I was his love of his life, I was everything and he didn’t mean to do it’, the next time it was because of some mistake and his excuses became even lamer the third and fourth time. After that I was so numb.”
I came around my desk and sat down in the chair beside her. I wrapped my arm around her as I could see the tears were falling down her cheeks.
“Ava I am so sorry. I knew he was a jerk, but I had no idea about this.” “It’s okay; I didn’t think that I would’ve wanted to talk about it. We finally ended and it was done. I am not saying that you were right either. You are on my shit list too.” She laughed and grabbed a tissue from my desk for the both of us. “The thing is, and this by no means justifies it, what it sounds like what you did with Caleb doesn’t sound like just some cheap thrill or something that was meaningless. That is what Liam did and that is why you have to know he did it just because he can, he could and he will more than likely do again. What you did, it meant something he was your first love and things obviously never ended. It was paused.”
Wow. Ava was right, it meant everything to me. Caleb was never really over, it just seemed like when he came back into my life it just picked up where we had left off. Liam was picking random women and having meaningless sex with them, or was it meaningless with any of them.
“Ava, thank you for listening. Again, please don’t say anything to anyone.” I hugged her. “I’m not going to say anything, but when I did ask you on Friday; if you thought that he was cheating, did you think about it before I said something or did I trigger something that made you look more into it?” She inquired.
“I had a feeling something was up, but never did I think that he would do this. He actually gave himself away when he sent a drunken text to me and it said that ‘she would never have to know’ and I am assuming that ‘she’ was me. Or that he got arrested at a bar but told me that he had to run into work. What hurt the most, though, was he was supposed to be enjoying the night with me. He was with a girl and he and a guy got into a fight over her.” I was getting worked up at the memory of having to pick him up from jail.
“You really did have a drama filled weekend. I am surprised that you’re here this morning.” Ava was again having a shocked look on her face. “Yeah you have no idea. I came in because he had togo to New York this week and I already took Friday off. With him gone I will have time to clear my head.”
“Or get something, or someone else in your head.” Ava winked and elbowed me in a playful way. “So, am I going to regret being around your desk or any other office furniture for the rest of the day?”
“Ava!” I slapped her arm. I didn’t want to tell her what just went on in here, but I know that she is not dumb.
“You know, these walls are not completely soundproof and that window it is not that thick.” She said seriously.
“Oh shit, do you think anyone else heard?” I could feel the blood leave my face.
“No, because they really are soundproof and I didn’t hear anything at all, I was just waiting for your reaction and to see if you really did get freaky in here without actually telling me.” She laughed.
“Oh my god! I am so embarrassed right now!” My face regained the blood really fast and I could feel I was ten shades of red in my face. “Don’t be, if I had an office, Brantley and I would be all over it today. The man is awesome in the freaky department and I don’t think that I’ll get enough of him.” Ava stood up and began to head towards the door. “Ryleigh, you are a very smart woman. You have your shit together and you always seem to know what to do. Don’t stay with Liam just because you are married, you shared some time together, you have a past together. Stay with him because you know that he is going to truly change his ways. But that means that you are going to have to stop with Caleb. If you decide to leave, you know you have the support of friends, like me, and you will get through this. Do you think that Caleb loves you?”
“I’m sure he does. He has told me a few times. He wants to fight for me.” I smiled at the thought of Caleb telling me how much he loved me. “Then go for Caleb. Liam, he had his chance to fight for you and he let you go.” Ava headed out my door. My head was not in my work for the rest of the afternoon. I just did a few reports for a couple of clients that were small businesses, not really sure how they could afford our firm. I kept checking my clock on my computer; I was so beyond ready to get out of the office. I could smell Caleb all over my office, not that it was a bad thing, but it was a distraction. I really wanted to be with him.
My phone buzzed as I was trying to busy myself with some note taking for my appointments later in the week.
I have landed. About to head to the hotel. Call or text me later. I love you. After my conversation with Ava, I really didn’t feel like responding. I did need to ask him about Courtney’s wedding though; did I really want to bring him to it? I wanted to bring Caleb more than anything.
Love you too. That was all that I could manage to text back. I set my phone down and looked at the clock. 4:57. I was ready to get out of here, I shut down my computer and grabbed my things. Ava was also getting her things together as I headed out of my office.
“You ready?” I asked. “This day has just dragged on and I am ready to get out of her.”
“You and me both! I’m so done with writing emails. This reminds me, your meeting is all set with Mr. Rogers. He may be really nice, but he is annoying!” She rolled her eyes as she grabbed her sweater.
“Well, let’s get out of here and you can go release some of your day out on your new man.” I winked at her as I pushed the button for the elevator.
“You have no idea! I’ve been dying all day and you get to have it right in your own office!” Ava joked as she stepped into the elevator car. I really needed to make sure that I watched what I was doing. I trusted Ava, but if someone else would have known about what I did I could get in a lot of trouble. Or someone could find a way to tell Liam. The rest of the elevator ride with Ava was silencebetween her and I. She was trying to text Brantley but getting frustrated because of the lack of signal. Ikept going back and forth with myself on whether this thing with Caleb was a good idea. I loved him dearly, but I was making my husband be this monogamous guy and here I was sleeping with another person! I was going to drive myself insane.
I walked out of the building and started towards Caleb’s hotel room. My head was in the clouds just thinking about our afternoon meeting. I had those butterflies in my stomach, I wasn’t sure that I was nervous about seeing him, but just having the memories made it more of a warm and fuzzy feeling. I walked in through the glass revolving doors of the hotel. I headed straight towards the bank of elevators, when I was stopped by a lady at the front desk.
“Good evening, ma’am. Are you Ryleigh Andrews?” She asked with a smile.
“Yes?” I looked at her puzzled.
“Mr. Martin informed me that you would be arriving, he wanted me to give you this envelope.” She handed me a fancy hotel envelope. I looked down at her name tag to find her name.
“Thank you, Betty.” With that she turned away and walked away.
I opened the envelope to find a key. It lo
oked like a house key! Inside there was also a note.
I figured that you have the key to my heart, so I might as well give you a key to my new house. I know that you are not going to move in but it is there for you to come by any time.
I love you.
Caleb I think my heart stopped as I read the note. I just stared at it in shock. Why would he give me a key to his place? He was moving way too fast, I was still married and not sure what I was going to do there and here Caleb was giving me a key to his place. I know that he wants us to be together but this was insane.
I quickly walked over to the elevators to head up to his room. I kept looking back at the note and felt the tears building up quickly. I knew that this had to come to a stop and that was what was going to kill me the most.
I walked down the hallway to his door. I stood there a moment before I knocked.
“Hey beautiful! You’re a little early; I was trying to get everything set up.” He said with a smile. “But I’m not going to make you stand out in the hall, so come on in.” He opened the door a little wider.
There were candles lit everywhere, several different color flowers and some champagne put on ice. He went all out tonight.
“I only saw you a couple hours ago, but you still look amazingly beautiful. Do you like?” He pointed around. “Did you get my envelope?” He sounded like his mind was going a million thoughts per second.
“It’s beautiful. I did.” I said quietly.
“Ryleigh, what’s the matter?” Caleb’s face then dropped. “Caleb, this is all too much. I think it is very sweet how you went out of your way for this, but I got the key and then started to realize, this is all moving so fast. Caleb, I just had a talk with Liam yesterday about he wants to try to start over and…” I paused as the tears began to flow down my cheeks. “Caleb, you’re an amazing guy and I really do love you, but I really shouldn’t just give up on Liam. I know that he screwed up, but I did too.”
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