by Maggie Way
Perry stood between Mom and Fred with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and a smile on his face that looked like it had been painted on with a wire brush. I’d never seen him look so uncomfortable. He looked like he might explode if he didn’t get back to the farm by midnight.
Perry was a country boy, through and through. He hated being out of his element, which was up to his ankles in dirt and potatoes. He tugged at the necktie Mom had made him wear and wiped sweat from his brow with a cocktail napkin.
He was wearing his “Sunday go to meeting” suit, an ill-fitting blue number he’d purchased at the Men’s Warehouse in Boise. I hoped it looked better on the mannequin than it did on him. The cuffs of the pants rose above his ankles and the sleeves of the jacket were an inch too short. Perry kept tugging on the sleeves in a hopeless attempt to pull them over his boney wrists.
Perry was tall and gangly, with a buzzed head and a skin baked brown from the sun. Mom said it was good that Perry was so dark because I was so Irish-pasty white, with red hair and blue eyes. “You’ll need to marry a man with a tan or your kids might turn out to be pale as ghosts!” Ha ha, very funny, Mom.
Just being at the reception looked painful to Perry, as if someone had stuck tacks in his shoes. Poor Perry. I knew he couldn’t wait to get back home to his dirt and his taters. I also knew he expected me to go with him. Poor, poor Perry.
“So, what’s your plan?” Perry asked, the corners of his mouth twitching in and out of a smile. “You coming home now or what?”
I tried to mask the hurt form my eyes.
There was no, “Congratulations, Alex!”
No, “Way to go, sweetheart!”
There was only, “You coming home now or what?”
Mom and Fred leaned in a little, also eager to hear the answer.
“I’m not sure,” I lied. “I have to wrap things up here before I can even think about going back to Idaho.” I gave his tie a little tug. “Let’s talk about that later at my place.”
I had something very special planned for Perry; something that would make him forget all about Idaho and his beloved potatoes.
The look in Perry’s eyes told me that he knew I was full of shit. He knew how I felt about the farm and the life he wanted me to lead. I never led him on or gave him a promise to return, but I had never told him I wasn’t going back either.
Christ, he’s known me since I was twelve. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t talk about getting the hell off the farm and moving somewhere to start a life that didn’t involve digging potatoes and cleaning the dirt from under my nails.
And now he was standing here on the happiest day of my life asking me when I was coming home.
Perry was either the dumbest man on the planet or the biggest optimist.
Either way, he was going to be sorely disappointed.
Chapter Two
Cameron Shaw
The man with the round spectacles and nervous eyes sitting across my desk was named Irving something or other. Irving was short, fat, bald, and sweating through the pits of the cheap suit he’d chosen to wear to my office on Wall Street.
He was wearing a red bowtie that hung crookedly around his pudgy neck. A bowtie, for Christsake. Only pussies and Harvard grads wear bowties to a meeting like this. I doubted Irving went to Harvard.
Irving was the lawyer representing the minority shareholders of Baby-Co Industries, a company I was about to buy and dismantle.
That’s what I do; I buy companies that are on the verge of bankruptcy or having cash-flow problems, shut down the company, split up the assets, and sell them off for a profit.
Some people call me a corporate raider. I prefer the term “liquidator”.
I’ve been in the liquidation business for twenty years, and it’s made me a billionaire at the age of forty-five.
Irving was telling me that the shareholders didn’t want the company sold and dismantled. They would love my money, but not my involvement.
It was a moot point. I had been quietly buying up the majority shares of stock in Beechwood for nearly a year, which meant the minority shareholders were shit out of luck.
Didn’t they know who I was?
Did they really think sending this little, fat fuck to plead their case would do one iota of good?
I was Cameron Shaw, for Christsake, the founder and CEO of Shaw Investments, Limited, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Paris, London, and Berlin (I quoted that right off our company prospectus).
If I wanted something, be it a woman, a car, a house, an island, or a company; I had the ability to get it and do whatever the fuck I wanted with it.
And I didn’t give a shit what anyone thought or how they were effected by my actions. This wasn’t a popularity contest. Let Warren Buffet and Bill Gates work that side of the fence with all their goody-goody philanthropic bullshit.
Everything I did was driven by the bottom line.
Money made the world go around.
Money could buy everything, including happiness.
I’m not an asshole. I’m a realist.
It wasn’t personal. It was just business.
“So you see, Mr. Shaw,” Irving was saying when I left the daydream I was having about golfing in Scotland and brought my attention back to him. “If you consider the human capital—“
I held up a hand to shut him up. “Mister… what was your name again?”
Irving blinked at me. He nodded at his business card, which he’d set in front of me on the desk when he arrived a few minutes before. He leaned over the desk and put one finger on the card to slide it toward me.
“Kramer,” he said with a frown. “Irving Kramer. As I was saying, if you consider the human capital involved--”
“Mr. Kramer, can I be perfectly honest with you?” I picked up his card and frowned at it for a moment, then tore it in two and set the pieces on the desk. I used a stiff finger to slide the pieces toward him. He stared at the torn card like it was a dead body for a moment, then brought his eyes up to meet mine.
He looked like he’d just shit his pants.
I freakin’ loved it.
“I don’t give a damn about human capital, Mr. Kramer,” I said with a bored sigh. I leaned forward with my elbows on the desk and shook my head at him.
“Baby-Co Industries is a dinosaur. Nobody buys real diapers anymore. It’s all about disposables. Their market share has fallen for ten years in a row. The company bleeds money. The best course for everyone involved is to shut the company down and sell off the assets. The shareholders will get good value for their stock.”
“You’re offering ten cents on the dollar,” Irving said incredulously. A film of sweat now covered his upper lip. His round glasses were fogging up. “The Baby-Co shareholders feel--“
“I’m offering what the company is worth,” I said forcefully. “The shareholders have no choice. It’s a done deal.”
“But what about the workers, Mr. Shaw,” Kramer said. “There are two hundred employees to consider. Many have worked there for decades.”
“They’ll get nice severance checks and find other work,” I said.
His face started to sag, like a man who knew he was beating his head against a brick wall that would never crack. I fucking loved it. He slumped in the chair and let his eyes go around the room. I knew what was coming next. I wasn’t the least bit surprised by his next words.
“We’ll sue,” he said. “We’ll tie you up in court for years.”
“No you won’t,” I said with a smile. “Mr. Kramer, I keep an entire law firm on retainer. A New York law firm, filled with the country’s best lawyers who would chew you up and spit you out for breakfast. Great lawyers who would never wear a fucking bowtie to a business meeting.”
His pudgy fingers went to the tie and lingered there for a moment. “That may be, but…”
I held up the hand again to shut him up. I took a slip of paper and pen from a desk drawer and scribbled on it. I folded the paper and
stuffed it into an envelope, then sealed the envelope and sailed it across the desk to him.
“That is my final offer to the minority shareholders,” I said. “Do not open it until you are sitting down with them. Have them consider that offer carefully because it is the last one they will receive before I unleash my legal team. You can let them know that I am making this offer because you’ve done such a stellar job as their attorney. Am I clear?”
He blinked at the envelope for a moment. “Yes, I understand,” he said quietly. His face was ashen and moist. His fingers were still touching the bowtie.
I got out of my chair and offered my right hand to him. That’s what you do when you’ve thoroughly kicked an opponent’s ass so hard he can taste his own shit; you offer them your hand to seal the deal.
He picked up the briefcase that was sitting at his feet and stuck the envelope inside, then pushed himself out of the chair. He stared at my hand for a moment, but turned without shaking it and left my office.
“He was afraid you were going to squeeze the blood out of him.”
Mitchell Ryan, my second in command, had been listening from the sofa across the room. He went to the wet bar and refilled his drink. He held out the decanter of whiskey, but I shook my head.
I wasn’t a big drinker. Alcohol clouds your brain. In my line of work that could be extremely costly.
Mitch drank enough for the both of us, though in twenty years I couldn’t recall ever seeing him truly drunk. Mitch was my age, but looked younger. He was a runner, medium height, lean build, with a nice smile and easygoing demeanor. In that sense, we couldn’t be more different. I’m tall and fit, but my smile doesn’t come out much anymore, and no one who knew me would ever call me easygoing.
Mitch and I have been friends since our days at Wharton Business School. When I started Shaw Investments, I brought him on to be my right hand and we’ve worked together ever since. He calls himself my “social conscience”. That’s a job I wouldn’t recommend to anyone.
“So, let me guess what you wrote on that slip of paper as your final offer,” Mitch said as he came to sit in the chair Irving had just vacated. He took a sip of whiskey and gave me a thoughtful look. “Let’s see, knowing you as I do, I imagine you wrote the words ‘fuck you’.”
“Actually, it was ‘fuck you’ with a dollar sign at the beginning,” I said with a smile. Mitch did indeed know me well. “Wish I could be there when he opens the envelope and reads it to the shareholders.”
Mitch gave me a little smile and slowly shook his head. I could never tell if he was amused or baffled by me. Since I paid him ten million dollars a year to do my bidding, I assumed it was a little of both.
“Have legal get the paperwork ready,” I said. “I have a feeling that our offer will be accepted by the end of the day.”
“Will do.” Mitch finished his drink and left the glass on the wet bar as he walked out of the office.
I leaned back in the chair with my fingers laced behind my head. I swiveled the chair to face the wall of windows that looked out over the New York City skyline from fifty stories up.
I stared at the bright blue sky beyond the tinted windows and ran the numbers in my head. After the dust settled, I would net thirty-million dollars from the Baby-Co deal.
You would think that I would be the happiest guy on the planet.
That’s what I would think, too, if I didn’t know better.
I’ve always said that money can buy anything, even happiness.
Now I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong.
Chapter Three
Alexandra
To say that last night did not go as planned would be an understatement. And it’s all my fault. I should have known better than to throw myself at Perry like that. Perry’s a sweet, innocent guy. Even though we’ve been together for years now, he’s never tried to do anything more than kiss me.
Maybe that’s why, when I came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a smile, Perry looked like he was going to have a heart attack!
I’ll never forget the night I grabbed his hand and forced it onto my boob while we were parking in his old truck after the senior prom. He started kneading my boob like it was a clump of dough he was molding into a pie crust.
Clearly, he didn’t know what to do with my breast, so I thought I should take the initiative. I grabbed his cock and he immediately shot a load in his pants.
Perry jumped out of the truck like his hair was on fire and nearly fainted when he saw the big stain on the front of his white tux pants he’d rented for the prom.
“Jesus, Alex, what are you doing?” he snapped at me. He looked down at himself with a look of horror, as if the front of his pants were covered in blood rather than jizz.
He jumped back in the truck and took me home without another word. We never spoke about that night, nor did he ever touch by boob or let me near his cock again.
“When we get married we’ll do all that stuff,” he would say to pacify me. “We both took that celibacy oath at church, remember? It wouldn’t be right if we broke our vows before we got married. What would the folks at church say if they knew we did what you’re wanting us to do?”
I wanted to say, “Fuck the people at church because I guarantee that they’re all fucking!” I wanted to say it, but I didn’t. I just pressed my thighs together and willed the desire to go away.
Coming out of the bathroom naked was all part of my stupid goal to lose my virginity on the same day I got my MBA. It was a stupid plan. I can see that now. I should have known that Perry would be horrified. Damn it, what was I thinking?
What little I know about sex I’ve learned from dirty romance novels and dirty movies I’ve watched online. I called it doing research. Others would probably call it foreplay.
I’m still a virgin, but I’m no slut. I only considered giving my virginity to Perry because I felt like I owed him something. He’d been waiting for me to come home and marry him for years. Now that he knew that wasn’t going to happen, the least I could do was give him something to remember me by.
Not to mention that being a virgin is hard, and not in a good way. I have the same urges and desires of other girls my age. And I wouldn’t be averse to doing “stuff” with guys, if the right guy came along.
I started “diddling” myself in the shower when I was a teenager, and now I do it sometimes at night before I go to bed or while I’m watching a dirty movie. I know. It’s pathetic. I’m twenty-four years old and the only orgasms I’ve had were by my own hand. If I ever got in an accident and lost my hands, I’d be screwed, again, not in a good way.
Anyway, Perry and I came back to my tiny apartment after seeing Mom and Fred off at the airport. Perry was scheduled to fly out the next day. I convinced him that he should spend the night with me. I’m not sure what he thought that meant, but as I said, things did not go as planned.
Perry was sitting on my ratty couch watching my little TV when I ducked into the bathroom and took off all my clothes. I took a quick shower because I wanted to be fresh for him.
I soaped up my body and rinsed off, then spent a good minute lathering up my tits and pussy. My pubes were trimmed short. I had thought earlier about shaving my cunt, then decided that would really freak Perry out.
My clit throbbed as the soap slid over it and my pussy tensed as my fingers tucked inside me to make sure I was good and clean. For a moment, I thought about making myself cum right then and there, but thought better of it. I wanted Perry to make me cum tonight. I would handle the job myself tomorrow.
I took the handheld sprayer and rinsed off my cunt. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing as the jets beat hot water against my clit and pussy lips. It felt so amazingly good.
I leaned back against the shower wall and spread my legs and bent my knees. I brought the spray head an inch from my pussy and moved it up and down so the jets could pelt from my anus to my clit. The moment the jets hammered into my opening I knew my plan to abstain was going to hell. I st
arted cumming and couldn’t seem to stop. The water kept pounding my clit and my juices kept flowing. I had to brace my free hand against the shower wall to keep from falling.
It was only after the shudders stopped rumbling through my body that I realized that I must have made one hell of a noise. I was panting like a dog and I was pretty sure I screamed when I came. Shit! I rinsed myself off again and stepped out of the shower.
My juices were still flowing as I wrapped myself in a towel and stared at the bathroom door. It was now or never. Perry was either going to fuck me or run back to the potato farm where he belonged.
You already know what happened.
I came out of the bathroom stark naked and stood there looking at him. Perry had a look on his face like he’d just spotted Big Foot. His eyes swept over my body, across my full, natural tits with the pink areolas and big nipples, down my stomach to the patch of curly red hair above my clit. I tried to strike a seductive pose, as if I even knew what that looked like. I decided to try a line I’d heard in one of the dirty movies I’d seen.
“See anything you like, big boy?” I asked, taking a step closer. “See anything you’d like to taste?” I cupped my tits in my palms and tweaked my nipples between my thumbs and forefingers.
Perry literally jumped off the couch, grabbed his crotch, and without another word, ran out the door. I’m serious. He literally ran out the fucking door, leaving me standing there with juices dripping out of my cooch and my hands on my own tits.
I stood there for a moment, unsure of what the hell had just happened. I squeezed my thighs together so I wouldn’t drip on the rug. When it was clear that Perry wasn’t coming back, I went back into the shower and turned on the hot water.
I stepped into the shower and picked up the sprayer, ready to finish what I had started.