by Cat Kelly
Sticky honey flowed onto his tongue and he ate greedily, while her hips jerked and her bottom slapped against his hot palms. The beautiful woman who'd sold her body to him for three hours, abandoned herself fully to the pleasure he'd feared he might have forgotten how to give.
She cried out—a woman on fire— grabbing at the quilt, hips bucking, thighs over his shoulders, her pussy riding his mouth like a rodeo champion, her tits quivering and bouncing.
Jack had assumed that at his age he'd seen and done it all; nothing should surprise him anymore. But, watching her reaction to his tongue, he was hard again already. The taste of her cum effected him like Spanish Fly. His desire to please this woman reached such new heights that the air felt thinner. He should have suffered vertigo.
It was a damn shame, he mused, that no one had ever serviced her properly before. Shame for her, lucky for him. Now he'd have fun making up for the failures of his fellow man.
Chapter Four
A Slight Hitch
She had a headache the next day and the fall sun was so unusually bright that she was delayed by a last minute search for her sunglasses on the way out of the door to work. Rushing to make up the lost minutes, when she got to Marchetti's she flew through the staff entrance and barely noticed quick footsteps chasing her down. Slipping off her shades and stepping into the elevator she was joined by one of the women who'd befriended her over martinis at happy hour recently.
"Hey, Marianne! Got a hangover?"
"No," she muttered. "Just a headache."
"That sucks. I get migraines sometimes that lay me flat for twenty four hours."
"Oh. This is just a plain old headache." And I'm shattered from the king-size fucking I received last night from a complete stranger. Eh....probably not the best place to announce that.
She had barely slept all night. After she got home she took a bath and went to bed with a half glass of milk and a packet of Oreos. Double-stuff, to be precise. Had to be Double-stuff. She'd watched the last half of an old black and white movie and then three episodes of The Brady Bunch, before she lay down and tried to get some shut-eye. It didn't happen. In a few hours she heard people stirring in her building, pipes groaning to life. Then her alarm had gone off.
"I've got some aspirin in my desk if you want some."
"Thanks, Christie."
"No prob. I keep tons of stuff in my desk. Anytime you need anything stop by."
The elevator was crowded and even as the doors tried to slide shut, people dashed forward to claim a spot, slowing everyone down. It was a pet peeve of hers. There were six elevators on this side alone. Would it hurt to wait a minute? Now the crowd closed her in, stealing her air.
The woman who'd followed her into the box almost stepped on her toe as people jostled for space and the cables finally whirred into life, taking them upward. Marianne looked at Christie and wondered if she could be the one who left that card for The Club on her chair. From appearances it wouldn't seem at all likely, but Marianne had studied people enough to know exactly how deceptive those appearances could be.
Couldn't ask outright. People weren't supposed to contact one another outside The Club. Not directly—not to talk about the place. That was probably why whomever it was had simply left the card for her to find.
The elevator took them up, out of Marchetti's luxury department store and into the administrative offices. When the doors opened three people got out. One got in.
Her heart...stopped.
He turned his back to her.
Oh, fuck. To put it mildly.
Mr. Woody.
A few people, she noted, seemed to shrivel away, giving him more space than they would allow for any other poor sod. Someone muttered a nervous "good morning," and he merely inclined his head. Who did he think he was - Caesar?
The doors slithered shut and they were off again.
Marianne's stalled pulse regrouped and whipped back into life. It was a good thing, after all, that this crowd of people would keep her upright and also prevent him from noticing her.
Shit, shit, shit. She clutched her head, eyes closed. So he worked at Marchetti's. She just knew she'd seen him before somewhere.
Her pussy started to throb again. As if it sensed him near, Claudia the Clitoris gleefully greeted Mr. Woody with a moistening of the panties. He didn't even have to look at Marianne to work his magic. In the space of one night she'd gone from orgasm shortage and frustration with sex, to an excess of distracted, blush-worthy thoughts that kept her on the constant verge.
Christie was jabbering excitedly at her shoulder. "We're so proud of Hayes. He got a football scholarship, you know. I told you, right?"
"That's great." To be honest she didn't know if Christie had told her, but it seemed inevitable. Christie's life revolved around her four kids and a "hubby", whose world seemed to revolve around himself only.
"I didn't want him going so far away to college, but hubby thought it was best."
"Hmm."
The tall man in front of them turned his head slightly. Marianne stepped back as far as she could and looked down, suddenly very interested in her shoes. The state she was in this morning she was surprised her foggy gaze could identify a matching pair in the closet, least of all manage to see straight to put them on.
Still couldn't believe she'd gone through with it last night. And then the things he'd done to her...
Her voice was actually hoarse when she left the place last night, from the moans and sighs and squeals of pleasure he'd forced out of her. Three hours they'd spent together and Mr. Woody used the time well. There was not a part of her left unpenetrated.
"Are you ok, Marianne? You look weird."
She sighed, raising a hand to her brow. "Just my head." Of all the elevators in all the world, he had to walk into hers.
"Poor you—and the monthly morale meeting is today at ten."
"Great." As regular and looked forward to with as much jolly anticipation as her period.
Should have used a sick day, she thought. Or gotten a frontal lobotomy. Marchetti's was very big on "Team spirit". Things like motivation, morale and company credo were rammed down their throats at every opportunity.
"It's Rawlings' turn to lead the meeting this month. I still have to get the agendas printed out. I was supposed to do it last night and then Bob came up to me —at five to five naturally," Christie groaned under her breath, "with a couple more items, which means redoing the whole thing. No way was I staying late when I had to take Kennedy to ballet rehearsal for the Thanksgiving recital and Taylor has that throat right now. Then hubby called to say he'd bring home pizza for dinner, but we had to eat by seven because he was going out to meet a client and Madison won't eat pizza, so I had to stop at Burger King on my way—"
"Can't you just email the agendas round to everyone?"
"Oh no. Bob Rawlings insists on printed agendas for every single one of his meetings. Complete waste of paper and ink—and my time—but Bob has to have things his way." Christie lowered her voice to a whisper. "Such a Dickwad."
Yeah, she knew what a Dickwad he was. Since she turned him down for a date last week, he'd been fairly intolerable to work with. Men around here seemed to think that because she was from Vermont she would be naive enough to fall for a few flash lines. Bob Rawlings was a married man and father of two college-age kids, but it didn't stop him from trying his luck. He kept scent strips torn out of magazines in his desk drawer so that he could quickly make his armpits smell sweeter whenever a good looking woman walked by his office door. He stared at her legs whenever she was forced to sit near him and he spent most of his day looking up porn on his computer. He also wore a badly concealed, cheap hairpiece and trimmed his nose hairs at his desk while in a conversation with her. Nice. Then he thought she'd leap at the chance of a night on the town in his company. While his wife took the kids to visit her parents in New Jersey.
And soccer mom Christie thought she had problems. Marianne winced, fingers pressing on her temple
. "Just let everyone print out their own agenda."
"I tried that but they don't bother," Christie babbled on. "They show up without a copy of the agenda and Bob goes ape-shit. He loves those agendas. No one cares about them but him."
Mr. Woody moved again, lifting a hand to itch under his collar.
"Hmm." She wanted to die.
No she didn't. She wanted to be invisible. Thankfully the next best thing—escape—came as the doors to their floor opened and a wave of conditioned air cooled her over-heated face. She dashed out, muttering about needing the bathroom, and hurried down the hall to the ladies' room.
Christie yelled after her, "Don't forget the aspirin at my desk. Stop by before the staff meeting. I can rustle up some Pepto Bismol if you need it. Maybe it's flu. This time of year..."
Marianne fell through the door into the quiet bathroom, shutting out the other woman and her motherly concern. For a moment she'd contemplated asking Christie if she had something at her desk for an overused pussy, bruised thighs and a sore anus. That might give pause to her ceaseless chatter. That would be something for the staff meeting agenda. Perhaps under "Any other business".
She dropped her hobo shoulder bag to the counter, leaned over the sink and turned on the faucet. A full gush of crystal clear, cold water hit the ceramic bowl and gurgled in a merry vortex down the drain. She grabbed a paper towel, dampened it and carefully dabbed her face and neck. Thankfully the bathroom was empty.
This was not good. Her anonymous, no-strings taboo sex did have a hitch after all. And the hitch worked in her goddamn building. Served her right, of course. Fancy thinking she could get away with a little wicked fun. Might have known the pixies of fate wouldn't be on her side.
Last night he'd paid twenty thousand club tokens for three hours of no-holes-barred sex with her. It was filthy; it was hot. It was part of a fantasy world and not supposed to bleed over into her real life. She looked up and stared at her face in the mirror over the sink.
Hello, you must be Marianne Miller, Slut Incorporated.
Goosebumps pimpled her arms and the back of her neck.
Calm down, think carefully—maybe it wasn't him.
Nah, it was him. She'd know just from the cologne and the back of his neck, which was broad and tanned below the severe cut of hair that was just starting to prickle with grey. Then there was the pinkie ring. Further proof. Odd really that he'd wear something so distinctive in a place where anonymity was paramount. Thoughtless. Probably wore it all the time, never took it off and so it never occurred to him. Or he could be the sort that liked to flirt with danger—liked the risk. Brazen. Arrogant.
He must be a popular regular at the club to have earned that many tokens.
If he knew she'd recognized him it probably wouldn't cause him the slightest concern.
From now on she'd take the stairs all the way to the sixteenth floor. Might get her into better shape and would save on gym membership. If she had a gym membership.
See? She could make a plus out of this. As her mother would say, everything had a positive side if one searched long enough.
Marianne crumpled the paper towel and tossed it in the trash. Resting against the sink, coming back to an even keel again, her mind searching for safe distractions, she realized suddenly that Christie's kids were all named after U.S. presidents. She laughed abruptly. What happened to Hoover? Or Bush?
Damn it! Her pussy was throbbing. Is that why they called it a pussy, she mused? Hers was almost purring this morning, like a very spoiled kitty expecting another treat.
* * * *
He strode into the executive offices on the 27th floor and instantly caused several coffee cups to tip precariously and one Boston cream donut to lose its filling prematurely down a golf shirt. No one expected him in today, but he liked to keep folk on their toes by making sudden appearances.
"Mr. Marchetti! How are you? I didn't know you were back from Rome!" A small, harried woman with files tucked under her arm, sharply changed her previous course to scuttle alongside Jack, three of her footsteps measured to only one of his. "If I'd known you were coming in I would have canceled the casual Friday."
He smiled, knowing his personal secretary disapproved of casual wear on Fridays and looked for any reason to dispense with it. "That's not necessary, Mrs. Bracknell. Just forget I'm here. I don't want to disrupt anything."
Joan Bracknell had joined Marchetti's in 1970. Since then she'd attended every major family event and didn't seem to have any life of her own outside work. She should have retired years ago but stayed on when Jack and his brother took over. They'd promised their father to look after her, give her a job there for as long as she wanted it. A stickler for tradition, she didn't adapt well to all the changes, but she was an invaluable resource for information. Her steel-trap mind absorbed minutia on each soul who came through her office and ran them on a loop as if they were stock prices. Mrs. Bracknell was the personnel department—all by her lonesome—before it became Human Resources. Now she was mainly responsible for keeping paper files, even though "important" data was kept in on online repository. Mrs. Bracknell preferred her paper files. Jack knew they were decidedly more detailed than the electronic ones, which only had facts about employees they were legally obliged to store.
"People aren't robots, Mr. Marchetti," she's said to him once, peering up at him through her bifocals. "They are multi-dimensional beings, not microchips."
He'd laughed at that. Truth was, he didn't give much thought to the individual people under him. He thought of Marchetti's as a whole, one greedy, fire-breathing dragon that absorbed all his time and energy—his life. Sometimes, wistful, he used to dream of being born into a normal family, where he got to choose his career and didn't have the chain of department stores ready to hang around his neck. Of course he appreciated everything it brought him, but there would always remain the fact that this was not his choice. It was a legacy and, occasionally, it was a lead weight on his spirit. One good thing was that after Laura died he had plenty of work to keep him busy and he'd thrown himself into it until there was no more wistful, wishful-thinking Jack. But it meant that he didn't see the faces of his employees. To him they were all part of the great machine.
Mrs. Bracknell was there to remind him that people were individuals. Her small office beside Jack's was stuffed with filing cabinets and a few potted plants. From there she kept an eye on people in the building and ran her own one-woman department in constant rivalry with the official Human Resources department. She'd firmly refused to be moved down there, even when she was offered a larger, corner office with windows and its own sofa.
As she followed him to the door of his office, he stopped suddenly and said, "There's a staff meeting today?"
She clutched her files to her chest. Her thin lips curled disdainfully. "Morale meeting. Same every month. Don't you remember?"
"I think I'll attend. Don't tell them I'm coming."
"I wouldn't advise it," she muttered. "They sit around eating donuts and Danish, slapping themselves on the back, fooling each other that they're getting anything done."
"No doubt, but I'd like to check in all the same." Jack turned and gestured for her to enter his office. "Actually, there's something you can do for me, Mrs. Bracknell."
"Yes?" She perked up.
"There's a young woman who started here a few months ago. Name of Marianne. Lots of dark, curly hair and—"
"Miller. Marianne Miller. The new gal in Furnishing and Interior Design. Bob Rawlings' new buyer and design assistant."
Of course Mrs. Bracknell knew. She knew everything. "What's she like?"
"Talented, so I hear." The secretary treated him to one of her wary squints. "Rawlings saw some of her work and head hunted her. Poached her away from Grant Peterson. She seems to have her head screwed on alright, although I've got pantyhose older. He'll be plucking them out of kindergarten next. Why?"
Jack was pretty sure this Marianne Miller was his Claudia. The minute he smelled h
er perfume and heard her voice in the elevator his entire body reacted like a trained animal. Suddenly his day was turned inside out. When she pushed her way out of the elevator and trotted away down the hall like a skittish faun he was tempted to run after her. "Oh, just curious, Mrs. B."
"Curious?" She snorted. "I thought you had your hands full with that socialite I see in the tabloids all the time. The one who does that reality show. She's been laying heavy hints of an imminent engagement."
Did people still use words like "socialite" and "imminent engagement"? Apparently Mrs. Bracknell did. He smiled. "Alana Shepherd is an old friend."
"Yes, I know that's the official line, but she's been in to the Bridal department twice in the past month and tried on dresses. That's how rumors start."
He sighed and rolled his eyes. For Alana, planning her next wedding was a hobby and a trip to his store was probably a photo op. She couldn't get enough pictures of herself. When she recently signed up to put herself on TV in a tacky reality show, she'd begged him to appear on it with her to spice up her "scenes" and her "storyline."
"Isn't it supposed to be reality?" he'd asked, confused.
"Oh, Jack, darling, how sweetly naive you can be."
His brother, who was usually deliberately dense when it came to women and their motives, had pointed out to Jack that Alana probably hoped to make him her reality by putting him in the show. She'd expected true life to mimic whatever plot she chose for them to play out on screen.
Jack had laughed at his brother's warnings. "So you can figure her out, but all the women you run into manage, somehow, to completely pull the wool over your eyes?"
Charlie winked. "Sometimes I enjoy having the wool over my eyes. It's easier to go along with a good looking woman than it is to fight her."
But Jack did not agree. He'd firmly refused to be filmed with Alana and for a few months she hadn't spoken to him because of that. Fortunately he was busy elsewhere for most of that time, but his return to New York would undoubtedly put her in his path again. So he might as well set the facts straight from the get go.