His Package

by Bloom, Penelope

  Unsurprisingly, she didn’t sound remotely apologetic. There was a kind of deadpan quality to her voice that didn’t quite match with the look she had in her eyes—like a constant challenge, a dare of some kind, but whatever the challenge was, I couldn’t begin to guess.

  My heart sank when I saw the package was ripped open. I didn’t dare ask her if she’d read the contents of the envelope, so I tried to stare her down. Most people weren’t comfortable with silence, especially when it was combined with eye contact. It was the quickest way to judge the strength of someone’s character, in my opinion. So when ten seconds and then twenty went by without her so much as flinching away from my gaze, I decided the tough front she wore may not have been an act after all.

  “Thanks.” She said in that dry, uninterested way of hers after half a minute had passed. “That’s what you say when somebody does something nice for you.” She gave the box a hard shove into my stomach and started back toward her door.

  “Wait. You didn’t look inside?”

  “Believe it or not, I don’t really care to know what kind of weird shit you get mailed to you.”

  I pulled out the envelope and saw the seal was broken on the flap. “Then why did you open this?”

  Those deep brown eyes of hers flicked away from mine and then back again. It was the first sign of weakness she’d shown, and it helped to know she was human beneath the wall of disinterest she was putting up. “Why did you open my dildo box?” she countered.

  “I thought it was mine,” I said through gritted teeth, even though I knew I was setting myself up for what was about to come.

  “Boom,” she said, emphasizing the word with a lazy twitch of her eyebrows. “And I thought your stupid envelope was mine. Any more stupid questions?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

  “And I don’t care.”

  I crossed my arms and waited.

  “What?” she asked. “You think I’m going to crack just because you want to go all sparkly eyes and silent on me?”

  She broke eye contact quickly this time, and she even fidgeted with the hem of her shirt before looking back up at me. Little by little, I was winning the battle of wills, and I found myself enjoying the unspoken contest hidden in our words. I could already tell she wasn’t like the women who had failed to hold my interest before. A kind of spark lurked behind those cold eyes of hers, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious about her story. I wanted to know how someone so beautiful ended up so cynical and dark.

  She was pretty. Porcelain skin and ink-black hair. Her features were soft and feminine with a chin that came to an almost sharp point. She had a personality full of sharp edges, from what I could tell, and it seemed fitting that her face had at least one sharp edge to match.

  But the part of her that fascinated me most was her mouth. She seemed to have nearly complete control over her facial expressions, and for whatever reason, she apparently wanted to show the world that she was over it. I could respect that. I knew about hiding myself. I knew about putting on a mask, and not just since my step-sister’s bullshit.

  But her mask wasn’t perfect. Those full lips had a tendency toward twitching at times. To a careless observer, it would look like nothing. To me, it looked like her laugh. When I’d pressed her buttons, there was the hint of a tightness that pulled her features inward. Again, barely noticeable, but as good as a glare to me.

  She flipped her hand up by the wrist in a way that said whatever, I’m over this, then she turned to leave again.

  “Have dinner with me,” I said.

  She paused just outside her door, which was propped open by a battered book. When she spoke, she didn’t even turn to face me. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because I think you looked inside my package, and I think maybe you’ll tell me the truth if I soften you up with some wine.”

  “Wine?” She still stood with her hand resting on the door to her apartment, head down slightly. “I only eat raw, bloody meat. So that’ll be a hard, ‘no’ from me.”

  “Then we’ll eat some raw, bloody meat. I don’t care. Just say yes.”

  She moved inside her apartment and finally turned to look at me, but only by sticking her face between the door and frame. It was the first time I’d seen something close to a real smile on her face, but it was a crooked one. “Maybe, but I’ve actually got plans tonight. Seven inches of them.”

  She pulled the book out of the door's way, and it swung shut on its own. I was left standing in the hallway, feeling like I'd somehow been outmaneuvered in a game I hadn't agreed to play. What the hell?

  There was a lurching feeling in my chest, too, almost like I was standing at the edge of a huge cliff and looking down. Was it dread? Anticipation?

  I wanted to groan with frustration. All I should have been focused on was keeping my head down and getting through the next couple weeks or even months. However long it took my step-sister to give up. She wanted to sabotage my life and my reputation, so I’d gone incognito. I left behind my apartment, my office, and my normal life. I could still manage my work remotely, even if it was a pain in the ass.

  So I had enough on my plate without letting the girl across the hall slide her way into my brain, but that’s exactly what she was doing. Maybe I was just so used to women falling at my feet that she had captured my interest from the first hint of resistance she showed. Or maybe she was just my type. More likely, it was a combination of both.

  I was looking through my fridge for a beer when it hit me that she’d just admitted she was going back in her apartment to have some fun with the dildo I’d returned to her. The falling, empty feeling in my stomach surged with a wave of heat. The thought of my sarcastic neighbor with a fondness for dark humor getting off was making all the wrong kinds of ideas pop into my head.

  It was just the latest ridiculous development in a long line of ridiculous developments, and I was seriously starting to wonder if I’d be better off letting my step-sister win. It was only money and pride, after all. But on the other hand, what else did I have?

  3

  Lilith

  I ripped a sigh from the depths of my soul. For some people, a sigh was a call for help. They wanted the concerned onlooker to lean over and say, “oh, you poor thing, what’s wrong?” For me, a sigh was more like a warning shot. It said I was teetering on the edge of tolerance, and I wasn’t in the mood to put up with anybody’s bullshit. The world was cruel, and I would be too if they tested me.

  I was at work. My official job title was “secretary.” Four years of college, twenty-five years of rolling my eyes at the idea of demeaning, insulting jobs that put women in archaic, subservient roles to men, and bam. Secretary.

  I’d really nailed that one.

  As it turned out, most of the successful businesswomen I’d admired had badassed their way to the top of their fields through exceptional talent, good luck, or family connections.

  I was zero for three. So far.

  I hadn’t ever been the most talented girl in the room, or particularly lucky. And the only family connections I had were some unpleasant memories and weird personality quirks that definitely pointed back to my strange upbringing. One thing I did have going for me was a stubborn determination to keep trying, even in the face of impossible odds.

  So I was biding my time, instead. Yes, I was sitting outside the office I wanted to ride one day, but I was also using my weekends to get a master’s degree in business—a fact I’d never admit, even under torture. I wasn’t big on people knowing my personal business. I’d had a childhood full of my parents trying to micromanage my life. Now that I was on my own, I wasn’t about to hand even an ounce of control to anyone else. If they didn’t know my dreams, they couldn’t try to dictate how I got there.

  As far as people went, my boss was kind of okay. That was also something I’d never admit to his face. I’d end up being the one who had to call a contracting company to get all the doorways in the building enlarged
to fit his swollen head if I ever complimented him. Sometimes I thought he was just too clueless to be anything but supremely self-confident, and other times I thought maybe he was actually some kind of evil genius underneath the often bumbling, easy-going exterior.

  He busted out of his office like Kramer from Seinfeld as if the mere thought of him summoned him up.

  William Chamberson.

  He and his twin brother, Bruce, owned Galleon Enterprises, and I had the misfortune of working as his… whatever I was. God knew he hardly used me for normal secretary work. If anything, I was his anti-secretary. Instead of helping people get in contact with him and setting up meetings, I was supposed to help him avoid everyone and all meetings. He even seemed to encourage laziness and my indifferent attitude at work.

  William and his brother were both married, but it didn’t stop every single woman in the very large company from openly talking about how badly they wish they could have some alone time with the men. Opinions were pretty split on which one was the most popular target. Women who were more buttoned-up and “Type A” seemed to lust after Bruce and his matter-of-fact, borderline-obsessive hunt for perfection in all things. The “Type B” women liked William and his wild, unpredictable personality.

  I thought they were all idiots. William and his brother were entertaining, but complete mental-cases.

  William opened his mouth to speak, but the phone rang.

  Both our eyes went to it. It was a sleek, fancy, charcoal-colored phone with a lot of buttons I still hadn’t quite figured out in my four years of working here.

  “Going to get that?” he asked.

  “No. I cleaned all the fingerprints off it this morning.”

  “Right,” he said. He took two long-legged steps to my desk and leaned forward with a conspiratorial look on his face. He picked up the phone and set it back down to silence the ringing, which also left a fresh set of prints on it. “Listen. I’ve got a favor to ask. I know you’re not big on the whole work thing. But I’ll give you whatever you want if you can just man the fort tonight. It’s a company party, and I need an inside man to tell me if this jerk I knew in high school shows up. I might’ve fired off a few tweets in his direction last night, and things got a bit out of hand.”

  “Sorry. No penis. Look elsewhere.”

  “Inside woman, whatever. It’s a part of speech. Phrase of speech? Shit. What’s the thing you call those things?”

  I spread my palms. “Not sure. You didn’t hire me for my mastery of English and grammar.”

  “Yeah, what did I hire you for again? I keep forgetting.”

  “I ignore the people who try to talk to you, so you don’t have to talk to them.”

  He patted my head twice and smiled. “And you’re a good girl for that.”

  I slapped his hand away and gave a little warning curl of my lip.

  He grinned. “You’re kind of like the angry dog I chain up in front of the house. It makes me look more intimidating.”

  “Yeah, because I’m so terrifying.”

  “Well,” he said carefully. “If you don’t want to have your soul sucked out through your eyes, or some kind of Pagan ritual performed over your bed while you sleep, you kind of are terrifying. But in the best possible way.”

  I locked eyes with him and didn’t blink.

  He nodded his head and pointed at me. “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Yep. So, tonight? Can you do it? I’ll give you, I don’t know, what’s a reasonable amount of money for three hours of extra work? A thousand dollars?”

  “More like ten.”

  “Okay, whatever. Ten, then. Can you do it?”

  I sighed. “Ten thousand dollars is not a reasonable amount of money for three hours of work. I’ll do it for my normal pay, but only because you said I was scary. Shit. Wait...” I looked up at the ceiling and tried to decide if I really wanted to say what I was about to say. I thought of the way my heart pounded when Mr. Perfect had asked me to go to dinner with him, and I knew I couldn’t resist. “There’s actually one catch. I might have agreed to a date tonight. I mean, I said ‘maybe,’ but I was thinking of changing it to ‘yes.’ He promised me raw meat,” I added as if that explained everything.

  William took a step back and held his mouth open in a stupid “O” shape that should have looked ridiculous, but the man had been blessed by all that was unfair with perfect features, so he still looked good.

  “A date? My Lilith? A date? Oh my God. What are we going to wear? I’ve got to call the wife. Hailey needs to know about this. Is this a makeover scenario? Definitely, right? No, wait, is he… is the guy… like you?”

  “What do you mean like me?”

  “You know,” he said, gesturing at his clothes and making a strange, constipated face. “Kind of, well, the way you are. You’re very special,” he said finally, as if he’d found the perfect way to express it.

  “He’s not like me, no,” I said. “He’s more like your brother, maybe.”

  William spontaneously gagged. It actually sounded convincing enough that I wasn’t sure it was staged. “Bruce? You agreed to a date with an OCD, telephone pole up the ass, horrible sense of humor, worst half of a pair of twins kind of guy?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t really know what’s up his ass, I didn’t look, yet. And I just mean he's more like Bruce in that he's actually kind of serious. And I hardly know him. My dildo got delivered to his mailbox, and I got his package in mine. So he invited me to eat. Or dinner. Or whatever."

  William crossed his arms and pinched his chin as he paced a small, restless circle like he was in the middle of uncovering some grand mystery. “First thing’s first, Lilith. The next time you talk to me about any of your disgusting sex toy hobbies, you’re fired. I don’t need to know what kind of devil spawn you shove up your hoo-hah, okay?”

  “Seven point two inches,” I said slowly. “Purple. Thick veins—”

  “Stop!” He shook his head and pressed his fingers to his temples. “More importantly, there’s a premium opportunity for innuendo here. You realize that, right? His package in your box? You could even say he—”

  “Already covered all that,” I sighed.

  He looked a little irritated but recovered quickly. “I don’t get it though. How does him getting your dildo in the mail lead to him asking you on a date?”

  “Maybe I charmed him? Or maybe he thought I was pretty.”

  William laughed. "It just doesn't make sense," he said as if I hadn't even spoken. "Serial killer? That's always the first thing you have to worry about as a woman, right?"

  “Totally. Maybe if he’s a serial killer, he and I can compare notes. Save electricity by using the same freezer for body storage.”

  William narrowed his eyes. “The scary part is I don’t even know if that’s a joke. And I don’t want to, because if I knew the truth, I’d probably be next on your list.”

  “Maybe you already are.”

  He ignored my threat. William had known me long enough to learn that I was more bark than bite, but at least he knew to still be afraid of my bad moods. “One thing is obvious. We need to know more about this so-called “man.” Habits. Schedule. Mannerisms. Hobbies. Work. We need to know it all, and fast. I can’t have you going on a date with him until we know more.”

  “Damn. If only there was some obvious, easy way to quickly find out about somebody. Like... some ancient social custom where you maybe share a meal and a few hours, talk about yourselves, and that kind of thing.”

  “Forget the hypotheticals, Lilith. I know what we have to do. Hold on.”

  He disappeared into his office. When he came back a few minutes later, he was holding a pair of high-tech goggles, some balled-up black clothing, and something that looked kind of like a megaphone, but with a clear, plastic bowl and a microphone in the middle. He set it down on the desk in front of me.

  "This is the plan. You use all this awesome shit. You spy on him. If he's a creep, you say no. If he's normal, you do the date.
I'll hold the job open for you tonight, just in case." He tapped my desk twice with his finger and winked. "You're welcome."

  “Do I get to ask why you have all this?”

  “No, because explaining would require me to tell you intimate details about the wonderful, robust sex life I have with my lovely wife.”

  “I’ll promise never to talk about dildos again if you promise to never talk about your ‘robust’ sex life. Ever again.”

  “Deal.”

  I shook my head at all the equipment. “Did you at least, I don’t know, sanitize it all?”

  “Of course we did. What kind of barbarians do you think we are?”

  “This is a new low, William. Even for you. Do you seriously think I’m going to go full-blown stalker on this guy just so I have an excuse to use some cool gadgets?” I ran my finger along the sleek and shiny night vision goggles. “Even if they are really cool high-tech gadgets. What do you think I am, twelve?”

  4

  Liam

  I grabbed a coffee from the barista and did a quick, casual glance around the cafe before I moved to sit with my business partners, Price and Kade.

  “You call this ‘dressing inconspicuously?’” I asked as I sat down.

  Price pulled out the collar on his Hawaiian shirt and looked offended. "This is how people on vacation dress. I'm a tourist."

  Price was my half-brother, and we both had my dad's sharp features, along with the broad shoulders and long legs. After that, the similarities stopped. My hair was dark, and his was dirty blond like his mother's. My eyes were gray, and his were light brown.

  Kade was a mountain of a man who had, oddly enough, started as an intern with the company a few years ago. You wouldn’t believe it from looking at him. He looked like he’d maybe just walked through a few walls, glared at somebody in charge, and dared someone to tell him he wasn’t a co-owner of the business. He had a slight criminal background, but I tried not to dwell too much on that.