by Sienna Blake
"So me and this guy, we're going to go have dinner and pretend that we're hungry and then go to a movie and pretend that either of us gives a fuck what's happening on the screen," I said, my voice low and gentle, like the purr of a kitten. "And then we're going to back to his place and do what both of us had been really wanting to do the whole time…"
I inhaled audibly into the silence, like a woman's last gasp before coming, and then whispered, "…fuck."
Michael shifted in his chair and sure as hell, I noticed. A thrill like a strike of lightning travelled all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. I hadn't been this bold in years. I hardly recognised my own voice. But there was power in it, and I liked that.
I licked my lips, because I wanted to keep going. And from Michael's silence and the way he moved his hands to grip his armrests till his knuckles shone white, I knew he wanted me to keep going, too.
"If you must know," I said, "he's going to pin me up against the wall and rip at my blouse before bothering to close the front door. He's going to scrape his teeth along my neck, nip at my clavicle, circle his hot tongue around my nipple before sucking it hard between his wet lips."
I noticed the hitch in Michael's breathing only because I noticed the hitch in my own. I was arousing him, that was obvious. But I was arousing myself as well. Because this non-existent date of mine was no longer faceless. He had sandy-blonde hair I wanted to mess up with my fingernails. He had a strong jawline set in a brooding, angry scowl that frightened and exhilarated me. He had sharp green eyes.
As I continued I imagined it was Michael's hands holding my wrists above my head, his hot breath exhaling against the sensitive skin just below my ear, his throbbing erection pressing urgently against my hips in that dimly lit hallway.
"He isn't going to bother taking off my skirt," I said, my voice strained as I struggled to keep myself under control. Just like Michael. "There's no time for that. He's going to push my skirt up my thigh, his nails dragging long red lines against my skin. He's going to tear aside my thong. He's going to thrust into me as my back arches and my tits quiver and my voice catches in my throat. And he is going to fuck me there against the wall, fast and hard and rough."
I swallowed heavily as my eyes travelled from the black pools of Michael's pupils down his chest, rising and falling unevenly, all the way down to his groin where his hard dick was tenting his pants, his leaking cockhead soon to stain his precious designer silks. I returned my eyes to his, doing my best to hold back a victorious grin. Because it really wasn't much of a victory, especially if he had had any inkling of just how wet I was.
I bit my lip and slowly unfolded my legs. With Michael's dark gaze fixed on me, I parted my legs on the edge of his desk. He couldn't help himself from sucking in a ragged breath as I parted them as far as my tight pencil skirt would allow. I placed my hands between my legs, palms flat on his desk, and leaned forward so my he could see the cleavage down my unbuttoned shirt.
I whispered, "So if you must know, Mr O'Sullivan, that's why I need to leave work early this afternoon."
Without another word I pushed myself off his desk and crossed his office. The temptation to look back was almost overwhelming. I wanted to see the fire in his eyes as he watched me leave, lust swirling, churning with anger and frustration. I wanted to see his grip on the armrests of his chair one more time, see just how close he was to cracking and splintering the plastic. I wanted to see the hardness of his erection against the zipper of his pants; I wanted to see the sweat on his brow from the exertion of restraining himself from palming his rock-hard cock.
But more than all that I wanted to prove to him that I didn't care; I wanted to prove to myself that I didn't care. I didn't want him. And I certainly didn't need him, despite how my body protested otherwise.
So I didn’t look back.
I slipped out of his office and closed the door with the tiniest click behind me. With shaking hands I gathered my things. I was about to drape my jacket over my arm when I noticed my hard nipples visible through my white blouse. I ducked into my jacket and headed with hurried, almost panicked steps toward the elevator.
Damn. What had I done?
I'd crossed a line. What was worse, I liked it. I wanted to do it again.
I dragged a hand over my face as I cursed myself, though I wasn't entirely sure what I was cursing myself for. Was I cursing myself for going that far with Michael? Or was I cursing myself for not going farther?
"Ms Miller."
In my tangle of thoughts I almost ran into Harry Peterson coming out of his office. I muttered an apology and hoped my cheeks weren't as red as they felt.
"I hope Michael's not riding you too hard," he said with a pat on my shoulder.
I flinched away, images of Michael's naked body atop mine on sheets damp from our sweat flooding my mind.
Shit. I had gone too far. Way too far.
"I have to go," I mumbled, moving to slip past Harry.
I hesitated and glanced back. "Um, Harry?"
"Hmm?"
"Michael wants a meeting," I said and then added with a devilish grin, "right now, he said."
Harry startled like a pheasant at a gunshot. "Right now?"
"Right now."
Harry half ran toward Michael's office. "Just me?" he called back at me.
I thought about it for a moment. "Better bring in everyone," I shouted.
I continued toward the elevators with my chin high and my gait steady. Just as I was stepping into the elevator, I was rewarded with Michael's booming voice barrelling down the hallway.
"Get the fuck out of here, you idiots!"
I laughed as the doors closed.
Michael
A massive grizzly bear on his hind legs and paws raised was growling viciously down at me with glassy eyes.
A large human hand smacked my back. But it might as well have been from that same grizzly bear, at least when it had been alive and not stuffed and frozen into position.
"Isn't this place fantastic?" my younger brother, Eoin, asked, grinning from ear-to-ear in our red leather booth. "We're in the wild, wild west, Mikey."
"Don't call me that," I grumbled. "And I told you, Eoin. I really don't have time for this."
Eoin was in the States for a series of international rugby matches, and it was just my luck that one of the cities on the tour happened to be Denver at the exact time I was here. I glanced around the Buckhorn Exchange, a historic restaurant in Denver decorated with stuffed eagles and foxes and deer and badgers and pheasants and rabbits and, of course, massive grizzly bears. If that wasn't enough animal diversity for you, the menu was stuffed with offerings of yak, ostrich, elk, rattlesnake, and Rocky Mountain Oysters, which Eoin gleefully informed me were bull testicles.
"I'm your brother," Eoin said after ordering a local whiskey I told him I didn't want because I had to get back to the office after this. "You have to make time for me or I'll call Ma."
"Aren't you a little old for tattling?" I grumbled as I situated my white linen napkin in my lap.
Eoin, of course, had his napkin stuffed into the front of his grey workout hoodie like a five-year-old waiting for his alphabet soup. My brother's only response was to stick out his tongue at me. For a professional athlete with a wife and family, he was still as immature and boyish as always.
"I only have time for an entree," I told him, sliding his menu away from him. "No appetizers. And certainly no dessert."
Eoin snatched back his menu and laughed. "We're trying every single thing on the menu, so settle in, buddy."
I rolled my eyes and slipped my Blackberry out of my breast pocket to shoot off some emails. Eoin plucked it from my fingers and before I could stop him, he stood, stretched onto his tiptoes, and balanced my cell phone in the razor-sharp jaws of the grizzly looming over us.
As he sat back down in the booth, he said, "I don't care if we have to stare deep into each other's eyes without a word for five hours—"
"Five hours!"
>
"You are not looking at that thing."
I was about to complain when I saw Abbi at the top of the stairs of the narrow, two-story restaurant. I had texted her earlier to bring me some paperwork to sign. I waved her over as I slipped a pen from my breast pocket.
"What else do you have in there?" Eoin asked. "A typewriter?"
"Nobody uses a typewriter anymore," I muttered, already reaching out a hand for the file from Abbi.
I did not greet her and she did not greet me. Eoin watched in bewilderment as Abbi stood silently next to the booth, arms jammed across her chest. I flipped through the file, my pen darting across the signature lines.
"Umm, are you going to introduce me?" Eoin asked, leaning his big body across the table.
I didn't look up from my paperwork. "No."
I added the last signature and closed the file, passing it back to Abbi without a word. Without a word herself, she tucked it into her briefcase and turned to leave. Before she could, Eoin wiggled out from the booth and blocked her path.
"Hello there, are you Michael's friend?"
Both Abbi and I scoffed.
"This is my assistant," I told Eoin as I calculated how high I would have to jump to reach my Blackberry. "And she was just leaving."
Eoin introduced himself anyway. Abbi shook his hand stiffly.
"Why don't you join us," Eoin said, shifting to block Abbi's retreat and indicating back toward our table.
I wasn't sure who said “no” more empathically. But either way, it was close.
Eoin glanced over toward me, but I was refusing to give even Abbi's general direction the courtesy of my gaze.
"I see you've been working your trademarked charm, Mikey."
"Don't call me Mikey."
My fingers tore at the edges of the thick paper menu; I was unable to keep myself from fidgeting with her so close. I could smell her perfume. I could see, even just out of the corner of my eye, the gentle curves of her long, lean body. With her so close, I could remember like it was yesterday that weekend nine years prior.
"I promise I'm much more pleasant," Eoin was telling Abbi. "And I'll make sure that Mikey here doesn't bite."
Abbi was still refusing, more politely than I would have. I sighed in relief until I saw Eoin with his big grizzly bear paws on Abbi's shoulders, helpless as a floundering salmon as he forcibly guided her into the booth. Eoin stuck Abbi between the two of us so that she couldn't escape without crawling under the table. In her panicked eyes I thought she might be considering it. Abbi kept almost awkwardly close to Eoin, who was watching me with peculiar interest as I scooted to the very edge of the booth, one ass cheek practically hanging over open air.
Our whiskeys arrived and silence descended once more after Eoin added another to the order along with the rattlesnake queso for the table. Abbi and I both kept our eyes locked on the table as Eoin drummed his fingers against his glass.
"Well, aren't you both great craic!" he said.
I needed an escape. There was no way I was sitting through a dinner with Abbi and my brother.
"I think my cell phone is ringing," I said, moving to stand. "I better—"
"You better sit your ass back down," Eoin said. "Unless you'd like to explain to Ma why you can't spend an evening with your sweet little brother."
I glared at Eoin, who was blinking innocently with his chin in his hands.
Fine. So I wasn't physically escaping. The only option was to escape mentally. I downed my whiskey, said fuck it to getting any work done that night. When the waitress brought Abbi's drink, I told her she better go ahead and bring the entire bottle.
By our third whiskies and our second rattlesnake queso, we all sank a little deeper into the booths and grinned a little more easily with our glossy eyes and pink cheeks.
"I bet you figure you drew quite the short stick ending up with Mikey here," Eoin said to Abbi.
Abbi's eyes darted to mine. I recognised that flush in her cheeks. Strands of her hair had slipped slightly from her braid in the heat of the crowded restaurant to fall over her hazel eyes.
"I know he's got a bit of a hard exterior," Eoin continued, draping his big arm across Abbi's shoulder casually in his gregarious, friendly manner. "But I promise there's a heart in there."
I rolled my eyes. "Shut up, Eoin."
Abbi sipped her whiskey and said, "I haven't seen any hint of it."
Eoin waggled his finger. "He'll surprise you," my brother said. "You'll think you've got him all figured out, that he's this cranky, workaholic robot, and then all of a sudden he'll surprise you."
"Shut up, Eoin."
We were nearing the bottom of the bottle of whiskey and I waved at the waitress for another. But Eoin did not shut up.
"You're not going to believe this," he said, eyeing me with a grin as he spoke to Abbi. "But Eoin was once in looove."
"Eoin, seriously, shut the feck up."
"I find that very hard to believe," Abbi said, though she still looked at me in surprise, as if there could still be the faint possibility of me being so stupid as to fall in love.
But Eoin, fuelled by three large pours of whiskey, clearly had no intentions of shutting the feck up.
"It was years ago," he started the story and my stomach dropped. "I mean, how many years ago was that, Mikey? Like a decade it seems."
"I don't know," I grumbled irritably, eyes fixed on the single ice cube in my whiskey glass.
Eoin leaned in closer to Abbi to whisper conspiratorially with her.
"You're not going to believe this, but I was in Australia for a rugby tournament and I call Mikey here after this big promotion—"
"Can we please talk about something else?" I asked, knowing it was futile.
Eoin was a runaway train and he was going to plough through whatever stood in his way.
"Anyway I call him and he answers and he's wasted, like thoroughly plastered. So I ask him where the hell he is and I swear to God," Eoin paused to cross his big beefy finger over his chest. "I swear to God, he said, 'I'm in love.' Unbelievable, right?"
I sensed Abbi's eyes on me as she said, "Yeah, unbelievable."
"He was at some sort of Celtic festival up in Wicklow mountains," Eoin continued. "I'd never heard him like that. You know, actually happy."
Eoin reached across the booth to jab playfully at my arm. I just shrank back farther into the leather seats. I couldn't bear to look up at Abbi.
I was afraid she would see in my eyes that I remembered that moment like it was yesterday. I was afraid she would see that I revisited it in my mind with a longing so hard it hurt. I was afraid she would see that it was the greatest “what if” of my life thus far and I’d imagined a hundred scenarios, tossing and turning in bed, where I’d acted differently.
Most of all I was afraid I would look up and see in Abbi's steady hazel eyes that she didn't remember, that it didn't haunt her like it haunted me, that she had moved on, forgotten. That she didn't care.
"And you know what?" Eoin continued to my horror. "I think I believed him. Really and truly believed him."
My attention was fixed on the ice cube in my glass.
"I mean, he was definitely wasted. There's no doubt about it. But I think he was in love with whoever this girl was. The real kind of love, you know? The painful, risky, scare-you-to-your-bones kind of love."
The ice was melting away to nothing just like my resolve not to look up to see Abbi's reaction. The heat of my fingers gripping the glass was warming up the whiskey, warring with the fast disappearing ice trying to keep the liquid cool. And yet I couldn't move my hands away; they would shake too terribly.
And they would see. Eoin. Abbi.
They would know.
"So believe me or not," Eoin finished, leaning back casually in the booth, entirely unaware of what he was doing to me, how he was torturing me. "But I'm telling you it's true. Every word of it."
We were all silent for a while, the clatter of forks on plates, the hum of mingled conversati
ons, the bustle of pots and pans from the kitchen filling the space. I let the noise pour over me, thankful for it. Thankful that it was loud and all-encompassing.
I was fully contented with drowning in the noise—it and bottomless whiskey—for the rest of the night.
But then Abbi spoke. And the insignificant, pointless, blissful noise disappeared as quickly as if someone unplugged a stereo. Her words were all I heard.
"I could believe it," she said. "Maybe."
The ice had melted. So had my resolve. I dared to look up at her. Her eyes were waiting for mine. They were the eyes of a girl standing in a hallway of a posh Dublin hotel caught red-handed with a stolen bottle of wine and a platter of hors d'oeuvres trying to break into a linen closet.
I regarded her as I did all those years ago: with curiosity, with fear, with the strange sensation that I stood just as much of a chance against her as I did a tornado on a wide plain.
But then Abbi averted her eyes and sighed. What she said next made me wish she'd never spoken, that she'd never disrupted the insignificant, pointless noise.
"But we all change," she said, reaching for her own whiskey. "And it's a very rare thing to ever change back."
Michael
Another party, another fancy hotel, another boring old man with a boring old voice and boring old things to say.
I resisted the urge to yawn as a director of this or vice president of that droned on about low interest rates and the FCC and corporate tax loop holes. PLA Harper and Levi, Levi, & Burke were celebrating the upcoming merger with a grand fecking celebration at the historic Brown Hotel in downtown Denver. The floors were marble, the rugs oriental, the ceilings moulded and it was all the fecking same.
"Yes, yes, of course," I said, not because I'd heard a single word of what this generic Mr Smith said, but because I'd learned to judge just by a facial expression what response was required given a particular length of pause.
Mr Smith was, of course, satisfied with this, thinking proudly to himself that he'd successfully wrangled the attention of a senior partner at the largest corporate law firm in the world, which was soon to get even larger.