Flynn’s secretary sent the wrong files over to Bob, who’s handling the account, right?”
“All right.”
Glee danced in Marcy’s eyes. “Apparently, she e-mailed Mr. Flynn’s private expense account, not the corporate one.”
“It has to get better.”
“Apparently, Mr. Flynn likes to keep track of how many hundred-dollar hookers and bootleg cigars he buys!” She wriggled in her seat.
“Bad news for Mr. Flynn’s secretary, I guess.”
Marcy grinned. “She’s been blowing Bob on the side. He didn’t tell Mr. Flynn.”
“Bob Hoover?” That was unexpected news.
“Yeah. Can you believe it?”
“I guess I can believe anything of anybody,” I told her honestly. “Most people are far less discriminating about who they take to bed than you’d think.”
“Oh, really?” She gave me a ferrety look of interest. “And you’d know this because…?”
“Pure conjecture.” I pushed away from the table and threw away my trash.
Marcy didn’t look disappointed, only more intrigued. “Uh-huh.”
I gave her a sweet and bland smile, and left her alone to meditate on my mysterious sex life.
The fact is, people are far less discriminating in who they fuck than anyone wants to admit. Appearance, intelligence, a sense of humor, wealth, power…not everyone has these qualities, and fewer have more than one. But here’s the truth. Fat, ugly and stupid people get laid, too, the media just doesn’t report on it like they do when the lovers are gorgeous film stars. Men don’t need to be clobbered over the head with the sight of your tits to know you’re looking for action. Even pent-up librarian types can get fucked with their panties around their ankles and a brick wall scraping bloody welts on their backs.
At least, this one can.
Or at least I’d been able to three years ago, which was the last time I’d gone out looking. I hadn’t been looking for action at Sweet Heaven, merely jonesing for chocolate. So why, then, had I let him take me away? Why had I asked him to walk me home and been so disappointed when he left me on the doorstep with nothing but a wave?
That I hadn’t been looking to find someone that day only exacerbated my private torture. If I’d found him in a bar instead of Sweet Heaven, if my hair had been loose about my shoulders, if my blouse had been unbuttoned, would he have asked to come inside my door? Come inside my body? Would he have kissed me on the stoop, his hands slipping around my waist and pulling me against him tight?
I would never know.
I thought of him all that day and all the next, and the wanting of him grew and grew in my mind like pouring water into a vase filled with stones. Thinking of him consumed my waking moments and seeped into my dreams, leading to sweaty nights amongst tangled sheets.
I studied my face incessantly, wondering what he had seen that day to take me from the candy store and to the pub, but not to bed. Had I failed somehow? Had I said some wrong thing, revealed some flaw, laughed too loudly or not quickly enough at his humor?
I knew I was obsessing. That’s what I did. Turned things over and over in my brain to pick them apart from every angle. Analyzed and calculated and pondered.
I could not forget the way his breath smelled when he leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Do you like licorice?”
I could not forget the warmth of his hand on mine when he congratulated me for downing that first shot of whiskey.
I could not forget the flash of his blue-green eyes or the small but perfect cleft in his chin or the faint freckles on the bridge of his nose and forehead or his voice and laugh, the slow deep honey of it that had made me want to lean against him and rub myself on him the way cats do, purring.
The last time I picked up a man in a bar and let him take me home, he’d ejaculated all over my skirt and cried beer-scented tears all over my face. Then he’d called me names and demanded I pay him back for the drinks he’d bought me. It had been one last bad encounter in a string of them. Boys who didn’t know what to do with their pricks, older men who thought two seconds of fingering counted as foreplay, sweet-faced lads who turned into abusive bastards the moment the doors locked behind them.
Celibacy had become the better option. A challenge I set myself that became habit. The day I’d met him in Sweet Heaven it had been three years, two months, a week and three days since I’d had sex.
Now, with thoughts of him on my mind, that nameless stranger, I couldn’t stop thinking of sex. A man I passed on the street could catch my gaze and my cunt would clench like fingers closing on a flower. My nipples rubbed with constant friction against my bras. My panties tugged incessantly at my clit, urging me to stroke that small button over and over, no matter the place or the time or the circumstance.
I was horny.
My assignations had never been about any sort of amorous feelings. They’d been about filling an emptiness inside, of chasing away the dark cloud I could usually escape but sometimes…could not. I went to bars and parties and the park to pick up men who might take me away for a few hours, might make me forget everything in my head. Sex had been a choice I made to ease an ache inside. I knew it. I knew why I did it. I knew why I looked like a librarian and acted like a whore.
Until now it hadn’t mattered. I’d met men who made me laugh, who made me sigh, even a few, very few, who’d made me come. Until now I had never met one I couldn’t forget.
For two weeks I stuttered along this way, my concentration knitted together by strands of habit rather than any effort on my part. My work didn’t suffer, only because the numbers came so easily to me, but everything else did. I forgot to mail bills, pick up the dry cleaning, set my alarm.
The spring days were still easing into night early enough that sometimes my ride home on the bus was done in darkness. I sat in my usual seat, the one at the back, my coat and briefcase folded neatly over my lap, my legs crossed high up at the thigh. I stared out the window and imagined his face and the smell of his breath, and then, with the rocking of the bus to aid me, I began to get myself off.
At first, just a gentle squeezing of my thigh muscles done in time to the thump of the bus wheels on the pavement. My pussy swelled. My clit became a tiny hard nodule pressing against the soft fabric of my panties. My hips, hidden by the coat and briefcase, rocked on the plastic seat. With both hands folded sedately on my lap, nobody looking at me would have any idea what I was doing.
Streetlights cast bars of silver on my lap and made swiftly moving lines of light that slid up my body and away, leaving behind darkness interrupted a minute later by another streak. I began to time my pace to the passing of the lights.
Sweet tension curled inside my stomach. My breath caught and held, then hissed out between my parted lips when it began to burn inside my lungs. I kept my eyes fixed on the window and the sights outside it, but I saw none of them. I saw the ghost of my face reflected now and again in the window glass. I imagined him looking at me.
My fingers curled on top of my leather briefcase, holding tight. My
