Falling for Sir (6 page)

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 her 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."