Full Release (2 page)

When I got back to Jeremy’s office, he was finished setting up. The room was dim, candles flickering, music a melodic imitation of the ocean. The table was covered with a thin, cream-colored flannel sheet. Eddie smiled and said, “Can I use your restroom...”

“It’s down the hall.”

“Great. Why don’t you take off your clothes and climb onto the table. Face down.” He smiled again and left the room.

I slipped off my shorts and my T-shirt. After folding them, I set them on the broken dining room chair. Taking off my fancy underwear, I had to laugh at myself. I’d chosen them so carefully, and Eddie wasn’t even in the room to watch me take them off. I placed them on top of my other clothes and climbed onto the table.

Lying face down, I put my head into the donut-shaped headrest Eddie had attached to one end, and waited. I could feel my heart beating a little too fast. I was conscious of the air on my naked skin. An article I’d read on the Internet about something called skin hunger popped into my head. It’s surprising the things that jump out at you when you end a relationship. It seemed ridiculous, that your skin could be hungry for touch, but the article made a convincing case. And lying on that table, I could believe it. My skin seemed acutely aware I was about to be touched.

I heard Eddie come back into the room; the brush of his footsteps on the carpet, the door clicking shut, the muted sound of his clothes dropping to the floor. He placed a hand on my back and kept it there as he walked around to the opposite side of the table. I heard the pop of a container being opened, followed by a wet, rubbing sound. Then both his hands were on me. My body seemed to sigh as he pressed his warm, slippery hands into my back. He ran them up over my shoulder blades to my neck. He used a lot of pressure, and it seemed as though my ribs might crack. I let out an involuntary groan.

“Am I too rough?”

“No,” I lied.

He worked on my back. I relaxed as he dug into my muscles. Pulling my legs apart, he hooked my feet on the edge of the table. With my legs spread like that, opened up, my heart skipped.
What would he do next?
I wondered.

Abruptly, he switched tactics. Beginning at my ankles, he gently ran his fingers up my legs, across my buttocks and up my spine. I shivered involuntarily, but wanted him to do it again. Noticing my shiver, he chuckled softly. He began working my left calf. Digging his fingers in deep until my tendons began to twitch. Then he worked on my thigh. Hand over hand, kneading the muscles just below my buttocks. After a pause, he moved around the table and repeated the process on my right leg.

When he finished my legs, he climbed up onto the table with me. He put his full weight into massaging my back. He leaned forward, pushing his hands up my body next to my spine. I could feel his cock as it dragged up my leg. Dangling over my ass, the tip touching one cheek, then the other. I forgot to relax. I couldn’t focus on anything but his dick as it grazed my thigh, a buttock, the crack of my ass.

Without warning, he laid down on me. Simply lay on me. His body was incredibly warm. He wasn’t heavy, and the pressure was pleasant, but still it was strangely intimate, not that being naked with someone in Jeremy’s office wasn’t intimate, but it seemed like real intimacy rather than purchased intimacy. He hooked his chin over my shoulder, breathing in my ear. He whispered, “This is nice, isn’t it?”

Before I could think about it, he hopped up and was again standing next to the table. He began to knead my muscles again. Everything he did on one side of my body he repeated on the other. He paid special attention to my hands, picking them up and rubbing my palms, pulling on each finger, then setting them down and running his palms across them, even interlacing his fingers so that for a moment it made me think of lovers standing in the sunlight. I was drifting a bit; relaxing finally. And yet, I was incredibly turned on. I felt as though I was on a tightrope between the two states.

Slipping his hand between my legs, he reached under me and pulled my cock down between my legs. Automatically, I lifted my hips to give him better access. With one hand, he stroked my dick, with the other he teasingly caressed and pinched my balls.

Being completely passive is not natural to me. It was a struggle to give myself over to someone. I wanted to roll over and grab him, pull him close. But I wasn’t sure if that was acceptable behavior, so I forced myself to let him decide what would be pleasurable, how things would happen, when things would happen...as difficult as that was for me, it was an amazing feeling. My dick grew harder by the second.

I could feel his semi-hard cock dragging along the table next to my hand. I reached out and took hold of it. I pulled on it a few times, and it sprang to life. It felt as impressive as it had looked in his photo. I rubbed a finger over its large mushroom head. Then, Eddie moved to the top of the table. Reluctantly, I let his prick fall out of my hand.

Through the headrest, I could see Eddie’s feet on the floor. They were well manicured and had a tan line from the flip-flops he’d probably worn all summer. He rubbed my back, beginning at the shoulders and with long strokes pushing all the way down to my buttocks. I could feel his growing erection press against the top of my head. I lifted my head and took his cock in my mouth. Eddie stopped stroking my back. I reached up and cupped his balls in one hand as I bobbed my head up and down on him.

He let out a muffled, “Yeah, that’s it.”

The conflict I’d felt was gone. I wasn’t lying there passively any longer. I ran my tongue from this base of his stalk up to the head. I popped the top of his prick in and out of my mouth until I could feel it thickening even more. My neck quickly grew sore, bent the way it was. But I was enjoying sucking his cock too much to change position.

I’d begun to wonder how long it might take to make him come when he said, “Turn over, please.”

I didn’t really want to, but he was the masseur. He was in charge. A little frustrated, I dropped his dick from my mouth and reluctantly flipped over. My cock was hard, the tip poking at my belly button.

Eddie moved down the table. He began to work my thighs, running his hands up and down them. Teasingly, letting his hands dip between my legs, brushing against my ball sac and then floating away. He ran his hands up and down my thigh again, this time they fluttered over my cock and down my other thigh. I gasped a little. He chuckled softly.

He continued to run his hands over me again and again. It felt like waves caressing me, like the ocean getting me off. I lifted my hips to meet him the next time he came up. Gently, he pushed me back down to the table. I tried to relax as he slowly began to pump my cock. I bent a little to the left, and he adjusted his arm so that he could easily follow my natural curve without tugging or pulling at me. He began to increase his speed.

I placed my hand on the dip at the top of Eddie’s ass, my fingers resting in the crack. He picked up his pace, and suddenly I was coming -- jizz spilling out of me all over Eddie’s fist. He kept jacking me until I shuddered and reached down to stop him.

He stood next to me for a moment, then walked out of the room. I heard the water run in my bathroom. A few moments later, he came back with a damp towel. He wiped off my dick and my belly. When I was clean, I sat up but he put a hand in the middle of my chest.

“Your hour isn’t over. I am not finished.”

For another twenty minutes, he expertly massaged my muscles, leaving me feeling loose and rubbery. I wondered if I should offer to help him get off. In other situations, where cash did not exchange hands, it would be rude not to offer. But Eddie might have other clients that day. He might not want to get off, since it could make getting hard difficult or unpleasant later on.

When he was finally done, he asked, “Relaxed?”

“Very,” I replied.

While he took down the table, I put on my fancy underwear and took seven twenties, plus another as a tip, out of my pocket. I handed the money to Eddie. He stepped forward and hugged me. With a smile, he picked up his portable table and was ready to leave. There didn’t seem to be anything to say, so I walked him to the door.

“Thank you,” I said, as though he were a plumber who’d just fixed a drain.

“It was my pleasure.”

After I shut the door, I realized I had a smile on my face. I was pleased with myself. It was a relief not to wonder if he might call me, or when I should call him. I didn’t have to worry about whether he liked me. All that mattered was that I had liked him. I could hire him again sometime, or not, and I didn’t have to worry about anyone’s feelings being hurt. We had both gone into this knowing what to expect, and gotten exactly that. All in all, I had to admit my time with Eddie had been the most successful, most pleasant relationship I’d had in ages.

Chapter Two

Almost two weeks later, Eddie called me.

It was a Wednesday. A rough Wednesday. My department was pulling together what we call “the ultimates”, which is a subjective process whereby we guesstimate how much a particular film will earn in each market it enters. The sales people from each division stop by, and we sit down to estimate their expected sales figures. The closer we come to reality, the better.

That morning, I spent a half an hour trying to explain to Fred Metz, a dimwitted VP with an MBA, why he wasn’t going to be able to earn two million dollars selling
The Taking of Flight 16
to his airline clients.

“But they’re trying to get Will Smith.” Fred crossed his legs and attempted to look superior. “And it’s historical,” he added, since it was set in the sixties.

“I don’t think even Will Smith can sell a film about a plane hijacking to the airlines, even if it is historical. I mean, would you want to watch that at thirty thousand feet?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“The hijackers crash the plane at the end,” I explained. I could tell by the look on his face he hadn’t read the entire script, even though he was one of the few people on our end of the studio who regularly received scripts. I’d only read the script because my boss delegates the reading of action films to me -- while covering romantic comedies herself.

He frowned, and I could tell he was about to insist again that I didn’t understand his market, when my phone buzzed and I was called into my boss’s office. My heart moved up into my throat. It was nearly time for my yearly review, which meant the possibility of a promotion or at least a healthy raise. My financial situation was crap, and I was desperate to start pulling myself out of the hole Jeremy had made in my finances.

The accounting department was located in a nine-story building across the street from the main lot. It was a drab glass and metal building that wasn’t likely to make it onto anyone’s tour. The studio itself had changed hands, and names, so many times in the last two decades that they probably put some stationers’ entire extended family through college. Recently, we’d been purchased by a German conglomerate, which resulted in a lot of nervousness and some unpleasant Nazi jokes.

Sonja Cartier’s office was two down from mine. Between us, in a miniscule office that had once been a supply room, was Charles Odom, a thirty-something closet case who ran ten miles each morning and had a binge-purge eating disorder and a penchant for undergoing plastic surgery on his vacations. I always did my best not to peek in as I walked by. Across from my office and his were two cubicles, which housed Tiffany Edwards, a forty-five year old frazzled single mom, and Bill Wilson, who’d been at the company since the seventies and was coasting his way to retirement. Outside Sonja’s office was an open station for her assistant, an aspiring actress named Meribelle who was clearly going nowhere.

Sonja’s office was small for a corner office, but still denoted her status as Executive Vice President Finance. It was tastefully decorated in early stockbroker: mahogany desk with a brass lamp, royal blue carpeting, forest green sofa, subtle fleur-de-lis pattern on the drapes. She’d even chosen two prints depicting foxhunts, which sometimes led people to question whether she’d inherited the office and never put her own stamp on it. But that was Sonja’s pattern. Be conservative. Don’t make waves. Fit in.

When I walked in, she told me to shut the door. Pacing behind her desk, she’d taken off the jacket to her well-tailored, gray suit. I had a sinking feeling things were not about to go my way.

“I just heard,” she said, then paused dramatically, “we’re re-engineering.”

Re-engineering is a polite way of saying that the new owners would be laying off a lot of people to make the books look good. I felt my raise and promotion slip away.

“I’m going to do everything I can to protect you,” Sonja promised.

“Thank you,” I said. Of course, the fact that I needed protecting didn’t make me feel particularly safe.

“We’re going to have to give them someone, though. The rumor is they’re asking for a ten percent reduction from every department.”

“I suppose we could do without Bill,” I said, though I’d rather have gotten rid of Charles. Bill was useless, while Charles actually got in the way.

“The thing about Bill is he’s so close to retiring. If I let him go now and we go through this again in a year then I’m royally screwed.”

“You think we’ll go through this again?” I asked, a little dumbfounded.

“Absolutely,” she said. “The Germans only want us because they think the Japanese do. They’ll either sell us to the Japanese at a huge profit, or the Japanese won’t actually want us and we’ll get dumped for cheap. What about Tiffany?”

I liked Tiffany. She had a bubbly personality and a can-do attitude. It’s true she had trouble working overtime since she had two teenaged boys to keep an eye on and a penchant for over-extending herself. She was currently taking two college classes at night. But the quality of her work was better than either Charles or Bill. I said so.

“You have an issue with Charles, don’t you?” she asked.

Here I had to be careful. Sonja liked Charles for some reason, so I had to be delicate if I wanted her to understand he was actively stupid. “Charles isn’t a problem-solver.”