Her Tokyo Valentine Conquest: An Erotic Short Story

Her
Tokyo Valentine Conquest: An Erotic Short Story

by

Samantha Egret

Published by Chances Press, LLC

Copyright 2015 by Samantha Egret

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This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either
the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously.
No reference to any real
persons is intended or should be inferred.
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which have been used without permission. The publication/use of
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***

Fuck Valentine’s
Day.

That’s the thought that kept going
through Akie’s mind the minute the red and pink hearts vomited all
over Walgreens. All she wanted was some fucking cold medicine to
head off this quasi-bird flu shit she had to deal with, and it hit
her right between her eyes. Right where the throbbing was.
Cupid…The heart doilies…The smell of cheap, shitty chocolate candy.
It just made it all worse.

She supposed she should feel excited
about it this year. After all, she’d just started dating a pretty
cool guy, though she wasn’t really sure if he was an end so much as
a means. A means of forgetting. And of maybe inflicting just a
little bit of jealousy.

Danny hadn’t wasted any time making
his move the first night she’d asked him out for drinks. She had
just grabbed up his highest profile account at Unchained Records,
where they both worked in marketing under Ned Amara—an account for
a band called Androgynous Punk. Danny was pretty pissed, she could
tell, but she knew that she either had to start making her place in
the Unchained hierarchy known, or she’d be at Ned’s mercy. And she
didn’t want to be at Ned’s mercy—she knew he’d salvage her job out
of some douchy sense of obligation, even if the budget was in the
tank. No, she didn’t want to keep her job because Ned felt like he
owed it to her. She wanted to keep it because she was the best,
even despite him. And if Danny had to lose, so be it.

This was business, not
personal.

But then when Ned passed
her that look over Danny’s shoulder—that look that said,
Now prove it
, his brown
eyes piercing at her through those thick-rimmed glasses he liked to
wear—she knew she wanted to prove it and then some. She wanted to
throw that shit right in his asshole face, so that it settled from
the top of his black pomaded head to the point of his manicured
goatee. So she asked Danny out for drinks, under the pretense of
transitioning the account. He’d dug right in, too. His finger went
up her cunt within minutes of their sloppy kissing. Probably for
the better. Break the ice.

But then she’d resolved to let it
plateau there for a while. She knew the result of going all-in from
the start, and she wouldn’t set herself at that sort of
disadvantage ever again.

Her mind returned to Walgreens and the
cold medicine. She made her selection and cut through another
aisle, avoiding the barrage of manufactured love on her way
out.

*

She snuggled up in her cotton jammies
and fuzzy slippers, long black hair in a looped ponytail, popping a
few of the cold pills along with some matcha, the green powder of
its finely-milled leaves settling at the bottom of her teacup in
the same manner that she planned to settle in the bath later this
evening. Grabbing the remote, for now she settled on one of her
favorite entertainment news shows. A number flashed on the screen,
indicating an incoming telephone call. Crap. It was
Danny.

“
Hey,” she answered,
settling the phone into her shoulder.

“
How you feelin’?” he
asked.

“
I could do without the
throbbing, but I just took something that’ll hopefully cancel that
out. Did anything interesting happen at work today?”

“
Naw, but even if it did I
wouldn’t tell you. You gotta focus on getting better.”

Akie smiled. “Maybe if you’d leave me
alone with my matcha I could.”

She heard his easy laughter. “Touché.
I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“
You won’t have to. I’ll
be there tomorrow. This cold gets one day and then I’m evicting its
ass.”

He laughed again. “Well, if anyone can
beat a virus into submission, it’s you. See you
tomorrow.”

“’
Bye, Danny.” She hit the
“
FLASH
”
button. A commercial popped on for Valentine’s
chocolate. Ugh! “Fuck me,” she said out loud. But instead she
sipped her matcha.

*

In Tokyo it had been different. The
holiday was mostly for women to give chocolate to the men in their
lives. Akie had spent five years in Japan working in Unchained’s
Tokyo office. It had been a nice opportunity to see, first hand,
the land from which her grandparents had emigrated. And yet, even
with her background as a Japanese American, there were aspects of
the culture that were so different from her home in Los
Angeles.

A year ago today, her fourth in Japan,
Akie had been out buying giri-choco, her obligations to the men in
the office. She’d never quite gotten over how different it was from
home: so very formal and rigid. Her first year in Tokyo, it had
been awkward when she’d ended up being the only woman in the office
that didn’t have anything to offer. So she’d subsequently made the
habit of getting that purchase out the way as soon as the market
shelves were filled with cheap chocolate. But last year she’d
dropped the ball and had to make a last-minute run.

She’d just met Ned a few days before.
He had been visiting from the Los Angeles office, trying to get
some fuel behind a few of the international accounts. She’d found
him attractive, despite the fact that she almost dwarfed him in her
heels, which weren’t even two inches but still brought her height
to a stately 5-foot-9-inches. Akie had been sure to remember him
when buying the giri-choco. When she went around the next day,
delivering them to her male colleagues, he raised his eyebrows in
surprise.

“
Oh!” he exclaimed as he
accepted the little package. “You shouldn’t have. I—really don’t
celebrate Valentine’s Day and anyway, I…uh…”

Akie laughed. “Actually, I kinda had
to. It’s a thing here. All the women do it, and all the men get one
whether they want it or not. You see, then, the men have to get us
back in a month.”

A glimmer of understanding registered
on Ned’s face. “Oh—well, thank you. I—won’t be able to get you
back. I won’t be here.”

“
No worries.” She turned
to make the rest of her deliveries.

“
But—how would you feel
about dinner?”

She turned back to look at him. “Oh,
you really don’t have to.”

She could see his eyes scan her curvy,
suited figure. “Maybe I want to.”

She smiled. “Well, in that case, I
accept.”

“
You like a good
steak?”

“
Yeah, actually—I haven’t
had one in ages!”

“
Perfect—there’s a pretty
nice-looking restaurant on top of my hotel. We can head over there
together after work.”

“
Sounds good.” Akie turned
back around. Wow. She’d never been to a nice restaurant in Tokyo.
And if it was the place she was thinking of, it was one of the
best. She looked down at her outfit, grateful she’d worn something
sleek and professional. She wondered if he planned to treat all the
women to dinner there. It would get pretty expensive.

It turned out the company had hired a
car to chauffer Ned between the hotel and the office. Akie simply
joined him that evening when he climbed in.

He made small talk during the drive,
twirling the giri-choco between his fingers. “So I understand
you’re from my neck of the woods?”

Akie nodded. “Yep, I grew up off
Sawtelle on the Westside of L.A.. My whole family’s
there.”

“
How long have you been in
Tokyo?”

“
A little over four years
now. I like it. It’s a culture shock, but still it’s kinda nice to
get back to my roots, so to speak. I’d never been to Japan before
this. We just never had enough money saved to make the trip.” She
glanced out the window. Sure enough, they were headed toward the
Park Hyatt. Turning back to Ned, she said, “I don’t remember seeing
you before this.”

“
Suzette always made the
trip.” Ned was referring to the Los Angeles Director of
International Accounts, who had just quit two months
before.

“
Oh, yeah—I met her. She
was…very driven.”

He smiled. “She was one of the best.
But, unfortunately—things didn’t work out with her staff. You could
say it was a…fit issue.”

Akie winked. She’d heard rumors about
how Suzette would hook up with her young male employees, disposing
of them when they’d run their course. She gave a knowing glance to
Ned. “Ah—gotcha. Is he still working for Unchained?” she asked,
referring to this latest of Suzette’s conquests.

“
Of course! I recently
promoted him. He’s one of the best, too.”

Akie knew that it was just
a hazard of any business: being a woman that is trumped by a man.
She thought about that Suzette chick. She was scary. And a man had
even gotten the best of
her
.

It was the reason Akie hadn’t gotten
involved with anyone at the Tokyo office, the reason there would be
no romantic honmei-choco this or any year. She’d not been prepared
to play all-stakes like that. It was just too messy. The good thing
about Ned was that he was only here for the week: no possible way
that it could get complicated.

The restaurant was on the
52
^nd
floor and had an amazing view. Ned had somehow scored a
window seat, and Akie sat there, entranced, as he poured her glass
after glass of wine and she absentmindedly drank. She could barely
remember what she ate. She had always been a light drinker and
could feel herself getting flushed.

Ned raised an eyebrow at her. “You
know, you look pretty stunning with your pink lips and flushed
cheeks. I’ll bet you get taken out to dinner like this all the
time.”

“
No way,” said Akie. “I
think I’m too American for the men here.”

“
Your height?”

“
No, not that, although
it’s just a physical manifestation of what makes me different from
the ideal. You know, I’m here to win. I’m here to be a success at
my job, not to support the men. I want power as much as they do.
And my height isn’t the only reason I don’t look up at them. I’m
big and boisterous and cunning—and it intimidates the shit out of
them. Of course, they wouldn’t admit it, not for a second. But the
end result is that I don’t have much of a dating life,
either.”

“
Their loss,” countered
Ned, grinning, “My gain.”

The night moved in fast-forward after
that, and before she knew it he was asking her if she wanted to see
the view from his room. She guessed, in her drunken state, that it
couldn’t hurt.

He ushered her into his darkened
suite. She reached for the switch, but he said, “No, let’s keep it
off. You can see the view better that way.”