Sealing the Deal

SEALING THE DEAL

LUXIE NOIR

Copyright © 2015 by Luxie Noir

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

About The Author

Dionne’s hands glided over the curves of her fine frame as she rode the stranger on the plush mattress in the king suite of The Mandarin Hotel. She could not be the only person who rented suites by the hour in San Francisco, or anywhere in Silicon Valley for that matter.

She
loved
the feel of her own skin. Her plump flesh was all so incredibly soft. She was sobering up now. Her mind cleared from the White Russians she was so fond of, though she could not remember her partner’s name. It didn’t matter. She would never see him again. And it wasn’t his name that made her pick him up. He was fine. His face was pretty and his build powerful. And at the moment, he was rocking her world. Her instincts had been dead on. The white boy could move. His body was rippling in a serpentine dance, driving into her.

And she told him. She gave him high praise indeed. “Fuck me, that’s it,” she said.

He had just about the bluest eyes she had ever seen. And yet there was something exotic about him. Pretty Boy.

It had been a long month and a tough break for her. Dionne Ellis had poured her heart and soul into her presentation. And it fell short. She was brainy. Beautiful. Brilliant. It was why they paid her the big bucks. So why was she the engine that could for other players, but when she sucked-up the courage to venture out on her own, something was always missing? Like a contract?

As the alcohol had all but left her and she was no longer the bold and inebriated Dionne, she lost interest in her boy toy fast. If she had been a little higher or in an otherwise different frame of mind, she might have had a better attitude. But Dionne being who she was, reached down in between her legs to touch herself. She was so wet and slippery and hot. She found her sweet spot and her rhythm and hurried Pretty Boy’s efforts along.

He liked it as much as she did. He started talking.

“Make it hot,” he whispered. “Come for me.”

Oh no, thought Dionne. I am not coming for you. If I am coming for anyone it is for myself. And then she promised herself that
this
was the last time. Hot as it was picking up strangers and tossing them aside when she was through,
this
was no way to handle stress. She felt as though she was on the verge of crossing a line.

But Pretty Boy had other ideas. Forget the line. He had pushed her to the edge and was making her fall over to the intense drop below, while giving it to her good.

With ease, he tipped her just enough, his strength keeping her balanced as he pistoned into her. The completion of her pleasure was not within her control after all. He had taken her over completely. She struggled to stay clear minded enough to work her sensitive heat – the erotic electricity knocking her in and out of focus. His rock hard erection pumped into her with off-the-hook sugar. Never had she so exquisitely experienced such steel hard deliciousness slamming into her.

Dionne and Pretty Boy’s chemistry was unusually reactive. If there was anyone in her repertoire she had encountered like this, Pretty Boy knocked them from her consciousness. Here they were, strangers. She didn’t know a thing about him except that he was pretty and he could fuck. But his very touch and his contact set her on fire. Everywhere his flesh connected with her, lit up. From the nape of her neck where he brushed his lips, to where her insides clutched, to her electrified channel – she was wet and alive with his every stroke.

Dionne hardly knew where she was when her body burst within, alive with a thousand colors. Ripples and waves of blissful spasms overtook her as she came so hard around his even harder length. Pretty Boy lasted. His hips never tired. Her pleasure was his pleasure. She had entered into this union for herself and she was going to leave it that way. She didn’t care about his satisfaction and fortunately that worked out just fine. His male animal cries filled the room unabashedly. And the soulful nature of his howls made her lips curl.

Okay, she admitted to herself how much she enjoyed discovering that he got off so well, especially because of her.

She gave him a moment to come back to earth before she nudged him to withdraw and sent him packing. After he was safely out the door she stepped into the shower. She dried her luscious body with the generous hotel towel while admiring it in the bathroom mirror. She dressed and went down to the lobby. She leaned back to scan the bar and there he was, Pretty Boy at a table, with another woman.

From the outside in, Dionne Ellis’s Eichler House was ugly. Or so she thought when she moved up from San Luis Obispo after finishing up at Cal Poly, to Cupertino. Her first job upon graduation was in the fabled Silicon Valley. Her father wanted her to be a teacher so she could always get a job. He said there might have been a time when computers were a good thing to get into but now everyone was doing it. The market was saturated. Layoffs happened. But they always needed teachers.

“It’s not computers, dad. It’s electronic design. Graphics,” she explained.

“Same diff,” he argued.

“I’ll teach at private school, if that ever happens,” she promised. And she would. Go teach art in one of the private art institutes in California. She had a buddy. Dionne would do it.

But she was now employed in the field for which she went to school. She was head designer for the biggest game producer in the world. What began as a glorified gopher job turned into a Vice President of Production job. And she was good at it and she had great ideas. But they only wanted her to embellish on their ideas, not introduce her own. So she went out in search of someone who was as interested in her ideas as much as she was. But she didn’t have any luck finding anyone. She found men who would use her in the office and in the bed, but that was it.

Dionne's Porsche Boxter was low and square. It hugged the road from San Francisco to Cupertino from her bad business moments and her hot moments with a nameless boy toy. She lived in a coveted neighborhood and her Eichler house was practically nothing but windows.

The tree frogs sang to her as she unloaded herself from the driver seat. The aggregate walk was cracked – a gift from the last earthquake – and the tongue and grove siding was shifting out of square. The house was more like a home more from a caveman cartoon rather than her dream from years of hard work at school and on the job. Location, location, location, she told herself. But was it worth it?

It was 11:30pm – two hours past bedtime, two hours past when she was sane. She had a day of off the hook stress. After a flop presentation to the competition that was likely going to steal her idea anyway, Dionne would have to wake up bright and early, probably with a hangover. She pitched a stellar idea to the enemy, but bad news, they didn’t like her. Worse news, they had her bright idea. All of which might just mean the end of her going-nowhere career.

And as her spiked heels clickity-clacked on the walk to the door, Dionne was wondering where her life was going? She fit her key into the door, which with one good kick could be shoved opened, and parked her bags on the table. The door opened into the kitchen and dining area. It was appealing while sitting in the kitchen looking out, but it never ceased to disappoint her when she entered it.

She didn’t bother flipping on the lights. The windows looking out to the backyard had no drapes and the neighbor’s security light spilled in enough to light her way into the living room and to her bedroom. She reached mid-living room when a shadow came up behind her and braced her gently but firmly to his chest.

“Lionel,” Dionne said without a bit of affection.

She didn’t finish her sentence because even though she had just come from a wild hook-up, she let him believe she was into it. She let his hand crawl underneath her neckline, traverse the ample flesh of her breast to toy with her supple soft nipple. He was a good looking man and had a good physique for someone who was not a local; surfers had the best bodies hands downs. He was taller than her, which she liked. She strung him along until he grinded into her buttocks. Then she cut him off.

“This is not a good time,” she announced icily. He staggered with frustration.

“It hasn’t been a good time for a while now,” he replied. Lionel’s cockney had lost its appeal and now the way he spoke just plain got on her nerves.

“Yeah well the way you threw me under the bus at the presentation today, sort of killed my joy for you,” said Dionne getting mad all over again.

“You promised that no matter how it went, that you and I would keep seeing one anover,” he whined.

“Th, th,” Dionne hissed. “The word is a-noTH-er.”

“I can’t help it. Jeezus,” he recoiled. “So you were fucking me for the contract, weren’t you? What did you do? Stalk me? Plan this for months?”

Dionne stepped outside onto her security lit patio and lit a cigarette. She didn’t smoke often but indulged when she felt like it. She kept a pack on the mantle of the fireplace next to the door. Lionel smoked too. All the foreign geeks in Silicon Valley did, especially the Brits. California didn’t grow their own cigarette smokers; it imported them.

Except for her. California born and bred, Dionne Ellis was a mold-breaker in a number of ways. A beautiful black woman in the land of the California blonde and blue-eyed icons. And a woman in a man’s world. Even in progressive California, the word ‘geek’ conjured a homely white dude with military-issue glasses. At 5’10”, 130 pounds and a face that could have rocked fashion magazines if she went that way, Dionne Ellis was anything but. Still she was a geek through and through. And she believed Silicon Valley owed her something for her uniqueness. For her brains and her talent. She was calling in her marker.

Lionel looked at the ground, clearly thinking to himself as they talked. She could see he was not liking what he heard.

Dionne explained, “I don’t think that under the circumstances we should associate. Look, I’m tired, and quite frankly, I am coming back from a date.”

She dropped her cigarette and mashed it out on the cement. Having experienced a wildfire a little too close to home, Dionne was extra cautious. She thought that the cement was the safest place for that butt to be. She would pick it up in the morning. Morning. It was fast approaching and Dionne loved her sleep. She wanted Lionel gone.

“Go,” she said bluntly. “Go now and don’t ever show up uninvited again.”

The look on his face was ferocious. It almost turned her on. But at the moment sleep won over sex.

“I think I will ruin you,” he said casually, dragging his cigarette one last time before his joined hers on the patio.

“I think I will ruin you back,” she replied as though his attempt was tired. “And I will enjoy doing it. Now go.”

As predicted, the morning came way too early. Dionne had no choice but to go in to work. Hooky wasn’t an option. She had pissed off Lionel, her partner in crime. She had to be quick about covering her back. As she sat up in bed, she could smell her coffee, set by a timer to brew automatically. Small mercies.

She got up, put her robe on. It was going to be a pretty temperate day. The sky was magnificently clear and blue. It would be baking outside soon but the inside of the house was chilly. Something about the architecture of her house made the interior temperature almost always perfect and it rarely required heat or air conditioning. She tied her robe at the waist and poured herself a cup of coffee. Perfection. She drew a bath, ignoring the presence of a slight hangover. She hated feeling anything less than a hundred percent.

Her phone buzzed. ‘Morning beautiful’ said the text. It wasn’t Lionel. It wasn’t anyone she knew. Whatever, thought Dionne. It was probably an error but she liked it just the same. Maybe the day was going to be better than she thought. She would make her appearance and get back home early… to bed… alone, as soon as she could. She would wear the yellow dress today. It looked vibrant against her skin.

As she stepped into the tub of almost too-hot water, still images of her evening with Pretty Boy filled her head. It was not the first time she got naked with a man she didn’t know. She figured she was completely unattached and only accountable to herself; it was her business. Rarely did she give anyone a second thought. But this guy was haunting her.

And she was remembering Pretty Boy wrong. For some reason, when she thought of him, she pictured him light-skinned but not Caucasian. She pictured him with dark hair that was the blend of multiple ancestries. So handsome. Big blue eyes framed with dark brows and lashes that made her suck in her breath just thinking about them. Damn. Dionne was electrified again. Her body remembered the way it felt to have Pretty Boy touch her and she was all lit up. Humming. Wet. Aching to be filled.

Dionne rocked her hips just enough to have the hot water tease her. She moved and made the water gently slap against the swollen flesh of her sex. The slight pressure of the lapping water heightened her arousal. She teased herself, imagining that Pretty Boy was in the bathroom with her. Hovering over her. Saying things to make her so worked up. Everything about him. The sound of his voice, the way he said his words, the way he touched her raised her pulse. It didn’t take but the lightest touch and Dionne came so hard. She burst with a powerful climax and relaxed back in the warm, scented bath water to let the pleasure pulse through her. Such a sweet dream. Then she dried herself off, dressed, and faced a day that was likely to be a nightmare.

Dionne decided to drive in to work with the top down. She took a deep breath, supped her coffee and went to work with the goal of telling her colleagues the truth. That she had not been at a doctor’s appointment the day before. She had been in San Francisco pitching her idea and she had bombed.

She also considered not saying a thing. But she was in the intensely competitive universe known as Silicon Valley, where foes shook hands, patted backs and praised, “Nicely done,” while they drove a shiv into your liver. She knew that her audience from yesterday would waste no time outing her to her employers. If they weren’t going to use her, they would ensure her employers weren’t going to either. Dionne’s idea was as good as stolen. If she had been able to stomach Lionel, maybe she could have salvaged the situation another way. But for her, the best option was always the last resort in business. And that was honesty.

Dionne breezed into the office as though it was business as usual. She was even early. But it seemed the office think tank was just a little bit earlier. They were there to beat her to the punch. To broach the subject of her meeting with a competitor, to offer them the idea before she had. Dionne’s face was like lead. Paralyzed. She couldn’t even force a smile.

“Hey,” she said as she cornered her office and saw her immediate supervisor and her supervisor’s supervisor waiting for her. They had thoughtfully boxed up all her things.

“We got some emails and voice mails from Lionel Daniels from Supra. You know him right?” her supervisor asked.

“Yes I do and I can explain,” began Dionne, bracing herself for the axe.

“The time to talk to us has passed,” said the most senior executive in the room. He tossed a copy of her PowerPoint onto her desk. “Good stuff. Sorry you couldn’t trust us with the first swing.”

“I tried,” Dionne broke. “Every time I sat in a meeting and started with my ideas I got the party line. We are a team. Let’s focus on what’s at hand. You said. This is not an R&D lab. This is Category. You told me to put my talents to your good use, not my own. Those were all your words. Had I thought for one second you would embrace this pitch, I would have made it to you.”

“Well, we like it,” he said. “We like it a lot.”

Dionne was relieved. Of course they would scold her. But they liked her idea. “You do?”

“We do,” they chorused.

“That’s awesome,” she relaxed in her chair. “If I had any idea you would have reacted this way I would have given it to you first,” she said.

“Given it to us?” quipped the senior executive. “It’s ours. Your contract states that anything you develop while working for us… is… ours. And we let Lionel Daniels know that. We told him and Supra to go fuck themselves.”

Dionne was nervous again, more so than before. She was sick. Supra wasn’t going to steal her idea, Category was. She could feel the blade on her neck already. She secretly crossed her fingers. She laughed nervously.

“Well good for you,” she said.

“But not so good for you,” he said. He gave her a look that was a mix of sympathy and wolf. Dionne was finally screwed by someone she knew, she thought to herself.

“I see,” she said drawing out the formal termination. “I have a copy of my contract somewhere, but do you mind sending me a copy electronically?”

“We’ll send it to your personal email,” said her supervisor. “Your Category account has been frozen. We’ll need your laptop. We’ll want to copy your hard drive.”

She was escorted from the building and watched by a security guard until she left the parking lot.

Lionel had the audacity to call her post meeting. She seethed.

"Now whose stalking who?" she hissed. "Lose my number. In fact as promised, you ruin me, I ruin you back. G'bye."

Dionne climbed in her Porsche and even though the guard was looking, she just sat there. She was overtaken by involuntary heavy breathing. A panic like the rush of the ocean swelled up inside her. She tried calming herself by repeatedly whispering that it would be okay. Her phone rang again. This time, it was her recruiter. Dionne wanted to ask her how she knew? Had she sensed blood in the water? But maybe unemployment wasn't the time for smart remarks to the headhunter.

"Hey," said Dionne trying to keep her tone at bummed-out and not hysterical.

"Hey sweetie. I heard. Now I just happen to have something. It’s a little unconventional. Pure Silicon Valley and so even if it's temporary, which the client says it doesn't have to be, it will serve as a nice bridge to wherever you wanna go."

Dionne really wasn't in the mood. She wasn't sure in her state she would make the best impression but she was sitting in a very expensive car and she had a mortgage in a Flintstone house in a prime California location. And while she had the funds, she didn't want to dip in her savings just yet. Dionne didn't have to review the deal she just breached. She was pretty sure the terms of her recent departure meant no buyout and no severance.

"Yeah okay. Please don't tell him my circumstances," Dionne said.

"Ohh sorry," said the recruiter. Dionne counted to ten. Her entire life was out of her hands, particularly that morning, it seemed. If she could throw her phone and throw a fit, she would.

"Wow just wow," she said, swallowing hard. Money was money she told herself. "Okay text me the address. When can I meet this true Silicon Valley example?"

When the address arrived, she decided she could probably do it on the way home. Dionne fought the urge to act out. She was set. There was no need to panic. Things happened for a reason. But stress made her do strange things… to strangers. She still might. She asked her recruiter if she could swing by to meet this Silicon Valley anomaly now or did she need to schedule an interview? The recruiter said now worked.

“And his name is Stan McDonald, not Anomaly. Though he’s trying to come up with the name of his new company. I think you should pitch that,” said the recruiter, and also added, “He likes that you’re flexible in meeting him in his office space. Be prepared. It’s a bona fide start up. Nothing glamorous about it.”

But that couldn’t be true, thought Dionne, if the address was correct. She never heard of Stan McDonald but she knew the place, at least the neighborhood. Rainbow Drive in Cupertino? Every multimillion-dollar home came with its own mountain vista and every homeowner was the king of that mountain, even if he was a she. Stan McDonald had to have some bucks if he lived on Rainbow Drive.

Though she was bummed the company didn’t have a name yet, she was intrigued and it was kind of thrilling. On the smooth asphalt drive her Boxter traversed deep rugged canyons, the crests of which sat houses so huge and sprawling the lots were all house and little yard. The horizon was dotted with mega-mansions and yet each one, acres apart from the other, was secluded. They were like little islands really.

She turned off the main drive onto Stan McDonald’s driveway, which was nearly a mile itself. Two young men, guards braced with huge shotguns, approached her and apparently recognized her. Rifles, really? Dionne shivered. What was she getting into?

“Pull up but not in,” said one of the guards about the garage, amiably. Dionne thought the guards looked like surfer twins.

The sun blared behind her and cast the opened garage in full shade. She got out of her car almost blind. She cut the glare with her hand as she peered in the garage/office. She followed the guards. Out of the corner of the garage, stepped another man who extended his hand to hers.

She reached to accept it. “Dionne Ellis,” she said.

Rather than accept her handshake, the man veered away. He gripped his thighs and laughed.

“Did I say something funny?” she searched the guards for a clue.

He was laughing hard and it was off-putting. He stood up straight and looked at her, waiting for her to catch on.

“I’m sorry but I am not understanding,” she blinked.

“Guys, will you leave us?” he dismissed the guards. He took hold of her arm gently but firmly and led her into the cool shade of the garage. But she resisted.

“I don’t think I want to,” she protested.

He gave her another clue. “You sure can move for a white boy,” he said in a low sweet but mimicking voice.

Pretty Boy?

“But you’re not…” she censored herself.

He laughingly finished her sentence for her. “White?” he raised his eyebrows with a dare.

It was bound to happen. Dionne was face to face with her one-night stand and it could not be a less opportune time. But how could she not know Pretty Boy at first sight? She had revisited his face so many times since they were together. She was grossed out. Had she been so wrong? That high? She had driven herself home after all that, forty-five minutes from San Francisco to San Jose. And, after Lionel, she had enough of working at places with someone she had slept with. Dionne was going to just leave.

“Hey,” he said with intense authority as she marched towards her car. “C’mere.”

“Look,” said Dionne. “I am here for an interview with Stan McDonald. If he finds out that you… that we… that I… he’s not going to hire me. I would rather not have him find out and then not hire me so I will send him my regrets via email.”

“Regrets?” asked Pretty Boy. “You don’t regret…”

“I don’t have time for this,” Dionne rolled her eyes.

“You made time the other night,” he remarked.

“That was a mistake. A huge mistake,” she admitted, feeling the full weight of her choices as she stood in the driveway of a venue for what had to be the weirdest interview experience she would ever have.

“I thought it was at least a memorable mistake,” he said, his voice laced with honey. “I certainly can’t forget it.”

Dionne felt herself being sucked in. Being this near him, the guy with the electric touch, made it very hard for her to not act on her stress the way she liked to.

She softened her tone. “I have to go,” she simply said.

“But you came all this way to meet about the start-up. I heard such great things about you,” he extended his hand. “Stan McDonald. Your resume is off the hook.”

Pretty Boy was Stan? No way. No way.

Dionne staggered, overtaken by the urge to faint. How could she be so dumb, so often? First the pitch, Lionel, getting fired and now not recognizing a man with whom she had the best sex of her life.

“I guess we’ve already conducted some of the interview,” she said trying to make a joke of it.

He stood very close to her but didn’t make any physical contact with her at all. It felt very intimate all the same. The magnetism that pulled her towards him made it feel like they were touching. His face just smoldered. He looked like she felt. It was sweet agony. It had now been a few days since their tryst in her favorite San Francisco hotel but it felt like forever and Dionne needed him again.