The Business Trip

His hand trailed up her ivory, stocking-covered leg until his fingers touched the edge of her skin. He toyed lightly with the garter holding the stockings up, running his fingers across the lace and stroking the quivering skin of her thigh.

"My dear, you are so very responsive," he murmured. His fingers moved higher and she held....

Shit, the boss is coming. Close file. Close file.

"Ms. Montgomery, were you able to schedule a pick up for this afternoon to get the documents to China?"

Eliza Montgomery pushed her glasses back up her nose and hoped to goodness her boss, Clayton Johnson, couldn't tell she was sweating like a virgin on her wedding night.

"Uhmm, yes sir. They should be here at three. They're charging extra to come on the holiday, though."

"Can't be helped." Johnson moved a little closer to her desk. She felt her nervous tension change to a different kind of tension--one that caused the muscles and nerves deep inside her abdomen, and lower, to wake up. That always seemed to happen around Clayton Johnson. She wished just once he'd look at her with some thing more than professional inquiry in his eyes.

"Are you all right, Ms. Montgomery? You look a little flushed."

If only you knew, she thought. Aloud she said, "Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir."

Johnson scowled. It was a shame. That seemed to be his perpetual look when he dealt with her. Eliza almost sighed. He was such a handsome man. Check that, actually Clayton Johnson was a hunk. A drop-your-tongue, loose-the-ability-to-think-rationally, hunka-hunka burning man. He was six-foot four inches of solid muscle. His coal black hair, with just a touch of silver at the temples, made a girl long to run her hands through it. And what he did for those Brooks Brothers suits he favored.... Well, that was another sin. He had eyes so dark a blue that sometimes she felt like she could willingly drown in them.

For a girl growing up playing with Barbie and Ken dolls, and dreaming a man who looked and acted like Tom Selleck would come and take her away, Clayton Johnson was every dream come true.

It was just a shame he never smiled. At least not at the office. Maybe one of his fabulous escorts made him smile. Liza kind of doubted it, though. It seemed to her, since he left the entire calling and setting of the dates to her, that he attacked the dating scene with the same humorless approach he attached to his work. Yes, Clayton Johnson had to be the original poster boy for the all-work-no-play campaign.

Come to think of it, she mused, I haven't either arranged one of his dates or taken any messages from his women in several months. Maybe that was part of the reason he was such a grouch lately. He needed to get laid. She almost smiled at the thought of what his reaction would be should she offer her own body for the good of the employees so to speak.

"Which is it, Ms. Montgomery?" he growled.

Liza gulped again. "I'm fine, sir."

"Good. There's been some kind of virus hitting the company. We had three people call in sick in receiving this morning."

Gee, wonder why? Liza thought uncharitably. It is after all, New Year's Day. Most people were busy being hung over after ringing in the New Year. And most companies don't bother opening on a national holiday.

Then again Johnson Electronics wasn't most companies. They were open every day except Sunday year around. Granted, he paid double time on the holidays, but Clayton Johnson could never seem to quite understand that some things were more important than money.

Liza almost sighed. She wished there were more important things than money in her life. But a girl had to eat and pay bills in today's world. Unless, of course, you were lucky enough to live in the pages of a novel. Liza wasn't that fortunate. But she could dream. In those dreams, Liza was the type of woman who could make Clayton Johnson stand up on his tiptoes and beg for mercy.

At the sound of his throat clearing, Liza jolted back to reality. She wasn't that kind of woman. She had to admit it. She was an executive assistant, not a member of the rich and famous club. She was a little too heavy for her own liking and forced to wear boxy business suits, which made her already generous bosom look like it could launch a fleet of carriers. She also had a few pants outfits with long over blouses that looked good in the catalogue, but failed miserably on short women with hips that rivaled the width of the Grand Canyon.

But, it never hurt to dream, right?

So every day she worked alongside Scrooge, er, Clayton Johnson, Liza wished she was someone else.

That thought made her grin. She needed to be more like Satin Pleasure, queen of erotic romance. Oh, wouldn't that be a sight to send Clayton's neat, little world into a wild tailspin?

"Ms. Montgomery?"

Liza shook her head and realized Johnson was staring at her as if she had grown another eye. "I'm sorry. Did you want something else?"

"Yes, Ms. Montgomery, I did. If you truly feel well today, please bring your keypad and come into my office. I have some memos I want to dictate."

He turned and strode into his office. Liza had the irrational urge to imitate his walk while sitting at her desk and sticking out her tongue at him. Of course, Liza wouldn't dare do that. Now, Satin would. Heck, Satin would have followed Clayton Johnson and offered to do something wild like spreading peanut butter all over his delectable body and licking it off. The picture that popped into Liza's head at that thought was highly erotic. Yum. Peanut butter. With just a smidgen of jelly. Grape, she decided. Nah, he'd never go for that. But how about hot fudge?

Satin had written about the amazing uses for hot fudge in her last story, "Afternoon Delights." That was the one which had won the coveted Passion Prose award from a famous magazine. It had also been nominated for the prestigious Seraphina award from the Erotic Romance Writers Association.

The words Satin had used popped immediately into Liza's mind.

The man was naked except for the dollop of hot fudge covering the tip of his erect cock.

"Oooh, there's nothing better than a sundae," the woman purred.

"I agree," the corporate pirate said. "As long as you're the cherry on top."

"Oh, I think you'll find my cherry just to your liking," the woman said before kneeling in front of him and wrapping her mouth around him.

Liza immediately got a picture of Clayton wearing nothing but his tie and a generous dollop of hot fudge. She sighed. There was no chance it would ever happen. He saw her as his efficient and slightly dumpy employee. That's all.

Eliza straightened her spine and reached in the drawer for her keypad. She had to stop thinking about herself like that. So, she wasn't a size five. She actually had cleavage and curves. She had to start thinking like Satin would.

Satin would not think of herself as dumpy. Satin was full-figured. Satin was a Rubenesque babe that real men could hold on to. That was how Liza would think of herself from now on. It was her New Year's resolution. She was going to grab all the gusto in life she could.

Feeling her spine straighten and her shoulders pull back with resolve, Liza grabbed up her keyboard and headed into Clayton's office.

Memos. How silly was that? He runs an electronics firm, she thought. Yet he can't even type his own memos.

Not that she minded getting all the latest gadgets like this nifty little keyboard.

It worked like a laptop but weighed only half a pound and came with infrared technology so she could send all her typing directly into their mainframe. It also had a recorder with voice recognition software so she hardly had to type. This same technology was why it was so silly Johnson refused to do his own memos and letters.

And sometimes gadgets just weren't enough to keep a girl happy. At least not this type of gadget. There had been a gadget Satin once wrote about in "Toys for Her," one of Liza's personal favorite short stories. Nothing as pedestrian as a plain, ordinary dildo, the one the heroine of that story used felt like skin and had a small heater in it to simulate warm flesh as it got erect. Of course, Satin hadn't made her heroine suffer with electronic stimulation alone. Satin always gave her heroines a nice hunky man to play with in the end.

In "Toys for Her," the couple had played a very dexterous form of the game Twister, achieving mind-blowing orgasms.

Liza sighed and thought again that she should have called in sick today like her roommate. Maybe she would have, if she'd had some of the gadgets Satin had written about in "Toys for Her." Or better yet, one of Satin's heroes. Just thinking about them made Liza squirm a little. The best guy was Cale in "Pirates of Pantzance." He'd been too yummy for words when the heroine had been ravaged by him on a deserted island. It made her want to escape to her own tropical island, but of course, only if she could take Cale with her.

Just because she hadn't had sex in more than three years didn't mean she had no sex drive. It just meant that it had been a long dry spell.

Well, dry spell or not, Liza had work to do, and Clayton Johnson was not a patient man. One thing she couldn't handle was another afternoon of Clayton sulking.

Clayton swiveled from his view of downtown Buffalo when she walked into his office. Today's lake effect snowstorm had already come and gone leaving in its wake a winter wonderland, pure white and glittering throughout the city. The sun, bouncing off the snow and the gleaming buildings surrounding them, momentarily blinded Liza. For a second, it appeared as if her boss had a halo. She shook her head and all angelic references fled. He was simply so handsome he took her breath away.

"About time, Ms. Montgomery. I thought for a moment you'd forgotten about me."

Liza nearly sighed again. Did she mention that her boss was impatient? She settled into the chair facing his desk, crossed her legs at the ankles demurely, turned on the machine and waited.

When he didn't say anything for a moment, she glanced up. His eyes were latched on to her legs. Right. That might happen.

Good Lord, she really needed to do something about her libido if she actually thought Clayton Johnson was looking at her body.

Oh, shucks, maybe I have a run, she thought immediately. And I just bought this pair last week.

She twisted a little, trying to see where the run was. When she looked up again, she actually thought she saw him blush.

"Is anything wrong, sir?"

"Er, no. Let's get on with it."

Liza bristled. "I've been ready."

"Yes." Mr. Johnson actually ran his finger around his collar.

He is embarrassed, Liza thought. Finally, a hint of humanity from him.

"First, I want to let you know there's been a change in the schedule for the rest of this month."

Back to business. She must have imagined the show of emotion. Perhaps he was a robot. Liza knew their R&D department had been working on a model...

"Ms. Montgomery..." The frustrated impatience was back.

"Oh, sorry." Liza dropped the keyboard and pulled her PDA out of her pocket. She had the company schedule open in seconds. "Okay, I'm ready now."

"The Buffalo office will be closed for the last two weeks of January."

Liza nearly dropped her stylus. "Closed? The entire office?"

"That's right. I'm giving everyone an extra two weeks off with pay. In appreciation for the great year we had last year."

"Hallelujah," Liza murmured.

"What's that, Ms. Montgomery?"

"Er, I said that's very generous, sir. I'm sure the employees will be ecstatic!"

"Yes, well, there's more."

Liza eagerly moved forward in her seat. Already she was planning her vacation. Maybe she'd take a cruise. It would be tight on her budget so soon after the holidays, but what the heck, a girl didn't often get the chance to get out of a Buffalo winter. And it would be the perfect opportunity to put her new life motto to work. Especially if she could find a cruise to a deserted tropical island. Heck, even an undeserted island would be terrific, and worth every hefty cent she put on her credit card. Bermuda would be great. Or she could go to Puerto Rico.