by JA Huss
We are in the middle of the floor—him coming down, me going up—and I just want to get past him as quickly as possible, so I push forward, dodging left, but he dodges right—his right, which is my left—and I actually smack into his chest.
There is a flurry of uncoordinated movements, and swearing (that’s me) and his hands on my arms sending that now familiar tingle through my body, and I compensate by dodging left, but he dodges right—that’s right, his right—and we smack together again.
I place two hands on his chest to push him away but then I lose my balance and I’m about to fall backwards down the stairs when he reaches out to grab me—his fingers slipping, but he overcompensates this time, snatching at my shirt in desperation because I truly am about to fall ass-backwards down half a flight of stairs—
And that’s when all the buttons on my sensible, professional button-down collared shirt go flying off in all directions.
“Oh, shit!” That’s me.
“Oh, shit!” That’s Andrew.
And then we’re both looking at my breasts.
I’m wearing a tank top, so we’re not actually looking at my breasts. But my girls are quite spectacular. Which is why I hide them underneath a professional shirt every day. And to top it all off, the tank is white, and my bra is pink, and… yeah. You can see it through the shirt.
“Um…” Andrew begins. And then he just smiles.
“Thanks a lot!” I say too loudly.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But you were going to fall and I just…” Then he’s laughing.
“It’s not funny! I have two more hours until lunch and I have to walk around like this until I can scoot home and change!”
I push him away. This time he’s got his hands up in the air, letting me know he’s not going to touch me. And I take a step up, determined to push my way past him this time, but then my cute little ballet flat that has absolutely no tread on the sole slips and I fall to my knees on the stairs, palms down to catch my fall.
And in that moment, somehow, some way, Andrew’s fingers are tangled in my hair. Like he was gonna save me by the ponytail.
I look up, hot with embarrassment, and find myself eye to eye with—yes, you guessed it—his junk.
He laughs again.
“This is not funny,” I say, scrambling to my feet then backing down a few steps to put some distance between us. “What are you doing here anyway? You’re down on forty-nine. These two floors are for Le Man. Go back to your floor!”
I’m wagging my finger at him, which is dumb, so I stop doing that.
He bends down, eyes still on me, and we’re like… way too close. Like his lips—those lips I kissed last night—are just mere inches from mine because even though he’s crouching down on the step, I’m three steps down.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Grabbing your tablet,” he says, his hand reaching out to pat the stairs to find it by touch, because his eyes have not strayed. They are locked on mine. “God, you’re adorable,” he whispers.
And now I’m looking at his lips. They are very nice lips. You don’t often think about a man’s lips until you’re presented with a set of spectacular ones. Lips like his. Which are just a little bit plump, and look very soft.
They are soft, I recall from last night.
And then he says, “Eden.”
And I swallow hard and say, “What?”
And then he kisses me. He barely has to move at all, that’s how close we are. The universe really is conspiring against me because when I walked into this stairwell thirty seconds ago there was no scenario that ended with me kissing Andrew Hawthorne.
I know what I should do. Push him away. Or run away. Or… or… pretty much anything else but let him kiss me, but that’s what I do.
I let him.
And then I take it one step further. Because I kiss him back.
What happens next is like… a choreographed dance or something. It has to be. There’s no other plausible explanation for how he gets to his feet, steps down the stairs, backs me down the stairs until my back is pressed up against the landing wall, and threads his fingers into my falling-apart ponytail while never breaking lip contact.
And it is the most amazing kiss. I’m talking half-open mouth with just the right amount of tongue. And he tastes like cinnamon. Like he was chewing a stick of Big Red or crunching on a cinnamon Tic-Tac just seconds before this whole encounter happened. Or maybe I’m imagining that because I’m obsessed with sweets?
Who cares?
“Shit,” he says, catching his breath and backing away.
I stare into his eyes. Which, like his lips, are very nice. “I gotta go,” I whisper. “The art department is waiting…”
But I don’t get to finish because he leans back in and kisses me again.
And this is when we get… hands-y.
I don’t know what I’m thinking. Probably not thinking, which, I realize, is the problem here. But my hands are on his upper arms, feeling his muscles underneath his shirt. And his hands are on my arms, riding up my shoulders, gripping them tightly before they slide down and…
Holy shit.
I moan into his mouth as he grabs my breasts and squeezes.
Voices outside the stairs make us both pull away quickly and I get this feeling. Like… what a magnet must feel like when it disconnects from a piece of iron.
He smiles at me.
I’m too busy wondering how this all just happened in the span of ninety seconds to smile back. And then he turns away, just as Lydia from data entry enters the stairs, and disappears down below.
“Hi, Eden,” Lydia quips, walking down the stairs towards the landing where I’m still pressed up against the wall. She gives me a funny look. “Everything OK?”
It’s only then that I realize my hair is all aflutter. Strands of it have come loose from my ponytail and are covering my eyes. I reach behind my head, grab my hair to make the hair band tight again, then blow the stray strands out of my eyes and say, “Just fine, thanks!”
Two seconds later I’m up on fifty-one and making my way to Myrtle’s desk, because even though I have no interest in seeing Pierce right now, I have to tell someone about what just happened in the stairs.
The second Myrtle spies me coming towards her desk she laughs.
“What?” I ask, looking around nervously.
“You just fucked him in the elevator!”
“What? No! I took the stairs. And why would you say that anyway?”
She holds a hand over her mouth, her mischievous eyes darting back and forth as she looks at me. “Well, you better go fix that just-fucked hair if you don’t want everyone to think you’re banging the boss’ best friend.”
CHAPTER TWLEVE - ANDREW
The moment I step back into my office and close the door, I see, through the window, a lightning strike out in the distance, just past the mountains.
There’s a storm brewing somewhere.
Once I make my way over to the glass, I stand and look out at the broad sweep of earth that lives just beyond my confinement and think, “What am I doing?” Or I say it aloud. Which I don’t mean to do. But do.
None of this is me. I’m not a CEO. I’m an artist. I’m not a guy who sits in an office. I’m an adventurer. I’m not a dude who presses up impulsively on impossibly cute and unexpectedly hot women in stairwells. I’m a guy who stays in a bloodless engagement until my will breaks and I can’t take it anymore.
Except I’m not any of the things I think I am and I’m all the things I didn’t know I was. At least I am today.
Do you have a charger I can borrow? What the hell was I doing? Rhetorical question. I know exactly what the hell I was doing. I was staring ahead of me at this new part of my life, listening to Pierce freak out about intellectual property and trademarks and thinking about how this is all the kind of shit that I have to concern myself with all the time now, and then I looked over and saw this person sitting there.
This p
erson I saw who looked excited, and nervous, and confused and so, so, so fucking easy to stare at, and I decided to follow my instincts. Which is what I’ve always tried to do. It’s why I left Kentucky for “Yankee Country,” as my mom calls it. And why I left Vermont for Berkeley, or “Hippie Country,” as my mom calls it. And why I got engaged, and why I got un-engaged, and why I kept working on a project that nobody else still believed in, and why I’ve done almost everything in my life.
Until now.
I didn’t mean to build a company. I’m not Pierce. And I sure as hell didn’t mean to run a company. And my instincts told me to just say ‘no.’ There would have been plenty of financial reward if I had just sold the idea and moved on. And it’s not like I needed the money anyway, so...
Maybe that’s it? Maybe it’s actually commitment? Maybe that’s my hang-up? Why I jump from thing to thing, idea to idea? And maybe I’m stupid that I’m only seeing it now?
I’ve been here less than forty-eight goddamn hours. I missed my welcome speech to the team. I haven’t unpacked my office. I’ve barely said hello to anyone. And yet I’ve seen Eden like five times, kissed her twice, groped her once, and yet I don’t know anything about her.
Maybe that’s what’s turning me on?
Shit.
I dunno. But I do know that my phone keeps dinging. I hear another email ding now and look to see yet another message from someone at the US Department of Justice. I’ve already ignored three phone calls and two other emails from them.
Flopping down into my desk chair, I realize I may be a crazy person. Which makes me laugh. I wish I didn’t laugh so goddamn much at things that aren’t actually funny, but I suppose I can get away with it because I have nice-looking teeth.
Sometimes I wish I still drank.
I close my eyes and take a breath, and in my mind’s eye what I see are breasts. Eden’s. From just a minute ago in the stairwell. And from last night in her dress. And...
Her dress. Her sleeveless, clingy, cottony dress that she was wearing. The one that showcased her perfect body. Her perfect and unexpected body that could make it hard to focus on anything else.
Cross my heart.
I said that to her. The girl in the videos that has Pierce losing his fucking mind said that in her last post. The girl in the videos has perfect breasts. The girl in the videos was wearing a sleeveless, clingy, cottony thing. The Sexpert was Pierce’s idea. Pierce thinks that whoever this woman is in the videos stole his idea. To steal his idea, she would have to have access to the idea. She would have had to have known what Pierce was cooking up. Like somebody who was working for him.
Why would someone who works for Pierce steal his idea? What would it gain them? What would be the benefit? Maybe Pierce is right, and they have an axe to grind against him. Maybe they want to see him fail. Or at least be embarrassed or...
Or maybe they just need a break. Maybe they’ve worked hard and don’t have much to show for it besides a small studio apartment and a job where they maybe feel unappreciated. Maybe they...
I like figuring out puzzles.
I pop open my laptop and type in my password. I open a browser, go to YouTube, and type in “Sexpert.” The channel has nearly half a million subscribers. Yeah, I know how things can go unexpectedly viral.
There are dozens of videos, dating back about a year. I scroll down to the very first one and click on it. It’s different than the one Pierce showed me this morning. The lighting is different. The background is different. The confidence that I’ve seen in the couple that I’ve watched is less present.
But the tits are the same.
And so is the sound of the voice. Sultry Siren.
“Hi, everyone.” The voice is halting. Not the purring that’s come gliding out in the other videos I’ve seen. It’s the voice of someone who seems .... not flustered. That’s not quite right. Ruffled maybe. The voice of someone who isn’t sure of what they’re doing or if they should be doing it. The last twenty-four months have been all about me listening to voices and analyzing voices and understanding voices, but even if my time hadn’t been spent doing that, it would be easy to pick out the hesitancy.
“So,” Sexpert continues. “So, um, I dunno if anybody is ever even going to watch these, but, um, I am the Sexpert. Hi.” I have to be honest, anyone discovering these early videos might think it was a joke. Her... sexpertise... doesn’t feel awe-inspiring. But somehow that’s part of the charm.
That and the boobs filling the screen.
“So, what I hope to do with these videos is to help people understand sex, talk about sex, appreciate sex, and maybe just make the whole thing a little less taboo. So, to start, I thought it would be fun to ease in with framing sex in a friendly way. Comparing it to something everyone loves. Dessert.” She holds up a Twinkie directly in between her breasts. It’s a sight to see. “So, there are many different ways to get the cream out—”
“Boss?”
Dev poking his head into my office causes me to slam down the laptop screen like I just got caught jerking it. And that’s not far off. Because, to my chagrin, as I push back from my desk to stand up, I realize I can’t. Stand up. At least not as long as I don’t want Dev to know about the more private parts of... No. That’s it. My more private parts.
I wave him in.
“Yeah?” I say, sliding my unexpected erection back under the safety of my desk. “What’s up?”
“Um,” he says, approaching carefully. Because I am acting weird. And I know it. “I just wanted to ask... Why were you asking about IN-VERSE earlier?”
“What do you mean? Why are you asking why I was asking?”
“Because I got a call from Carrie at Justice—”
“Carrie? At the Justice Department?”
“Yeah. Like I said. Carrie at Justice.” He shakes his head a little. “And she says you haven’t returned her calls or emails.”
“Oh. Yeah. I gotta do that.” I get a tight grin, raise my eyebrows, and ask, “Anything else?”
His brows furrow and he draws in his chin, twisting his head to the side. He looks like an otter, kinda. “Nah. I don’t think so. Just... Are you OK, man?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I’m dynamite. What time is it?”
He looks at his watch. “Almost noon. Why don’t you keep a clock in your office?”
“Time is a construct designed to keep us down.”
“It’s really not. It’s science. I could explain it, but I’d need more hours than I have to spare, and you’d probably need a different brain.”
“You think it’s wise to insult your boss’s intelligence?”
He shrugs. “Dunno. Never had a boss before.”
“Okay,” I say, waving him out.
“Yeah. OK. But seriously, what’s going on with IN-VERSE? Is everything OK with it? We’re not going to lose the contract or anything, are we? I’ve busted my ass working out all the bugs.”
“No. No way. We’re good. In fact, there’s a real-world test we’re going to be able to run pretty soon.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just let me know when we can sync with the database.”
“OK...” He nods, turns to leave, then turns back and says, “We’re not all going to go to jail or anything, are we?”
I laugh. Because it’s what I do. “No. No, of course not.”
“OK. Because I wouldn’t do well in jail. I’m frail and I don’t punch well with my right hand.”
“You’re not going to jail, Dev. At worst you’ll just be deported.”
“Comforting. Thanks.”
And he leaves.
I take a breath and close my eyes tightly. When I open them again I look to see if my dick is still trying to escape through my jeans or if I’m good to stand up. All the talk of the Justice Department and people going to jail seems to have chilled everything out, so I feel like I’m good to go.
I need to pull myself together. I’m going to go back to my place, take a f
ew minutes to get my head in the game, and then come back to work and be a boss. I’m gonna help Pierce, I’m gonna stop distracting myself, and I’m gonna drill down on the task at hand. Which is not this Eden girl. It’s not.
Although...
Maybe it is. I mean, maybe I should just ask her some questions. Just stuff about herself. Stuff like, “Hey, are you trying to sabotage my friend’s life’s work? And why?” Like that. Fun stuff. Small talk.
Maybe.
When I stand up to leave there’s another sudden crash of lightning, accompanied this time by a bone-shaking clap of thunder above the great, towering peaks outside.
Yeah.
Maybe.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - EDEN
I wear the button-down shirts over my tanks for a reason. My tits are just… wow. Spectacular. I mean, I’ve watched a lot of porn over the past year for Sexpert research so I’ve seen lots of tits. Like thousands, probably. And mine rank right up there in like the top one percent of spectacular tits.
It’s truly my one… hmmm, what to call it. Body gift, I guess. Because my hair is too thick, and my ankles are too skinny, and my hips are a little bit bigger than they should be, and no matter how much I diet, I have this hint of an extra chin.
Lots of guys have said they find it cute, but they can fuck off. I hate it. I hate my skinny ankles, and my wide hips, and yes, when your hair is too thick you can’t even put it up in a regular hair tie. You need those big jumbo scrunchies.
My tits are perfect. They’re not too big, not too small, not too soft, and not too hard.
My point is—people look at them if I don’t cover them up properly. They can’t help but look.
That night that Zoey and I came up with the Sexpert we knew right away we’d have to exploit my biggest assets. But the way I see it… what good is an asset if you can’t exploit it?
“Where are you going?”
I look up, startled by Myrtle’s voice coming from the open door of the stairs. “I’m going home to change my shirt,” I say quickly. “The buttons…” I look down at the missing buttons and think about the way Andrew just accidentally popped them all off. “I just need a new shirt. Why are you down here?”
