Taking Care of Business

by Lauren Dane

  Christ, it's bright. A shaft of absurdly golden sunshine heated her arm as she waited in the hotel lobby for her cab. At least the air conditioning kept the space cool.

  June in Philadelphia was, um, golden and hot. It had been so easy to forget when she'd headed to the University of Washington to go to law school and ended up staying. How quickly the rain and mist became normal. Back home it would be nearing about seventy degrees and the sunlight would still be pale. Well, not back home any more. Philly was home now. All her stuff would be delivered the following weekend to move in. How this would affect her arrangement with Dix she didn't know.

  They'd begun speaking on the phone when she'd been hired of counsel to Allied Packaging on a contracts issue and the spark had been there immediately. How it had flowed into phone sex Kate wasn't even sure of any more but it had. And then emails.

  The first time they'd met face to face was for two days in Chicago when she'd gone to speak at a legal conference and he'd shown up at her door. The sex had been explosive, amazing, so furtive and guilty, nothing had ever been so delicious.

  That had been four months before and they'd met once more in San Francisco a month prior. In between the few times they'd been together physically, they'd gotten to know each other, which in retrospect had been very stupid on her part, because she liked Charles Dixon a great deal. The more she got to know him, the more she liked him. Which was, of course, the crux of the issue.

  What they had was a nice, part-time, no-strings fling. Had she endangered that by taking a job at the Philadelphia offices of her firm and moving there?

  She had a plan, she had goals and she prided herself on keeping her business separate from her personal. And yet, there she sat, majorly muddled with this man at the core. Katherine Edwards and her right choices —only she'd cheated and made a wrong one because he was too delicious not to.

  She heaved a sigh and settled in the cushy chair. After returning from her day of meetings, she'd taken a shower and changed out of her suit and into a sleeveless shirt, Capri pants and sandals to battle the heat. Something she'd be doubly glad of on the two-hour train commute.

  Her phone rang. 'Shake It Like a Salt Shaker'.

  Leah's voice came over the line and, while she tried to play off her break-up with that ass-hat Mike, the emotion hung heavy in her voice.

  In any case, they made arrangements to meet at the train station but there was a moment when Dix came up in passing.

  Kate's breath caught at the mention of his name. Leah had been her closest friend for what felt like forever but Kate hadn't told her about him yet. It called for alcohol and lots of it. They had a lot of catching up to do when they met later on that evening in Harrisburg.

  They rung off and Kate settled back into the plush faux-comfort of the chair. She stared out the windows to Market Street just beyond and waited.

  She could have jotted down her notes. Could have pulled out her laptop and worked. Could have made a few calls and checked her voicemail. Instead she allowed herself to do nothing but think.

  3

  'What can I get you?' The bartender had waited until Leah's phone conversations finished before asking. He tossed a towel over one shoulder while he put both hands on the bar between them. 'You look like you could use something.'

  'That bad?' Leah tried a laugh but it came out sounding more like a sigh.

  The bartender grinned. 'We're supposed to say that to everyone. Gets the customers in a drinking mood.'

  Now her laughter trickled out of her with more force. 'Really?'

  He nodded and grabbed up the twenty-dollar bill one of the suits had just passed to him. He filled two mugs with beer as he talked, then handed them off and made change. 'Not really. But it usually works.'

  He wasn't as young as many of the bartenders working at a lot of the new pubs and clubs springing up in downtown Harrisburg. Not that Leah had been out to a club in a long time, but sometimes she had lunch down here with some of her coworkers. This guy, though, looked to be in his early forties with a head of dark hair going nicely silver. He had a sweet smile, too.

  'I'll take a glass of Cabernet,' she told him. 'It's too early for anything else.'

  'Never too early,' countered the bartender, but he filled her glass with red wine anyway. 'Cheers.'

  'Cheers,' she said, and sipped.

  'It won't put hair on your chest,' the bartender said with another grin, 'but I guess it'll have to do, right?'

  It would have been too simple for her to merely sit and have a glass of wine by herself. No, the beer-drinking suits in the corner booth kept glancing her way. Only a matter of time before one of them worked up the gumption to come over and hit on her, she thought as she sipped and made casual conversation with the bartender.

  She was wrong, though. One of them didn't come over. They both did.

  One on either side, they flanked her. The one on her right, the blond, wore a wedding ring. The dark-haired one on her left flashed her a grin of teeth so white and straight he could have been in an ad for cosmetic dentistry.

  They introduced themselves as Stu and Larry, and she told them her name. They asked her if she was in town on business, and she said yes. The bartender made himself scarce, and, while Leah appreciated his discretion, she had absolutely no intentions of taking up these men on their obvious intentions.

  Their flirting was easy, if a little too . . . calculated . . . for her tastes. After fifteen minutes she felt like a deer being run down by wolves. The tag-teaming was subtle but unmistakable and, though she gave them loads of credit for the effort, she finally had to ask the question.

  'Does this usually work for you?'

  Stu, the married one, looked faintly surprised. 'What?'

  'Sometimes,' said Larry, obviously the brighter of the two.

  'Is it working for you?'

  Leah smiled. 'Not really. Sorry.'

  Stu looked a little confused, exchanging glances with his friend. 'Listen —'

  'It's OK, Stu.' Larry shook his head. 'The lady isn't interested.'

  'Thanks for the drink, though,' Leah said.

  Stu's phone rang and he excused himself to answer it. Larry turned to her. 'What about if I ditched him?'

  It was unaccountably refreshing to talk this way, the pretence of flirting gone. It had been quite some time since Leah had flirted with anyone, but she was pleased to discover being courted still made her tingle.

  'It's not you,' she said, but added his name, slowly, easing it from her lips, 'Larry.'

  He grinned. 'Sure. That's what they all say.'

  'I just broke up with my boyfriend today,' she explained.

  'Congratulations. All the more reason for you to celebrate.'

  'You really know how to work it,' she said, impressed.

  He feigned a moment of modesty quickly overtaken by pride. 'Thank you. You're beautiful.'

  'What about your friend?' she whispered, leaning towards him as though to share a secret. They both looked over at Stu, still on his cell phone. 'Won't he get upset?'

  'Stu? Nah.' Larry shook his head. 'Disappointed. But not upset.'

  Leah leaned almost close enough to allow her lips to brush his ear. 'Let me ask you something, Larry.' Again, the name. It added intimacy. This all would have been better in dim lighting with the pound and throb of music around them, but she could work with mid-afternoon and the buzz of construction on the street outside if she had to. 'Do you and Stu do this often?'

  Larry murmured directly into her ear, and his lips did brush her skin. 'Yes.'

  She leaned even just a teensy bit closer. The satin lining of her skirt slid over the tops of her thighs, bare above her stockings. She'd dressed for Mike every morning for close to two years, but today she'd dressed for herself.

  'You both take a woman to bed?' she whispered. Larry smelled good, like expensive cologne. 'At the same time?'

  'Sometimes.' His hand had inched forwards, fingers tracing her knee.

  'Do you fuck each
other too? Or just her?'

  The slow circling of Larry's fingertips, which had been inching higher, stopped. He pulled away a little bit to look at her, his smile a little crooked. 'What?'

  Leah swiped her tongue slowly along her lower lip, and Larry's eyes followed the motion. 'Do you fuck each other too?' she repeated slowly, so he was sure not to miss a word.

  'You and Stu, Larry. Do you suck each other's cock? Does he rim you while you fuck some strange woman you picked up in a bar?'

  The words came out mildly, casually, as if she were enquiring about the weather, but she might as well have poked him with a sharp stick. Larry jerked back. He looked past her, presumably at Stu, and when he looked back at Leah his gaze was faintly panicked.

  'No,' he said with a shake of his head. 'Hell, no.'

  Leah leaned back in her chair and swivelled round to face the bar. She lifted her glass of wine and drained it, then set the empty glass carefully back on the coaster. She licked her lips clean and pulled a five-dollar bill from her bag. She put it on the counter.

  'Too bad,' she said with a sweet smile for Larry, who still looked as though someone had hit him on the back of the head with something heavy. 'Because, if you'd said yes, I'd have gone upstairs with both of you.'

  The bartender stifled a guffaw as Leah winked at the flummoxed Larry. She headed out of the bar, with a small wave for clueless Stu, and went to see if her room was ready at last.

  It was, thank God, and she was already stripping out of her suit jacket as the door closed behind her. She tossed her bag on to the bed and went straight to the bathroom to turn on the hot water. She still wanted a hot shower, but she no longer needed the good cry.

  The bartender seemed to think she was joking, maybe just using an excuse to get rid of the too-exuberant suitors, but Leah had told the truth. If Stu and Larry had promised more than just a standard tag-team screw, she'd have gone with them to their room and fucked the stuffing out of both of them.

  Steam filled the bathroom as she slid open the buttons of her silk shirt and hung it carefully on the hook behind the door. Next came her skirt, until she stood wearing only the white lace bra and panties, the matching garter belt and sheer nude stockings. The lace between her legs was already damp.

  That morning after fucking Mike —and there was no way for her to think of it as making love, because there had been no love to it —she'd wondered if she'd ever want sex again. The thought of another person's hands on her had made her stomach churn. Her relief at knowing she wouldn't have to suck his cock any longer, wouldn't have to suffer him pumping away on top of her, had only strengthened her resolve.

  There had been no one thing at which to point blame. The break-up was the accumulation of months of dissatisfaction. But if there was one thing that had tipped her over the edge, it was the toothpaste. He'd left the cap off the toothpaste yet again, left squeezed globs of goo all over the place and expected her to clean it up. That had been the final straw. He'd woken her early with a demand for oral sex, but it was the toothpaste that had stayed with her until she could no longer face a life with him.

  Leah had always had a healthy libido and her sex life with Mike had been compatible . . . at first. Over time her desire for him had been squelched by his lack of consideration. Their games of dominance and submission had become nothing more than an excuse for him to act like an asshole.

  Larry's touch on her knee, the purely masculine smell, the look of interest in his eyes: all had triggered something lying dormant in her for months and months. He'd thought he was in control of the situation, but Leah had been the one manipulating and manoeuvring the conversation. She'd been the one in charge, though Larry hadn't realised it.

  It felt good.

  A sigh whispered out of her as she ran her hands over her body. The woman in the mirror didn't look like the Leah she'd come to recognise: the one who kept her eyes downcast when she was naked; the one who gave in.

  Leah slid her fingers into the front of her panties, over her clipped curls. Her clit throbbed under her touch and another sigh opened her mouth. Her finger dipped lower, between slick folds, and she shuddered.

  Leah stripped out of her panties, leaving the whole pile on the floor and climbed into the hot water. She hissed at the sting even as she welcomed it. She turned her face to the spray.

  'Oh,' she breathed when she saw one of the reasons why this hotel room cost so much. 'Yes.'

  She pulled the detachable shower head from its hook and turned the massage setting from spray to jet. Immediately the water pulsed from the shower head in short hard bursts.

  She hadn't made herself come in a long time. Mike had been a big fan of orgasm denial as a show of power and, since the less often she came, the more likely it was she would climax when he fucked her, Leah had complied with his commands.

  But that was over now. No more Mike, she reminded herself as she centred the pulsing jet of water directly on her clit. She cried out at once, the pressure almost too much. Too strong. Her hips bucked forwards and she reached for the handrail.

  She thought of the two men downstairs. Of having two cocks, four hands, two mouths on her. Of how Larry's neck smelled and how it would taste if she bit it. How it would feel to have one of them kneeling between her legs, lapping at her cunt, while the other tongued his way down her spine.

  A soft muttered curse slipped out as the water pounded her. Already her breath was coming in short sharp pants and her vision was blurring. Leah, shower head still in hand, lowered herself to the floor of the bathtub and opened her legs as she adjusted the spray to a gentler setting.

  The water caressed her flesh like a hundred tiny tongues licking her. Her cit, the soft folds, her ass. She moved the water back and forth across her flesh, her back arching as she came so hard a grunt escaped her. Her entire pussy spasmed, clamping down on nothing, and she longed for something to fill her.

  Unfortunately, she hadn't thought to pack anything. She had a drawer full of toys that had lost their appeal when wielded under Mike's dominating hand. This morning she'd been sure she didn't care if she ever saw her vibrator again.

  Fortunately, she had her hand and she knew exactly where her G-spot was. The water tickled her as she slid her fingers inside herself, stroking. She came again, as hard as the first time.

  It was a miracle.

  Leah lay back in the tub, the spray now directed towards the wall so only a fine mist came down to cover her, and tried to catch her breath. Her heartbeat slowed. Relief.

  'Wow,' she said and then laughed. 'Thank God.'

  She'd been half-afraid she'd never want to fuck again.

  More afraid her body would never demand pleasure the way it had in the past, that somehow she'd allowed Mike to break her.

  Well, Leah thought as she got out of the shower and wrapped herself in a fluffy white towel, at least she wasn't broken.

  4

  'So, I took a job here at Hargrave.' Kate dropped the biggest bomb of her day into the conversation she'd been having with Leah. Her friend had picked her up at the train station and they were on the way back to the hotel. Leah had neatly avoided Mike talk for the time being so Kate let her evade. God knew she'd been evading enough herself.

  'Seriously? How long have you known? Why didn't you say anything?'

  Kate sighed. 'It's all tied in with something else I haven't told you. First things first though. I closed on a really nice condo yesterday. I'll start full-time next week. It's a pay raise, my moving expenses, a nicer office. I'm a senior partner here.'

  'Well, good. Having you two hours away is great. Better than an entire country away. So tell me the big thing.'

  Kate braced herself and blurted it out before she could change her mind. 'I've been having a fling with Charles Dixon.'

  'Get out! Dix? A fling like how? And you didn't tell me?'

  'A fling. An affair. Sex. Guilty, really hot, furtive sex where we both fly in somewhere, fuck for the entire weekend and go back home. It's, oh my Go
d, it's fucking marvellous.'

  Leah grinned. 'Wow! How long?'

  'We've been flirting since day one, then, um, emails followed. Phone sex, he's very inventive.' A shiver went through her at that. 'We met in person for the first time four months ago. We've only done that twice, first in Chicago and last month in San Francisco.'

  'You know I have to ask this, does he make you scream out the "Star Spangled Banner"?'

  Kate laughed. 'Upside down from the chandelier. How do you think he is? I'm not a virgin by any means but he's a rock star in bed.'