by Alyse Zaftig
At this point, Riley was long gone. I knew that even if I tried to take an elevator down, she was probably on her way home. I texted her instead.
DESMOND: Are you coming to work tomorrow?
I waited for a few minutes, since I knew that Riley kept her phone on her. But my phone didn’t buzz with her reply. I went down to the parking garage and backed my little Beemer out of its space. In a city obsessed with cars, what kind of car you had mattered. I didn’t give a fuck about playing the game of buying a new Lambo every year. I kept my same old Beemer, even when the other guys at my club gave me shit about it. It was the first thing that I’d bought when I’d made some money, and I was holding onto it for as long as it would run. Traffic was as bad as LA traffic always was. The highway was basically a parking lot.
As soon as I got to my driveway and parked my car, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket.
RILEY: Yes
I grinned. I had another shot. I knew things had gotten fucked up today by Zara, but I’d fix it. I knew I could.
My phone buzzed and Paul’s name flashed across the screen. I accepted the call.
“What up, bro?”
“Man, Riley’s driving me crazy. She’s been keeping secrets.”
“Secrets? What kind?” I could hear my heartbeat start pounding like a drum.
“She’s hidden stuff in her bedroom…I know that she’s been seeming some asshole.”
“Yeah, how?” My heart was pounding a little harder than usual.
“Her mouth, man. It’s all swollen like she was making out with someone, but she’s mad. I think that she had an argument with a secret boyfriend.”
I was so fucked. I tried to sound casual. “You know who it is?”
“No, but motherfucker better pray that I don’t find out from Riley. I will put that dick in the ground. Nobody touches my little sister. She’s not old enough to mess around with some guy who just wants to get into her pants.”
“She’s a legal adult now. You’re not her guardian anymore.”
“I’m still her big brother.” He stopped for a second while I prayed that he hadn’t figured out out just who’d made Riley look like that by kissing her as clothing was pulled open. “Wait, whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Always yours.” I swallowed hard.
“Whatever, man. I’m going for a run or a drink or maybe a fuck. Later.”
He hung up the phone. I threw mine down on the ground. I had to stay away from Riley. Making out with her once was already jeopardizing the oldest friendship I had. I wanted her, but what was it worth trashing my best friend’s trust? I had to keep it in my pants, or he’d probably cut it off when he found out. He was entitled to do it. Like Zara had said, I had no right to touch innocent Riley. She was way too young for me.
White Shirt
Riley
TWO MONTHS LATER
“I want to get a full-time job.”
Paul stopped eating his peanut butter toast. “What?”
“I’m going to get a full-time job. This internship or assistant position or whatever that I have with Desmond is good and I’m investing my paycheck, but I’m just not going to be able to afford housing at this rate, even with student loans.”
“You don’t need to pay rent. You’re living with me while you spend your first two years at ElCo.” He finished his toast and got up to put his plate into the sink, as if that were the end of the conversation.
“Whether you like it or not, I’m going to SoCal.”
“Over my dead body. We don’t have the money.”
“I can make money.”
“Your job is to study!” Paul’s face was flushed. “And that’s final.”
He stormed out of the kitchen while I stared at my bowl of cereal. It slowly got soggier and soggier while I listened to him get ready for work and finally go out the door.
I dumped out the cereal, ran the garbage disposal, and put the cereal bowl down in the sink. I couldn’t cry. I’d mess up my makeup. Instead, I sucked it up and put on my blazer before taking the bus to work like I did every day.
I put in my earphones while I sat sideways on the bus and counted down the minutes until I saw Desmond again. When I got off the bus, I waved at the security guys as I scanned my RFID badge and got into the building on the express lane side. Whenever I forgot my RFID badge, I had to go on the other side and actually get screened.
I got into the elevator, which was packed with people. Someone had forgotten his deodorant today. The elevator stopped at every floor before I finally got to mine.
“Shit!” That was all the warning I got before one of the people who was trying to get off of the elevator at the same time spilled coffee all over my white shirt and light blue skirt.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” There was a woman whose face was red and a dripping coffee cup without a lid. I could see the lid on the floor, along with coffee.
“It’s totally fine. Just an accident.”
I went to the bathroom to clean myself up. Unfortunately, getting coffee out of a white shirt wasn’t exactly easy. It was okay, though, because I had an emergency dress in my desk. I chanted “emergency dress” over and over to calm myself down. Everything was fine. The coffee stain wasn’t important.
When I cleaned myself up as best as I could, I went back to my desk and pulled out my big drawer, the one that I kept everything in.
No emergency dress.
I flipped through my binders and papers, but my dress wasn’t there.
I winced as I remember where it went. I’d pulled it on for an impromptu meeting on Casual Friday. Desmond had wanted me in there to take notes, and I could hardly do that in jeans. I’d used my emergency dress and worn it home without bringing it back.
I was just going to have to hope that nobody noticed the very obvious coffee stains on my clothes.
Squid Ink
Riley
By five o’clock, I was ready to tear my hair out. Nothing had gone my way today. After that dumb fight with Paul and getting coffee spilled on me, I’d started calling people on Desmond’s calendar to confirm the meetings with their assistants. I’d somehow gotten them a row off and messed up their names. I’d also accidentally called someone’s direct line instead of his assistant, and he’d yelled at me for ten minutes straight for interrupting his golf time.
I was just printing out tomorrow’s agenda for Desmond when I heard a sound coming from the printer that I’d never heard before. It had jammed, which was easy enough to fix on my printer at home. You just had to open it up, move the paper out, and close it again.
Not true for corporate printers. Somehow, there was black ink spraying everywhere when I tried to open it up and take the paper out. Now in addition to the coffee stains, I looked like I’d wrestled with a squid.
And lost.
I needed to go home as soon as I could. Desmond had been in meetings all day, so at least I hadn’t had to deal with him. We’d declared détente or something, because after that explosive kiss and Zara’s interruption, we’d never talked about it. I was professional. He was professional. I had my assignments, did them, and went home alone. On the plus side, I hadn’t been brought along as a wing-woman to any bars since the last time when Desmond had walked me home. I didn’t have to walk him make out with anybody or see anybody touch him like Zara had. It still made me mad when I thought about how he’d made out with me while he was engaged to someone else, but it was a banked fire instead of an inferno now. It was his business, not mine.
I looked at his office door. Sneaking out at five, after the long day I’d had, didn’t seem so bad. Half the office left at five anyway. The overachievers stayed until six, which was when Desmond sometimes left. As his assistant, I normally had to stick around if Desmond was here.
“Riley? Can you come into my office?”
I spun around and looked at Desmond standing in his office’s doorway. I stood up, trying to pull my blazer together to hide the coffee and ink stains.
> “Of course, sir.”
I walked with my head up, but inside I was ready to snap. The guy whose golf game I’d interrupted this morning had probably called Desmond and now I was going to be fired. I hadn’t been alone with Desmond since that disastrous kiss, but I thought that I was pretty safe now. Two months had gone by without anything happening. No explanation, just a professional relationship.
“Could you sit down, please?”
His face was serious. This was it. I was going to get the ax, and I’d only been here for two months.
I started crying. Unladylike sobs made my whole body shake. I covered my face with my hands, incredibly embarrassed by crying in front of Dez.
“Oh, shit! Christ! Stop crying!”
“How can I stop crying when you’re firing me?” I choked.
“Firing you? What are you talking about? I’m offering you a promotion.”
My tears dried in an instant. “What?” I wiped my eyes with the back of my right hand. “What did you say?”
Position
Desmond
“I think that you’ve been doing a really good job. I know that you really want to work in marketing, so I contacted someone in my marketing department to see if they wanted any extra help. I told them all about what you’ve done as my assistant and it’s time for the next step.”
She stared at me. Her mouth opened and then closed. “I don’t know how to thank you. I really thought that you were going to fire me after…”
“I got a weird email today about you calling someone during a golf game.”
I watched some color drain from her face. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not worrying about it. Everyone has bad days.”
She began to breathe again, straining the buttons of her shirt, which seemed to be decorated in an avant-garde brown and black pattern. She was smiling now, a killer smile that almost made me forget why I’d been careful not to be alone with her since we’d been interrupted by Zara.
“I’d love to,” she blurted out. “Can I keep it even if I’m in school?”
“Yeah. Just talk to your boss about your class schedule. We’ll accommodate it.” Anything that I could do to help Riley and her brother, I would. She was a good girl.
“Is that all?” I could see her twist her hands nervously, like she was thinking about the last time we were alone together.
“Yes, that’s it.”
She stood up so quickly that she tottered on the high heels that she still hadn’t mastered after a few months in the corporate world. I reached out to grab her and keep her from falling. Both of us slammed into my desk, sending a stack of papers falling to the ground.
“Oh no! This is the icing on top of a shitty day.” She bent to her knees and began gathering up the papers.
My dick jumped in my pants when I saw her kneeling in front of me. I thought about having her soft lips wrap around my hard cock, draining me dry before we went for a second round. Instead of succumbing to the temptation of a girl who was almost jailbait, I knelt beside her and helped gather the papers. Our heads knocked together as we reached for the same piece of paper.
“Ow!” she yelped.
I rubbed the spot on her head that she’d bumped against my skull. “Sorry. I’m pretty hardheaded.”
Her head was in my hands. Our faces were a breath apart, kneeling on the floor. Half of the papers were in a stack next to her. Half of them were still scattered on the floor.
Against my better judgment, I wanted to taste her lips again, just to see if it could possibly be as good as it’d been earlier.
When our lips touched, I knew that it was better than I remembered. Kissing her again was better than my memories, better than the dreams that left me hard and aching in the middle of the night. Rational me knew that I shouldn’t fuck my best friend’s little sister, no matter how curvy her little ass was. Irrational me didn’t care and took the kiss deeper.
She broke the kiss and slapped me, making my head rock with the force of her blow.
“You cheating asshole! You can’t kiss me while you’re engaged.”
Delusions
Riley
To my shock, Dez started laughing.
“Oh, shit, we never talked about it, did we? We didn’t talk about the kiss, so we didn’t talk about Zara.”
“No. Talk about what? The way you kissed me up against a wall with your body plastered to mine, getting me hot enough to set fire to ice, before your fiancée walked in on us?” I got to my feet and wiped his kiss off of my lips with the back of my hand. “We’re done here.” I began to walk out of his office, fighting back tears. I thought that I had to quit, since he wouldn’t stop kissing me. Once was a mistake, but twice was a pattern of behavior. I wasn’t going to wait around for the third time. I’d figure out something else.
“She’s not my fiancée.”
I spun around on my heels and nearly face-planted on the carpet. I put my hand on the wall and turned. “What did you say?”
“She’s not my fiancée.”
“Why did she say she was? I saw the ring on her finger. I could tell that she was telling the truth when she said that you bought it for her.”
“I did.”
I tried to walk out again, but he caught my arm and spun me around.
“Hey, wait a minute. Let me explain.”
I shook off his hand and sent him a glare. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I don’t want to make out with a cheater.”
“I broke up with her years ago. Do you want to hear the story or are you going to stomp out of here like a spoiled brat?”
He got my attention. I glared daggers at him. “Five minutes. That’s all you get before I walk out of here and quit on the spot.”
“I broke up with her a long time ago. How much do you know about my college years and my time in the military?”
“You and Paul went away to San Francisco…I don’t know much about that time. Paul didn’t come home much, and he didn’t really talk about you.”
“Zara was my college girlfriend. We dated for a year before she coerced me into proposing on the day that she chose with a ring that she pushed me into buying.”
“How?”
“By forcing me to go to the jewelry store every time we were together. It wasn’t a subtle hint. I figured that I had to get married to a girl anyway, so why not her? She seemed healthy enough and she was fun. A little bit of an alcoholic, but that’s not a bad thing in college. She could get us into any party. She loved to have a good time.”
“You have three minutes left.”
He took a deep breath. “I found in her bed with the cofounder of a business that I started in college.” He had a sheepish expression on his face.
You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. “You found her in bed…with someone else?” I looked him up and down. “You…found your fiancée in bed with someone else? Look at you. Dude, this is the worst lie you’ve ever told. Nobody would believe that.”
“Flattering,” he said, smiling at me with just one corner of his mouth, “but it’s true. Too dumb to be fake. She was jealous about the amount of time I spent on my business and wanted to make a point, destroying my engagement and my business in one stroke.”
“Kind of an evil mastermind.”
“Exactly. I have no interest in getting near her again.”
“Why does she have her ring?”
“Within a day, she had a change of heart. She wanted me to take her back, but instead I had my first threesome that night with two girls on me. The sex was reassuringly meaningless. I swore off of long-term relationships. I have no idea how she conned me into being monogamous while we were together, anyway. Wasted a whole year of college on her lying ass.”
“She hurt you.”
“She hurt my pride, that’s it. And my bank account for a millisecond. She wouldn’t give back the ring, though. She said that she’d convince me to take her back one day. Actually, she said that I’d beg for her to come
back.”
“But you never did?”
“Before she surprised us in my office, I hadn’t seen her since we broke up. I haven’t seen her since college, nothing between us during my time in the military and after. She probably convinced a security guard that she needed to see me. She’s manipulative. She convinced you to back off, didn’t she?”
“She had me fooled,” I admitted.
Desmond slid his arms around me and then lowered his mouth to mine.
Apex
Desmond
I moved my hands to grip her waist and pull her off of the floor. She wrapped her legs around me as I moved her and lowered her onto my desk, papers be damned. I could feel them crunching underfoot, but Riley was the only person that mattered.
Her hands went to pull my shirt out of my pants, yanking the tail out. I kissed her while I helped her by unbuttoning my shirt.
“You’re ripped,” she murmured, her eyes half-closed, her lips swollen from my kisses.
“I’m also more naked than you are.” I quickly unzipped her skirt and turned her over so that I could pull her skirt and underwear off.
“Sorry, babe. This one’s going to be quick.”
I knelt behind her and parted her thighs so that I had better access to her core. I lapped up her wetness. She tasted like brown sugar mixed with honey. Her legs were shaking from the force of the orgasm that she was almost having. I pushed her a little harder against my desk so that the edge would stimulate her clitoris.
She went off like a rocket, so wet that it was getting on her thighs. I was careful to lap all that up as well. I knew that she was wet, but I stuck a finger inside of her, loosening her up.
Then I felt something that made everything stop.
