Attraction

by Linn Young

  One night, Heron was also able to get Riley, with a combination of cajoling and bullying, to give him a free weekend night, where they were to begin their night together with a dinner. When Riley arrived at his penthouse, she asked him where he was taking her to dinner. She looked surprised when she saw the small table in the dinning room intimately set for two, complete with candle lights.

  “I thought we were going out to dinner,” she said.

  “I said I wanted us to have dinner. I just didn’t say where. You’ve finally taken a night off for us. I’ll be damned if I waste any of it by driving to places, dealing with the crowds and all the wait staff.” He gave a small enigmatic smile. “It seems when it comes to you, I’m very selfish. I want you all to myself tonight for as long as possible. If we went out to a restaurant, it’d be like sharing you.”

  Heron opened a bottle of white wine and poured some in glasses.

  “So, what’s for dinner? Who’s cooking?” Riley asked. Then she looked at Heron with wide eyes. “Don’t tell me you are?”

  “No, my butler, Canton, is a trained chef. I think the menu is crispy duck, herbed pilaf, and baby vegetables.”

  Heron handed her a glass of wine. Riley jumped a little when his fingers made contact with hers. He looked at her and she flushed a little. She was already feeling jumpy, itchy, and tense. It had been over week since they last saw one another, and her body was craving his touch. She stepped back, sipping her wine, carefully avoiding his eyes.

  “How long until dinner?” she asked, making her way down the living room that overlooked the city.

  “Canton said another thirty minutes.” He followed her, watching her take in the city lights.

  When he stood next to her, he brushed the back of his hands along her jaw line. She turned her head and lifted her eyes to him. When their eyes made contact, it was as if all pretense of sociability and politeness was swept away, the desire and the almost compulsive need for one other in their eyes. Riley took a large sip of her wine. Then she let herself lean against Heron’s body and buried her face in his chest, inhaling the scent of him, which was a combination of faint tangy aftershave and soap. Heron also took a sip of his glass, before lifting a hand to her long thick curls, lightly rubbing her scalp and caressing her nape, burying his face in her hair, kissing it, smelling it. They stood like that for several minutes, not talking, finishing their glasses of wine, Riley nuzzling her face against his chest, feeling the hardness of his big body against hers, letting his intense body heat lull her into drowsiness, Heron’s face and hand buried in her hair, drawing in the smell and warmth of her, feeling the texture of her soft curls against his face and in his hands.

  Heron set their empty wine glasses on a small coffee table. He took Riley’s hand and drew her down to the couch. He laid back lengthwise and drew her on top of him. Riley laid her head on his chest and stayed there, his arms around her. His hands stroked all over her, firmly, warmly, her hair, her back, her buttocks, thighs, arms.

  Riley thought how good it felt to have a man touch her all over her body with such hard, heavy, warm hands. If she closed her eyes for a moment, and pretended that she was not who she was and the man beneath her was not Heron, then she could fantasize that the urgency of his hands on her was because she meant something to him, and he meant something to her.

  For a long time, they were content to stay in the embrace. She could have remained like that for ages.

  Then, after awhile, Heron lifted Riley’s face to his for a long kiss. He began to undo her buttons down her shirt, pushed a front panel aside to reveal her breast that was encased in a lacy low-cut bra. Without ending the kiss, his hand undid the front clasp and cupped the goldentinged globe that spilled out. She moaned beneath his mouth when he brushed her nipple with his thumb. He lifted his head and looked down, watching as he fondled and squeezed her, teasingly brushing the tip with his fingers. Riley arched, gasping, and tried to pull his head down, indicating that she wanted him to take her in his mouth. When he only brushed his lips across the nipple, she let a feminine growl of frustration. She writhed beneath Heron and tangled her legs around his and pressed her hips against his. With her hands in his hair, she pulled his lips to her mouth and began to take long, lazy but firm bites of his mouth, chin, and jaw. Heron shuddered and his hand pushed down on her buttocks so that his hardness beneath his trousers was pressed against her pubis. Riley arched her back, her eyes closed and rocked back and forth on his hardness, imitating their fucking. Giving a low growl of male appreciation, Heron pulled her head down for another long, heated kiss.

  Thirty minutes later, Canton, Heron’s butler and cook, pushed past the swinging door from the kitchen, carrying a large tray that held dishes of food on his shoulder. He set the tray on a stand next to the table and laid the dishes that were covered by silver domes on the table. He then opened the bottle of red wine. He stood back for a moment to make sure that everything had been set to his satisfaction. Then he turned to summon his master and his guest to dinner.

  Canton stopped when he saw Heron and his female guest naked on the floor of the living room, their discarded clothes strewn all around them. Both were doing a lot of moaning and gasping, their hands clasping at one another’s body, their lips meeting often for long kisses. His master was between the female’s legs, which were wrapped around his waist. By the pumping motion of Heron’s buttocks, it was very clear that the two were in the middle of sex.

  For a moment, the butler was in complete shock, and, for a moment, did not know how he should proceed.

  In the fifteen years he had worked for Heron, he had never come across this from him. Never in his wildest imagination did he think that he ever would. Canton would never have thought that his master was possible of such blatant indiscretion, even in his own home. Heron certainly had many other women to his penthouse. A few of the female guests had spent the night. But the butler couldn’t recall Heron ever displaying any form of physical gestures to a woman in front of him, even a kiss. He had always been so formal with his female guests in front of his domestic staff. And that included the beautiful blonde woman who had been his fiancée a few months ago and was now his sister-in-law.

  Suddenly loud cries and groans were uttered by the couple on the floor, snapping Canton back to the present. He realized he had been staring at the them for several seconds. He opened his mouth and managed only a hoarse croak. Then he shut his mouth, stared at the two entangled bodies, closed his mouth again, and walked back out of the living room.

  He put the entrée dishes back on the tray and carried the tray back to the kitchen. With his usual precision and care, Canton stored the uneaten food into containers, wrote out instructions for each, and put them in the refrigerator. He took his apron off, hooked it neatly on the wall, then went to his private quarters where he planned to spend a few hours reading before he went bed, since there was every indication that his master would not need, or want, him for rest of the evening.

  Four hours later, Heron woke up, finding himself naked, his arms around an equally naked Riley, lying on his living room floor. He felt his stomach growl and felt the gnawing of its empty chamber. He disengaged from Riley, pulled on his trousers, and padded barefoot into the kitchen. There, on the butcher’s table, he found Canton’s neatly written instructions, telling him that he would find his dinner in the refrigerator. He warmed the food as instructed, put them on the tray as well as wine and glasses, and carried it back into the living room, setting it on the floor.

  Heron was well into his second helping of the crispy duck when the aroma and her own growling stomach awoke Riley. Drowsily, she took in his nearly empty plate and the food on the tray. She rose to a sitting position, and unabashedly stretched, raising her arms high above her head and yawning widely in front of Heron without bothering to cover her mouth. He stopped chewing and watched her, a little taken aback, then his mouth split into a wide smile, for some reason, finding himself laughing.

  “Did we ruin yo
ur butler’s dinner?” she asked lazily.

  “No, it’s quite good.”

  “Mmmm, it smells good.”

  Riley reached for her silk camisole and pulled it over her head. Then she crawled on her hands and knees to food tray. With her back to Heron, she stayed on all fours while filling her plate with food, giving him a full view of her bare buttocks. He stared it for a moment, his gaze lingering on her closely cropped black bush and the pink slash of her flesh that her position afforded.

  He said with almost casual observation, “You would do well to behave yourself if you don’t want to find yourself going without any food until tomorrow. And, as understanding as Canton was when he must have come across us in flagrante, I don’t think he’d be equally so if he found tomorrow the food soaked all over this carpet.”

  Riley looked back at him and gave him a cheeky smile. Then she turned to a sitting position, carrying her plate, demurely folding her legs under her. Heron continued to watch her as she ate the food with great enjoyment, his eyes hooded a little, slightly curious, detecting an impish glint in her hazel eyes. He knew that she was aware the picture she presented to him, sitting in front of him with just her camisole on that barely covered her generous breasts, her legs tucked under her, bare from the waist down, affording him the view of the black triangle between her closed thighs, all the while she ate her belated dinner, holding the plate in front of her, a shield between her and him.

  If he hadn’t been so sated with sex and food, Heron would have made a grab for her. As it was, his penis was partially hard, the heat in his loins a dull throb instead of raging with tension. And he was content for the moment to sit on the floor and watch her, leaning his head against the couch, his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, drinking his wine, enjoying the rare moment of being in each other’s company without the demanding drive to bury himself deep inside her.

  The next morning, Riley was in the foyer of Heron’s penthouse, dressed, her small overnight bag standing next to her, as she waited for Heron’s driver, Dustin, to drive her back to Santa Rosa.

  While she was carefully putting her red lipstick on in the hall mirror, Heron came down the stairs dressed for work. At the bottom of the stairs, Canton stood with Heron’s overcoat and briefcase.

  “Tell Dustin I’ll ride in the same car with Ms. Calderon to work. From there, he can take Ms. Calderon home,” Heron instructed.

  Canton helped him into his coat. “Very good, sir.” The butler exited through the kitchen.

  As Heron walked towards her, Riley looked over him and her breath caught in her throat. He was dressed in an all black double-breasted suit over a olive green-taupe shirt with dark tan silk tie with tiny black polka dots. The black attire emphasized even more his striking good looks, putting the clean lines of his face and his tall lean body into sharper relief. Heron literally, standing before her, was quite breathtaking.

  “You’re devastating,” she murmured, awe in her voice.

  Heron frowned, not quite sure he had heard right. “I beg your pardon?”

  Riley had not meant to say what she did and flushed a little when she realized she did. Then she gave a rueful smile, now laughing at herself, shaking her head a little. “I could fall head over heels in love with you.”

  Whatever response she expected from him, it wasn’t his face turning white and frozen. For a few seconds, there was a painful, awkward silence between them. It was broken when Canton re-emerged from the kitchen.

  “Dustin will be a moment with the car, sir.”

  For a few miles, they rode in silence as Heron’s driver, Dustin, drove the limousine through the busy city. Riley was staring out the window, idly watching the people rush to work. Now that she had some time to think about her words to Heron, she wondered what possessed her to say them. At the moment, she thought she had been jesting. But now, she realized it was a bad judgment call on her part.

  “Did you mean what you said, back there?”

  Riley turned to look at Heron. “What?”

  “Did you mean what you said back there? About falling in love?”

  She stared at him, at a complete loss as to what she should say. Then, as usual, she resorted to flippancy. She gave a humorous smile. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had a woman fall in love with you, Heron.”

  “I thought your sister had, but I was apparently wrong.”

  Riley looked at him more closely. “What is it that you’re asking?”

  He thought for a second. “I guess I’m asking what’s love to you.”

  That surprised her, that Heron would ask her such a question. “Well, sex has to be good.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, her smile turning impish. She was rewarded with a smile from him that was genuine, his white teeth flashing at her in the car. She pursed her lips. “Let’s see, what is love to me. I want a lot of laughter in the relationship. We have to be pretty compatible, or else, what’s the point. There should also be a lot of fun in the relationship…”

  “I was talking about love, not relationship.”

  “You think one is possible without the other?”

  “Yes. Many couples have one or the other but not both.”

  “Love cannot last without it being encompassed within and being supported by a solid relationship. –Anyway, you should know that already. I mean, look at your parents. As far as I witnessed, they’re still happy and seem content after forty years of marriage. They seem to still genuinely like each other, are fond of one another, still able to make each other smile. Since I only met them once, I can’t really say about the passion part. But you know them. Tell me, are you parents still passionate with one another?”

  Heron said blandly, a little fastidiously, “That’s something I rarely think about.”

  Riley smiled. She was beginning to relax, their earlier awkwardness gone. “But, I don’t understand. Why do you look so far from home for examples of love when it’s right there, in front of you?”

  He shifted a little in his seat, finding the question a bit unsettling. “I don’t know. I was always so different from my family. It always seemed hard to apply the love that my parents had, and my sister and her husband, and now, my brother and your sister, all found to me. They’re all much more easy going and open than I am.”

  “You know, your mother told me that you expected so much more from yourself and from the world than anyone else.”

  After a moment, she saw Heron give a slight nod. They fell into silence again, but this silence was not awkward but was comfortable, almost companionable.

  When the limousine pulled up in front of Heron’s office building, he seemed reluctant to get out of the car. He stared out the window, sightlessly, at the people rushing into the building.

  “You know you don’t have to go back up to Santa Rosa,” he said, his head still turned away out the window. Then he looked at her, his face impassive and guarded. “You can stay at my place for as long as you like.”

  Riley suppressed a sigh. They had been over this before. She didn’t understand it when he made such suggestions, as if he was ignoring the fact that she was an owner of a business, and that it was a very demanding career.

  “You know I can’t do that,” she said gently.

  Heron continued to stare at her for a long moment. Then he reached out and pulled her into his arms and gave her a long kiss. When he ended it, he leaned his forehead against hers, his eyes closed, his arms holding her tightly to him.

  Riley reached in her purse, pulled out a white linen handkerchief. Heron opened his eyes and watched her as she wiped his mouth of her lipstick. She put the handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit, letting the folded corner peak out of it.

  Later in the day, in a three hour meeting with his father, brother, and board members, Heron’s mind began to wander as the other’s began an intense discussion of transferring a large block of United States bonds to overseas currency. Riley would be up in Santa Rosa by now, he thought, l
ooking at his watch. He wondered if she had gone back to bed once she was in her home and was sleeping now, or if she was in her office at the bar. He lifted his hand and felt the corner of her linen handkerchief in his breast pocket. He pulled it out and opened it and stared at the red lipstick smear on the white cloth. And the corners of his lips turned up slightly as he remembered her wiping his mouth with it after their passionate kiss.

  Roy’s voice reached him down the long table. “Heron, are you still with us?”

  Heron turned his eyes blindly to his father, the faraway gaze still in the dark depths. “What?”

  “What are you doing staring at that handkerchief for?” Roy demanded.

  For a few seconds, Heron could only stare blankly at his father. From across the conference table, Tanner almost burst out into a laugh. It was the first time he had ever seen his brother at a complete loss for words in a business setting, especially in a boardroom setting, where the demands of attention and clarity were intense.

  Then Heron seemed to come to, folded the handkerchief and put it in his pants pocket. He reached in his briefcase and pulled out folder, and said with smooth coolness, “I have the latest Federal Treasury report on the bonds.”

  Heron told Riley that he wanted her to accompany him to a Sotheby auction that was being held in the city. It was an exclusive event that was coordinated by the auction house with their New York, London, and Paris offices, offering items ranging from art, jewelry, and antique furniture. There was no item that had a beginning bidding price under one hundred thousand dollars. Only the wealthy and major art houses and museums were to attend.

  “Why would I want to go to that?” Riley asked.

  “You are my mistress,” he pointed out coolly.