Ways in the Guardian: A Menage Romance Book Collection

by Barbara Downey

  “Hey dude, how was your extended weekend?” Darren asked perching on the edge of his desk.

  “I was sick, man-flu I think,” he replied pushing the guy off the workspace.

  “Should have called me, I would have taken care of you,” Darren said winking before scooting off to his own department.

  “Hey, you look different,” Hannah said. “Did you have a mini-break?”

  “No, I was sick. I lost a few pounds though,” Ryan grinned and slapped his tight new trunk.

  “Looking good,” Hannah drawled, making Ryan blush.

  Ryan felt like there was a conspiracy going on and it was all about him. Everyone was looking at him differently, especially the women. He was starting to feel uncomfortable, like the dreams where you go to work without putting your clothes on. He felt vulnerable because he was used to feeling mediocre. On three separate occasions, he’d had to remove someone’s butt from the edge of his desk and that was definitely not normal behavior in his office and most certainly not with him being the recipient.

  By the end of the day, he was mentally exhausted from all the extra work he was putting into his conversations. He felt objectified, like a piece of steak that for some reason unknown to him was suddenly very popular and extra juicy. He didn’t want to be steak, he wanted to eat steak and on that thought, he had been asked to dinner by one of his female colleagues. The fact that he couldn’t remember her name was a testament to how weird things were getting.

  He left his desk a few minutes early and hid in the supply room, which is what any normal person would do at the end of their workday. He felt stupid hiding like that but he was no longer thinking clearly. When the door opened, his heart sank, and he pressed his body into the darkest corner. A woman had walked in but he didn’t recognize her. He was relieved she wasn’t one of the women that had harassed him.

  “I am a confident woman,” she said in a gentle voice.

  He ignored her because she wasn’t looking at him. She was obviously in her own world, just hiding out like he was. She stretched and removed her chunky glasses to rub her face.

  She had delicate features hidden underneath the over-sized glasses and honey-brown eyes. She pulled her long smooth hair out of its tight bun and ruffled her hands through it, then wound it back up and secured it once more. Most women wore their hair down in the office but this odd little creature hid her beauty behind no-nonsense clothes and accessories.

  “I am a confident woman,” she said in a louder voice and he jumped slightly, knocking a pencil off the shelf.

  “I’m sorry, I should have told you I was here,” he said stepping out from behind the shelves.

  “You should have,” she said blushing a delicate shade of pink.

  “My name is Ryan,” he said holding out his hand.

  “Josie,” she replied after considering his hand for several seconds.

  When he took hold of her hand, it was tiny and cool; her bones were delicate like that of a bird’s. He must have held on to it for too long because she snatched it back and wrapped it against her ribs as if he’d burned her. He stepped back to make her more comfortable, and she breathed in, visibly.

  “I was just hiding out here for a bit; things were getting a little intense, and I wanted to wait until everyone else had gone,” he said, not sure why he was being honest with her.

  “I come here often,” she replied.

  “To say the affirmation?” He asked.

  “That’s none of your business,” she replied.

  She yanked the handle of the door so hard the door nearly smacked him in the face but his reflexes were quick and he grabbed it. He watched her go. She was beautiful, so much more so than the heavily made up vixens with their carefully planned flirty gestures and their overpowering perfumes. She intrigued him and, as he watched her gather her things and leave, he realized that she worked in his office. He had the feeling that she had been there for long enough for him to have gotten to know her, only he hadn’t.

  Chapter 3 - Josie

  Of course, he would notice her now, now that he was Mr. Popular. To make it even worse he’d seen her saying that stupid affirmation, and he’d had the cheek to ask her about it. As if hiding out in the supply room wasn’t bad enough but to be caught speaking to herself was just plain awful. Why was he in there, anyway?

  She tidied her desk and turned off her computer. She was supposed to be meeting a man from the dating agency but she just didn’t know if she could go through with it. She thought that five minutes of affirmations in the cupboard would calm her nerves but thanks to Ryan, her nerves were frazzled. He had looked her up and down like she was a woman, which she was, but hell he hadn’t ever noticed her before, let alone, appreciated her form. She needed a glass of wine and a good book not a date with a man who looked a little cross-eyed if his picture was correct.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” Ryan said again from across the room.

  Everyone else had vacated the office, running out to avoid being drafted into work a little longer on boring accounts. She had no distraction but her bag and her coat. He was staring at her like he expected an answer and she had to at least acknowledge him. After a moment she sighed, she was not ready to go on a date if she couldn’t speak to a man in her office.

  “It’s my fault, I should have checked,” she said.

  “Can I walk with you for a bit? People have been acting really odd today and you’re the only one who isn’t,” he said and he looked confused.

  “Okay,” she replied because she really didn’t know what else she could have said.

  They were right, of course, she’d heard the gossip, he looked great. He’d lost a few pounds and maybe worked out a bit but there was something else that had changed. His skin was glowing and there was a sparkle in his eyes but it didn’t match the look on his face; his face said he was tired and fed up. She stepped into the elevator and he followed her, sinking against the wall like he needed a prop.

  “I spent the weekend in bed sick, and I came back today to find that people are acting weird around me. Are they joking?” He asked.

  “You look different, like you spent the weekend at a spa and came back healthier,” she replied and thought she had done a good job of masking what her mouth was desperate to say.

  “That’s weird because I didn’t, I worked late on Friday night and took a kebab home. I got scratched by a large cat in the park, wanna see?”

  He began unbuttoning his shirt and she flinched. She had imagined this scenario so many times that she kind of knew it off by heart but to see it happening, and not in a private place like her bedroom, was totally disturbing and he must have seen that in her facial expression.

  “I’m sorry,” he said and buttoned up once more. “Have you heard on the news about a large cat escaping a zoo or something?” He asked as the elevator doors opened.

  “No,” she said willing the blush on her face to remove itself, she was almost sweating.

  “No, me neither. It must have been a dog,” he said but she could see he didn’t think it was. “Do you want to go for a drink?”

  “No, I have a date,” she said.

  “Of course, I’m sorry,” he said, but she wasn’t sure what he was saying sorry for this time.

  “Goodbye,” she said and walked away hoping that he wasn’t watching her.

  “Goodbye, Josie,” he called after her.

  She resisted the urge to turn around and kept on walking. She realized when she put her key in the door that she had walked right past the wine bar where she should have met her date. She wasn’t going back, she would just leave him a message on the dating site that she found someone else and then she would open the bottle of white wine in the fridge and run a bubble bath.

  She would read her new book in the bath and wouldn’t think about Ryan at all. She wouldn’t think about how his slimmer face was more chiseled or about how his shoulders filled his shirt so it was bursting with manliness, and she definitely would not hav
e fantasies about being semi-naked with him in the cupboard during office time.

  She failed miserably at not thinking about Ryan and she even took a glass of wine onto her balcony which overlooked the park. She knew where he lived, she had walked behind him on many occasions and he hadn’t noticed at all. She’d seen him jogging on warm evenings while she was reading on a park bench and he hadn’t once recognized her. She was invisible which was perfect most of the time but sometimes she wished that one person would see her and now he had, she was terrified.

  She wondered what he meant about a big cat and searched the dark shapes in the park for something cat-like. There wasn’t anything that she could see but he had said that he’d been scratched, not bitten or knocked down. She reached for her tablet and checked the news sites but nothing came up; no sightings or missing wild cats, no strange occurrences in the park. She wondered what the scratch looked like and then realized that she had spent the entire evening thinking about Ryan, again.

  “I am a confident woman, I am a likable woman, I am happy, I am confident, I have drunk too much wine,” she said sighing.

  Chapter 4 - Ryan

  Josie couldn’t wait to get away from him and after the day he’d had it was refreshing. He walked back through the park after he’d watched her walk away. He wanted to see if there were any footprints in the park that looked at all cat-like, not that he had any idea what cat paw prints looked like. He soon found a patch of wrinkled grass where he had skidded through it but no footprints at all, not even his.

  His appetite had increased through the day and when he reached his apartment, he knew he needed meat. His body was craving it and he could put it down to the weekend’s sickness or years of dieting but something told him it was something to do with the scratch and his new and improved body. The sandwiches he’d taken for lunch hadn’t been nearly enough but with the attention he had suddenly acquired he hadn’t dared to venture outside the building. Now when he opened his fridge, he saw three packets of meat; ignoring the vegetables he filled the frying pan with various animal products.

  After taking care of his hunger, he ran a bath and spent a whole hour just soaking in the hot water. His thoughts roamed, and he was soon picturing the petite girl who had worked in his office and remained anonymous for over a year. He had a vague memory of seeing her but now, after the supply room incident, he couldn’t remove her from his brain. He was no longer relaxed; he was agitated and slightly aroused. Visions of her soft light brown hair tickling his chest came out of nowhere and interrupted his peace.

  It was while he was thinking about Josie sprawled all over him that something very strange happened. One minute he had one hand on the edge of the bath and the other on his manhood, enjoying happy thoughts, the next minute he had a sudden attack of heightened awareness. It wasn’t a gradual buildup but more of an explosion of sensations.

  His sense of smell changed and a whole new world began to revolve around his nose. He could smell all kinds of food drifting in through the window and it made him feel like he needed to find these foods.

  His vision had also changed, but he didn’t notice this until he opened his eyes. His bathroom was no longer a steamy blur of comfort, it was sharp and clear. When he stood up and peered through the window to savor the scents of the city, he found that he could see a lot more than he could before he got in the bath. The city was alive and vibrant and he felt like a predator watching over it.

  He jumped out of the bath and pulled on his clothes, not bothering to dry his body. He had to get out there, there were things down there that he needed and although he wasn’t sure what they were, they smelled pretty good. He stopped long enough to pick up his keys and then he was out, down the communal stairs and off into the night.

  He started jogging but chasing the smells meant that he couldn’t stick to the path. He ran under the cover of trees and then out again, trying to identify the scents. There were doggy smells, rodents, all kinds of foods, and something else that caught his hunger.

  He ran to the far edge of the park and looked around; he recognized that smell but in his excitement, he just couldn’t remember what it belonged to. He took several deep breaths, glad that no one was around to see him. He knew he must look crazy running around the park like a puppy on heat but everything felt good, or to be more precise everything felt totally awesome and he didn’t want it to stop. He didn’t feel his transformation; he was too entranced with what he was feeling. He didn’t even notice that he was no longer walking on two legs.

  The stream of scent that was driving him wild was coming from one of the apartments that bordered the park in the opposite corner from his. He traced the scent along the walkway and up the stairs, coming to stop outside a flat with a red door.

  He didn’t know why he was standing outside someone’s apartment, but he knew something inside would interest him. He couldn’t seem to drag himself away but stalking a scent was weird and deep down he understood that, but he continued to wait.

  When Ryan woke, it was to a high-pitched shriek. A woman was standing over him with a broom and he saw the anger on her face just before she hit him square in the face with the brushy end. He covered his face and shot to his feet quickly finding out why she was pissed.

  He was naked; he was stark naked aside from his abs that were looking pretty good under the predawn glow. He covered his manhood with one hand while the other fended off the blows that were still coming.

  If Ryan thought things couldn’t be worse than waking up disorientated and naked across the park from his flat, he would be mistaken. The red door next to him opened and a sleepy-eyed Josie peered out. His eyes met hers and they both gasped and then he did what most normal people would do in his situation; he ran like the devil was chasing him, and his junk, no longer covered, was flapping in the wind.

  He had one huge streak of good luck and that was finding his clothes, albeit shredded, on the dewy grass. His keys were still in the pocket of his now unwearable jeans. By the time he rammed his key into the lock, the sun had risen over the horizon and the park was light. He hadn’t seen anyone else on his travels but the one person he didn’t want to see him doing a freaky naked sprint had seen him and he had felt her eyes burning into the back of his butt on the entire dash through the park.

  Chapter 5 - Josie

  Josie had woken to a scream, and it had jolted her clean out of bed. She had grabbed the baseball bat that she hid behind the door and prepared to swing it but when she peered around the door she saw Ryan, naked. She had seen the startled look on his face before he turned around and fled and then she had sneaked a look at his body. It was perfect, in every way.

  After telling her neighbor, Irene, to go back home and put the coffee on, she ran to her balcony and watched Ryan as he grabbed what looked like his clothes and ran across the park, still naked and still beautiful.

  She had no theories on what had just happened, none at all. When Irene walked in and handed her a cup of coffee, she took it but she didn’t stop watching until she saw Ryan disappear into his block. She knew Irene was waiting for an explanation and she knew it would be easier to lie than try to work out what actually happened.

  “What in the world was that young man doing?”

  “He was my date, I kicked him out,” Josie replied hoping the lie wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass.

  “But why was he naked, and why was he sleeping on your door mat?”

  “It was a game,” she said; she had never been a great liar.

  “I think I’m too old to hear about this,” Irene said.

  Josie never looked forward to work, it wasn’t fun on any given day but she had a feeling that today was going to be particularly hard after catching Ryan in the buff on her doorstep. She really wanted to know what was going on but wasn’t in a hurry to do the asking because that meant getting close to him, close enough to remember what his body looked like underneath his office clothes.

  Ryan was late, and this gave her an ex
tra couple of hours to agonize over what she was going to say. Did she pretend it hadn’t happened or call him a pervert? He could be a nudist or have a sleep disorder that made him get up from his perfectly good bed and wander the streets without any idea what he was doing. The real mystery to her was why her place? Why had Irene found him curled up on her doormat?

  Ryan appeared in the coffee room when she’d popped in. She always waited until everyone else had finished with it. Now she was trapped in the small space with the man she’d seen every inch of on her doorstep just a few hours previously. She was furious with her traitorous body for blushing when he stood there without any color at all. Why wasn’t he the one to blush?

  “I’m sorry. Please, can you just forget that happened? Whatever you saw, I would like you to wipe it from your memory and please don’t ever mention it, oh and can you tell your neighbor that I’m sorry. She really hit me hard, though, she should be more careful,” he said, and she finally found the blush on his cheeks.

  “Why were you there?” She whispered.

  “I have no idea, none at all,” he said shrugging.

  “Hi Ryan, I missed you this morning,” a tall brunette from the adjoining office said while arranging herself on the door frame until she looked like a pinup having a photo-shoot.

  “Missed me?” Ryan asked turning to face the woman.

  Josie grabbed her coffee, stepped behind Ryan and tried to squeeze herself between the door frame and the wanton slut; it was difficult because the bitch just ignored her presence and Josie nearly spilled her coffee.

  “Josie wait!” Ryan called but once free she was off.

  She kept her eyes down for the rest of the day, eating her packed lunch at her desk and not bothering to fill up on coffee. She could feel his eyes boring into her and the one time she had looked up he’d been staring at her unashamedly and all she could think of was his bare backside bouncing through the park. She had to turn on her desk fan to cool her flush. Drooling over a man in the office who doesn’t know you exist is one thing but working alongside a man she’d seen naked but hadn’t had the pleasure of even a kiss, well that was another thing entirely. She wanted him so much she could barely focus on her work.