Website- www.lyndakayefrazier.com
Heating Up the Help Desk
Leigh W. Stuart
Heating Up the Help Desk Copyright © 2018 by Leigh W. Stuart. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, dream, place, or event is purely coincidental and not the intention of this collection.
Heating Up the Help Desk
If there is one thing tech genius Kenneth Jones knows, it’s how to make a computer yield to his desires—from turning it on, to making the keyboard hum beneath his touch. But when it comes to women? He’s going to need a savvy, sex advice coach to hack his love life.
* * *
Accountant Reese Wallace can calculate a return on investment faster than brewing coffee, but that’s just her day job. After hours, she moonlights as a relationship blogger, promoting love, sex and happiness. The moment geeky Kenneth strides into her life, she’s dying to get her hands on him. Strictly as her client, of course.
* * *
Brains might be sexy as hell, but Kenneth’s pocket protector and corduroy pants must come off. Once they do, though, Reese is in trouble. She’s about to discover that it’s not the amount of experience in bed that counts, but the size of the…heart that goes with it.
For the geek in my life.
1
Reese
Reese choked on her coffee and nearly spat it all over her keyboard. From one second to the next, black had swallowed her computer screen and the provocative message I need you urgently scrolled across the top.
While she was no expert, she was reasonably certain computers weren’t up to the task of conversation or knowing when they needed help. Although, if anyone’s PC needed some tender loving care, it was hers.
Not certain if she should try to communicate, she reached with shaking hands for the keyboard. Another line appeared:
Call the IT Department help desk.
That seemed very logical. Freaky and weird, but logical. Did they do exorcisms at the help desk?
She punched in the number on her old-fashioned phone, keeping an eye on her screen in case more messages came from the depths of the machine.
“Hey, this is Kenneth, can I help you?”
The deep, rich voice that filled her ear made her shiver all the way down to her toes. Goodness. They put the sex-vibes man on duty today. “Yeah, hi, this is Reese from accounting. I’m having an issue with my computer. It’s getting a little chatty with me.”
“You write the blog It’s Not Rocket Science, It’s a Vagina?”
She jumped to her feet, fear tingling in her spine. Her secret was out.
“What? How do you…wait a minute. Just wait.” Her heart was racing. How the hell could he know that? And why would he bring it up now.
“Is it your blog or not?” he asked.
“The blog situation is complicated. Whether or not it’s mine is not really the issue here.” Reese gritted her teeth, wracking her brain for a clever reply. Hem and haw? Deny it all? Confirm her secret identity to Kenneth at the help desk and open a can of worms all over her job? What should she do? “The real issue is my computer has started writing messages to me.”
“I think I know what’s wrong with your computer,” he said. “I’ll be right up to straighten it out.”
Reese hung up, scrambled to clean the piles of papers on her desk, and wiped up the croissant crumbs and coffee-ring stains. She was neat, efficient, professional, and no—she did not moonlight as an advice columnist that helped men reach their physical potential, and more importantly, helped women reach a maximum number of orgasms.
Professional.
She would never recommend a reverse cowgirl to several hundred online followers, complete with her own hand-drawn illustrations and tips. From her personal experience. Because that might look bad for the company, and she wasn’t an idiot.
Besides, reverse cowgirl wasn’t for everyone. You had to have healthy knees.
Desk clean.
A man was coming. He was so tall his head was barely inches from the top of the doorframe when he came into the open office space from the hallway. From across the large room, which was partitioned off in four-foot-high walls, creating a maze of narrow corridors and small cubicles, he nodded at her.
Reese recognized him from a year ago when they merged with another company and a wave of new employees came on board. But in her memory, he was lankier. The man coming toward her wasn’t the tall, skinny new guy anymore.
Golden-brown hair alternately fell across his forehead in front and stuck in strange spikes in the back like a wild bird’s nest. It would be so easy to run her fingers through those thick locks and make him bedroom messy instead of the couldn’t-remember-how-to-use-a-comb-this-morning look he had going. Heavy framed glasses hid half of his face, but if she could get him to take them off Clark Kent style, she would probably swoon. His square jaw cut from stone was the cherry on top.
But his clothes…His shirt was a polyester paisley disaster made worse by a striped tie. But those shoulders stretched the fabric to a max, and the sleeves were folded back twice, showing forearms wired with muscle. Most of him seemed to be muscle, actually.
Her mouth started watering. Maybe she should peel back the rest of the shirt, just to make sure. Her eyes continued to drop as he made the final length of corridor. His questionable shirt was tucked into slightly faded maroon slacks…and no.
Tell me I’m not seeing this.
He had on blue suede loafers that didn’t coordinate with anything else he was wearing.
So this was Kenneth from the help desk. He had so much potential, but then again, geeks were really not her kind of men.
When he arrived at her desk he glanced around, but her colleagues were buried behind the rat’s maze of partitions. Her knees gave out and she sat down hard, glad to find her seat underneath her butt. Up close he towered over her by at least a foot. But what really knocked the air from her chest were his icy blue eyes. Why did he hide them?
He knelt next to her desk. Even kneeling on one knee, he was barely below her eye level.
“Reese Wallace?” he whispered.
She nodded, the flutters in her stomach wrecking mayhem. She didn’t know if she was frightened by his discovery of her blog or turned on by the way he whispered her name. Like he had something in mind for her later that night beyond rebooting her computer.
“I have a proposition to make,” he said. “I need your services badly. Urgently. I need you now.”
Both of her eyebrows shot up, and she pressed to the back of her chair. “Need me now? What kind of need me now are we talking about?”
Her love-life might be bleak at the moment, but it wasn’t even noon yet. She wasn’t sure she had energy for a quick nookie with a stranger in the supply closet before lunch.
He took her hand in his.
Whoa. Proposition, as in a proposal? “Slow down please, I don’t know you well enough—”
“Reese, I’m asking you,” he said, then paused to lick his lips. “The fact is, I need to know how to seduce women, and you are an expert on helping men with the art of seduction. Will you be my one and only coach for the next four days?”
2
Kenneth
The slim hand in Kenneth’s hold jerked free. Reese’s eyes, large in the photos on-line, were wider than the shining circles on floppy disks.
“Hold up there, you are rather fast on the draw,” she said, her black heels planted in the ground. “You need to seduce women four days from now?” She held up four fingers, as if she wasn’t sure she heard correctly.
Chances seemed horribly slim that she would accept the job at that point, but he had to try. “Yes, I need lessons on how to be a romancing, seducing machine—or at least learn ho
w to match my clothes—and I’ve chosen you as my man coach for this endeavor. To begin with, there will be only one woman, if that will make it easier.”
Reese shushed him, putting a finger over his mouth. “How do you know about my blog and the coaching?” she asked, voice low and sharp. He started to answer but she hushed him again.
Standing slowly, she scanned the room over the partitions and ducked down again for their tête-à-tête. “Now tell me how you know about my website. You realize how bad this looks for someone working here? The ultra-professional sheen on Orbis Tech would be tarnished if this got out. You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
“Of course not. I tracked the VPN address to the physical address from the provider for the website.”
“Oh.” Her pouty red lips held the O shape of her word, and she shook her head slowly at him. “What?”
“I was pretty sure when I saw the name that I recognized you from somewhere, but I went ahead and cross-checked with Google maps and then found your profile on LinkedIn.”
“How very stalkerish of you, Kenneth.” Her eyebrows knitted into a frown. “I don’t know what to say. My VPN address? What the hell.”
“Sure. The VPN. It’s not like I actually drove to your house and spied on you. That would be wrong.”
“Yeah. Wrong. So very, very wrong.”
“Listen, I have a date this Friday night, and I am desperate.” He put a hand over his heart, which would hopefully convey honesty and vulnerability in order to sway her to his side. “I need help. After spending last night sifting through personal coach ads and websites, I listed their areas of expertise and their positive and negative aspects on a spreadsheet to create graphs. After I poured through the data again, I determined you were my top choice. Being a real-life personal coach was listed as an up-and-coming service, I know. However, your lack of experience is far outweighed by your proximity, hopefully your availability, and the high quality of advice you give. And not just on sex positions and toys—not that I didn’t read those posts attentively. But my first goal is succeeding on a date. Just like you say: to win a woman’s heart, you have to be the fulfillment of her needs, and to do that you have to be the best version of yourself.”
“You made graphs to choose me?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Reese dropped her head in her hands. “But what the hell is a VPN address, and how do I make mine a secret?”
“Easy.”
“Hey, Reese, everything all right?” asked a woman as she leaned over the central partition, smacking gum in her mouth.
Reese popped upright with big smile on her face. “Just fine, Barb. No worries. I had someone come up to take a look at my computer. It’s on the fritz.”
“Oh my gosh. What’s wrong with it?” Barb left her cubicle to circle around to Reese’s computer.
Kenneth grabbed Reese’s keyboard and hit the all-powerful Ctrl-Alt-Delete before Barb butted in, and Reese’s accounting documents reappeared like magic. Taking control of her computer from downstairs while the regular help desk guy had his coffee break had been a walk in the park. Fixing it was even easier. Black Screen of Death, gone. Poof. Vanished.
Barb squeezed in the tight space with them, her ample form pressed on his back as she peered at the screen up close. “Looks good to me.” She adjusted her glasses a few times, studying it.
“It’s great. Kenneth laid his hands on my computer and cured it. That was amazing. I think I owe you a coffee.” Reese quirked a smooth eyebrow at him. “Don’t you?”
Body language. He could do this.
“Why, yes. Yes, indeed that would be lovely. Let’s go”—he hiked a thumb over his shoulder—“to this floor’s break room.”
“Would you bring me back a green tea, Reese, hon?” Barb said. “I’ve been detoxing for a week and it’s been miraculous.”
“Of course I will,” Reese replied, pointing at the exit behind Barb’s back. “You know I am all about wellness and taking care of the body. You’ll have to let me know how it’s working for you—but later.” She ushered him from her cubicle, led him around the maze, and down the hall.
The small, austere break room surprised him. He had expected the cushy comforts of the Tech Department’s lounge. This conversation would be easier with Star Wars posters, koosh balls, and a Rubik’s Cube to solve. Here there were a couple of tables, metal chairs, and a long counter where the coffee machine sat. A machine that had only two buttons. He would manage, though.
“So how much do you charge?” Kenneth asked, taking a step inside. “Is it per hour, per day, per week?”
“Shhhh!” she hissed, shutting the door of the break room. Hands on his chest, she pushed him to the wall and then covered his mouth. She was so short she had to stretch her arms up to silence him.
Kenneth bent his knees to help her out. Short girls were so adorable. He did not, in any way, notice her breasts pressed against his chest. And if he did notice it and how utterly amazing it felt, he did not, in any way, take any sort of pleasure from it.
His cock had a different view of the whole situation.
Kenneth grunted and tried to maneuver her off his chest without touching anything he shouldn’t touch according to the company policy.
The bulge in his pants was an uncomfortable reminder that he needed this date on Friday to be a resounding success. A shout it from the rooftops kind of success. A the next round is on me, everybody, success.
Amanda was classy, blonde, into cosplay, and had a Masters in geology. Score one for science. The stars had aligned when Kenneth swiped for her profile, and he planned on being the one. Or at least the one for one night. He’d start with one night and take it from there.
His body’s reaction to Reese’s soft body was purely physiological. Understandable, too. With her wavy black hair in a bob, smoky eyes, and dark lips which had the same silky smoothness as her blouse, she had a sultry, flapper-era allure. Any physical reaction on his part to her curves was solely appreciation of her natural attributes. That was all. Dating her was not in the equation, not even in his wildest dreams. He willed his erection to be reasonable. To behave.
She wouldn’t see him as anything but a geek from the development floor. That was his life. Fine. So long as she accepted the contract.
Reese growled at him in warning.
He froze. She must have noticed his erection.
“Don’t talk about me and my you know what,” she said, pointing a threatening finger.
“What?” he asked. Wait. That meant she hadn’t noticed his erection, which wasn’t calming down. It was…sexy being growled at. His brain backtracked to his last comment. “Your hourly rates?”
“Yes, and my after-hours activities. Just tell me about you.”
Kenneth leaned against the wall, arms crossed, and took a deep breath. It was strange to have to bare his soul to a woman in order to get help baring the rest of him to another. “I need your help. I suppose you could say I haven’t been the best at the ‘dating game.’ In fact, I royally suck. When I turned twenty-eight almost a year ago, I decided it was time. I would get—I would go on a date and maybe more with a woman within the year.”
“That’s great. A concrete, measurable goal. Where are you so far?”
“I signed up for four dating websites, analyzed the competition, and converted the compiled information on why some men are successful and others not into graphs. Then I created a database with all the potentially interesting women for me on a sliding scale and went on one date.”
“How long did that take you?”
“Two and a half hours.”
“Whoa. You did all that in two and half hours?”
“Oh, you mean the analyzing,” he said. The confusion in her expression cleared. “That took me eleven months. I went on my first date in five years a couple of weeks ago.”
Her expression was not reassuring. Not in the least. “And the date? How was it?”
“A failure. On all fronts. Would you
like to read the report I wrote?”
“Maybe later.” She stepped back, hand on her hip, and scrutinized him from toe to head. That non-reassuring expression was getting down-right scary.
“Is this”—she waved at him—“what you wore?”
“No, I had brown slacks and a different tie.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear, still studying him. “You want to know how to seduce women, correct? But I give advice on how to seduce women in order to have meaningful relationships. Is that what you want?”
“The more meaningful, the merrier. I’m all about meaning.” A relationship with a sexy woman who enjoyed spending her days and nights with him? Hell yes. “You’ll teach me, then? I hate to sound desperate, but I’ll get on my knees if necessary.”
The corner of her mouth tilted up but quickly squashed. Kenneth liked that. He wanted to make her smile again. He wanted to do other things even more, and he would definitely go down on his knees. But she was talking, so he had to pay attention.
“Describe the perfect woman,” Reese said.
“For starters, someone who has similar tastes and hobbies as me. Can spot the flaws in Breaking Bad, is into cosplay, can spend a weekend doing RPGs, wants to visit the CERN in Geneva, you know. The basics.”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but keep going. I can do some research later on RPG’s and AI.”
Kenneth scratched his jaw. What kind of person thought RPG’s had anything to do with AI? Reese was one of those non-tech, non-sci-fi people he had trouble understanding.
And yet, his cock stirred and pressed at his zipper every time she moved.
“Also, she has to be attractive and find me attractive, which is the tricky part,” Kenneth said. “That’s where you come in. My early analysis of successful men on the dating sites was clear. I needed to work out more. I’ve been lifting weights and jogging for ten months, and I thought it paid off. But…” He couldn’t describe out loud his date’s eyes glazing over during the dinner conversation or her twitching nose when he leaned in for a kiss.
Seduction in a Suit: An Office Romance Collection Page 32
