Velvet Kisses

  * * *

  “Knock knock,” a sweet voice emits from the door. It’s been a half hour since HR sent up the warning. I was beginning to think she got lost on the way. She. I automatically assumed it was a woman. I’m pretty disappointed in myself for that. But, nonetheless, I’m right.

  “Come in.” I stand to greet her.

  “I would have been here sooner, but I ran into—”

  I give a hard blink in the event the apparition that’s been haunting my daydreams has somehow manifested in front of me.

  “Marley?”

  “Wyatt?” Her eyes spring open wide.

  Another beat of confusion ticks by before I circle around my desk and motion her to the seat before me.

  “Um?” She points to the door before shutting it. “So this is your office?” Her hair is glossy, smooth as silk today—much paler in hue than I remember. Her eyes are dusted blue, the same color of the sky just before a storm.

  “This is it.” For now. “So are you temping?”

  “No, actually yes—my friend Laney, her husband got me the job.”

  “Ryder.” My jaw tightens. Something in me doesn’t want Ryder or Bryson or any of the other testicle-wielding idiots that work around here to lay a single eye on her—even if they are married. Not that Ryder or Bryson are idiots, but for some reason I’ve elevated Marley to something private—a character I dreamed up in my mind all for myself. I like the idea of that on a perverse level. “Please, take a seat.” I lean against the desk wondering what to do with this.

  “Look”—she hesitates—“I really need a job.” She shakes her head, her eyes suddenly glassy and pleading. “You see, I’m not exactly living it up over at the dorm. There’s an unlawful amount of ramen going on over there if you know what I mean, and every now and again a girl likes to sink her teeth into something meaty.” She swallows hard as her gaze rides up and down my body.

  A dark laugh rumbles from me. “My ego appreciates the fact you haven’t lost your appetite for the meatier things in life.”

  “Yeah, well, the offer still stands.” She gives a weak smile, sinking deep into the seat. “My article could certainly use a—”

  “Guinea pig?”

  She averts her eyes as if the concept were deplorable. “Subject. A willing subject.”

  “What’s the news with the boyfriend?” I head to the mini fridge and pluck out a water for the both of us.

  “Ex-boyfriend. Due to the spectacular amount of foreign assets he’s familiarized himself with, his offer has since been revoked.”

  “His loss, those velvet cuffs held an unordinary amount of promise.”

  Marley loosens with a laugh. “That they did.” She gives a less-than-innocent shrug. A dimple cuts in just shy of her lips, and I’d like nothing more than to sink my tongue into it. “And they still can.”

  “Marley.” I scoot into my desk, trying to hide the blooming ache in my pants. This might be the reaction Monica was hoping to elicit, but it’s Marley who’s getting the rise out of me. “I’m essentially your boss now.” Things have taken a turn for the worst. Not only was I feeling older than dirt around her, but the fact she’s my doe-eyed secretary doesn’t exactly spell out match made in heaven. More like a match made in human resources litigation hell once I’m slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit. And don’t for a minute think it’s not coming. “Our relationship is now relegated to the work environment. It begins and ends right here in this office.” I lay it down thick in my heavy authoritative voice, and her cheeks brighten like peppers.

  “I’m okay with keeping things behind these four walls if you are.” She straightens while putting on a pair of dark rimmed glasses as if she were ready to make a business proposition. “I’m not looking for roses and chocolate. I’m looking for a man, someone strong, hot as hell like you, who’s willing to test out a few theories with me, that’s all.”

  I close my eyes a moment, and she’s still there beneath my lids as if she’s taken up residency.

  “You deserve roses and chocolate, Marley.” I pause a moment because, judging from her own words, that’s not something she believes in.

  She shakes her head disbelieving. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  “I read your articles.” Her face bleaches just a touch as I say it. “You should fall in love, and, when you do, that right person will gift you all of those amazing adventures. Sex shouldn’t be some bucket list you create, checking off items as you execute them. It’s not a treasure hunt. It’s a lifestyle. One I hope you can achieve, and, when you do, cherish it because it’s a little like a needle in a haystack.”

  “Impossible to find?” Her voice floats through the air, soft as powdered sugar. “I’ve seen romantic love up close and personal. It’s ugly. It leaves tear stains on your pillow, makes you guzzle its brand of bullshit like gasoline, then lights a match and watches as you burn. No thanks. I’m not asking for seconds.” Her lashes blink so fast I can feel the breeze. “What about you? You a roses and chocolate kind of guy? How many relationships have you had in the last two years?”

  She’s got me there. “Zero.” I force a smile. “And it’s a nice round number I’m happy with.” I think. “So how was school?” I ask, shuffling through the mail piled up on my desk.

  How was school? Can I sound anymore like I’m trying to be her daddy? I’d laugh if it were even a hair funny.

  “School is school. First day always throws me off a bit. I started a business venture with Baya—she’s Annie’s sister-in-law. It’s a class project. We need to start a business and walk through the entire process by semester’s end—ideally with a profit.”

  “Just a few months. That’s an ambitious undertaking. What kind of business?” She’s smart. I like that.

  “Thrift store couture.”

  Maybe not as bright as I thought.

  “Say again?” Old pappy here couldn’t possibly have heard right. “Did you say thrift store?”

  “I know it sounds amazingly ironic, but trust me, it’s what all the cool kids are doing.” She gives a little wink. “Actually it’s what all the cool kids are buying. Baya and I are sort of the first to market with the idea. It’s a niche but definitely one that shouldn’t be overlooked. I’ll be sewing the garments myself, and I’m positive I’ll be able to push them out the door just as fast as I can make them.”

  “Whoa. There goes any growth potential. And just when I saw real promise.”

  “What are you talking about? There’s plenty of growth potential.”

  “Not if you’re sewing each piece yourself. There are only so many hours in the day, and there’s only one of you. Let’s say you’re able to make six pieces in one day—” I click on my accountant-grade calculator better left in the twentieth century, but I like the way it whistles and purrs, something about this sound that technology can’t seem to replicate.

  “Two at the most,” she interjects. “I can maybe make three, but that’s with little sleep, and, for sure, I’d have to skip my breakfast ramen.”

  I glance up. Marley is fit, thin, and, according to her, bordering on malnutritioned. Beautiful as hell, though.

  “If you can only provide two then your business won’t thrive for long. Did you account for burnout?”

  She bites down on those perfect crimson lips, and it’s hard to judge from here if she’s wearing lipstick or not. Marley is simply that perfect. Ruby lips, eyes like an iron sky, and those thighs still haven’t left my mind since the other night. My mouth waters just thinking about them.

  “If you take Saturday and Sunday off, you’re looking at ten pieces on a good week.” I connect my fingers at the tips trying to keep my eyes from drifting to her cleavage. “I’d say at best you’re buying yourself a nice, mid-salary job.”

  “Boy you really know how to take a girl’s dreams and hack them to pieces. Would you like to drive a stake through my beating heart while you’re at it?” Her lips twist. “My mother has high blood pressure and the onset
of diabetes, would you like to give me a readout on the equally bleak future of my health?”

  Shit. Did I just do that?

  “I apologize.” My phone vibrates and jumps on the table before I can elaborate exactly how bad I feel for taking a giant crap all over her dreams. If I didn’t think I was an ass before, it’s pretty clear, now.

  It’s a text from Blake.

  Hey sweetheart. Could you pick up dinner? I put in an order at The Spaghetti Hut. Two large pizzas. One is all yours for the trouble. My treat.

  His treat. I shake my head a moment.

  I glance back up at Marley, her face stained with red blotches as if she were ready to cry or throw sharp objects at me. A castration might be on the table.

  “You’re in luck, Marley. I just might have a business plan that quadruples your income potential. I promise if you hear me out, you might end up with a lucrative business that puts your classmates to shame.”

  “Considering Will is one of my classmates, I’m all ears.”

  “Great.” I stand and lock up my briefcase. “I’ll share every last detail over dinner.”

  * * *

  I follow Marley to Whitney Briggs where she drops her car off, and we pick up the pizzas on the way to the carriage house. We keep the conversation light, with me avoiding the pitfall of burning all her dreams to ashes and her avoiding the topic of climbing on my dick for investigative purposes.

  “So you’re really going to turn my business venture into a money maker, huh?” She asks as she sashays to the door.

  “You’ve got the brains. I’ve got the money.”

  “What’s that suppose to mean?” She gives a sly grin as she rings the doorbell. The wanting in her eyes lights up the evening like flares. Marley is nonstop seducing me, beckoning me to be so much more than someone she makes coffee for.

  “It means, I’m interested in investing.”

  “Really?” She gives an enthusiastic hop and nearly flips the pizzas right out of my hands.

  “Really.”

  The door swings open, and my brother looks slightly rumpled. Annie comes up from behind looking a little worn out herself, and I’m not sure if the baby has them ragged or if they’ve done it to themselves the old fashioned way.

  We make our way in and start on dinner. About part way through, the baby bleats like a lamb, and Annie is quick to comfort him. Baby Ben is named after his father, Benjamin, the brother I lost last summer. Blake stepped up when the birth mother announced she didn’t want anything to do with the kid. I’m proud as hell of my little bro. Blake has always had balls of steel. What he doesn’t know is that if he didn’t do it, I would have.

  I give a careful examination of the little boy who was almost mine.

  “Don’t be greedy.” Marley flicks her fingers in anticipation at Annie, and the baby changes hands.

  Something in me loosens. My stomach relaxes. That tense knot in my shoulders gives a little when I see her with that infant in her arms. Marley deserves all the happy endings life can afford to give her. She’s smart—also a smart ass—but that’s just a little detail. She’s gorgeous as a fox—young and too fucking beautiful if that’s even possible. I withhold the urge to apologize to her for the internal expletive. Nevertheless, she’s—my mind fights me on the last little bit of information that certifies her from ever being mine. Too young, too fit, too beautiful—when the hell did I get so picky? How many laws would I be breaking by seeing someone like Marley? That’s right, none. I hack through my pizza before knocking back an ice-cold beer as Annie and Marley head to the bedroom to change the baby.

  “So what’s the deal?” Blake takes my beer from me and sets it down on the table.

  “What’s the deal with what?”

  “She wanted to fuck you the other night.”

  I smack him in the gut. “What the hell are you shouting for?”

  “Annie says you shut the girl down,” he whispers, annoyed as hell with me. And, in reflection, I should be annoyed as hell with me, too.

  “She’s nice.” I pick up my beer in defiance and salute him. “She’s not my type.”

  “You don’t have a type.”

  “That may be true, but she’s—” I shake my head in the general direction of the bedroom. I can feel the shift happening, and once it does I don’t want to be responsible for feelings or broken hearts. “Look, I saw the pain Mom went through. I saw the agony in her face over both your father and mine. It’s too much pressure. Love is something you don’t dick around with.”

  “She wasn’t asking you to love her.” He raises his brows as he plucks another slice from the box. “Not in the way you’re thinking. Newsflash, big bro, just because she’s ten years your junior, doesn’t mean she’s made of glass. She just wanted to mess around. Since when is that so hard for you of all people to understand?” He takes a bite, watching me all the while. “Why don’t you do her a solid? She’ll trot off content to have gotten her way, and you’ll usher in a new era of pre-menopausal pussy.”

  The girls file into the room before I can properly sucker punch him.

  We finish up, and Annie and Blake both retire to the sofa like an old married couple. I pause at the door a moment just looking at their heads knit together as they enjoy a brief moment of solitude. They’re in love. Annie and Blake are proof that the unicorn indeed exists. If my mother were here, she would flood the room with tears.

  Marley and I drive back to Whitney Briggs in a contented silence.

  “So are you going to get that business plan together?” she asks, as she opens the door to the car.

  “Yeah, I am. Why don’t you do the same?”

  Marley cocks her ear toward me as if she misunderstood. “My plan?”

  Her shirt hangs low in the front. She’s all but offered the girls to me on a platter, but my eyes still manage to stay trained on hers. Marley’s plan to herd me toward the bedroom is working spectacularly. If she’s demanding to be tied to the bedpost, who the hell am I to stop her? I should be penning a thank you—tattooing her name across my chest for the privilege.

  “Yes, your plan.” I gently touch my finger across her lips, and her eyes close involuntarily. “Draw up an inventory of what you’ll need for that research of yours.”

  “My research?” Her beautiful features soften. Her lips fall open, and I memorize her like this. “It requires a willing participant—no inhibitions—a good back and lots of stamina.”

  “I have all of the above and then some.”

  Marley leans in, her cleavage dips as if to say hello. Her eyes light up the dark interior of the car like sirens.

  “Are you telling me you’re in?”

  “I’m in.”

  Words I hope I won’t live to regret.

  Something tells me I won’t.

  At least not in the immediate future.

  Good Vibrations

  Marley

  “So? Did he fall for it?”

  “Of course, he fell for it. He’s a red-blooded American male with a boner the size of the Washington monument. He’s designed by nature to fall for it.”

  I wasn’t being totally dishonest when I asked for a little assistance with my article. Wyatt just doesn’t realize it’s for a much larger piece I’m working on tentatively titled “Sex and the Modern Woman: What’s Love Got to do With It?” If I’m lucky I’ll sell my coitus opine to the New York Post and have a real journalism badge under my belt. Scratch that. I’ll sell it as a memoir and make millions.

  “You’re not going to hurt him are you?” Annie looks nervous as if I’ve proposed to skin him alive and wear him as a winter coat.

  “Only if he asks real nice.” I make a face. “Blake himself said he was practically a gigolo.”

  “Did not!”

  “Okay, I believe the verbiage Blake used was man-whore. Same difference. I’m using Wyatt for sex. He gets pleasure. I get pleasure and perhaps the start of a very provocative thesis. It’s a trade as old as time. The only point I want t
o prove is that it’s high time women turn the tables on men and make something lucrative come out of their fornicating adventures.”

  “Now who’s the gigolo?”

  “Point taken.”

  “Why not just fill him in on the rest?” Annie is literally pale at the thought of Wyatt laying it all out on the line literally.

  “Please. We’re talking about a man who would have gladly used me for his own promiscuous purposes night one had I not squandered that opportunity spectacularly by way of my mouth.” I take a breath and consider Annie’s point. “Besides, the thought of me spotlighting his bedroom moves in a lasting memoir might make him skittish. He thinks my article is silly. Trust me, I’ve done nothing but amuse him at the thought of us engaging in sexual research. He even asked me to come up with a naughty checklist so we can cross things off with a fat, red pen as we blow through the condoms. It’s panning out to be as clinical as can be.”

  It’s safe to say Will wrecked both my head and my heart. There’s no way I would have even remotely considered penning a sexual memoir as a way to prove the point that you can lead a very productive life without a man to pin your happiness on. It was only after weeks of greedily inhaling Netflix marathons of Gilmore Girls did I even begin to get a kernel of hope, and, by hope, I mean revenge.

  What better way to turn my weak, broken heart into a solid sheet of iron than to remove the element that is lauded as a god to be worshiped—horrifically fictitious in nature—love. Love is a fickle, slippery serpent that coils around its victim when they’re least aware and slowly suffocates them by the token fantasy that all it promised ever really existed. Love is a big, fat, fake, and I intend to blow its cover—ironically between the covers.

  “So what do you make of Blake and me?” Annie sits on her bed with a self-righteous repose as if she’s ready to knife my plan to shreds before I get a single blowjob out of the deal.

  “You and Blake are a fairytale—the unattainable gold standard in the land of gilded hearts and all that other stupid cupid crap. Sorry—no offense.” Annie has quickly become my bestie, and I’d hate for my acid tongue to ruin our blossoming friendship.