“Hi, papi,” she says timidly. It would have been hilarious, actually, considering the type of woman she carries herself as during office hours. His heart skips a beat, instantly taking him back to junior high school and his first real date behind his parents’ backs.
“Hey,” he replies, struggling to contain his composure. “I’m on the way, Ronnie. I should be there in—”
“Mark…what are we doing? Are you okay with this? At this point, there’s really no need to…listen to me. I’m babbling like a schoolgirl on her first date,” she jokes.
“Hey, that’s funny, ’cause I swear I was just thinking the same thing about myself,” Marcus replies.
That awkward moment of silence bridges the gap between small talk and the nitty-gritty. This time, it’s Marcus who steps up. He admits to himself right here. The two of them had danced around this for months now, both secretly hoping and lusting for things to take a turn toward that forbidden place. That time was here. That time was now. Marcus takes in a deep breath. His shaking hands steady, his throbbing heart slows ever so slightly. He focuses on the road sign ahead: DAVISON FWY—not too far now.
“Veronica, I’ve gotta be honest with you and I expect you to be honest with me. I’ve wanted this for quite some time now. I’ve been telling myself that it’s the wrong thing for me to do, for all the right reasons, and still I lie down each night clinging to whatever words were spoken between us during the course of the day. I think about the smell of your perfume as you walk by me—it lingers in the air long after you’ve left the room. I see the look in your eyes staring at me that way, when no one’s around. And I have to admit, the day you brushed by me in the conference room as we moved past Mr. Jenkins—”
Veronica chimed in, “I know, Mark. I probably shouldn’t have touched you, but…it was one of those moments, you know? I didn’t realize what I was doing until it happened. Guess that’s really when I admitted to myself how much I liked you.”
“That was probably the defining moment for me, too. I didn’t want to admit it. Call it lust or whatever you wanna call it. That was it for me,” Marcus said.
Veronica sighs. She speaks in that sexy voice that Marcus has come to hear in his sleep.
“Well, that makes me feel better about going out and spending money on…you’ll see, Mr. Jackson. I want you to know that this isn’t the norm for me, Marcus. This is somewhat special for me. This isn’t something that I regularly do. Me being your boss and all, the whole situation is damn near the perfect drama. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t forcing you into a situation that you really weren’t prepared for. Do you know what we’re doing?”
Marcus shakes his head as he answers her question. “We are two grown people who know exactly what we’re doing. So of course it doesn’t make any sense, boss. But it feels right, so what else can we do about it? Call it an act of nature.”
“What about—” Veronica starts.
“I don’t want to think about her right now. She has nothing to do with us. Can you handle that?” he says.
His confidence is building. She seems vulnerable now. There is another long pause. Marcus watches the road; he barrels up I-75 at ninety miles per hour, passing the I-696 interchange. His adrenaline is high. What is she wearing at this moment? How long would it take to undress her? How much time would they have? What is Mia thinking right now?
“No!” he yells out, shaking the last thought.
“Are you alright, Mark? What’s going on?” Veronica asks.
“Nothing. Everything is as it should be. I should be there shortly. Do I need to pick up anything?” Marcus asks.
“Just yourself, hon. Just yourself. I’ll leave the back doo
r open for you. Hurry,” she closes in that sultry, sensuous voice.
Marcus’s member throbs so hard, it begins to ache. “My God, I’m gonna do this,” he pronounces. Outside, the rain continues to punish the pavement around the Mustang as it veers off the eastbound Big Beaver ramp.
Moments later, Marcus makes a right turn onto Athena Drive, and there it is, just the way she’d described it, two houses up the block, on the left. He slowly pulls into the driveway, parking alongside the cream-colored luxury sedan he’d seen pull into the executive lot hundreds of times before. Marcus switches off the windshield wipers, turns off the headlights, and kills the ignition. The sound of the Mustang’s rumbling engine is replaced by the steady pelting of the rainfall against the soft-cover roof of the black convertible. The rain, though intense, is soothing. Marcus concentrates on his breathing. His soul is alive with both fear and anticipation.
The calm before the storm. As he sits here listening to the rain beat against the car, he carefully looks over Veronica’s abode. The redbrick home seems to call out to him, inviting him to start the walk up the pathway leading from the driveway to the back entrance. He can see faint glimmers of light flickering throughout windows of the house.
“Candles. She’s ready for me. This isn’t just some fling,” he whispers.
He looks at his ring finger.
“Soon, Mia. Soon, but not tonight. Tonight’s not about you. God help me, tonight is about me,” he whispers.
Opening the door of the Mustang, he darts up the brick path, toward the rear entrance of the house, looking like a cat burglar making his way toward his next score. Somewhere inside, she’s waiting to be taken.
The back door is open, just as Veronica said it would be. Marcus slips into the house, then gently closes the door behind him while shaking the rain from his soaked suede jacket. Spying the coat hooks just off the wall-mounted doorstop, he slides the dripping jacket onto one of them. This is when he catches a whiff of that sweet, warm tinged fragrance. His member, already hard, stiffens up a notch more to the point of painful throbbing. He stares at the jacket, somehow afraid to look in the direction of the flickering light beyond the kitchen. His heart is beating a mile a minute within his chest. The click of heels against the tiled kitchen floor forces his breathing to momentarily stop. The smell of her perfume is stronger than ever. Marcus clears his throat, and settles himself down.
“I’m here, Ronnie. Just getting settled in. Your home is nice.” Marcus digs deep, reaching for whatever small talk he can muster.
“It reminds me of—”
“Hon, did you really come here to gibber with me, or to screw me?”