Our annual North America company conference was in Saint Louis, with one night's pre-planned function at the City Museum. For those who are unfamiliar with it, it is not your typical museum. Constructed largely from scrap materials, it houses slides (including one HUGE one), games and bars.
I traveled with my long-time coworker, Karen. We'd known each other for close to fifteen years at this point, having done a fair bit of traveling for work both separately and together. Karen was in her mid-forties, only a few months older than myself. Great, shapely figure and shoulder-length, dark brown hair to match the deep pools of brown in her eyes which sometimes reflected little tints of bronze or gold.
We met at the local airport near our respective home towns and flew out together, getting the pre-arranged shuttle from the airport to our downtown hotel. We always preferred to be allocated rooms next door to one another, but on this occasion, Karen received a room in the "new building" across the street, while mine was a ridiculous number of floors up in the starting-to-get-seedy main building. In such a situation, I would walk Karen to her room at night and also go over to accompany her in the mornings. She always appreciated this and I often thought there must be some backstory to this preference, but never actually asked her about it.
At the end of the first full day, we had a formal dinner with all our business unit colleagues in one of the convention center dining rooms. Mediocre food which the company likely paid far too much for, not to mention utterly appalling wine. A dull evening, on the whole, after which Karen and I went out to one of the local bars for a couple drinks, where she seemed perfectly happy to hang with me, rather than join any of the larger groups we knew. Around ten-thirty or so, we called it a night and walked back to the hotel, where I escorted Karen to her room in the annex and briefly stepped inside for a nice goodnight hug (we prefer to do it INSIDE in case anyone else sees and starts unjustified rumors - we'd both had our share of those, over the years).
Next day was another long day of talks and meetings, followed by 'a fun evening at the City Museum', where chartered buses took us a handful of blocks to the City Museum, where we turned out to be some of the first to arrive and therefore the first to hit one of the upstairs bars! Suspecting some of our colleagues may want to do shots later, we selected vodka with cranberry juice as the drink for the evening. An additional vodka shot would not even be noticed on top of a half dozen or so earlier vodka and fruit drinks!
We walked around the various floors of the building, checking out the amusements and refilling our drinks every half hour or so. Karen was eager to try the massive slide (I don't car for heights so much), so I held her purse at the bottom while she proceeded up the spiral staircase. Knowing I had a strong appreciation for her bottom, she even offered to walk up the stairs directly in front of me, in an attempt to encourage me to try the slide. But no - not even that was alluring enough to overcome my irrational fears.
By the time Karen came back down the slide, we were both sweating profusely. I know - women generally don't sweat, they perspire. Well, let me tell you, Karen was sweating. So was I, as the six-story "room" was unbearably hot on that summer's night. I returned her purse to her and she made use of the (relative) quiet of that area to make a brief phone call to a family member, before we left to go downstairs to grab a refreshing ice cream.
On the way down the wide staircase, Karen stopped suddenly and asked me to check her butt. I was in disbelief at what she had just asked me to do, before she explained she wanted to know if the slide had left any marks on her jeans. Well, I certainly took my time, carefully looking over a very nicely-filled pair of jeans from the rear. I could see no faults - all was perfect in my eyes. I'm still not sure if she was serious about it, or just teasing me.
We obtained our ice cream bars, then retreated to a quieter, cooler area to sit and consume them, before (reluctantly on my part) seeking out our larger group of colleagues at one of the upstairs piano bars. There was a raucous crowd there and sure enough, I was invited to partake in a couple shots, while Karen was asked to dance (and declined).
We spent probably an hour and a half or so with the group, having to yell until hoarse to be heard. Not exactly my idea of fun, but I couldn't convince Karen we could just leave really early - people would notice and talk.
At one point, she was standing with her back to the bar when another woman, carrying one too many beers in plastic cups, managed to lose her footing and tripped slightly, spraying Karen's lower legs with about half the beer. Karen was so not amused, while the tipsy lady just blew it off and returned for a replacement beer.
Closing time rolled around and we were shepherded downstairs and outside to the waiting charter buses. Karen sat by the window (she's usually more of an aisle person) and made as if to tell me something, then thought twice about it and indicated she'd tell me back in her room. Fine by me, as I was always happy to maximize my time alone with her!
Back at the hotel, I walked her up to her room in the annex and once more, she thanked me for doing so (she does this EVERY time) and reminded me I had no idea how much she appreciated this. Once the door clicked behind us, we moved into the sitting area of her suite, where we both wished we had something more to drink there (we didn't) and I asked her what she'd been considering telling me on the bus.
At this point, she hummed and hawed a bit, not really saying very much of import. I was a bit puzzled by this, so I prompted her: perhaps she wanted to take off her beer-sodden jeans and let them start drying out for the trip home next day? Alas, no - she had apparently decided they were just fine and were already drying nicely on her. Hey, a man can dream, right?
With nothing other than small talk remaining and another long day next day, we stood to say goodnight. While I would have been perfectly happy with a goodnight hug on the love seat, sometimes that can be a bit awkward with respect to hand placement. Not that Karen would likely have minded too much, as she seemed to be a pleasantly-buzzed, but slightly pensive, mood.
I had also consumed just enough to lose some of my normal inhibitions. I had been relatively well-behaved on previous trips with Karen, always wanting her to know there was somebody there for her she could rely on, somebody to look out for her if she drank too much, was not feeling well, etc. As I stepped up to Karen to give her a goodnight hug, all that went out the window. As I approached her, our faces moving to the left of one another's in a well-coordinated fashion (we'd had enough practice over the years), I let myself be overpowered by her scent. The dried sweat on her neck and around her right ear was incredibly rich in pheromones, sending my senses into overdrive and my inhibitions even lower.
I wanted this woman. I wanted to bathe in her incredible aroma. I wanted Karen more than I had ever wanted any woman before or since. But a tiny part of brain (the logical, sensible part) reminded me this was my friend and I could be ruining a great thing here, so try to walk a line which may allow for a graceful rejection without loss of face for either of us, especially her.
My mouth parched, I turned my face toward Karen's neck and very carefully placed a single, dry, closed-lip kiss on her collarbone. Doing all I could to take my time, being alert for any reaction from her, I withdrew slightly and repeated the kissing motion, about a third of the way to her ear. I felt Karen breathe in, deeply. No other response, but she was not backing away. Deer-in-the-headlight syndrome? Possibly. One more kiss, this time right below her ear as I again inhaled deeply of her musk. Only too aware of my own pulsing erection, I whispered slowly in her ear "What does it take to get you aroused?" and stepped back a pace to wait for her reaction.
I looked her straight in the face, noticing her slightly dilated pupils and flared nostrils. Did she feel it, too, the arousal? She tilted her head a little to my left and reached out with her left arm, over my shoulder and hooked her hand around the lower rear of my skull, pulling my upper body slowly but firmly in her direction. Our mouths met, corner to corner.
In all our years together, our lips had never met. Sure, we'd kissed one another on the cheek or the neck from time to time, but this was different. So different. I felt an almost-electric spark race through my body, starting at where our lips touched, zinging around my head and down to my throbbing cock. I don't recall the last time I had felt so alive, on fire.
Unsure where this tentative lip-contact was leading, I let Karen take control, moving at her pace. I would follow her example and go along with whatever she did. She parted her lips ever so slightly, so I did the same, my mouth still pressed against hers. She turned her head to an angle better suited for minimal nose-clashing, so I augmented the angle a little further as our lips mashed together, mouths now perpendicular to one another's. I waited, not breathing, for her next move.
Karen's lips parted more, her mouth opening to allow my tongue to explore her teeth, her gums, her own tongue. Our tongues dueled, intertwining and trying to trap one another's under or above our own. Her tongue was so much more prehensile than my own - she won nearly every battle and I was so happy to let her win. The joy coursing through me at that time was something I could never have imagined feeling with such intensity. I was truly giddy and felt as if I were floating, weightless, unencumbered by such trivialities as gravity or my body being denser than air.
We broke the kiss.
