Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. She began wringing them together as a nervous alternative. She was sitting at the end of the bed closest to the door in the hotel room. She was waiting to meet him in their usual place, but this time it wasn't sex on her mind; it was ending this affair before it ended her sanity.
She curled her toes in and out of her heeled sandals, red polish that matched her red scarf tied at her throat flashed from her toes. She wore her simple short black skirt today and a simple low necked white blouse. She had come straight from work and an important meeting to be here. It was in this meeting that she had decided that these secret meetings must end.
He had been there today. His company was taking over her own. They had brought the two staffs together to discuss the changes. Taylor didn't hear any of them. She had been too busy watching him while pretending not to watch him from across the board room. When it had been his turn to speak, this task was more difficulty, and awkward. He had refused to stop staring at her the whole time that he was talking. More than one person noticed. The engagement ring on her left hand suddenly felt like a hot brand burning her skin. It might as well have been with the way he was staring at it. She never wore it in front of him.
He was too obvious. People were talking now, and it wouldn't take long with the merger until David knew. David was her fiancé and one of the partners at the firm. Thank God he was away on other business today. David. He was a good man, but there was some type of animalistic passion that seemed to overpower her when Jack was around.
Jack. Tall, dark, and staring dangerously at her in that board room. It made her realize how much her secret affair with him would hurt David. The minute she let herself meet his gaze in the meeting and he had stopped talking and smiled triumphantly, smugly, she knew that fate would fall fast if she didn't end it.
She wanted to take off her shoes, but feared the need for a fast escape. She should have just phoned, but that would have been the easy way out. She knew that there would be nothing easy about this. Nothing was easy about Jack. In her thoughts came the flashing images of the times they had shared in rooms before this one. There were things that Jack made her feel that no man had ever come close to doing. She had never known what true sexual passion could be until she had finally given in to his advances. What had followed was 3 months of late night meetings, weekly afternoons at out of the way hotels, and hours of guilt over moments of pleasure. She just couldn't do it anymore.
She suddenly stood up. The bed was not the place to be sitting with these thoughts. It would be too easy to give in once again. She opted for the chair by the window instead. In route to the chair, the door opened. Jack was there.
He still had on his suit. He had been at the office when she left and assumed he'd come directly after. She had been right.
His gray suit still looked as sleek and deadly on him as it had in the board room. He looked just as dangerous and smug in their private room as he had in the board room. He leaned against the wall beside the bathroom and stared at her the same way he had only a few hours earlier.
Under his stare, she felt like a trapped animal, panic setting in before anger. "What you did today was hateful," Taylor didn't recognize her own voice as she spoke to him. It shook and was meek, not anything like her normal proud, husky tone.
Jack was unphased, he continued to stare. "It was necessary," came his reply, the only sign of emotion from him was the slight tick in his right jaw. A jaunty pulse of flesh that at other times had made Taylor aroused instantly. This time it made her feel fear.
Fear; he could smell it on her and it seemed to arouse him. She sat in the chair, her arms clutching the small arms of the seat on either side. Her legs were pressed tight together, with her feet looking bowed inward as they were planted on the floor. Her perfectly round breasts that fit just right in his palms were moving up and down under that white blouse in her nervousness. Through the low neckline he could watch her cleavage rise and fall just below that red scarf that waved like a red flag. She still had on that damn ring.
She tilted her head up and straightened herself under his slowly smoldering stare. "People are talking about us."
He moved from the wall and began his way towards her. He loosened his tie as he went. "It was necessary."
