The Van Den Berg Sanction

The Van Den Berg Sanction marks the debut of what will ideally be an international corporate espionage erotic thriller series. Trent Shimada, an American agent of Japanese and Filipino descent, takes the lead as an elite, hybrid detective-consultant action hero deployed on industrial spy cases that pose a global threat.

Berlin. August 3. 1:47PM.

"Your coat, Herr Shimada."

An instinctual, irrepressible, ever so slight lick of her lips accompanied the lingering glide of the executive secretary's hands over Trent Shimada's coat shoulders. Through the fabric, he perceived the soft yet unmistakably deliberate tracing of her fingertips over the steely contours of his triceps. In the midst of this bustling lunchtime bistro, filled with bland-suited management types talking financial bourses over bratwurst, the secretary took an extra moment to indulge in the simple, sensational delight of helping a man put his jacket back on.

Not just any jacket: a sleek charcoal trench-blazer, athletically cut to drape a lean and streamlined Adonis frame. And not just any man: a charismatically enigmatic, devilishly handsome Asian consultant from America. She had been helpless to extricate her every fiber of fascination from him for the past two hours.

"Danke, Fraulein."

The impeccably enunciated thank-you issued politely from Shimada's lips as he adjusted his coat sleeves and gracefully spun back around to face the executive secretary. His voice, refined with consciously reserved masculinity and controlled with intellectual precision, subtly overflowed with the rarest vintage of concealed confidence and profound humanity. He smiled shyly yet slyly all at once, as if he were both oblivious and telepathic to the all-consuming attraction which had been swelling deep within her for the past two hours.

It had been swelling deep within her from the very instant her piercing blue eyes had locked upon a pair of ultra-masculine almond eyes a hundred times more piercing, two hours ago outside the bistro entrance. As he continued graciously, devilishly smiling his gratitude for the assistance she had rendered throughout the meeting, he briefly held her once again with the very same laser gaze that had transfixed her soul in that immortal moment when he first introduced himself.

Fiercely fighting every animalistic impulse coursing through her comely and craving frame, she simply brushed back her raven locks and girlishly stood by as Shimada bade a round of farewells to the executives. Every single cerebrally articulate syllable from the lips of this Japanese-Filipino phenom, who alternated between German and Italian in his goodbye exchanges, was an aural treasure which engorged her wanting earlobes. And those lips. So edible. So laced with masculine vitality. She feared that even an accidental kiss would paralyze her.

Even the mere act of him shaking hands with her employers, in these banally upscale culinary settings, was a visually delicious little spectacle to voyeuristically cherish. A silent giggle curled one corner of her lips and she looked down to hide her joy, like a schoolgirl with embarrassing secret thoughts about a boy. Her particular joy this moment was Shimada's stylishly mussed jet-black mane, which belied his impossible wisdom for his thirty-seven years, and made him look even younger than her own twenty-six years.

Power players, dealmakers, other consultants, and investment bankers streamed hourly through her headquarters office at Krueger-Altieri, the largest corporate conglomerate in the European Union. Many were articulate too. Many were handsome too. Many of them made advances on her. It mattered not from this moment forth. This executive secretary was utterly and permanently enslaved to anything and everything Trent Shimada, the only articulate and handsome man who now existed in her universe.

And this time, she wanted to be the one making the advance. But could she, and if she could, how would she make the advance?

Her gaze then happened upon a platter of sausage and sour cream on a nearby serving tray. Her mind raced wildly and she nearly gasped out loud as she felt herself instantaneously moisten. A flash of tongue unconsciously flitted across her lips once again. She indulged in one last extra moment, this time a moment of sinful imaginings, envisioning an entirely different steel-hard piece of Shimada's physique far south of his triceps.

Today's two hour business meeting, she sensed, would fuel endlessly long nights of a very different and desperate business: self-gratification in the unbearably uncertain days ahead. The days would be unbearable if she had to interact with him and he showed no hint of interest beyond business. The days would be uncertain because she didn't know how much or how often she would see him. Shimada would now be consulting for her bosses, which guaranteed he would be around...but would it lead to ecstatic consummation, or to tormented unrequite?

Not since her jetsetting days on the catwalk had she found herself desirous and inspired in her career. Now, today, she was not merely inspired, but ignited. Now, today, she was gluttonously desirous...for more of whatever else would bring more of Trent Shimada into her life.

Prior to now there had been no dearth of worthy companions in her life, or competing for entry into her life. But in one instant, in the course of one business gathering in one bistro, and owing to one man, all those other men had suddenly been rendered permanently unworthy. Sheet-writhing nights entangled with just her own hands and thoughts of Shimada in her mind would outdo the most intimate embraces of any of these formerly worthy men, multiple times over.

Shimada cast her a parting glance which was both innocuously charming and wickedly knowing. It acutely slew her that he might know. And she knew instantly that his beautiful parting countenance was the very face she would forever see, forever be enchanted and haunted by, whenever and however she brought herself to sensual catharsis on desperate solo nights.

The incipient moisture had transformed into a languid trickle down her thigh. She abruptly excused herself to the ladies room, clawing frantically at her collar and unbuttoning for air as she hurriedly stumbled along the way. Minutes later, a startled patron entering the ladies room would ask her if everything was alright, for she thought she had heard a muffled scream.

Delicate beads of brow sweat. Guiltily flushed cheeks. Skirt waist resting disheveled at mid-thigh level. Three fingers glistening with the sensuously stringy mixture of hotly panted saliva and wanton womanly juices.

Yes, everything was indeed quite alright.