Berkley furniture was a manufacturer of fine hand made wood furniture and Alec Conyers was one of those who did the making. He was fifty years old, tall, and strong with big hands that looked clumsy but were in fact very delicate and skilled with wood. His specialty was work on hand carving table and chair legs and much of that work began with placing a long square piece of exotic wood on the lathe to be turned down to the approximate roundness and thickness of the leg Alec was working on. With the length of wood turning at high speed on the lathe Alec would use his chisels and gouges to shape the pleasing curves and smooth sweeps of the leg, then he would remove the leg and finish the hand work details on it-- carve the claws at the foot or the leaf patterns that ran up it or the gargoyle faces at the top where it connected with the table.
One of the things that Alec loved about his work was that the raw wood had the most delicious aromas as it was worked. The smoke from the chisel held against the turning wood in the lathe was sweet, and the saw dust and chips from the carving held an intoxicating and sensual aroma that could almost make Alec's head spin like opium fumes. He was so addicted to that aroma that he would even take his coffee breaks sitting beside his lathe to smell the wonderful mixture of strong rich coffee as it mixed with the sweet resinous aroma of worked wood.
There was another reason Alec took his coffee breaks at his lathe.
At the Berkley furniture company the plant was down stairs and the offices were on the floor above. There were two ways to reach the offices. There was a steel mesh stairway inside the plant which lead up to an office door, but that stairway was always covered with saw dust so those people who worked in the office and wore nice suits and dresses seldom entered by that stairway. Instead they entered via a steel mesh stairway which ran up the outside of the building. That stairway made a diagonal crossing of the large window situated right behind Alec Conyer's lathe, and it just so happened that his morning coffee break fell just at the time when the secretaries, three of them, were reporting for work. Each day Alec would sit behind his lathe, beneath his window enclouded in the resinous aroma of worked wood and strong coffee and he would look up as the secretaries climbed the steel mesh stair case to the office. Each day he would see flashes and glimpses of smooth legs, shiny stockings, and white and pink and red and black lace panties, and he would sigh at the loveliness of those velvet thighs and imagine himself kneeling between them. Imagine the feel of them against his rough but skillfully delicate hands. Imagine the silky touch of them against his cheeks. Imagine the salty sweet taste of that flesh on his lips and tongue.
The secretaries either did not know or did not care that Alec was there beneath the staircase for they never moved to the other side or held their dresses tight against their legs when they climbed the stairs, but neither did they take even a momentary pause as they went up, only climbed up to their work showing Alec only flickers of themselves as they passed. And life went on like that for years until Betty came to work for Berkley furniture.
Betty Parsons was not a young girl. She was 43 but she kept herself well and dressed nicely. She did not wear much make up, mostly just a little around her eyes to bring out the color of them. There was an unconscious magnetism to her. When Betty walked into a room, men's eyes turned toward her even though there were other, younger women at hand.
Alec felt that magnetism from the first day he set eyes on Betty. She walked up the stairs alone on her first day and Alec glimpsed her long shapely legs from his place behind the lathe. They gathered all his attention, making him forget where he was. Until then he had always been discreet, only looking for the short length of time the secretaries were in his view as he sat, but with this woman he felt he had to see more. He stood and put his face against the window to look longer at Betty. She walked up the stairs with deliberate steps and as she lifted her knee to take the next step Alec could see a tantalizing flash up her bright yellow skirt that kindled a fire in his middle, Fingers of that fire reached down into his loins, causing his manhood to swell, and up into his throat causing his mouth to go dry. This Betty was so beautiful! Her legs were long and slim and she wore high reach stockings rather than panty hose. Alec could see the darker tops and just above those tops the white flesh of her legs, and all beneath the skirt was tinted with the sunny yellow aura of light filtered through the yellow cloth the skirt of which it was made. Alec let his eyes caress those thighs all the way to the top -- to the triangle of lace that swelled as it covered Betty's treasure.
At the top of the stairs Betty turned a little to look back and down and her eyes met Alec's for a second. Alec was both electrified and petrified by those eyes. Having his eyes locked to them sent a shock down him that exploded behind his testicles. His mouth went dry and his knees went weak. It was as though Betty were looking into his guts and seeing all the blood in him flowing toward his engorging manhood.
And then she smiled a smile all full of rich promising sweetness that was gone in an instant and she went into the office.
For several days after that first day Alec did his best to be waiting behind his lathe when Betty came in each day and when she came out for lunch and on many of those days Betty was as accommodating as she had been that first day. She wore beautiful cloths that allowed Alec to study her body as though he was studying an artist's model. Her underclothing, which she always made sure Alec had a chance to study, was always frilly, lacy, and heart-breakingly feminine. It made Alec want to rush out onto the stairs and bury his face between those cream white thighs and worship that barely hidden treasure with a thousand kisses. But at the same time he was afraid that if he made some move to actually meet Betty it would destroy the fantasy they had built for themselves, so he contented himself with worshipping her through the window.
One day Alec was working on a piece of oak which would become the curved and clawed leg of a table. The piece turned in his lathe and he applied his rough chisel to begin the shaping process. The chips and sawdust flew from the spinning piece of wood and the aroma of cut oak rolled up to encloud him.
"I love the smell of worked wood," a deep female voice said.
