Tom's morning started out wonderfully. Slipping from bed before Dai, kissing her neck in the darkness, inhaling her scent, admiring the dim form of her young, supple body under the sheets, he'd made coffee, gotten in a quick run, and watched the sunrise from the garden. As soon as he checked his work schedule, though, he saw a long, blocked day of meetings and calls ahead of him. He sat down at his desk and started working, trying to at least get on top of it, but when he heard the dim sounds from the kitchen that meant Dai was out and about, he still had a day of meetings that couldn't be canceled. Or shouldn't at any rate. And his first one was starting already. He put his headset on, opened the camera, and managed to look not like he'd much rather be joining Dai in the kitchen.
"Carol, I think that it's pretty obvious the problem is upstream..." he launched into his first meeting, reminding himself he worked with people he liked and respected. But then he heard the sounds from the kitchen, the 'click' of the lighter, followed by 'tap tap' as Dai sucked down her first vibrant lungful of smoke. Half his soul got up out of the chair and joined her, but he managed to keep his body sitting down with an effort of will. He counted under his breath, and a few seconds later, the door to his study pushed open and he blanked his camera as Dai strolled in, in tiny white bra and maroon shorts that fit her like a bass beat. And bearing a bong, too. He muted his audio before she said, "Want me to sit on your lap and give you a hit, Daddy?" in an innocent-as-hell voice, her big brown eyes wide and free of any guile or duplicity--right.
He unmuted himself for a second, not breaking eye contact with Dai, and said, "No, Carol, I'm still here, and I still think that they don't even know what outcome variable they want to measure." He firmly shook his head "No," at Dai, and then, muting again, said, "I've got a wall of meetings today. Try to be good," before returning to the call. He saw her little grin in response, and so the games began. "Sure thing, Daddy," she responded, sprightly, and turned to walk out the door--but stopped, looking back at him to make sure he was checking out her ass instead of paying attention to the call. Then, leaving just the lemony funk of the weed, she was gone.
He sighed long and deep, and went back into the call. He anticipated the next move from Dai coming right away, and so when he finished that call and hung up and couldn't even hear anything from her, he felt stranded between disappointment and relief. He went into the next meeting with a clearer head. Ten minutes into it, he looked up and saw, out in the garden, Dai bringing out a kettlebell. Exercise. Totally legitimate. Nothing he could object to.
And of course, she took off her top, because it was only in the way. The meeting receded from Tom's attention at relativistic speed, and he lost the thread entirely as she stretched, incidentally running her hand over her perky, cuppable breasts. He literally had to close his eyes to return his concentration, and one of his colleagues asked, "Stub your toe, Tom?" He laughed it off, and joined in the conversation not because he really had that much to add but because he needed to keep his mind off of Dai's lovely body laid out for him in the garden. She started pulling, turning, lifting the kettlebell, and the sinuous grace, visible strength along her long, svelte arms, and sheer beauty of her body in motion hit him as hard as it had the very first time he saw it. What added to his heat now was that she knew exactly what effect she was having on him. How much the sight of her lunging up, her ass a foundation of strength for her as she reached upwards, made him feel that need in him to grab her, have her strength under him, her tight body submitting and--
He found himself passionately arguing for a change in a policy that nobody thought he cared about, just because he needed to vent some of this excess energy somewhere. Dai continued her exercise, and Tom managed to wrestle his libido down again. Though when Dai turned to look at him at the end of her first set of reps, cooly blowing a coil of her hair out of her face, he almost texted her to get into the room right now. His hand strayed to his phone. And then drew back.
The meeting ended before her exercise. He had a gap of time, and he could go out, interrupt her. He almost did, but the memory of that little smile, that perfectly, sweetly challenging-mocking bit of sass--that strengthened his resolve. He focused, wrote out some actually coherent and on-point emails. Dai moved on to deadlifting. She faced away from him, but at the start and end of every rep, she'd turn and look him down steadily, pouring that spicy honey of her gaze on him. Give a little nod. Smirk without moving her lips. Knowing the effect she was having on him, celebrating it.
She was upping the weights, too. If he was able to hold out on her, he saw, she'd take that energy back and put it in. She clapped another set of plates onto the bar, and attacked it. This time his eyes were on the plane of her back, the divine geometry of it, a trickle of sweat exploring the declivity of her spine, every worked muscle standing out as she smoothly, savagely pumped the heavy bar up and down on her shoulders. This was the highest she'd done in awhile; he'd have to cook her something celebratory later tonight. And god how did her ass look better the heavier the weight was.
Another meeting began as she continued. His hand sought out the old boxing grip-trainer he kept on his desk instead of a stress ball, and the next time she looked in at him after doing a ferocious set, after lifting an amount of weight few people would think a girl her size could handle, he dramatically held it up so she could see through the window, and squeezed it hard, making an exaggerated face of triumph. She cracked up, but his boss-for-the-time-being sharply asked, "Tom, what are you even doing?" to which Tom replied, "Just letting off a bit of stress, Ted."
She finished her set and disappeared from the yard, door to the house banging in a deeply insolent way. He finished the meeting with his boss. He needed more coffee, but now she was out there, like a sexy mine, waiting to go off in his face. But when he went out to the kitchen, he heard the shower running. So before he got his coffee, he headed in there. A hip-hop song he didn't recognize was playing, and she had the shower on hot enough to send up wraiths of steam shrouding her body, as if astral spirits were caressing her. She leaned her shoulder and thigh up against the fog-laden door to the shower as she noticed him enter.
"Poor Daddy, such a long day of meetings," she said, just audible over the hip-hop. "More to go," he said, "But no more video meetings, at least. My next ones are just phone calls."
"That's interesting, Daddy," she said, with a lilt, and he grinned, and stepped back out.
He went to his office, finished up more of the paperwork before getting on the first phone call. Standing, as he usually did for calls. Another one-on-one, with a colleague who liked to think out loud quite a bit, but a pleasant enough guy. Tom heard the click-click, bubble, tap tap from the kitchen. And then another--she was getting nicely blazed. His weed-needing cells told him wasn't it time to ditch this monkey suit and get into the green, but he slapped down that urge too. And he knew it wouldn't be long before she was in here, making trouble.
