Lovers Without Realizing It

What follows is based on a true story – the events described here really happened to two people that I know and love dearly, and who gave their permission for their story to be recorded. Their identities have been changed to protect their privacy.

This work is given freely to any who might enjoy it, though it should be credited properly to its author – that's only fair. If you shouldn't be reading adult material, don't read this. Otherwise, please enjoy.

***

I groaned softly as I settled back at my desk, reaching down surreptitiously to massage one of my calves.

"Too many trips to the copier again, Jessica?" My boss asked me sympathetically on her way by with her third cup of coffee.

I heaved a deep sigh, starting to respond, but she was already back through her office door, letting it swing mostly closed as she settled in, sipping her coffee. I shook my head and shifted my massage to my sore feet. It certainly wasn't my fault they installed the copier on the far side of the floor – and it wasn't Diane's fault that she needed things copied a hundred times a day.

I'd been Diane's assistant for not quite a year, on my fifth attempt at finding a steady job in the field. My first boss had been a kindly older man, but his second heart attack had forced his retirement, and there'd been no other job open for me that wouldn't have required more sucking up than I was willing to do. My second boss had tried to convince me that assistants always worked until 3 a.m. Don't get me wrong – I don't mind long hours. I don't have a life for them to interfere with anyway. Still, if I wanted to work eighteen hour days seven days a week, I could have gone to law school – and then I wouldn't be holding down assistant jobs for crap pay and no benefits. The third and fourth jobs...well, the less said about those, the better.

Then I had come to Elsin and Associates, a tiny law firm that consisted of Diane Elsin and her partner, the elderly man whose practice she had taken over. He was near retirement, but apparently didn't like his wife all that much – so a young, ambitious lawyer who could take over his practice while not making him work too hard fit him like a glove.

Diane also had two paralegals who worked for her, but I rarely saw them much. They worked on another floor of the office building where the law firm had its offices, and we shared them with two other such firms, so I basically only knew them as names on interoffice mail envelopes.

Diane Elsin had made a reputation for herself as a trial lawyer in her late twenties and early thirties – now forty years old, she practiced mostly as a trial consultant to larger firms. She still cut quite an imposing figure on the rare occasions she actually went to a trial, though – tall, fit, blonde, long legs, cold blue eyes – she was the very image of a ruthless, bloodsucking lawyer.

I thought she was actually a pretty nice woman, myself – quiet and private about herself, but always composed, with a ready smile. She was also one of the few lawyers I'd met that didn't treat their assistants like slaves – she wasn't one of those fruity saccharine types either. When she asked you to call her Diane, it wasn't patronizing. When she asked you to get coffee for her, it was because she couldn't get it herself at the moment, being stuck on a conference call or coming in a bit late and needing to rush straight to a meeting.

Of course, by this point in my career with her, I'd barely gotten up the courage to call her anything at all. I'm what you'd call the shy type. Very petite from head to toe, short red hair, big green eyes, still far too many freckles across my nose for a girl of twenty-eight, and a body that I worked hard on but seemed capable of attracting attention only from married men a quarter-century older than me. The fact that I hadn't been on a date with a boy since middle school didn't help with that at all. I couldn't even take advantage of it, for crying out loud – I've known I was gay since I was sixteen, when I realized that my masturbatory fantasies hadn't involved a boy in quite some time and weren't likely to any time soon. It hadn't taken very many dates with women to seal things more or less in stone for me. I was lucky, though – I came out in college, my friends were supportive, my mom seemed relieved that I had finally figured it out, and my dad's reaction consisted of one piece of advice: "Just remember, honey, a woman can be just as much of a prick as any man." Thanks, Dad – not bad advice, though.

Diane, on the other hand, was divorced, though I knew little about her life in that respect. I'd heard something about a law professor, but she'd been divorced for years, and certainly didn't talk about her love life with me. She was one of those people who you'd finish telling your life story to and then realize she hasn't said a thing about herself.

So far, my time working for her had consisted entirely of variations on the exchange I just mentioned, though – basic pleasantries, small talk, and the like. We'd had a couple of very pleasant conversations over coffee and bagels, and she took me out to dinner a few times with the rest of the firm to celebrate a particularly big account, so I hesitantly considered us friends – or at least friendly co-workers.

"Jessica?"

I looked up immediately when she called my name, and got up – wincing again at the ache in my feet and ankles – to see what Diane wanted.

She looked up, her Bluetooth phone at her ear and her desk covered with paper. "Jess," she said, muting her phone again, "I can't find those contract copies they sent over last week."

I nodded. "They're filed, I'll get them." I stepped to the corner of her office where her master files were kept, quickly rifling through a couple of drawers. This wasn't unusual – Diane was a very good lawyer, but she preferred to do everything electronically – by email or scan. Paper documents just got in her way, and she had no patience for them. So I kept the files myself, so that she didn't have to worry about keeping track of documents she hated dealing with anyway.

It's funny, looking back – we'd never actually discussed that, but I'd just sort of done it that way without thinking, and she'd never questioned it. In hindsight, that probably should have told me something.

I pulled the file she was looking for, slipping it onto the desk.

"Yes," Diane was saying into the phone, "I've got them right here." She gave me a grateful look. "Yes, you were saying – about the land agreements?" She glanced up at me, and I nodded, flipping the file open and paging to the document she needed. Another thing I did without ever having been asked.

I stayed there for the rest of the call, flipping to this page or that as I tried to follow half a conversation – I'd gotten pretty good at it. Finally, Diane disconnected the call and rolled her eyes.

"Idiot," she muttered. She shook her head, looking at the large crystal clock on her desk. "I've got a meeting in just a few minutes – make sure I'm not disturbed, okay?"

"No problem," I assured her, re-closing the file and returning it to its drawer, slipping out of the office and closing the door behind me.

This was also common. A few times a week, clients – or prospective clients – would come by. Diane's practice depended on these meetings – basically, they were sales pitches. Thus, especially after a call like the one she'd just finished, talking to some annoying mouthpiece somewhere, she'd take a few minutes to relax and get herself together before the meeting, so that she could go in and blow their socks off with the Elsin legal machine. In other words, to make herself look so frighteningly competent and ruthless that the clients just wouldn't be able to imagine winning without her – and more importantly, unable to imagine losing with her.

Believe me, it worked – I'd sat in on a few of these meetings. I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few of her clients didn't hire her just to make absolutely sure their opponents couldn't.

I went back to my desk, sinking gratefully back down into my chair – a large, comfortable, swiveling and tilting thing. Diane spared no expense on the office furniture, something I appreciated greatly after years of being the assistant in the "ergonomic" chair that made me feel like I was ninety years old when I went home at the end of the day.

These quiet times that Diane spent before meetings were private – I'd always stop calls going to her phone, and make anyone who showed up to see her wait. Her office had no windows, not even in the door, and she never talked about it, so I never knew what she did to compose herself for a meeting.

No doubt, had I thought about it, I might have guessed. One of my friends from college became a surgeon – according to him, it's much more common than most people think. Diane did the same thing that any number of surgeons, pilots, athletes, performers, and other high-stress professionals do to relax when they really need to be steady and relaxed – she got herself off. The surge of endorphins and other positive mood-affecting things that orgasm creates are more effective for calm and focus than just about any manmade drug could ever be – and cheaper, too.

So, this particular day is the day that the inevitable finally happened. A faulty latch on her office door, of all things, changed my life. I heard a slight click, and saw her door inch open, as happens with latches that don't quite fit right anymore. My desk sits just outside her door in our little corner of the floor, so I saw it immediately. Without thinking, I got up to close the door again, and, quite by accident – I swear – glanced in through the two-inch-wide crack of open doorway.

My composed, oh-so-private boss had her chair swiveled sideways and leaned back, one of her long legs up on the desk, and her hand under her skirt. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed, and her lips slightly parted. If it hadn't been for the visible movement of her hand between her legs – and the death grip her other hand had on the arm of her chair – I might have thought she was asleep.

Now, before anyone judges me prematurely, I did exactly what any good assistant would do. I set a world record for the slowest, quietest closing of a door in the history of mankind, and crept back to my desk, where I sat perfectly still, waiting to see if I woke up. If it hadn't been for my eyes being open wide enough to actually roll out of my head if I'd so much as sneezed, no one walking by would think anything odd had just happened.

Two minutes later, Diane left her office and went to the meeting – head to toe a calm, confident lawyer. Fortunately for me, she didn't look at me as she went – I hadn't managed to get my eyes back to their normal size yet. After a lot of thought, I realized nothing was changed. She obviously hadn't seen me, and nobody else had to know. I could pretend it hadn't happened. All right, so I was naïve.

Days when Diane had meetings took on a whole different perspective for me. She'd close her door for her private time a little before that day's meeting, and I'd suddenly find myself totally incapable of concentrating on anything. I carefully kept from thinking about what she was doing – if I thought about it, I pictured it, and that certainly didn't help.

For the most part, it wasn't even that I was aroused by the whole idea – mostly, I was confused. I'd certainly never felt any particular attraction for Diane. I thought she was gorgeous, of course, but given her history of being straight and her general private attitude – and her being my boss – I'd never looked at her through that particular lens. Slowly, over the weeks that followed, I found ways to excuse thinking about it. I mean, like any single girl, I needed my relaxation too, and since I hadn't had a relationship in a couple of years I can certainly be forgiven if my mind happened to fix on the only sex-related thing to happen to me in a while. If what I saw happened to pop into my head when I was taking care of myself – usually near the end – that's only natural, since my brain had to be seeking any clear image to focus on. This made perfect sense to me, and I resolved not to feel badly about it.

I realized I was in trouble about two months after my accidental spying, when I realized that I had been sitting at my desk, waiting for Diane to come out for a meeting, and had been contemplating ways I might tamper with the door handle to get it to pop open again. I stared at it, willing the door to slip open, and give me just one more glimpse. I told myself that I just needed to see it once more, and that would satisfy the curiosity that had been raging in me.

Finally, after Diane had left for a meeting one day, I went into her office to file some things, and caught sight of something light-colored under her desk. Of course, thinking like the idiot I was that there were some papers that had slipped off the desk, I knelt down to get them – and found myself holding a pair of lacy white panties. Even that might not have been enough to doom me – but then a fragrance caught my nose. A fragrance I had not experienced in far, far too long. I could smell Diane on those panties, and that sensory addition to the image in my head sent a quiver through my breast – and parts beyond – that I hadn't felt in a long, long, time.

The panties were halfway into my pocket before I realized that Diane would probably look for them later. I replaced them under the desk, slunk back out to my own desk, and wondered how long it would take to get the delicious, softly musky-sweet smell of her out of my nose. That night, I found some of the strongest, spiciest food I could at a takeout place and breathed so deep I half-wondered if I were trying to actually scour my sinuses completely down to the bone. After that, I tried to erase the whole thing from my mind – and might have been able to, if not for our upstairs neighbors.

One day, Diane had a meeting scheduled with a huge client – a major downtown firm, the sort that could be a cash cow for our little firm for years, if we made the right first impression and nailed the first job they gave us. Diane had been stressing the meeting for two weeks – she'd been as short-tempered as I'd ever seen her. Her emails to the paralegals got more and more demanding and frustrated, and she wasn't talking to anyone. To top it all off, on the day of the meeting where we expected to be hired – or not – the offices above ours were remodeling their offices. Saws, drills, hammers – you name it.

I was sitting at my desk. The meeting was in five minutes. Diane hadn't come out of her office, and I was worried. I hadn't put two and two together, or anything – don't worry, nowhere in this story is anyone going to accuse me of being terribly perceptive – but I thought that maybe she had fallen asleep...afterwards. That's happened to me several times, so I know how easy it is to drift off after a well-needed orgasm.

I'll never know what I hoped, subconsciously, might be going on, but before I could think, I was up, and knocked lightly on her office door. There was no answer.

I knocked again, slightly harder – still no answer.

So, yes, thinking that I could explain it away if I caught her asleep with her hand up her skirt – or die of embarrassment, whichever – I opened the door.

Diane wasn't asleep. Fortunately for me, she had her eyes closed, and she wasn't listening for the door to open. She was leaned back in her chair, her leg on the desk like before, her hand working furiously. Her head was back, her eyes closed – but her expression wasn't the dreamy look of a woman who has just had an orgasm, or even the straining look of a woman who's very close to one. It was the frustrated, desperate look of a woman who simply cannot quite get there.

I stared at her, thoughts I'll never remember racing through my head – and then the power saw on the floor above screamed again, and she actually groaned in frustration, shaking her head. I realized the problem immediately, having been there many times myself, and my mind slammed into one of those walls that we are all sometimes presented with in our lives.

I had two choices, and just two. If I did the ethical, professional thing and left her alone, I kept my job safe – but we risked losing a huge account, the kind of blow to a reputation from which lawyers sometimes don't recover. Nobody wants to hire the consultant that the big boys didn't think was good enough. If Diane went into that meeting stressed, tired, angry – and now sexually frustrated – and tried to impress a dozen or so veteran male lawyers...

One choice was good for me. One might be good for her. Again, it was probably one of those hints that I chose the one that was good for her and potentially disastrous for me, but...oh well. My brain, I fully admit, was turned off. Diane was the best boss I had ever had, and I dared to think of her as a friend. I had to help her – and I only knew one way to do that.

I walked into her office, closed the door very softly, walked around her desk – and before she even knew I was there, I knelt down, carefully not touching her, leaned in, and just ran my tongue over and between her desperately moving fingers.

I have no doubt that, had she not been as close as she was, as desperate as she was, or as frustrated as she was, I would have either been kicked in the face, fired, arrested, sued, or all of the above. However, Diane was way too close for that. Her fingers, like the rest of her, froze at the first touch of my tongue, in shock – but I didn't waste any time. The flat of my tongue pushed her fingers aside, stroked over her clit, and started to flutter – that was all it took. What her fingers could not accomplish, thanks to stress and a power saw, my warm, wet, soft tongue, combined with surprise, managed beautifully.

Her frozen shock turned directly into rigidity, and her body locked up tight. I felt her spasm, heard a deep gasp, and then my mouth was flooded with the sweet, tangy taste of her. Her breathing stopped for a good fifteen seconds as the spasms continued, and then she went limp with a sigh of suddenly released breath.

I licked her gently through her orgasm, and stopped when she relaxed. I leaned back on my knees, glancing up at her face – I'll never know how I had the courage to do that.

Her head was still back, but her eyes were wide open, staring straight up at the ceiling. Her lips were parted, her breathing still shaky. She slowly raised her head to look at me, and those cold blue eyes were wide with shock, her face still flushed from her orgasm.

I couldn't bear to meet that gaze, so I licked my lips clean, stood up – without touching her – and walked out of her office, opening the door and closing it behind me as though nothing at all had happened.

I knew two things for sure at that point – I would need a new job, and I would never forget what she tasted like.

Two minutes later, exactly the time at which the meeting was scheduled to start, Diane opened her door and walked past me without a glance, striding off to the meeting.

I figured I now had until the meeting ended to pack up my things and run for my life, but I couldn't make myself move. Belatedly, I thought about the pussy that I had just licked, my mind whirling to process the sensory data, since I had not gotten a clear look, as absurd as that seemed. Soft, downy blonde hair, trimmed pleasantly close. Velvety soft, warm skin. That sweetly tangy scent that I knew would haunt my dreams. A taste that made me want nothing more in the world than one more lick.

I sat there dumbly, reliving the experience over and over in my head, wishing I had an office with a door, for a long time, unable to move or think clearly. My thoughts waffled constantly between shock at what I had just done, fear of my career ending, and an arousal that had me throbbing and squirming in my chair.