The rock group
Giant
has a song that begins: "Sometimes love feels like an empty room." During a Christmas party a few years ago, I shared a place in time with a man, a friend, who took a step outside of his empty room and left me standing in the dark with his lingering feeling of loneliness.
It was my second Christmas party with this client, but it would be my last. The project on which I was working would end at the New Year, and my times of living out of a hotel room for two nights a week would be over.
The party was (as it always is) an elegant, coat-and-tie affair that served lobster bisque and roast duck, presented by waiters from under a shiny, silver dome. Everyone from the mailroom clerks to the $3 million-a-year CEO attended, and all of the 200 or so ladies, draped in their most extravagant party dresses, came away with a hoity-toity keepsake.
I wore a black, sequined cocktail dress with a plunging open back and long sleeves. It fits me with an obsessed tailor's precision and sparkles like moonlight off the undulating ocean. My legs were adorned in a swirl of black lace hosiery and tall, black pumps. When I took off my coat at the coat check, several men wanted me to notice their eyes coveting what they saw. It's what I wanted, isn't it? And yet I pretended not to notice. How silly we humans are.
Wes is a country boy who went to college and left behind the one-streetlight town in which he was born. Tall and big-boned with thick, dark hair, he is never without a smile, especially on those Saturday mornings when he would make a brief stop at the office carrying his five-year-old son, Cody, on his shoulders. He would stop by my desk, with his smile coming from across the room like the rising sun. "Good morning," he would say, his smiling words wrapping around me and giving me a big hug.
But there
are
things that will wipe that public smile off his face. I know those things. I've gently indulged my pleasure and watched that smile melt into closed eyes and an incredulous, open mouth gasping in reflex. We had fun in my hotel room. We had fun in an empty office in the company building. And one time, we had fun in a storage closet off a hallway with the office in full bustle. He stood, leaning forward and looking down with his hands up high grasping the shelving supports. I knelt. Luckily, no one needed printer paper.
But Wes and I were about more than just sex. We had spent much of the Spring sitting on a sunlit retaining wall, him eating his bagged lunches and me balancing a fast-food salad. The light-jacket Spring became Summer, and his bagged lunches became a meal in a cooler for two, with lunch meats, fresh greens, iced tea, and checkered napkins.
At the Christmas party, after the sumptuous meal had been served and the dance floor was crowded with well-dressed professionals and their significant others, Wes and I stood in a hallway near the busy foyer, away from the loud music, where we cheerfully talked. All the while, Wes' eyes ran their hands over my body, from my propped breasts right down to the tall heels of my pumps. I let him have his fill, enjoying his flattering attention, while I idly chatted about springtime plans. "We're thinking about Jamaica, but I told..."
He interrupted. "You're killing me, you know that?" I could not contain the smile that pulled across my face. "You look fantastic. You are absolutely killing me."
Before I could comment, two women passed by on their way to the rest rooms, one of whom I worked with. "I'm coming to see you on Monday," she said as she walked by. "I need your help."
"I'll be there," I responded, and as I briefly looked away, Wes curiously pulled a curtain aside next to us that revealed an empty room. It was a bar area with sinks and built-in coolers that was unused for this event, and it was randomly stuffed with folding tables and stacks of chairs. It was separated from the Christmas party by a pull-out partition wall, except for the five feet next to us, which was covered by a shear brown curtain.
He looked into the dark space, and then his eyes measured me. I gave him a blank face that so obviously challenged his next move. Wes took hold of my hand as he casually looked around. When he saw that no one would notice, he quickly pulled me behind the curtain. He led me to the back corner where chairs were stacked next to the bar, and he pulled me up against him. "You look good enough to eat," he said softly.
"Did you not get enough dinner?'
"I didn't get the dessert I wanted."
I looked up at him with demure eyes. "Well, you need to have your dessert."
Wes looked at a stack of chairs next to us. "Sit up here," he whispered while patting the seat, and with his hands around my waist he helped me hop onto the stack. I pulled off my pumps for fear one might noisily fall, and he took that as a signal and immediately reached up under my dress to remove my underwear. His zealous clawing was slightly comical, but once his arms were buried elbow deep under my dress he abruptly stopped, because instead of underwear, all he felt was smooth, naked skin.
I felt his hands, puzzled and uncertain, feel their way around. He felt the tops of my thigh-highs, and then his hands gradually ventured up and found the teeny-tiny strap that crossed around my waist from the lacy, little patch I called panties. Comprehension eased across his face and his eyes, provoked and excited, came up to meet mine.
Time stopped. He had discovered my sexy, little secret, and more than that, we both realized that he had the dominating position of standing between my open legs, his belly even with my passionate treasure. He pushed my dress up higher, and his eyes slowly meandered down to observe my vulnerable, little mound clothed in nothing more than a sheer, veiled whisper of virgin white. At first his eyes popped like bubbles at the naughty, contrasting white, and then they drank in the scene with gusto and wiped their stubbly mouths with their sleeves. I watched him stare at it, exposed and presented like a succulent gift, and then his gaze returned to mine, holding my eyes with a provocative gloat that poured liquid heat into my faltering chest.
He slipped an index finger under the breath of white lacy patch, pulled it aside, and began to lightly stroke my delicate, womanly folds with the back of his fingers. I let out a long faltering breath and closed my eyes. Pleasure, delicious strokes of pleasure were nestling within me.
"You're leaving us soon," he said, my eyes still closed as I soaked in the good feelings. All I could do was to nod. "I don't want you to leave. Ever."
I swallowed. "Everything's done," I swallowed again, "we're just cleaning up..."