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The takeover bid continues
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The memory lurked like a dark monster, dimly glimpsed in gloaming shadow. Had it even happened? At this distance, it was hard to countenance. His body knew it though.
He'd been brought around by the late morning sun slicing through his eyeballs, dredged up from a Mariana-Trench-deep sleep, drool moistening the cotton sheet pressed to his mouth. The hotel bed looked like he'd been wrestling a crocodile, and his body felt like it too, his head sore and fretful.
But his dick. His dick was hard, and not just morning glory hard, but begging-to-plunge-itself-into-anything-tight-and-moist hard. Chambermaid, room service, vacuum cleaner nozzle; each was as enticing as the next.
The flight home had been a torment: sexy air hostesses wiggling their tight bums and carefully concealed breasts at him, begging to be fucked, just begging for it, while his fellow passengers slept. He'd slipped it in from behind with each of them in turn, screwing them over the drinks trolley, sticking his face between their butt cheeks as they wiggled past, and been woken by the ding of the seat-belt sign, sweaty and stiff from his fevered half-dream.
In the weeks after, googling like a madman, he tried to make sense of what she'd done. She'd claimed she'd doped him with an aphrodisiac that would rewire his neural network. He'd scoffed, but the frenzied sex and its effect on him since had left him wondering. There was Vyleesi, the FDA-approved aphrodisiac PT-141, but a slightly heightened sexual desire this wasn't, unless it was her other-worldly skills that had done for him. There was more to what she'd drugged him with than that though, he was sure, and his brain was being warped. He read unverified stories of experiments the KGB had conducted with nerve agents dispensed by honeypots in the 1960s. There were rumours the programme had never been discontinued, but instead had grown in sophistication under the auspices of the FSB, with new technologies like gene editing. Either way, he suspected that, like a super-charged Viagra, whatever she'd given him had simply worked in symbiosis with her skills.
It didn't subside but grew and grew. Sex. Like a hormonal teenager, he smelled it everywhere. His wife got the worst of it, night in, night out. Rampant, rough, raging, he took it out on her. Sore and perplexed, she banished him from their bed. So he took it out instead on the young intern at the office, the sexy little thing that was desperate to get on. Job insecurity was a wonderful thing. It lined his pockets and it polished his dick. She didn't know what hit her. A smile here and an angry word there, and before she knew it she was taking it up the arse.
And the dreams. Drifting on a raft, becalmed on a flat, clear ocean, and the girl rising naked from it to drag him into the depths. Snuggling with her in a deep, deep bed of cloud. Her slowly fucking him as she removes his organs and places them in the bowl beside the autopsy table. The girl. Dragging it out of him with exquisite pain. His sperm. Sticky on his stomach and sheets.
He had to get a grip.
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Anna Brightman smiled at him as he strode into the board room. It gave him the creeps. He knew what she thought of him, and they weren't on smiling terms. He was on his own with her too, while they waited for the rest of the Board to join them. They'd have to make a pretence of civility for the next few minutes, but the air was rancid with their mutual loathing. Everything about her riled him: her buttoned-up, presbyterian clothes, her hair scraped back into a tight knot, the minimal makeup and sparse, carefully weighed words. That modest appearance and unassuming demeanour were just cover for preening self-regard and vain ambition. Apparently, she thought herself his equal - no, his better even. What a joke. He'd show her soon enough.
There was an awkward silence as they took their places at the long table, Nigel at the head. He could see her weighing up how far away she could sit without appearing intimidated. She sat closer than he'd like, shuffled the papers in front of her and looked up with an unreadable expression.
"Are you feeling better after your trip to Moscow? I hear you got more than you bargained for."
"What do you mean?" he replied, trying to affect a care-free tone to hide his sudden alarm. She couldn't know, surely?
"Brian told me about your food poisoning and the cancelled meeting. I heard the Osco Board rearranged though and were surprisingly receptive to your opening offer."
A wave of relief washed over him. "Yes. Although nothing surprising about it whatsoever. They know their robotics division needs Haverstone's AI to go anywhere, and, more importantly, they need me."
"I'm sure that's the clincher."
He knew, and he knew she knew he knew, that the comment was rank with sarcasm, but there wasn't a hint of it in her voice. He'd make her pay for that and every other smart-arse remark she'd ever made. He squeezed his hand into a tight fist beneath the table and imagined it slamming into her prissy face, crunching her delicate cheekbone and leaving her sprawled at his feet, sobbing.
At that moment, Brian appeared at the door. Good old, rock-solid Brian. He hesitated momentarily, straightened his Carlton Club tie, smoothed his pin-striped jacket lapels, stiffened and saluted.
"Captain!"
"At ease, Brian!" said Nigel, in that slightly indulgent tone he adopted with him, shoulders relaxing instantly at the arrival of his right-hand man. What he loved about him was how utterly dependable he was. Dependable and predictable. Predictable and dull. Exactly what he needed in his Chief Operating Officer. Brian took a seat and sat bolt upright as he neatly arranged the leather executive folder and glass of water in front of him, took out a printed agenda and began to read it out quietly to himself, point by point. No doubt Anna Brightman coveted the man's job as a stepping stone in her quest to depose Nigel, but Brian idolised him and had his back. They often had him and his wife over for dinner. She was like a 1950s throwback, a stay-at-home mum who baked cakes and held coffee mornings, and was as straight-laced as him. If if it weren't for their two children, it was hard to imagine he'd ever had sex in his entire life. Nigel supposed it was strictly missionary once a week.
"I'd like to open proceedings by congratulating our chairman on his successful Moscow trip," began Brian, once the Board had taken their places.
"Thank you, Brian." Nigel surveyed his gathered acolytes imperiously. "It's been a tricky proposal to negotiate, I have to say, but my personal visit to Osco headquarters clearly impressed them. I know some had their doubts about the wisdom of the bid and my ability to pull it off," he said with a slight chuckle and a pause to focus everyone's thoughts on who that was, "but I'm confident it will be hugely beneficial for both companies, and its successful conclusion reaffirm that our current leadership structure is the key to continued success." He scanned the table again, expectantly, and noticed Brightman looking disconcerted and struggling to form her words. The perfect moment to put her on the spot. "Anna, you were about to comment?"
