Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
“You live in the shed behind your parent’s house?” the girl asked.
“Well not live…well, actually…” I shrugged as we made our way through the backyard in the dark. “I’m saving up my money and working to build my company, so the shed sort of serves as an economical way to have a private office.”
“Very ambitious,” she said, glancing around the interior with amusement.
The room was a mess of papers, food wrappers, and a disheveled futon, but most of the time it served as home.
A flashlight stood up on the ground as a makeshift lamp, giving the whole space a soft golden light.
“Now,” she said, walking up to me slowly. “Where were we again?”
I smiled as I caught her against the wall and slid my hand around her waist. “As if I could forget,” I whispered, and she moaned as my mouth found her neck.
I kissed her as we moved our hands across each other’s bodies in a maddening frenzy.
I needed more of her, all of her, and I felt her breathing hitch as I suddenly began to stroke her from underneath the hem of her skirt.
“Johnathan,” she pleaded. “The bed…please.”
We tumbled onto the futon without even bothering to move aside the papers spread across it.
I groaned in anticipation as I felt her hands undo my zipper, and I tossed her discarded skirt off of the bed.
Suddenly we were both naked, and the curves of her body were illuminated by the lamplight, all shades of golden shadows like a long-forgotten painting.
I moved on top of her and kissed her, almost in reverence, and tangled my hands wildly through the dark strands of brown hair that were splayed out on the pillow.
Soon I was inside her, we were moving together, and she was letting out gorgeous sighs that echoed off the walls.
I buried my head in her neck, immersed in her and the pleasure, when I suddenly looked down at her and she met my eyes…
I didn’t register who the woman really was until that moment—she had been a diaphanous fog of legs and moans and skin when I stared directly into her eyes and—
“Samantha?”
“Look, I know jetlag is a thing and all, but sleeping in two hours? Come on, man.”
I awoke with a shock to see Gabriel standing over me looking incredibly pissed…and incredibly confused. Hell, I was incredibly confused.
“How the hell did you get in?” I asked, suddenly conscious of the fact that I was sweating bullets and had a massive case of morning wood going on underneath my sheets.
Gabriel gave me his classic teacher look again. “You didn’t lock the doors, genius,” he laughed. “You’re a rich dude, and the right burglar could have made a killing last night.”
“Yeah,” I said, still processing the images running through my mind, and then I noticed Gabriel was staring at me with genuine concern.
“You alright?” Gabriel asked, setting down his coffee. “You have a nightmare or something?”
“Um.”
“Something hot?”
I felt myself blush for the first time in ages, and ran my hand over my morning stubble. “Something sort of in the middle.”
Gabriel cackled. “Kinky.”
I looked at the clock. I really had slept in two hours and figured I must have forgotten to set my alarm in the haze of last night’s jetlag.
“You got ten minutes, and then we’re heading back to the office,” Gabriel said, and I groaned.
He shut the door to my bedroom and went to go wait in the kitchen while I dug through my closet for a clean shirt.
I rested my head against the wall for a minute.
Of all the people I could have had a sex dream about, Samantha was an odd choice.
You’d think after Amy’s rather brazen behavior yesterday that she would have been more likely to make a surprise appearance, but Samantha?
The same Samantha who was hell-bent on making the acquisition of her company as difficult as possible?
I shivered as the last moments of the dream circled back through my mind—this dream was no vague morning recollection, but one saturated with color and detail, and one that was insistent on staying put firmly in my memory.
But seriously, I thought, putting on my tie… what the hell?
I looked at my slightly disheveled appearance in the mirror and decided it would have to do.
Gabriel looked visibly annoyed as we got into the car, and I made a mental note to treat him to dinner to make up for the fact that he had to come and wake me up for work…again. Maybe that Korean place Samantha was talking about…
Samantha. She would be at the office today, fully armed and ready to fight. Christ.
An uncomfortable silence had settled into Gabriel’s Jaguar as we sped down the highway. He adjusted his glasses and attempted some small talk. “So,” he sighed. “There might be a blizzard coming in a couple weeks. Insane, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, and continued to stare out at the trees absentmindedly.
“Okay, as your best friend, I really have to ask, Johnathan, sorry, but—”
“The dream?”
Gabriel smiled. “Ohhh this is gonna be good.”
I bashfully sunk into my seat. “Well,” I said. “It was a sex dream.”
“Mm-hmm,” Gabriel said, raising his eyebrows and urging me to continue. “And?”
“Well, back when the Torver Group was starting out, remember how I basically lived in that shed behind my parent’s place? And that’s where I would bring girls to…” I sighed. “So, in the dream, I was living back there, and I brought a girl back, and—”
“Get to the point, Torver.”
“It was Samantha Doyle.”
Gabriel’s face morphed into a bizarre combination of joy and shock as he suddenly slapped both his hands down on the steering wheel.
“No,” he said cackling. “Nah man, that is too good! Samantha Doyle! You didn’t!
” He was laughing so hard that I was getting concerned about him still being able to operate the car.
“Oh my god, you had sex with Samantha Doyle. Damn!”
He kept laughing.
“Let me remind you,” I told Gabriel. “That this was completely the work of my subconscious mind and that I had absolutely nothing to do with it, okay?”
Gabriel grinned. “So, was it good?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Aw please, even in dream sex you can tell how good it is.”
I looked away from Gabriel and shrugged. “It was actually…it was actually pretty good. Really good.” I admitted, and judging by the look on Gabriel’s face you would have sworn he’d just won the lottery.
“I knew there was chemistry between you two.”
I scoffed. “We only just got past hating each other, Gabriel, I don’t think so.”
Gabriel only smiled and shook his head. “The science of chemistry is made up of all kinds of reactions, and maybe some of them don’t start out perfect, but they get there.” He smiled. “Maybe you and Samantha are an element all your own.”
“I’m about five seconds away from punching you in the face, you cheesy bastard.”
Gabriel just cracked up even more as we drove into the parking lot. “And as you can see, I don’t really care.”
I swallowed hard as we took the elevator up to the office.
Today was a big negotiations day with Wordsworth, which meant I would have to spend an endless day shut in the conference room with Samantha.
Of all days. Gabriel simply stared up at the screen flashing the numbers of the floors we were ascending with a massive grin on his face.
I rested my head in my hand and sighed, already counting down the hours until I could go back home. “Why do I get the terrible feeling you’re going to enjoy this way too much?”
Gabriel laughed. “I’m already enjoying this.”
I walked into the office to find Sabryna already setting up the pastries and coffee in the conference room.
“Only glazed doughnuts this time,” she said, and I cringed as she winked at me.
“When are the Wordsworth people getting here?”
Sabryna smiled as she arranged the coffee cups. “Any minute now.”
I sighed and took my place at the head of the table.
An article I had read about meditation in the workplace last week came to mind, so I decided to take some deep breaths for a few minutes and try to clear my mind before anyone else showed up.
I had to focus. I had to clear my mind completely of last night, and that stupid, ridiculous dream.
These negotiations were no joke, and I couldn’t let some stupid, dirty fantasy I’d had about the CEO of the company we were in the process of acquiring get in the way of that.
I wasn’t that kind of guy. Work and romance were strictly separate areas, I reminded myself, shutting my eyes and inhaling as slowly as I could…
and they would need to stay that way. Breathe, Johnathan… just relax and breathe.
“Asleep already?”
I practically jumped as I opened my eyes to the sight of Samantha Doyle standing next to me. I could feel myself blushing deeply as she pulled out the chair next to me to take a seat. “Are you okay, Johnathan? You look a bit…” she bit her lip and repressed a smile. “…frazzled.”
“I just um…” I shook my head as I tried to sit up straighter in my chair. “Didn’t get much sleep…the neighbor’s dog was barking…yeah.”
Samantha was staring at me with a look that seemed to be part victory and part amusement.
“Drink your coffee,” she said, and began to pour me a large cup from the carafe placed at the center of the table.
Of course, today of all days she had decided to wear her hair down, fastening it at the back of her head with a topaz-encrusted barrette that brought out the golden flecks in her warm brown eyes.
She wore a light navy blazer with a white blouse underneath that dipped dangerously low for a work setting.
My mind was already flipping back to the sight of what I had supposedly thought she would look like spread out naked on my mattress.
I would have given up my stupid boat to get her to wear a turtleneck, or a chicken costume, or literally anything else for the course of this ridiculous freaking meeting.