Chapter 20. 1
Corinne. Saturday
Leanna looked happy for me on our video chat Saturday morning. But she looked happy in an unsure, qualified sort of way. I could see it in the strange, uneasy caution of her smile.
“You, um… went out… with your boss? ”
She didn’t mean to put me on the defensive, of course, but I felt the need to qualify what I’d told her. “No, I didn’t go out with him in the way you ‘go out’ with a guy. We just went out to eat the way you do during the day, and we went to eat together. It was two people who work in the same place having lunch, that’s all.”
“And, you were the only one there that he could have gone to lunch with?”
“Well, if he’d gone to lunch with someone else who worked there, would that have been a date?”
Leanna and I both seemed to be struggling over terms and definitions, tripping over our own words. It was one of the clumsiest conversations that I could ever remember having.
“I don’t know if it would have been a date with someone else. Does he like anyone else who works there?”
“I don’t know if Elijah likes anyone else who works there,” I answered. “We haven’t gotten that personal with each other.”
“It seems like you are getting pretty personal,” she pointed out, “if he’s invited you to his gym with him and then taken you to lunch. That’s looking kind of personal.”
What could I say to that? An answer was eluding me. “I kind of thought this was good news,” I replied. “I mean, I thought it shows how well I’m doing at the job, getting along with people that I work with.”
“And, I’m glad you’re getting along there,” said Leanna. “Except, Elijah isn’t someone you’re working with. He’s the one you’re working for. And, I’m glad you’re enjoying his company, but you know, there are supposed to be lines and boundaries between bosses and personnel. It sounds like you could become something more than just an employee, and that might not look so good to other people. Plus, you don’t really know that much about him.”
I couldn’t help scoffing at that. “Leanna, please! He’s a billionaire! I think you can assume certain things from that. He must have a fantastic work ethic. He must be really responsible. And, he must be someone that people can respect — someone that I can respect.”
She was as skeptical of me as I was of her. “Addie, listen to how that sounds. People get rich all kinds of ways, not all of them respectable. A lot of rich people are the furthest thing from respectable. We’ve both heard Daddy give entire sermons on the difference between being a rich person and being a good person. Remember Daddy’s sermon on that part of the Bible that says you shouldn’t ‘lay up your treasures here on Earth?’ Well, ‘laying up treasures’ is what rich people do, and they may do things to ‘lay them up’ that some people wouldn’t be too proud of.
“I’m not saying Elijah isn’t nice. I’m not saying he isn’t kind and smart and charming and great-looking.All I’m suggesting is that people do things to get rich that maybe aren’t the nicest and charming things a person can do.”
This wasn’t what I wanted or needed to hear. “Are you saying Elijah may be secretly some kind of… I don’t know, some kind of scoundrel? Leanna, I know I’m not that experienced and I haven’t been around the block that much, but all in all I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. That’s what I learned from Daddy. And really, if there were anything underhanded or suspect about Elijah, I’d feel it. I trust my instincts and I think I can trust him.”
She gave in. “If you say so. I’m just really thinking of you. Every time we talk, I can tell how much you’re loving it there. I just always want to see you as happy as you’ve been since starting that job. I love you and I want to know you’re happy, that’s all.”
“I am happy, Leanna. Really, I am. And, Elijah is nothing to worry about.”
My sister took me at my word and accepted that I could trust my instincts. And as I spoke to her, I reassured myself that I was right, that I hadn’t led myself astray by getting better acquainted with Elijah.
After we finished our chat, though, I sat on my bed where I’d been talking to Leanna on my laptop, and my sister’s words chimed back in my mind. She did have a point about wealthy people and the less than ethical ways they sometimes become wealthy. They may break or bend any number of the rules that make society decent, humane, civilized, and just. They may break or outright ignore the law, or buy off the people who are meant to make and use laws to protect everyone else. They may do even worse things than that.
It all reminded me of what Barbara had said to me in the lobby. Her words came back to me right in the wake of my sister’s. Anything you hear about his past is in his past. It has nothing to do with his life today.
She thought Elijah was one of the good guys. What she said suggested that he had some dark patches in his past, but then so did a lot of people. The fact was that she thought — and I agreed — that Elijah was one of the good guys. Barbara, who’d worked for him for years, knew him better than I did, so if push came to shove, I had to agree with her.
My own words repeated to me next. Elijah is nothing to worry about.
I was sure I was right.
The next thought that I had to contend with was the clear fact that Elijah and I were getting closer. I could feel it happening. I knew he must be feeling it, too. We were starting to relate to each other on more than just a professional level. Elijah and I were connecting as people, and it felt as if there was a possibility of that connection growing deeper, stronger. How deep and how strong could it get?
Once again, there was the question of Elijah possibly wanting to fuck me. And again, there was my own resolve that I would not be the one to initiate it. Was I doing the right thing by not initiating anything? I wondered. Perhaps I should open things up, not to the act, but to a discussion. Perhaps I should ask Elijah, straight out, what he expected from our acquaintance. Was he looking for it to be more than an acquaintance, or was he interested in enjoying each other’s company and not each other’s…you know.
I seriously had to consider what he might say if I asked him. If he said he wanted to do it to me, how would I respond? Would I let him? I knew that if I let him, I would love it — absolutely love it. There was no way I wouldn’t enjoy that face kissing me, that body with my hands all over it, that dick I’d imagined in the gym shower entering me and taking my virginity away. Being fucked by Elijah would have to be the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me — if he wanted it and if I allowed it.
Other questions came to me. If I resisted Elijah and resisted my own desire for his body and his cock, what would that mean to my job? Should I be worried there? Was Elijah the kind of man who would hold sex, or the lack of it, over me for the sake of my job? Would I be forfeiting my position in his company by not getting into positions with him in bed?
No, I couldn’t believe that of him. If I believed Elijah was a good person, essentially, then I must believe he wasn’t the kind of boss who would hold sex over me that way, using it as a condition of employment. He wouldn’t do that. I just knew he wouldn’t.
But, my own desires were now becoming clearer to me. I was working for a man that I wanted to fuck me.
I’d watched him work out, and worshipped his body. I’d indulged in a steamy fantasy about him taking a shower. And, I had entertained the idea of letting him fuck me if he wanted to. These feelings had taken root and started to grow in me from the moment I first saw him.
Feelings like this, if they exist, won’t just go away. They have to be faced by both parties involved. Sooner or later, such feelings have to come out from under the surface and into the light.
It wouldn’t be later. It would definitely be sooner.
_______________
I spent the rest of Saturday morning straightening up and cleaning the apartment with music playing on my living room speakers just to take my mind off that conversation with Leanna and the mix of feelings with which it had left me. I managed to burn up some energy as well as distract myself that way.
After that, I decided just to lie down on the couch and take it easy for a bit. Perhaps while giving myself a little rest, I could figure out what to do with the rest of my Saturday. I might go out and see a movie, if something that I liked was playing. There was any number of things I might do.
What I actually ended up doing was drifting off into a nap, in spite of the good night’s sleep I’d gotten the night before. Of course I got a good night’s sleep; I went to sleep thinking of how much I’d enjoyed Elijah’s company before his strange friend showed up. I went to sleep thinking of how gorgeous he was, how nice he was, how hot his body was. Those same thoughts took me into an unplanned little snooze.
I found myself in the soft leather seat of a sleek, powerful muscle cars. Its engine purred like a tiger who’d just been fed. In the driver’s seat at my left sat Elijah, managing to look even sexier than usual in sunglasses. Jazz music played on the car’s speakers as he drove the muscle car down roads I recognized.
Soon, we pulled up on my street in Youngstown, in front of my house. Elijah cut off the engine and smiled over at me, “We’re here.”
Warm feelings washed over me as we got out of the car and the front door of the house opened. Leanna and my father stepped out onto the front landing, smiling broadly, happy to see us. “Hey!” Leanna called, bounding down the steps excitedly, my father following her, giving us a wave of welcome.
On the front walk, she threw her arms around me, and we hugged the embrace of siblings who’d been apart for too long. She looked appreciatively over my shoulder at the handsomeness who’d brought me home. Elijah offered Leanna his hand.
“My sister Leanna,” I said, “this is Elijah Bennett.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Elijah.
“Oh…oh, my…” she reacted, no doubt thinking my descriptions of Elijah to her had not done him justice.
“Welcome, son,” said my father, holding out his hand.
And I felt the greatest swelling of pride in my heart as Elijah took my father’s hand. “Elijah, this is my father, Pastor Aaron Gordon.”
“It’s a pleasure, Sir,” said Elijah, smiling respectfully at my father.
“I’m sure the pleasure is ours,” said Daddy. “Thanks to you, my daughter has thrived since leaving home. We owe that to you.”
Elijah put an arm around me and said, “We’ve all been thriving since Corinne joined the company.” He looked sweetly at me and added, “I’ve been thriving, too, in other ways.”
Daddy laughed. “Come on in the house, you two. We were just finishing up getting dinner ready when we heard you pull up.”
Together, the four of us walked up the front steps to the house, looking forward to a good meal and to my family getting to know my new…my new…
My new what? Boss? Boyfriend? Fiancé? What was Elijah to me? Who were we to each other? I should know that. Why didn’t I know that? What kind of relationship did we have? Who was it that I had brought home to meet my father and my sister?
Who? Who? Who…
Daddy opened the front door and ushered us all inside. But, past the door were not the front hall and living room that I knew so well, the downstairs of the home where I’d grown up. Beyond that familiar threshold was a vast, deep, dark space; a space of unknowns, a space filled with questions. Questions about Elijah. Questions about myself. Questions, questions…
For the first time in my life, I was unsure about entering my own house. But in the warmth of my father’s smile, with the warmth of Elijah’s hand holding mine, I stepped forward into that dark, empty space where all the questions were. And, the darkness was all I could see and the questions were all I could feel. Darkness and questions…
I jolted awake as if I’d grabbed a live wire at the abrupt, jangling sound of my text tone. For a minute, I lay on the couch, blinking, gasping, disoriented, having been hurled out of my dream and into the reality of my trilling phone. Settling and calming myself, I took the phone from my pocket and looked at the ID.
It was Elijah.
His message said, Doing anything today? Want to meet up?
It made me think the dream was prescient, somehow, as if my unconscious mind knew before I did that I’d be hearing from him.
I’d love to, I texted back. Where?
Could I come over to your place?
The idea of it made me sit upright on the couch, my heart quickening, my eyes widening. My boss — my billionaire boss — was asking if he could come over to my apartment. What could I say to that? I wondered.
Not your place? I texted back.
I’d like to see where you live. I’ll bet it’s nice.
Reading that, I looked around at my decidedly middle-class surroundings and shook my head with a bemused sort of grin. Nice, he guessed. As a man with a billion dollars to his name, Elijah must have an entirely different scale for the meaning of nice than I had.
Wanting anything else to say, I replied, Well, I did just clean it up.
Perfect, he said. Let me come over. We can decide what we want to do.
Having just said I would love to see him, I couldn’t very well take it back now. How would that look?
So, I just said, Okay. You have the address?
Got it in the HR spreadsheet on my computer. See you in a bit.
And with that, it was all set. I lowered the phone, gulped hard, and took both a deep breath and another look around my freshly cleaned but in no way wealthy-looking apartment. My very wealthy boss was coming over.
I leapt up from the couch, my nerves on sudden alert. The apartment may have been ready for Elijah, even though I wasn’t planning on him today. Now, I had to be prepared, too. I ran into the bedroom and checked my hair in the mirror, deciding I looked all right. I decided not to put on any makeup or perfume. He should see me the way I most naturally was, the way that I was when I came to work, except that I had on my ordinary Saturday afternoon clothes, just a blouse and jeans and slippers. I decided to look as if I didn’t have any expectations.
With that decision made, I went to the kitchen to check what I had to drink. I should be able to offer the boss some basic hospitality. In the fridge were a couple of big bottles of iced tea, one with lemon, one with raspberry. I checked the ice trays in the freezer. They were full. Satisfied with that, I went to the cupboard and got out a couple of nice glasses and a tray, and took them into the living room and put them on the coffee table.
I have drinks ready, I texted him. Let me know when you’re almost here.
A thumbs-up sign from Elijah came in response.
My heart felt like a jumping frog. That wouldn’t do. I shouldn’t act as if there were anything to be nervous about. He wasn’t coming to inspect my home. He was coming to visit. His visit was about the two of us just enjoying each other’s company.
I sat on the couch, with the glasses ready on the coffee table in front of me, and kept myself calm while I waited.
_______________
When Elijah showed up at my door upon my ringing him up from downstairs, I saw him in a way I’d never seen him before. He was no more dressed for work than I was, and I knew it was silly to expect him to be in his usual business suit and tie on a Saturday afternoon. Neither of us was working today.
He looked like a model in designer casual clothing, such as you’d see in an issue of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. His clothes — a knit pullover sweater, a pair of Dockers slacks, a pair of well-polished loafers — were impeccable, but not for the office.
So help me, this guy was not capable of looking anything less than sexy.
“Hi, Corinne,” he said, as casually as he looked.
“Come in, Elijah,” I replied, ushering him into my apartment.
I shut the door behind him, and there we were, alone together, in my place, just the two of us. In private, behind a closed door.
“Would you like a glass of iced tea?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said.
But, I seemed to be rooted to the spot, staring into his handsomeness and the unsettlingly cool hotness of his eyes.
Elijah reached out with one hand, and I still didn’t move — not even when he gently sifted his fingers through my hair. All I did was stand there with my heart skipping and let him.
Half-whispering, I said, “I was…going to get some tea…”
“I know,” he said, still softly feeling my hair. He took a step closer, and still I stayed right where I was and didn’t move. Elijah, however, did move. He came closer still, bringing the masculine beauty of that face close to mine, letting me feel his breath on my own face. I thought I would just melt into a puddle right there. He brought his lips to mine and gently let our lips touch.
It was just a tender meeting of the lips, but it was enough to make both of us forget about any refreshments. I dared to touch Elijah’s face. He answered by kissing me a little harder, a little more intently. My breath trembled. As if to steady and reassure me, he put one arm around me.
I returned his kiss, with the same intent as he’d shown in kissing me. From that point, neither of us wanted to turn back. I let him take me completely in his arms and put both arms around him. Our lips opened a bit, deepening the kiss. The tip of Elijah’s tongue danced at the opening of my mouth. He leaned into the kiss a little more and I answered him, kissing him back a little harder, hard enough to encourage him not to stop.
The kiss lingered. Then, with me in his arms and our faces hovering close together, Elijah said, “Want to go sit down?”
“Yes,” I said. And, hand in hand, we went over to the couch.
Our lips hardly left each other, one kiss melting into the next, his tongue probing more into my mouth. Our breath was now hot on each other’s cheeks and chin.
Elijah’s hands and mine roamed over each other’s body, and I got my first feel of what I’d admired in the gym. The muscles of his shoulders, back, and chest, even under his sweater, were so cut, so hard, so full of manly power. I began to moan softly into his kisses. He moaned softly back.
He leaned back against one arm of the sofa and pulled me down on top of him and into another burning kiss. His hands moved down my shoulders to the middle of my back and lingered there as if searching for something. The clasp of my bra, perhaps? My heart skipped a little more at the thought. Then his hands moved a little lower. How far down would they go? Would he move down enough to feel my bottom?
He broke from our kissing and lifted my face up to look into my eyes. “Corinne?”
“Yes?”
“I want to ask you something.”
“What?”
He took a beat before going on. “I want you to know before I ask you this that I won’t hold your answer against you, even if it’s not what I want to hear.”
A feeling came over me as if I were catching fire and freezing at once. “Okay,” I said.
“Do you think you’d be okay,” Elijah began, then hesitated. It didn’t seem to be in his character to hesitate, but he did. “Do you think you’d be all right…with letting me fuck you?”
There it was. The question. That question. The question that I’d always put off, dodged, avoided, from every man I’d ever gone out with, including Blake. Now here it was, from the one man I’d ever met who was even more beautiful than Blake. Here was the question.
“Oh, Elijah…” I said, then trailed off.
He touched my face, caressing my cheek with his thumb. “I’m not trying to press any advantage over you. You’re totally free to say no, and I promise I’ll stop this right here, right now. It’ll go no further. But, Corinne, if you say yes… If you say yes, I’ll get your pussy right here, and I promise to make it good.”
Now, there was one critical thing that I needed to know. Summoning up my courage, I asked, “If I do say no, what about my job?”
“I won’t make it about your job,” said Elijah sincerely. “I’m not that kind of boss, who expects something from a woman who works for him and holds her job over her head as a condition of keeping it. I would never, ever do that. If you say no, you’ll come to work Monday morning and it will be as if nothing ever happened. I give you my deepest, most solemn word, this is not about the boss laying a sexual claim on his employee.
“This is about me, a man with a hard cock, wanting to fuck a woman he thinks is beautiful. You are beautiful, Corinne. You’re beautiful, and I want your pussy. So I’m asking, not as your boss but just as a man. Will you let me fuck you? Right now?”
That put us right at the moment of truth — a moment where I’d been other times, which had always had one outcome. And this time, of all times, the outcome was different. This time, my own desire was too great. This time, lying on top of Elijah on my couch, feeling under the zipper of his pant what he said he wanted to give me — and what I had to admit to myself that I wanted — there could be no other outcome than the thing I said next.
“Yes, Elijah,” I answered. “Yes. Please.”
He gave a smile of manly desire. “Oh, fuck yes.” He leaned up and brought his lips to mine for another kiss, this one harder and more passionate than any of the others — a kiss of his most powerful and undeniable intent, which I had no intention of denying one minute longer.
At the end of this kiss, Elijah murmured, “Get your fucking clothes off.”
We sat up on the sofa again and quickly began to undress. The first thing to go was Elijah’s sweater, which he practically tore from his body and tossed onto the floor. Now, laid fully bare in front of me, were the pecs and abs that had been fully covered by his tank top in the gym, along with those arms.
I watched him take off his clothes and was hardly aware of my own motions in taking off my own. And, racing and ricocheting around in my head was one thought, both strangely exciting and alarming.
Elijah was by no means a virgin. But, he had no idea that he was about to do it to a virgin. He thought he was about to do it to an experienced woman. The man did not have a clue.
Elijah kicked off his shoes. I wondered if that meant he was expecting something to happen when he got here and had deliberately worn shoes that would be easy to remove. As the question crossed my mind, I decided I didn’t care. He bent over, showing me the exposed muscles of his back, and stripped off his socks. My heart sped up a little more.
He next sent my pulse into overdrive by going for his belt buckle and his zipper, quickly undoing them. He made me almost fit to faint and showed me that he really meant business by grabbing the waist of his Dockers and the waist of his briefs at the same time and pulling them off together, kicking them away. In that one gesture, he revealed the prong of his erect cock, standing at attention. I almost whined in awe.
There it was. After I’d turned down the offer of every man that I’d dated, here in front of me was the one and only penis that I’d ever seen in my life.
And, it wasn’t even the dick of a man that I’d ever considered a date. Elijah and I had gone out socially without any idea of anything potentially romantic or intimate. And yet, here he was, spectacularly, awesomely, breathtakingly naked on my living room sofa. And there was his cock, ready to fuck me.
I had nothing to compare it to. All I could see was that it was big. It was long and it was thick, with a bead of moisture exuding from the hole at the tip, like a dewdrop. Elijah’s large, hard, beautiful dick — and he wanted to put it inside me. And, I so wanted him to do it.
Somehow, in the midst of all this, I had managed to strip down to just my bra and panties and was sitting on the couch almost as naked as he was. There was so much of his male perfection to look at, but my eyes were drawn to what stood ready for action under the dark golden-brown thatch of hair between his thighs. I’d never been ready for it before. I was ready now.
So was Elijah. He slid his nakedness over to me, took me in his now-exposed arms, and kissed me, deeply, soulfully. I bent back and moaned into his kiss.
His strong hands moved smoothly up and down my back. He parted from the kiss, brought me sitting up again, and found the clasp of my bra at the front, rather than at the back where I thought he might be searching for it before. Just like a man who knew what he was doing, Elijah got my bra off and whipped it away somewhere. My breasts were bare, only inches from him, where he could touch them. And touch them he did.
I leaned back my head and whimpered joyously at the feeling of a man touching my exposed bosom for the first time. It felt unbelievably good. His hands seemed even warmer on my breasts than they did on my back. He took one boob in each hand and squeezed, gently and firmly, drawing the excited breath out of me and feeding his manly touch into me.
“Damn, what nice tits,” Elijah said. He leaned his head forward and kissed one of my nipples, which had turned to little brown stones of flesh. I gasped and shuddered at the sensation. I bit my lower lip.
Elijah switched from kissing my nipple to sucking it. I released my lip and made a sound of pure wonder as his lips enclosed my nipple and his tongue wetly encircled it. I had nothing to compare this feeling to, just as I had nothing to which I could compare the sight of his dick. It was insanely good, but I knew it wasn’t nearly as good as other things I’d soon experience.
He kissed his way across my bare bosom. I made helpless, elated moans as he went, and let out shuddering noises at his capture of my other nipple in his mouth. With every pull of his mouth, he was capturing me more and more, making me more and more the willing recipient of his desire.
He straightened back up and moved his hands to my waist, where my only remaining garment was my panties. Elijah slipped them down over my thighs and manoeuvred me around to put my back against the back of the sofa and enable himself to slide that last little garment down my legs and over my ankles. He had me just the way I wanted to be with him.
Leaning back on the couch with me, Elijah took my lips in another simmering kiss, while slipping his hand up between my thighs, silently commanding me to open them. He was the boss now as much as he was at work. I obeyed, and he moved his hand along my inner thigh to where the opening of my pussy waited for him under the bush of my pubes.
What I felt now was a mixture of arousal and pure, total wonder at the touch of this fantastically beautiful man in my most intimate place. His fingers moved along the folds of my sex, and he still had no idea that he was touching me in a way that no man before him had ever done, doing something to me that was as new as it was thrilling.
It seemed almost unfair that I hadn’t told him I was a virgin, but there was never an opportune time to tell him that. As his lips played at mine and his fingers played at my womanhood, I suddenly realized something. If Elijah were to put a finger inside me now, he might break my hymen, ending my virginity that way, when he should only do that with his cock.
Spinning around in my head now was the thought, I should have told him…
But he ended the long, steamy kiss and took his hand from under my pubes, pecking my lips one more time. He leaned back against the arm of the couch, displaying the total wonder of his body and the erection standing at his crotch. He took his dick in one hand and stroked on it, smiling sexily at me.
“Come here and put my dick in your mouth,” he said, presenting that boner to me. “Give me a blow job.”
Racing through my brain now was another excited but anxious thought. Not knowing whom he was naked with, Elijah was asking for a blow job — and assuming I’d done it before and knew what I was doing.
Hesitation would only make me look like the virgin that I was. It would only complicate matters, and right now of all times was no time for complications. For the first time in my life, I was naked with a man. And, not just any man; it was a man beautiful enough, stunning enough, to make a woman — or many other men — weep.