Chapter 4
A CATERING COINCIDENCE
Thomas
There’s a myth, at places like Century College, that power is money, or connections, or the face on a plaque above the library stairs.
That’s just the sales pitch. True power is more elemental: it’s the physics of want.
The hunger in the room that bends all other hungers toward it, quietly, inexorably, as gravity bends space.
Tonight, that force is me.
From my post by the picture window, I can see the whole ballroom: the chandelier like a dripping icicle, the ice-sculpture peacock at the center of the silent auction table, the crosshatched grid of men’s tuxes and women’s skin glittering with priceless jewels.
Beyond the glass, trees sway so gently it could be a screensaver, but inside, the air is heavy and humming.
Every gaze in the room orbits the same small axis: the man who wrote the eight-figure check to save this college from another year of mediocrity.
It’s fine. The money means nothing to me.
Besides, I graduated from Century twenty five years ago, and this place set me on my path to fame and fortune.
Not only that, but my daughter, Stella, is now a junior at the school.
But the fundraising sometimes sucks, even with the fancy setting and expensive wine.
They keep calling me “Mr. Moreland” tonight, as if I’m my father, as if I didn’t already own half the committee’s net worth by the time I was twenty-five.
My tuxedo is Tom Ford, the cut so sharp I could fillet a banker with a careless shrug; the watch is Patek Philippe, white gold, limited edition, a flex so restrained only real insiders notice.
The cufflinks: platinum, mother-of-pearl, custom, each one monogrammed with the letter M.
The scotch in my hand is older than the event planner, and it tastes faintly of vanilla and peat and something else—something almost blue, if blue could be a flavor.
But even here, even now, I can’t focus on the surface game.
All I can see, again and again, is the memory of her: the anonymous blonde from last week, the girl who let me spread her ass against the wet brick outside the Faculty Club, who moaned into my mouth and clawed at my lapels and took my cock like she’d been starved for it since birth.
The way she’d let me finish, raw and deep, in a place which is hers alone.
That ass—perfect, peach-shaped, so tight I thought I’d break her.
The little gasps she made when I first pressed my thumb inside, her trembling as I opened her up.
I’ve fucked a lot of women in my life, some for sport, some for habit, many because they wanted a story to tell, but none of them left a mark like this one.
I came so hard I was half-blind. It was the kind of balls-emptying orgasm that echoes up your spine and sits there, making every subsequent climax a dull afterimage.
I’ve spent the last week replaying that moment, slow-mo, every detail in crystal HD.
The flecks of brick dust on her bare thighs.
The little nicks on her knuckles from where she’d braced against the wall.
The heat of her, the smell—warm skin, flowery shampoo, the sharp electric whiff of fear and need all tangled together.
I’ve stroked myself raw every night since, always with that same image in my mind, but the real thing haunted me in ways I didn’t have a word for.
The only problem was, I never got her name. Not even a number. She was gone before I could zip up, vanished into the night like a cat burglar, and now she’s all I can think about. In a lifetime of plenty, I’ve found a new kind of scarcity, and it pisses me off more than I’d ever admit.
“Tom,” says a voice, honeyed and expensive, right by my elbow. I turn and find the Dean’s wife, a tall brunette in a backless silver sheath, her lips already parted for me in a way that’s pure muscle memory.
I smile. It’s the smile I use that’s practiced, yet polite.
“Candace,” I say, just soft enough to make her lean in.
Her perfume is high-velocity, something French and relentless.
Her eyes scan my face for a tell, and when she doesn’t find one, she settles for the familiar: “You look like you’d rather be anywhere else. ”
She’s not wrong. “I’m not a party person,” I say, which is both a lie and the truth. I am the party, but only when it’s on my terms.
She laughs, tossing her hair, displaying her neck the way prey does in documentaries. “Well, I hope the auction was worth it. They said your gift came with strings, but I think you just like seeing your name on things.”
“Names are important,” I say, and watch her file that away. She’s trying to decide if it’s there’s a double entendre. There isn’t. I’m not interested in this woman, I’m just too polite to snub her at this black tie event.
Across the floor, women orbit in slow, practiced ellipses.
A statuesque redhead in a green slit dress catches my eye, holds it, then looks away with a deliberate shiver.
I know her: she’s the faculty advisor for the Women’s Leadership Initiative.
She hates me in public, but sends drunk texts every other Friday, begging me to “dominate” her at a nearby luxury hotel.
I never do, but I keep her thirsty. It’s the only way to keep these events interesting.
Another one: the president’s assistant, thin and mousy, but in the right dress, she looks like a junior version of the dean’s wife.
I watch her circle the room with a notebook and pen in hand, face perfectly blank, but every so often she sneaks glances in my direction—anxious, hungry.
It’s the same look I’ve seen in boardrooms: the hunger to be seen, to be chosen.
Tonight, I don’t care about any of them.
Candace slides her hand along my forearm, her touch barely there, but she presses a single fingernail to the vein at my wrist, as if marking her claim. “You’ll come to the afterparty, right?” she murmurs. “The real party?”
I let the silence draw out, just to see her squirm. “Maybe,” I say. “Depends on the guest list.”
She grins, all teeth. “If you’re there, everyone else will definitely come.”
She moves off, hips moving in that exaggerated metronome reserved for high-end trophy wives. I watch her go, not because I want her, but because it’s habit. I’m supposed to want her. I’m supposed to be the kind of man who fucks women like her, on principle.
But the truth is, I don’t want anyone in this room.
I want the blonde with the big breasts, and innocent blue eyes who let me wreck her in the alley.
I want to see her again, to hear the sound she makes when she finally lets go, to have her bend over and pull her cheeks open once more, allowing me to pleasure myself in her body one more time.
A handclap interrupts my reverie. It’s the provost, a slick Midwesterner in a plaid bow tie, holding a microphone as if he’s about to auction a cow. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he bellows. “If I could have your attention for a few brief words—”
I fade out, letting the rest of the crowd turn as one organism.
While he bloviates about tradition and community and the ‘unparalleled generosity of Mr. Thomas Moreland,’ I scan the edges of the room, searching for something I can’t even name.
The feeling is like being watched, or like the memory of being watched, sticky and unshakable.
A tray passes within reach. I take a single oyster on the half shell, shucked fresh and floating in a lake of mignonette. The server is young—maybe nineteen, face scrubbed, hair pulled into a taut bun under her starched white hat. She doesn’t meet my eyes, just bows her head and moves on.
I pop the oyster and savor it. The taste: brine, iron, ocean. For a moment, it’s enough.
Then I see her—across the ballroom, near the bar, in a knot of other waitstaff.
My jaw drops, and I startle for a moment, the oyster forgotten.
It’s the blonde. My mystery woman. It’s only a glimpse because she’s got her back to me, but I’d know that ass anywhere.
The memory replays, hot and sharp: the feel of her anal walls, the sound of her voice, the way her hole clenched around my cock as she gasped and came for me.
She turns, just for a second, and our eyes lock across the crowd.
Electricity flows between us like a live wire.
Suddenly, there’s only the two of us in the ballroom, everyone else fading to nothing.
Her lips part, startled, and her lashes drop for a moment.
Maybe it’s fear, or maybe it’s just as hungry as mine. I can’t tell.
I set my glass down, careful, so no one sees my hand shake. The rest of the world blurs to static; all I can see is her, alive and real and in arm’s reach. The paradox of want: the closer it gets, the harder it is to breathe.
She looks away, tries to hide behind another girl, but it’s too late. I see her. She knows it.
I think about crossing the room, grabbing her by the wrist and hauling her into some side room, but I can’t—not yet. Not with all these eyes. Instead, I linger at the edge, watching, building the tension between us like a wire drawn tight. She glances back, flushes, looks down. Perfect.
When the speeches end, the room swells with chatter, glasses clinking, nervous laughter.
A succession of women approaches me: a junior partner at a law firm, a Swedish exchange donor, an elderly art professor who winks at me with something like maternal pride.
I do my job, smiling, nodding, being gracious.
But every cell of me is tuned to the blonde. What the hell is she doing here?