Chapter 5
I could get used to this. The leather seats that recline all the way. The impeccable service, including a three-course lunch. A quiet ride in the lap of luxury next to Natalie.
Lila snoozes in her seat across the aisle. She popped a Xanax. Flying makes her anxious, she’d said, so she’s in the land of nod, a black satin eye mask snug on her face.
“Can I get you anything else?” the flight attendant asks us.
I do a double take. For a split second, it registers that she’s pretty.
She’s been serving us the whole flight, but it just hit me—her looks.
Silky red hair, full lips, and warm brown eyes, along with a tight, trim figure.
But then, all thoughts of her fall out of my head.
And that’s not just because it would be rude to hit on the flight attendant on Lila’s plane, and it would also be classless to hit on her in front of an employee.
But the reality is I don’t really want to get to know her more.
I’m kind of interested in talking to Natalie on this flight.
Even though we tease each other at the office, and even though we’ve gone to dinner a few times, we mostly chat about work. There’s a lot I don’t know about her.
The attendant clears our Ahi tuna lunch dishes and asks if we’d like to watch a movie. I shift my focus to Natalie, letting her decide. She shakes her head and says, “I think I’ll read.”
But she doesn’t read. She doesn’t break out her Kindle or a paperback.
Instead, she nudges me with her elbow and says, “I never imagined working for a construction firm meant I’d fly to Vegas like this.
I should have tracked you down long ago.
I would never have taken on all the crummy jobs I had before. ”
I laugh. “Tell me more about your checkered work history.” I don’t actually know a lot about what she did prior to working for me. Her résumé didn’t score her the gig. Her gumption did.
She arches an eyebrow. “Like the time I worked for a phone sex operation?”
My eyes nearly pop out of my head. Then I school my expression and do my damnedest to act unfazed. “Oh, yeah?”
She nods. “It was kinda awesome. We did it all, but we specialized in furries and feet.”
I do my best to maintain a straight face as sights and sounds of Natalie twirling a phone cord as she purrs huskily about the high heels on her tiny feet, flash like a neon billboard before my eyes. I swallow then manage a dry, “Really?”
I’m not sure if I’m turned on or wigged out. Maybe both. Mostly turned on, though.
She nods several times. “You have no idea how many men have foot fetishes until you do phone sex. They want to hear you walking around in your heels. They like the sound they make on a hard wood—pun intended—floor.”
Damn, I love puns. I’m motherfucking wild about them.
But I’ve got no clue how to react to that one.
I scrub a hand across my jaw. This is a whole new side to Natalie.
And I can’t help but picture her strutting across the floor in stilettos.
She’s already an intoxicating combo of cheerleader looks and tomboy heart—add in heels, and I’d be a goner.
For the record, I’m not a foot fetishist whatsoever, but I bet she’d look sinfully sexy in four-inch pumps.
Red ones. With her legs wrapped around my waist as I fuck her against the wall.
“And furries?” I ask.
“People who wear full fur-suit costumes,” she explains.
“I get what that is.” I frown in confusion. “What I don’t get is that furries seem to be more of a real life thing.”
She nods exaggeratedly. “Oh, it’s huge in phone sex. You pretend to be wearing a full fox suit. Or sometimes a squirrel outfit. Raccoons were also popular. But mostly a sexy squirrel. That was the favorite.”
I’m trying. I swear I’m trying. But picturing Natalie whispering dirty words like rub your furry tail against me as I store nuts in my cheeks doesn’t compute. “Men called in wanting to get it on with a gal in a squirrel suit?”
She nods. “It’s called yiffing?”
I run a hand through my thick hair, a little wavy today. “Whatever floats your boat.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Admit it. You’re shocked.”
“Nah,” I say, acting all cool. Then I think fuck it. “Okay fine. Maybe a little.”
A huge smile flashes on her face. “Gotcha.” She points at me, and victory sparkles in her light blue eyes.
“Got me at what?”
“I heard you like pranks. Josie told me.”
I crack up and shake my head in appreciation. “Well done,” I say, then slowly clap. “You win at pulling my leg.”
I straighten out my left leg, and she does her best charade to yank it. I pretend she captured it, and she tugs harder at the air, my leg like a big fish she’s captured.
She grunts as she reels it in, then I set my foot down on the ground and knock fists with her. “Seriously. Dinner is on me tonight.”
“It better always be on you,” she says, then adds for emphasis, “Boss.”
Ah, there’s that reminder.
“Anyway,” she continues, “I might have been pulling your leg. But everything I said is true. I never said I made the calls. And I do know all that because I did work for a phone sex company. I just wasn’t an operator myself.
I screened the girls who wanted to work for us, set up the schedules, made sure they were paid, logged all the calls. It was weirdly fun.”
“And I’m weirdly impressed.” I would never have pegged the phone sex business as part of Natalie’s work history, but the way she describes it completely fits her organizational skills.
She punches my bicep playfully. “And I wasn’t technically lying.”
“You were technically entertaining the hell out of me, though.”
“Good,” she says with a bright smile. “Want to know about more of my past jobs? I’ve had some interesting ones.”
“Sure,” I say, stretching out my long legs and thoroughly enjoying the legroom, not to mention the conversation.
“After the phone sex company I worked as a pet pedicurist.”
“That’s a job?”
She nods, the look in her eyes intense. “Hell, yeah. And it’s not a bad way to make a living. You have no idea what wealthy Manhattanites will pay to have someone come to their home and clip the chihuahua’s claws.”
“Why not stick with it then?”
“Shockingly, I didn’t want to spend my entire life working on dog feet. Don’t get me wrong. I love dogs, and paws are awesome, but when it started conflicting with my schedule at the dojo in the evenings I had to let it go.”
I tap her knee. “Which brings us to your true passion. Administering a side-kick to the head.”
She pretends to punch me in the chest, coming this close. “Or the heart.”
Her eyes glint. For a flash, I see something in them. Or maybe it’s just that her words feel like a warning, like she really could deliver a blow to my heart.
I blink then look away.
She lowers her arm, placing her hands in her lap. “I do love it, though.” Her tone is calmer now, more serious than when she riffed on yiffing and feet, on paws and claws. “Always have.”
“Since you were little?”
“My parents sent me to karate class when I was six. I had a lot of energy, and it was a great place for me to burn it off. I grew to love it. The techniques, the skills, and most of all, the fact that you can always improve.” She raises her eyes, meeting mine.
In this moment, she seems to be shedding a layer that was between us—the boss-assistant one, maybe—as she ventures into more personal territory.
“I also really love teaching it. My favorite is the self-defense part. I really want to keep teaching women self-defense and using martial arts for that. I feel like it’s this one special thing I can do, you know? ”
Her voice is vulnerable, like she wants reassurance that her admission means something to me. That I’ll treat it with care. And I will. “I completely know what you mean, and I suspect you’re fantastic at it.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I love working for your company, too, and my job at WH is a fantastic one,” she says. Then a soft smile curves her lips, spreading until it turns into a yawn. A huge open-jawed yawn. She brings her hand to her mouth. “I think I hear a nap calling my name.”
A few minutes later, she’s sound asleep in her seat. A little after that, her head slides to my shoulder. Then, when she’s deep in REM, her upper body slouches down, down, down . . . her head hitting my lap.
And that’s how I spend the rest of the flight with Natalie curled in my lap.
Yes, it turns me on. Yes, I’m fucking aroused. And yes, my mind is filled with a reel of images of where her head could be if she woke up, shifted a few inches, and opened her mouth wide.
I inch back in the seat, trying to give Natalie’s face some distance from the family jewels.
Soon enough, we begin the descent into Las Vegas. She wakes as we land and shoots straight up, her eyes darting all around as if she’s registering where she is as she comes to. “Did I . . .?”
She points at my legs.
“Sleep on my lap?”
She nods.
“Yes.”
Her eyes widen to saucer size. “Did I do that?” She points frantically at my crotch.
Ah, fuck. She noticed the banana in my pocket. I cycle through a litany of potential excuses for sporting wood during her afternoon lap nap when my eyes follow her finger. It’s not my dick she’s pointing at. It’s the wet spot on my jeans. The huge wet spot that could only be caused by—
She brings a hand to her chest. “I’m so sorry I drooled on you.”
I crack up. “Sweetheart, you can drool on me anytime.”
She flashes an apologetic smile, then reaches into her back pocket for her phone, presumably. When she comes up empty, I peer around, spotting it on the floor by my feet, where it must have fallen while she slept.
I reach down to grab it for her, and I do my best to look away, but I can’t help but notice the end of a message from her sister that appears on the screen.
I knew you’d feel this way!
What way, I wonder?