A Billion Little Clues (5 page)

Another few sentences about how "the damn gardeners must have been high when they planted this layout" later, the man suddenly stopped. "Good heavens, where are my manners," he suddenly cut into his thoughts. "I've been talking your ear off, and I don't even know your name!"

Well, that was nice of him, even if it had come after five minutes of lecturing about why "those Mediterranean varieties won't even make it to frost here". "I'm Melinda," I said, holding out my hand to him. "Melinda Gaines, from Marketing."

"Melinda," the man repeated back to me, reaching out and taking my hand. "Delighted to meet you. Thank you for letting me indulge myself with this little rant, here. What brings you out to here?"

He hadn't given his name, I couldn't help noticing, but it seemed a little impolite to just inquire. Maybe he was famous and I was supposed to recognize him. He was probably some head honcho at Panther Worldwide, and assumed that all of the executives knew who he was. I'd be outing myself if I showed that I didn't actually know his name. And then I'd probably be kicked right out of the entire party, and charged for that martini to boot. Best to just keep my mouth shut about why I was really here.

"Oh, you know," I said instead, gesturing back towards the doors behind us leading back into the house. "You can only talk so much about the markets, going back and forth with Geoffrey on our stocks, before you just need a breath of fresh air, you know?"

I wasn't quite sure what I had just said. I hoped desperately that it wasn't all gibberish. But the man tossed his head back and laughed heartily, a deep and rolling laugh that brought a similar smile to my own face.

"Hah, you got on the wrong end of Silvers, did you?" he exclaimed. "He's a damn good financial officer, got an eagle eye for any errors in the books, but he's definitely sometimes an insufferable know-it-all whenever money comes up! No chance of winning an argument against him."

I nodded, acting as if this was exactly what I meant. I noticed that I was still holding a mostly-full martini, and took a sip of it. It was a really good martini, even though I had to be careful to avoid banging a tooth on that metal sword.

The man was still standing beside me, but he reached over and picked his own drink up off of the railing. I didn't know exactly what it was, but it was in a glass tumbler and looked to be a dark amber color. There were little stones in the glass, chiseled into the shape of ice cubes, that clinked together as he lifted it up to his lips for a sip. It was probably whiskey, or brandy, or scotch, or one of those other fancy executive drinks.

"Good man, overall, though," my terrace partner added after a minute. "Don't mean to badmouth him at all, you know?"

He must be worried that I'd mention to the CFO his know-it-all comment! Because yes, I reminded myself, I'm an executive with a lot of clout. Not just a secretary. I was supposed to be here. "Don't worry, I'm holding everything said on this balcony as confidential," I joked back to him. "No need to fear your words getting out!"

The man grinned back at me at this comment, flashing a set of even, perfectly white teeth. He was still standing fairly close to me, and I could see the outline of his face, his jaw, as I gazed up at him. He was really quite attractive, I couldn't stop myself from noticing.

Not that I was going to even consider hooking up with him. I was just here to ensure that no one said anything bad about the marketing development. Nothing else.

But there was no reason why I shouldn't stick around and make sure that this fellow in particular didn't think bad things of the department, right?

The conversation had drifted to a stop, and I cast around for something else to say. "So wait - what about you?" I asked, turning his own question back around on him. "Why aren't you in there at the party socializing?"

The man let out all of his breath in a whoosh. I felt it breeze past me, a brief note of warmth against the slight chill in the night air. "It's just so exhausting," he sighed. "After the first couple bashes, it all becomes so routine, you know? Always the same people, talking about the same topics. Everyone just wants to show off and boast about their newest toy, their newest vacation house, their new car that's not even off the production line yet. It's like being back in grade school, but instead of showing off baseball cards, they're showing off Ferraris and villas in Barbados."

"I know exactly what you mean," I lied smoothly. "It really does get old. Especially when I come out here and look up at the stars." Oh god, did that sound as corny out loud as it did in my head? It probably did. I risked a glance up at the man's eyes, but they didn't appear to be rolling. Maybe he was just doing it in his head.

"I agree," he said emphatically, tilting his head back to look up at those stars I had just mentioned. "And out here, even with those bothersome spotlights, they really do look amazing. Do you know the constellations?"

Why had I mentioned stars? It had sounded kind of deep in my head, but now that it was out, I wished I could grab the words back. I should have stuck to what I knew. Office supplies? How to brew a good pot of coffee? "I'm a bit rusty," I covered for myself.

"Me too, but let's see what I do remember," the man said. I felt him draw in closer to me as he kept on gazing up at the sky. He felt warm, heat radiating out from him despite the fancy suit he wore. It felt quite nice, and I couldn't stop myself from leaning in a little closer against him. "Okay, here's one! See those stars up there? See how it looks a bit like a pot with a long handle? That's the Big Dipper!"

"No, where?"

"Here!" The man's arm pointed up, and I pressed my head against his shoulder to gaze down the length of the arm at where he was pointing. They were just stars, little pricks of twinkling light! "I don't..."

And then, suddenly, I did! "Ooh! There!" I exclaimed. "I see it!"

"Yes! And now, if we follow up along those two bright ones that make up the pot, it points right to the North Star!" The man's hand traced the pattern across the sky for me. "It's that one up there, a little fainter than the others. That's how sailors used to find out which direction was north when out on the ocean."

"That one?" I raised my own hand to point.

The man's hand closed gently around my fingers, adjusting them slightly. "No, this one."

"Oh. That one."

His skin was very warm. With him holding my hand like this, I was all but pressed against his chest. Just beyond my spine, I could feel his heart beating inside his chest. Was it going faster? I tried to count, but I lost track after a few beats. It was definitely beating strongly, at least.

When the man next spoke, his voice was right beside my ear. I could feel his breath blowing through my hair, brushing ever so gently against the skin of my neck. It made it very difficult to focus on his words. "This probably isn't the best choice," he murmured, but he didn't sound as though his heart was in his words.

"Shh," I replied, barely daring to break a whisper. "Everything on the balcony is confidential, remember?"

What in the world was I thinking? I was definitely not supposed to be out on Roman's super-expensive balcony, flirting with some man whose name I didn't even know. It had been a long time since I'd last even gotten this close to anyone who wasn't my dentist or a homeless man on an especially crowded bus, but that was no excuse!

I really ought to just take a step back, put on my professional face, and thank the man for his informative little lesson on the stars. I would then go inside, make the rounds and put in a few good comments about the Marketing department here and there, and then go home. The next day, I would report to Keith that I had heard nothing but good things, and maybe he would go a little easier on the yelling.

Instead, I took another drink of my martini. In fact, I took quite a large drink. By the time I put the glass back down on the metal railing, the little metal sword with its skewered olive was ratting against the empty glass.

And then I turned around to wrap my arms around the man. For an instant, we were frozen there. I could feel his dark eyes staring down into mine, his lips slightly quirked up as if he was enjoying a private little joke. His arms were encircling me, enclosing me in a lovely little cocoon of protective warmth against the slight chilly breeze that had sprung up. His coat had fallen open, and I was leaning right against his thin shirt.

For a moment, we hung there, our eyes locked on each other. Amazingly, all of the thousand little competing voices in my mind had fallen silent. I knew that they would spring back up in a second, so I had to act quickly.

But the man beat me to it. Bending down slightly as I craned up on my tiptoes - he kissed me.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

I was being kissed. There was no doubt about it. These were definitely another pair of lips on mine, soft and yielding and ever so gently exploring.

I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't even know this man's name, for goodness sake! He was a total stranger, a man I had only met a few minutes previously, a man to whom I had already told several lies (not the least of which being the implicit assumption that I actually belonged at this party in the first place).

All this man had done was yell at me about the flowers in the garden below us, and then point out a few stars in the sky. Admittedly, it was a very romantic sky. Aside from the spotlights sweeping back and forth at the front of the house to mark the entry to the party, there were no other lights in the countryside. The stars were brightly shining above us, even the faintest, dimmest ones visible among their brighter brethren.

And then he had stepped up to me, wrapped his arms around me to keep me warm against the chill in the evening's air. As he'd tightened his grip, I had turned around to look up at him, at his handsome face in the faint light shining out from the house behind us. Our lips had been very close together already.

But he had been the one to make his move first! I might have been thinking about how it would feel to kiss this man, but I hadn't actually planned to do it. Maybe I might have tilted my head up in preparation, pursed my lips a little bit, but I hadn't been the one who made the first move forward to plant our lips together.

We were still kissing, even as these thoughts shot through my head. I couldn't help noticing that we were still kissing. This was, I had to admit, all but impossible to ignore.

It was really quite a good kiss. The man's lips were just soft enough, not all chapped and ragged like some men who didn't pay attention to their lips. His tongue had slipped out of his mouth and probed gently at my own, and I opened my lips up a little wider to allow it entrance. It poked around my mouth, gently exploring and massaging in quite a nice way. When it met my own tongue, they would briefly coil around each other in mutual greeting before darting off to go explore some more.

As well as the kiss, the man's arms were wrapped around me, pulling me in tightly against him. I had nestled inside of his suit, partly to get away from the cold, but mostly so that I could feel the heat of his body. We were pressed very close together. And my dress was quite tight. I wondered if he could feel my nipples standing out, pressing against his rock-hard abs. I wasn't sure how he could miss them.

Now that I thought about it, he was probably super aware of my nipples pressing against him. I could feel something pressing against me, that was clear. At first, I thought perhaps the man's wallet was touching me, but as we continued to kiss and it grew longer and harder, it became very clear that this was no wallet. But it definitely got my pulse up as I imagined its size inside the man's pants.

We very briefly broke apart, just long enough to grab breath before diving back in for more lip-locking. All sorts of dirty, delicious little thoughts were springing up in my mind. Maybe this was meant to be, I thought to myself. Meeting a dark, mysterious stranger at an incredibly rich and extravagant party, only to end up falling for him and spending a wild night of passion together before departing in the morning and never seeing him again.

The more we kissed, the more I ran my hands over his very tight and shapely body, the stronger these fantasies grew. In my mind's eye, I was ripping his very fancy shirt off of his body as he tugged at the tight zipper of my dress. He was kissing me all over as his hands ducked inside of my undergarments, running to all sorts of delicious private places. I was peeling off his pants and getting to feel up close the object pressing into me between my thighs. I swore that I could feel his hand on my ass, right now...

Wait a minute! I really could feel his hand there! My eyes went wide, and he let out a little satisfied grunt as he squeezed. I tried to make an affronted little noise without actually sounding like I wanted him to stop. His fingers managed to encapsulate the cheek of my ass very nicely.

And that wasn't all that I could feel! Did I mention that I was pressed very closely up against this man? And that the fabric of his suit, although very nice and well-made, was quite thin. And, not to put too fine of a point on it, I could feel a very long and distinct bulge between this man's legs, questing and seeking to find refuge in between my legs.