Sealing the Deal (3 page)

Finally, he collapsed on top of her, nestling his body onto hers. His weight was almost too much pressure on her full breasts. Dionne encouraged him over to the side, towards the drop. Their limbs were still tangled into one another. He was still on the throes of the moment but she was clearheaded. It had been as intense for him as it had been for her. Recovered, he turned to her, cutting a look out of the corner of his eye.

“My goodness,” he declared.

He rolled her gently on her stomach, hitched her buttocks back up towards him. And entered her again. He was not the polite, patient man he had been the first go round. He took her like a possession and less like a partner. It was all about him. He drove into her with a quick, powerful rhythm and came quickly, ragefully. He collapsed behind her, burying his face into her shoulder.

Dionne wasn’t sure she liked that as much, but she was completely satisfied. And for some reason she felt as if she could conduct business with him without any sort of interference by their animalistic sexual attraction. She also remembered what her recruiter said, that it could be a temporary position.

She turned to him and said, “Show me the powder room.”

He laughed. “Certainly,”

Stan shadowed her, directing her while in the house to find their way to the bathroom. He had the ability to pull back his energy, to connect with her when it was cool and to give her space when she needed it. And she needed it. In the bathroom her thoughts brewed about what had just happened between them and what they wanted to accomplish in the immediate future. She formulated her expression of those thoughts as she bathed herself in a way that her mother used to call a whore’s bath.

It had been such amazing sex. The stars were like fireworks in the brilliant California sky but now, as she dabbed the itchy places left by the grass, reality was less romantic. She was mildly allergic to the grass and blotches started to puff on her skin. She ran the water so it was as cool as possible to ease her discomfort. The silk of her dress, soft as it was, was going to be a nuisance. Dionne freshened in the bidet and finished putting herself back together.

Stan lingered in his living room that was adorned with a blunt stone fireplace. It looked ancient, like something out of the frontier, but that was typical of wealthy California mansions. They could be brand new and still have the worn-in, broken-in comfort of a place with more years. Cool was timeless and Stan was certainly that. The way he stood, aloof, pretending to scan a magazine, Dionne wondered now that they had sex if his posture was one of no longer interested or if he was being cool and casual. She knew for sure that something in the way they had sex the second time combined with her now treacherously itching skin made it so she didn’t want to have sex with him anymore. She wanted to keep it all business.

When she stepped into the living room, quietly, he looked up and read her. He tilted his head and asked gently, “What?”

“I had a really good time tonight but moving forward I am going to keep it platonic between us and I would like for you to do the same,” she said after sucking in a deep breath. It wasn’t an unreasonable request and yet she had to work up her nerve to make it.

“Fine,” he replied, the corners of his eyes glittering, almost as if he were suppressing a laugh. Like he found something amusing.

“Is there something funny?” she asked perturbed.

“Nope,” he answered quickly. “I am with you. I have papers for you to sign. You can take a day or two to look them over. Whatever you like.”

“I’ll take them,” she said, with a strange, foreign emotion building pressure within her. “I’d like to go home now.”

“Absolutely,” he answered, stepping closer to her. “Everything okay?”

“I’m tired,” she answered not entirely lying. “It’s been a whirlwind couple of days.”

Stan handed her the papers and made no point to hide the fact that he was studying her. “You will tell me if you have an issue, right? I expect you to be forthright and honest and I can’t reassure you enough. You can trust me.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice becoming brittle with tears that wanted to stampede.

He shepherded her out to the drive and held the door for her as she got into the car. The driver knew where to go. Which was good. She couldn’t speak. She was way too busy crying her eyes out.

Dionne told Stan she needed to take a few days. In the strange but comfortable space that was her Eichler home, she spaced out, as she called it. Never dressing in much more than her bikini or her robe, in part because of exhaustion and in part because the grass from Stan’s estate gave her a rash. Her backyard had a solid privacy fence, a couple of pineapple guava and her lounge chair. She spread her terry robe on top of her lawn chair and let the sun’s rays work the stress from her. Cleanse her. Purge her. No more hooking up with strangers. No more meaningless sex. And even though the pitch at Supra with Lionel ended up on her face, she was going to commit to the goal of being at the helm of her own company with her product as the main income maker.

Stan actually encouraged taking time off though he reminded her once again to send him the contract she had with Category, which she did. Finally. That was all she did that remotely resembled work. She slathered herself with her chocolate mask, some concoction she had gotten in Sonoma that was supposed to draw out toxins – hopefully it would cure her allergic reaction that she was sporting on her skin. Dionne slept the day away.

At 4 pm she was rousted from her relaxation by the insistent knock of a courier. She wasn’t expecting anything and was leery going to the door in her robe. The house had a privacy courtyard out front and if someone were to slip into the house the way Lionel was able to, the neighbors wouldn’t be any wiser. But Dionne was certainly glad she had answered the door.

It was a delivery from Category. She had been wrong. They did offer her a severance, and a huge one. One so big it rerouted all urgency for her to get back to work. She was tempted to call and see if there was a clerical error. But she didn’t. She showered quickly, toweled off and stepped into her almost worn-to-nothing jean skirt, a low-back tank top and sandals. She put the top down for this adventure. She was going to go out, deposit her check and maybe take herself to Oscar’s for takeout. Oscar’s was her favorite. It had been a drive-in at one time. She walked up to the window, and though she knew the menu and was probably going to order what she always did, she decided instead to study the menu.

“I promise this is a coincidence,” Stan said from behind her.

Dionne flinched and was going to hurl herself around to face him, she was so surprised he had been able to sneak up behind her so easily.

“Oh please,” he begged, “whatever you do, don’t turn around. It’s such a magnificent angle.” He dragged his finger up the length of her spine. “Chocolate?”

She was a little embarrassed. That was hard to do – embarrass her. She didn’t often have the good sense to be. She had apparently missed some of the mask from her skin. She also knew her back was splotchy from the grass and that if he could see the mask, he could see the rash.

He did.

“Poor baby,” he noted.

“I was laying out in the sun with only my string bikini but I had that stuff all over me…” Dionne stopped because her words had a hypnotic effect on him. His eyes glazed over.

“You had that stuff all over you with nothing but a couple of strings and some triangles?” he asked zombie-like. “Shit.”

Somehow being near each other after a small break made them both forget their resolution to keep things just business. His touch was like a sparkler radiating electricity through her. Her nipples were erect, protruding through the worn soft fabric of her tank top.

“Sorry about the flirting. I promise to behave myself, but would you mind very much if we waited a day or so? It’s killing me to see your skin all broken out and it’s all my fault. Please let me treat you to a sweet little spot in Santa Rosa I know? It’s a privately owned house that a couple of hippies own and operate. They’ll take care of whatever ails you and I think every one of my friends should experience this place just once. How about while you’re thinking of being my partner?”

Partner? She was at first charmed at the idea and then she wasn’t. Why would he go into partnership with a person he didn’t know? It was the precise question she asked him. He did that thing he always did when he was about to ask a question.

Stan tilted his head and had the sweetest, sexiest look on his face. “Ms. Ellis, you’ve been to my place?”

“Yes,” she answered. Of course she had.

“Do I look like I am in the habit of making dumb decisions? I asked you to trust me, did I not?”

It was a rhetorical question but answering her questions with the request to ‘trust him’ only went so far. But still he had a point, you don’t get hilltop mansions on Rainbow Drive by being foolish.

“And if you don’t take me up on my offer for Santa Rosa, at least see my dermatologist,” he said.

“That bad?” Dionne asked.

“I’d be happy to kiss it to make you feel better. You can take an extra day off. We can start the clock running tomorrow. No times, no period starting tomorrow.”

“What?” Dionne gave him a look for the weird thing he’d said. He grinned.

“It was thing from when I was a kid,” he said.

She ordered lunch/dinner. A veggie sub smeared with hummus and mushroom pate. Stan was still waiting for his order because he arrived after her.

“I’ll pay you $1,000 if you let me feed that to you,” he smirked salaciously.

“Mr. McDonald,” Dionne replied, knowing he was just teasing. “I am not for sale. Besides, I received a very large severance check today from Category.”

“Did you?” he asked.

“I did,” she replied. “A complete surprise for me. I would have sworn that I was not to receive any severance under the circumstances, but I accepted it nonetheless.”

“Good for you. The offer stands for Santa Rosa. I can send a car,” he offered.

“You know what? I will take you up on that offer, but I’ll drive myself. Do you think they can take me on such short notice? Say if I get up there tomorrow?”

“I know they can,” he beamed.

Without thinking, Dionne threw her arms around him and kissed him. At first it was a chaste kiss but then it evolved into something more. He braced the small of her back with his powerful hands. The bra underneath her shirt snapped in the front and in the heat of the moment she got unhitched. Her heavy breasts were unleashed with only the small shirt she was wearing to cover her. She felt a cool breeze on the skin of her under-curve and realized what happened. Her eyebrows all but flew off her forehead in a bit of a panic.

“Stan,” she whispered. “Stan.”

“Yes,” he replied, oblivious.

“I’m naked,” she hissed.

“You’re not naked,” he argued.

“I am. I fell out of my bra,” she said as quietly as possible.

He raised his grip an inch and realized she was telling the truth. “Oh goodness,” he said wickedly. “How may I assist?”

“Stay put,” she instructed and fidgeted with putting herself back together. She was not having success. She couldn’t see what she was doing. But he could.

“Allow me,” he offered. Very deftly and covertly, he lifted, tucked and snapped. Dionne was good as new.

“Thank you,” she said.

“My complete and utter pleasure.”

Dionne drove home on a cloud. She had money in the bank and didn’t have to dip into her reserves. She had an off the hook handsome man making her feel passionately alive, even if he was off limits. It made things right with the world knowing that she could feel so good, so intensely.

She was excited about driving up the coast to the little private spa. If Stan said it was heaven, it had to be good. She went home, napped and woke up to pack the best of her best. She got a text from Stan that she was set for three days. So that would be nine outfits for morning, noon and night, plus sundry bathing suits and loungewear. Dionne took a long hot bath and removed all the hair from her body. She had some skimpy bathing suits and she wanted to be able to change and go without stopping and grooming.

She went to bed thinking of Stan. Not business. Not all the great money she was paid. But of Stan. She wished in her heart of hearts she was going to share the trip with him. Nevertheless, the timing was good. She could come back from her little vacation refreshed and in the right frame of mind to sign papers. Dionne packed and despite having a nap, crashed. She slept harder than she had in quite some time, all the way through night.

And almost through the morning. She rose past the time she usually did and very refreshed. The coffee had brewed itself. She poured a cup and ate an orange and a banana for breakfast. She loaded up her car and programmed her GPS. She was heading to Santa Rosa.

Dionne was just about to turn off I-580 to head towards Berkeley when her phone rang. She was very careful to have her phone hooked up to a speaker so she could drive and talk. It was Stan.

“Dionne,” he said, not a bit of flirtation or silliness in his tone.

“Yes,” she answered professionally.

“I have an emergency. Are you driving?” he asked.

“Yes. I just existed from the main highway,” she answered.

“I have meetings with two companies. They know I am pitching simultaneously,” he began.

“That’s great,” she said, “Congratulations.”

“Well, except that the meetings are the day after tomorrow,” he said. “If either one of these hits the pay-off will be huge.” There was a pause. “I could really use some help.”

Dionne was a little jealous that Stan was pitching something and her product had been lost, but this was the nature of their business. As much as she was looking forward to the spa, she knew it would always be there. And after this one Hail Mary for Stan, she was going to take a few days, no ifs ands or buts. It took everything she had to turn the wheel but she did and headed south.

She pulled up in Stan’s drive, greeted this time by Stan himself. The top of her Porsche was down and she was dressed for playing. Dionne knew she made an impression when she lifted her tall, lean, nicely adorned frame out of the play mobile.

“My God,” he muttered. He wasn’t flattering her. The sight of her seemed to really pain him.

“So fill me in,” she said as he led her over to his working office. They stopped in their tracks at her choice of words.

“I mean, what’s going down?” she amended. That was no better. “Jesus, is everything going to be double entendre?”

“I have a pitch with Lightspeed and I have a pitch with,” he hesitated, “Category.”

Dionne was tense. “You have to pitch to those a…”

He covered her mouth with the palm of his hand before she could finish. “Yes, and if it pays off I’ll never ask you to do anything like this again.”

She looked at him. He removed his hand. She got emotional. “I’ve already ALREADY heard rumblings about my product MY PRODUCT in the gossip mill.”

“I am very sorry about that,” he said with genuine care. He looked her point blank in the eye. “Trust me.”

Dionne looked back at him with equal examination. “I guess I better sign those papers.”

“Say by the way,” he asked, “did you ever get around to reading your contract? The one with Category?”

“No but you got it, right?” she asked as she held a pen to the signature line of the contract with him. He put his hand over hers so she could not write.

“Did you read this contract?” he asked her sternly.

“No, I haven’t but I am going to… as you have so often said… trust you,” she smiled.

Stan unceremoniously hoisted her and walked her back to the garage wall, pinning her there. Not to fondle her beautiful self but to scold her. “Ms. Ellis, you should read your contracts. I am in a crunch now. And your procrastination has put me into something of a bind. Read these documents before you sign them or sign them now and I will relinquish you for obligation since you turned around to do me a favor. A favor I would share if you were my partner.”

There was something immensely hot about his lecturing of her. “I’m going to sit down and read before I sign, I promise. I won’t hold you up. And when I finally take that trip to Santa Rosa, which I plan to do once this exciting crisis has passed, I will read my prior one.”

He looked at her intently. “Good,” he said.

Stan laid out the two products he was pitching. One was something he described in detail. It was identified in all the slide drafts. But the second thing that he was trying to sell was anonymous. Although Dionne’s bailiwick was graphics technology and design, most of what she worked on in the past had already been signed for. She didn’t have much involvement in the finessing of deals. She was familiar with the veiling of deals in case someone stole the idea. That’s what Stan was doing. He was hiding his cards about one of the ideas. Keeping it a secret from her. Nothing was disclosed about the second piece, although she was sure the blanks would be filled in at the last minute.

There was no thought of sex while they were brainstorming. They were just two driven individuals gunning for a deadline, trying to create a finished product. Dionne had struggled to accomplish the same thing in a month. They were cranking out a piece of marketing that would convey his position artfully, so the audience would feel the full weight and excitement of the product they should invest in.

Dionne watched Stan as he worked. She had never worked closely with a person who was so much her counterpart. He was so incredibly handsome. No other way to put it than he was a beautiful man. Full perfectly chiseled lips and a broad masculine nose. Skin the blend of the blood of kings. She laughed when she thought of that, but he did. He looked like a pharaoh. He looked like he should be naked to the waist in the male equivalent to harem pants. She would be his concubine for sure. He was such genetic pay dirt.

And he didn’t judge her. She realized that in all her other business situations, she felt judgment. Maybe it was her judging herself, hedging against what other people might think or say. She was a groundbreaker and until she saw more black women as peers in the workplace, she would always feel somewhat like a lone wolf.

But Stan was awesome company. She wondered if he had some of the same perspectives. Silicon Valley was diverse. People from all over the world made it their home and place of work, but something was lacking when it came from homegrown diversity. The American contribution usually looked like a variation on the Facebook guy or the Apple guys or the Microsoft man.

They put a bow on their presentation somewhere around 3am. It was silly but they pushed through their creative process until it was finished. They were pleased and their shared drive to succeed left them with an excess of pent up energy. They had finished ahead of schedule and now it was time to blow off steam.

“It’s late,” he said. “You’re already packed. Stay.”

There was a different sort of magnetism that flowed between them now. It was deeper. Still very animal and powerful, but not as wham-bam as that of their first encounters. Dionne could not deny him a minute of her company because it would mean depriving her of his. She took his hand and followed him on his suggestion that they enjoy a light meal, some crisp California wine and a midnight swim in his heated pool.

It was just the two of them. He fetched a platter of cheese and fruit, some sourdough and crisp white Viognier wine. It made Dionne warm and lazy inside. When they had their fill, they stripped down and descended into the steaming pool water. With the backdrop of the vast night sky glittering with stars and the deep canyons beyond, their setting was spectacular.

Dionne latched onto a float and let her naked body drift in the glowing lenses of the pool light. Despite the steam and the appearance that the pool might be hot, the temperature of the water was perfect. The water just felt soft against her skin. Her stress melted away but she was still not quite settled enough to feel sleepy.

Thoughts of Stan filled her head. Not about the homerun they were about to hit in business, although he still hadn’t revealed the name of the second product. It was a challenge working around a blind item. It was weird. Come to think about it, it made no sense. Whatever, she thought, she did what he asked and he knew what he was doing. Like he said, look at all he had accomplished.

Her legs drifted lazily. She was not startled when she felt him grip her ankles, then brace her thighs to steady her as his mouth landed, so hot and tantalizing on the petaled flesh between her legs. He penetrated her with a hot, firm tongue. Blood rushed to her center, her nerves lit up. Every molecule of her sex was aroused to the fullest. Every wiggle and pressure of his tongue pushed her further and further up that luscious climb. The thought filled her head and she connected to the fact that she was going to come this way. That once again, she almost didn’t have to do a thing to find to her pleasure with him. She just had to lie back and enjoy it.

Dionne dare not move or she would slip off the float. The stillness she had to maintain concentrated the effect of Stan’s efforts to give them potent results. She had to not move and take it. It was sweet torture. He knew her body so well so quickly. He flicked his tongue on the sensitive nub of her clitoris, isolating it and then ignoring it. He stimulated erogenous points inside and out until she found herself moaning, trying to address the sexual pressure building up in her body. Her nipples were rock hard points in the night air. She was so lit up. Whether she would fall into the water or not, and break the momentum, she began to rock against the wet hot lusciousness of his mouth. He responded by pressing his thumb against the sensitive-ringed opening embedded between the curves of her buttocks. That sent her over pleasure’s cliff. She was instantly seized with the spasms of ecstasy. Powerful clenches that rippled through her, electrifying every place in her that could tingle.

The coyotes knew she was getting some. Her cries bounced around the canyon. She could hardly think. She went in and out as she floated around, consumed in bliss. Stan guided her pleasure-limp body to the pool’s edge, to a ledge that created a shallow pocket in the pool’s corner. Stan propped himself up on the ledge and let Dionne return the pleasure ten-fold as she went to town on him.

She lowered her mouth onto his large, hard erection, taking him as deeply as she possibly could. She drew her cheeks tautly, working up moisture so as to create as sensual a friction as she was able. She gripped base of his shaft firmly to drive him wild and enveloped Stan with erotic textures and pressures to drive him out of his mind and body.

His words dragged through his teeth. He held his head upward, trying to endure her carnal treatment as she plunged on him mercilessly. With the aid of the water in the shallow pool, Stan lifted his hips to pump into her mouth until he could hold out no more. He came like fireworks, bursting forth powerfully as his cries exploded in the canyon sky. His pleasure was magnificent. It was an amazing end to an incredible night. Spent and satisfied, they showered off and crashed.