“Oh my god,” she breathed as he moved his mouth over hers, kissing her more hungrily with each touch, “is this really happening?” she asked no one.
His breath was short as he moved his hands from her face to her arms and then her hands, lifting them to the wall behind her and pinning them there gently. “God I hope so,” he murmured as his mouth moved down her throat.
She closed her eyes and felt her skin catch fire. It had been real ages since she was with a man, and she had forgotten that intimacy could feel so incredible, if she had ever really felt it so good at all. She couldn’t remember it ever feeling to her the way that it did as Alexander’s hands moved slowly down her bare arms to the sides of her torso, slowly, gently cupping her generous breasts as he kissed and sucked at her neck and moved his mouth lower to the blossom of cleavage showing above the line of her blouse.
His mouth slowly canvassed the upper swell of her breasts and she moaned softly as his thumbs moved over her hardening nipples, massaging them. Fired burned its way from his mouth and fingers down through her all the way to her core, and she felt an unfamiliar ache begin to build there.
Alexander brought his mouth back up to hers and kissed her as a parched man drinks in the sweet cool water of an oasis. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up against his form, subtly moving what she could feel was a rock hard erection against her.
He lifted his mouth from hers reluctantly and gazed, heavy lidded, into her dark eyes. “Stay with me, please… don’t feel obligated, the business we did is done and it doesn’t have anything at all to do with this. You don’t owe me anything, but… if you want to, if you’re feeling at all like I am… if you want… more, please stay with me.” He leaned forward and kissed her again, losing himself in the kiss as he mumbled the word against her lips again, “Please…”
As he kissed her she reached her hands up to his chest and began to unbutton his shirt, trailing her fingers down his chest as she opened each one, and when she reached his pants, he kissed her harder on the mouth. She unzipped them and they fell to the floor, leaving only his boxers. Feeling bold and fiery, she lowered her hand to his erection, sliding her fingers beneath the satin, and closing them around his shaft.
“Oh god…” He grew breathless and lifted his mouth from hers, pressing his cheek to hers. “Come with me.”
He let her touch him a moment longer, but then he took her hand in his and led her to the bedroom. He stripped his own clothes off, but he took his time slowly peeling her out of hers, revealing her voluptuous curves and lines slowly and tracing all of them with his fingers, his hands and his tongue.
Callie felt as if everything in her was spinning with every touch of his, with every kiss, and when he laid her back on his bed, she felt like she was in some kind of impossible dream, seeing a face she had seen many times before in the media, so close to her, so intimate.
“I need to taste you,” he said softly as he brushed his hands up the inside of her thighs and parted them. She stared in blissful disbelief as he brought his mouth to her core and began to kiss her, began to taste her there, began to run the tip of his tongue along her tender folds.
It couldn’t be real, she thought, but there he was doing it, there he was sliding his tongue into her, thrusting it further and further, his mouth ravenous against her to the point that she had to close her eyes and push her head back into the pillows.
Callie closed her fingers tightly in his golden hair and began to move her hips, pressing her body hard against his mouth. He only licked, bit, and sucked at her harder, and pleasure began to mount in her, building like a tidal wave, until it crashed all through her and she fisted his hair and cried out with her release, coming hard as her body trembled in his hands.
She had barely begun to come back down off of the wave when he pulled her up to him and kissed her breasts, taking each in his mouth, cupping them and massaging them firmly. They knelt together, facing one another as he gorged himself on her dark, hard nipples and slid his fingers down between her thighs, moving them swiftly over her and into her until she clung tightly to him and came again.
He had made her come twice and she was trembling from both times, but she wanted more from him. She wanted all of him. Opening her eyes, she looked into his eyes as she pushed him back down into the bed, and he stared at her with pure wonder on his face as she brought her thighs over his knees and lifted his erection to her, massaging it firmly with her fingertips as she closed her full lips around it.
She began to suck at the tip of him, moving her fingertips up and down his solid shaft, surprised at the massive size of him. She hadn’t seen many nude men in her life, but none of them were as endowed as Alexander. He moaned deeply and she brought more of him into her mouth, licking, sucking at him and rubbing him firmer and faster as she took more of him in.
He began to pump his hips gently, and she saw him close his eyes and catch his breath. She sucked harder at him and he cried out with pleasure. She saw that it was getting intense for him, and she lifted her mouth from his throbbing hardness and positioned her body over his hips.
Alexander opened his eyes and watched her above him as she began to lower her body down onto his rock solid erection, taking him into her inch by inch as they both held their breath. Her hands rested on the muscled wall of his chest, and he closed his widespread fingers tightly over her thighs, sliding them up to her rounded hips as she finally brought him at his fullness inside of her. They both gasped, and she began to rock over him, swaying her hips and moaning.
He stared at her, unable to look away as he clasped her hips first, driving himself slowly all the way into her, and then bringing his hands to cup her breasts, drawing her down to his mouth so that he could close his lips and teeth around her nipples, making her moan with absolute pleasure.
They moved together, doing their best to temper their building passions as they held fast and wrestled against one another in breathless, fiery surrender. Alexander brought her to her orgasms over and over again, until she was weak and blissful, heady and enraptured with him, and still he refused to let his own pleasure come.
He moved in her from beneath, from above, and from behind, taking her in many ways for as long as he could, even as the gold light of the morning sun spilled in through the window and canvassed her dark skin in light, which only turned him on more.
She was wrapped in his arms laying beneath him and he brought his mouth from her breasts to her lips where he kissed her for the millionth time when he finally could hold himself back no longer, and she held him tightly to her as he thrust himself to the very depths of her and made her come again, just from the feel of his orgasm exploding in her and flooding her with heat.
She gasped and clung to him, her face pressed against his neck and his face pressed against hers, murmuring her name as he trembled and finally came still, laying at her side in the sheets. He leaned forward and kissed her mouth again; long and slow, and when their bodies parted, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Callie watched him for a while, not believing what had happened that night. She was sure that she was dreaming. It couldn’t be possible that she had just shared her body with such a beautiful man; a tech celebrity billionaire who had paid her a quarter of a million dollars to fix a program he had made; the whole thing felt entirely surreal to her. She glanced at the clock and knew that she had to go, though she didn’t want to. It felt to her like voluntarily ending the best dream she had ever had, and she didn’t want to do that.
Leaning over, she kissed his mouth once more, tenderly and slowly, and she whispered against his lips, “thank you, Alexander.”
Then she made herself leave him and go to the bathroom to clean up and get dressed again. She straightened her hair and makeup and gave him one long, last look to remember the living dream before she left. She saw that his hand was on the pillow where she had been sleeping, and it made her smile wistfully to imagine that he was dreaming of holding her beside him.
Callie sighed with happiness, bliss, relief, pleasure, and a little sadness that it was ending, and she slipped out of his room and left the hotel.
***
Alexander walked into the small, upscale Italian restaurant nestled into a quiet neighborhood just down the hill from the Fremont Troll under the bridge. He liked the neighborhood, and he would occasionally meet his best friend Oliver around the different pubs or restaurants there, but it was Oliver’s turn to choose, and he had decided on the Italian restaurant.
Oliver was already waiting at a table near the front window that overlooked the street outside. He waved to Alexander, and grinned. He had medium length brown hair and brown eyes, he was tall and slender, and he had a welcoming and warm demeanor that made everyone feel as though he was their friend, whether or not he was.
Alexander gave him a hug and took the seat across from him. “Hey!” He grinned at him as he sat. “How are you?”
Oliver shrugged. “I’m finer than a spring day in Georgia,” he quipped with a chuckle. As he took in the look of his best friend sitting across the table from him, he lowered his brow somewhat. “You look a little rough around the edges… I mean, you’re still enviably good looking, but, as your close, personal friend, I have to tell you I haven’t seen shadows under your eyes in a while.”
Oliver leaned in closer and dropped his voice some. “You’re not hung over are you?” He asked in disbelief. “You’re never hung over.”
Alexander shook his head and as the server appeared beside him, he looked up with a hopeful smile. “May I please get an espresso, a cappuccino, and a wine spritzer?” The server nodded and left.
Oliver frowned. “What’s going on?”
Alexander rubbed his hands over his face for a moment and then lowered them to the table as he reached for the water that the server had brought for him.
“I’m not hung over.” Alexander sighed with a widening smile and a shake of his head. “I just had the most incredible night of my life. Hands down.”
Intrigue washed over Oliver’s face. “Really? Do tell! I hope it was a girl. Please tell me you weren’t talking computers all night with another guy.”
Alexander laughed and shook his head. “It’s like you know me.”
“Imagine.” Oliver chuckled. “So?”
“It was both.” Alexander answered with a shrug. “You know I was down here for a couple of days talking with Tony Barretti about the new app. He’s interested in a partnership and I’m chewing on that. Well, he thought it would be a good show of business machismo to haul me out to a strip club last night.”
Oliver’s eyes went wide and he stared at his best friend; his mouth twisted in mock horror. “A strip club? Tony doesn’t know you at all, does he?”
Alexander shook his head regretfully. “To be honest, I think that the strip club was more for his benefit than mine. It’s a wonder he didn’t get thrown out of there for being so crude. It was pretty embarrassing, actually.”
Oliver nodded and listened intently. “So you were at a strip club with Tony. Ew. You know he doesn’t have a great reputation for being around women, right? Yeah. So then what happened?”
“I didn’t know that before, but I do now.” Alexander admitted distastefully. “So we were there and our cocktail waitress came over to our table while I was trying to talk to Tony about the problems with the app, and he was drooling over her, although that was totally understandable. understandable, I guess.She is really… just… god she’s beautiful. He was just a pig about it.” His face darkened as he thought back to it.
“Anyway, she saw me talking with him about the app and she whips her phone out and shows me right there that she’s come up with this unbelievably brilliant workaround for all of the problems that we’ve been having with the app, and I mean all of them. She figured out this brilliant fix for the whole thing. Like, my team- my whole team has been working like crazy on these issues for a month and she did it all in one day. I was blown away. I’m still blown away.”
He shook his head and looked up gratefully at the server who brought his drinks to him. They both ordered their lunches, and the server left. Oliver turned his attention back to Alexander.
“Okay, continue. Beautiful girl, genius fix. Got it.” Oliver urged him as Alexander shot his espresso back in one gulp and then sipped on his cappuccino like it was ambrosia.
“So I begged her to show me how she did it, and she couldn’t because she was busy. It was crazy in there last night. She was swamped. So I waited, of course-”
“Of course.” Oliver agreed in absolution.
“I waited for her to have some free time, but it didn’t happen until she was off the clock. By that time Tony was passed out and the bar was closing, so I had her follow me back to the hotel and we poured Tony into his room. Then she came with me back to my room.” Alexander was playing it all back in his mind as he relayed it, all the while feeling his heart beat faster and his blood begin to rush.
Oliver slowly raised his eyebrows and leaned forward, staring straight into Alexander’s eyes. “You are blushing, Sir. Blushing. I want details.”
Alexander laughed and shrugged. “Well, we went in to work on the code, and she fixed the whole damn thing. All of it, in an hour.” He lifted his hands in the air a moment and then dropped them to his side for effect. “Zip and done, just like that. My whole team worked for a month and didn’t get halfway through what she did in an hour.”
“That’s remarkable.” Oliver shook his head in amazement.
“No, it’s unheard of. She’s a genius. She’s… she’s just… beyond anything I can imagine.” He sighed and closed his eyes, giving his head a shake.
“Sooooo…. Then what happened? I’ve heard you talk about computers and code and programming countless times for the better part of a decade. None of it ever made you blush. Spill.” Oliver pressed, his eyes still steady on Alexander.
Alexander sighed. “She was leaving. She did the code, I paid her a quarter of a million dollars, and she was leaving. We made it as far as the door.”
“I love how you just nonchalantly say that like you dropped a dollar in the cup of a guy on the street.” Oliver stated with an ironic and level tone. “You made it to the door and what?”
With a distant look in his eyes, Alexander spoke in a quiet voice. “We made it to the door and then she kissed me… and I kissed her… and… and then I think my whole life changed right then.”
Oliver didn’t say a word. He simply stared at his friend.
Alexander sighed and continued. “She stayed the night with me. Like, the whole night. The sun was up and we were…” He trailed off and closed his eyes. Taking a breath he opened them again. “I fell asleep and when I woke up, she was gone. It feels so… weird. The whole thing feels weird.”
He furrowed his brow and let out a heavy sigh, looking at his best friend. “I’m not the same man I was at this time yesterday, Oliver. I’m not.”
Oliver leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, regarding his friend thoughtfully. He did not speak.
“What? Say something for chrissake!” Alexander urged him.
Oliver pursed his lips for a moment and then leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table and pointed his finger at Alexander. “I know what this is. I do.” He pursed his lips again and gave his head a shake. “This is almost exactly what happened when I met Joshua, way back before the dating and the wedding bells. This. Exact. Kind. Of. Thing.”
It was Alexander’s turn to stare at him.
“Listen. I’m truly amazed about the workaround fix for the app. Seriously, I love the app but I am first in line for the fix. I call dibs. Now, if no one else at your company could come up with this, then you better get your ass in gear and hire her before someone else does, and don’t you dare let her get away, even if you did have sex with her. If she is a genius, she’s going to be hot on the market at some point and you want her before that. You don’t want to be her competitor.” Oliver eyed him knowingly, “Especially now.”
Alexander gave him a questioning look and Oliver waved it off. Alexander shrugged. “Okay, hire her immediately. Good plan. I was actually thinking that exact same thing, too. You know, Tony was there last night. He saw what she did with the app when she showed it to us at the bar. He knows she’s a genius.”
He looked panicked for a moment. “Oh god. What if he gets to her before I do and offers her a job?”
“Then you’d better get to her before Tony or anyone else does, because once word of her fix on your app gets around, she’s going to be a hot ticket, and you’ll be hard pressed to be first in line for her.” Oliver gave him a serious look. “Don’t lose her. For god’s sake,” he shook his head and gave his friend a tender, happy smile, “whatever you do, don’t lose her.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Alexander asked him suspiciously.
“Oh look, pasta!” Oliver smiled up at the waitress and then changed the subject to interior design.
***
Callie walked in the door of her mother’s house and saw her mother standing in the kitchen. Noel immediately sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Thank you, Lord, she made it home safe.” She clicked her tongue and then shot her daughter a disapproving look. “You couldn’t at least send me a text to let me know you were alive? Where have you been?” She asked in an irritated whisper.
Callie looked around the kitchen and let out a breath of relief. “Does she know I just got home?”
Noel shook her head. “No, I didn’t tell her that you never came home last night.” Noel swatted Callie’s arm with the tea towel she had in her hand, and Callie was grateful that it wasn’t with the spatula that she had in her other hand.
“Now where have you been?” Noel asked again insistently. She gave her daughter a sharp look.
Callie reached for the tea towel and the spatula and gently took them from her mother’s hands. “Mama, I think you better sit down.”
Noel frowned darkly. “Why? What’s so bad you want me to sit to hear it? Oh no… what is it? Is it your brother? Please tell me you’re both fine. Oh Lord…” She planted her hand on her heart and sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs.
Callie shook her head. “No, Mama, it’s not bad. It’s incredible.”
Relief washed over Noel’s face and her shoulders relaxed some. “Well thank the Lord. Now what is it?” She asked, her eyes piercing her daughter’s.
Drawing in a big breath, Callie opened her purse and reached for the check. “You know that app on my phone and on my laptop that I wrote a program to fix?”
“Yes?” Noel said, reaching for her reading glasses and pushing them on, sliding them up her nose as she eyed the paper in her daughter’s hand.
“Well, I met the guy who invented the app. He’s a billionaire CEO of one of the biggest tech companies here in Seattle. I showed him what I did with the app and he paid me to do some contract work for him. He paid me to show him how to do what I did to fix the app. That’s what I was doing last night.” She handed her mother the folded check and didn’t bother to mention that she did a whole lot more than that the night before.
Noel opened the check and widened her eyes as she looked down at it. She read it three times in disbelief and then planted her hand over her mouth and then her heart as tears filled her eyes. “Oh my sweet baby Jesus! Look at that!” She stared at it and then her eyes lifted to Callie’s.
“Is that real? Am I looking at a real check? This isn’t a fake, is it?” Noel began to fan herself with her hand as tears flowed out of her eyes.
Callie felt tears coming too. “Mama don’t cry! You know I never let you cry alone!” She laughed and fanned her own face, wiping at her eyes with her other hand. “Yes, that’s real. I fixed his app and he paid me for it. It’s probably worth a whole lot more money to him, but that’s what he gave me and I took it and left. That’s for us now.”
“Oh my baby! I am so glad that you started going to college! I knew you were so smart, my smart baby girl… my… come here and hug me. I just can’t take this on my own. Come on over here!” She closed her eyes and began to weep as Callie hugged her and wept with her.
Noel began to recover and her eyes got wide as she gasped and held the check against her heart. “Now, you listen to me. We need to go put this in your bank account right now. No waiting. God knows what might happen to it, or maybe that man will see reason today and stop the payment on it.” She worried aloud as she pushed herself up from her chair.
“Mama, he’s a billionaire, he’s not going to-”
“Nope. We’re not taking any chances. Now you get that girl of ours and you get out here. I’m turning the stove off and we’re headed right for the bank. Thank heaven the bank is open on Saturday’s for a few hours. Now come on! We can come back and have breakfast after. Don’t even go to the bathroom, just get in the car. Quick now. Let’s go!” Noel waddled as fast as she could around the kitchen, shutting it down as she shooed Callie along.
“Jenny, we need to run an errand and Noel wants to go right now. Come on out please, honey.” Callie called down the hall, and Jenny called back a muffled, “Okay!”
They piled into the car and Noel tucked the check into her bra and crossed her arms over her chest all the way to the bank until they walked in and were standing before a lady at the counter. Only then did the older woman pull the check from her bra and look around suspiciously before pressing it into Callie’s hand.
“Now sign that and give it to her. Quick!” Noel insisted seriously. Callie knew better than to talk about it or argue, so she did what she was told, and the teller smiled as she deposited the check and handed Jenny a sucker.
“Don’t you eat that until after lunch.” Noel eyed Jenny closely.
Jenny nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” She smiled and thanked the teller.
The teller gave them a receipt and they thanked her and went back out to the car. It wasn’t until then that Noel finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well thank the Lord that’s done. I just can’t believe it.” She dabbed at her eyes again. Then she looked over at her daughter. “So what are you going to do now?”
Callie grinned. “I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to go buy Jenny a brand new outfit for ballet and new pointe shoes, and I want to do it right now.”
Jenny squealed with delight in the back seat and called out her thanks to Callie excitedly.
Noel bawled for a moment and then wiped at her eyes again. She grabbed her daughter’s hand and squeezed it. “You’re such a good girl. I’m so proud of you.” She sniffed at wiped her tissue at her nose. “Let’s go ahead and go now.”
When they returned home from shopping, Callie picked up the phone and her mother got busy making breakfast again. Looking over at her daughter as she pushed the spatula under a pancake, she asked, “Is that your brother? Are you calling your brother?”
Callie nodded and Noel smiled widely. “You tell that boy that his mama loves him.”
“I’ll let you talk with him too, Mama. You can tell him yourself.” Callie smiled.
Jenny bounced in her chair at the table. “Yay! Uncle Jack!”
A deep masculine voice answered the phone, and she could hear the smile on the other end of it. “Callie!”
“How did you know it was me? It might have been Mama!” she laughed.
“I always know when it’s you. It’s a twin thing. How are you doing, little sister?” he asked, giving her the old reliable dig at being two minutes older than her.
“Jackson, you’d better sit down.” She grinned.
“Jackson? I know it’s serious when you use my whole name. None of this ‘hey Jack’, no. It’s Jackson. What’d you do, win the lottery?” He laughed deeply.
“Yeah, I kind of did.” .
There was a moment of silence at the other end of the phone. “What?” He asked with a serious tone. She told him all about it and when he had gotten over the shock of it, he spoke plainly to her.
“Sis, you have enough money now to last for a good long while. I want you to quit that job. I want you to quit it today. I hate that you’ve had to do that to make money. Now you have a chance. You put that money in the bank and you only spend what you have to. You focus on school and you quit that damn job. You hear me?” She couldn’t remember the last time that he had sounded so serious.
“I hear you, big brother. That’s the plan. That is just exactly what I want to do. I feel the same way about that job that you do,” she said quietly.
Jenny frowned at her from across the table. “You’re going to quit your waitressing job?”
Callie cleared her throat and Jack chuckled quietly. “You know,” Callie said, changing the subject, “Jenny has got some exciting news to share with her Uncle Jack.” Callie gave the girl a sidelong look and a wink, and Jenny bounced out of her seat and ran to the phone.
“She does?” Jack asked with anticipation as Jenny took the phone from Callie. She told him all about her upcoming audition and how much it meant to her. He listened and cheered her on, telling her that he knew she could do it.
“Thank you, Uncle Jack. When are you coming home? I miss you! I want you to see me dance!” She pleaded excitedly.
He sighed and his voice grew serious. “I’m sorry baby girl, I’m working right now. I don’t think I’ll make it home until Christmas. But, I miss you and I love you too, and I think you better start watching the mailbox for a surprise from your Uncle Jack. Okay?”
She smiled brightly, though it was clear that she was sad that she wouldn’t see him until Christmas. “Okay! I will. Thank you! I love you!”
Jenny handed the phone to Noel and Callie gave Jenny a hug. “I am going to quit my job today, and then I’m going to have a lot more time to spend with you.”
“Really?” Jenny was completely elated again. “Oh, Auntie Callie! I’m so excited!!”
“Me too, baby girl. Me too.” Callie smiled wide and hugged the little girl tightly.