Authors: Pepper Anthony
Holy shit! She wants two guys at once!
Maybe more than two! His blood started racing as he pictured
it. Though he’d never given a thought to sharing a woman with another guy, the
idea didn’t hit him as totally repulsive, especially if the woman was someone
as hot as Amber.
But what set of circumstances would have to occur to make
such a thing possible?
All afternoon, as he worked pulling cable three floors
above, he turned that question over in his mind. He found it didn’t take much
to imagine the lovely Amber being sexually entertained by two guys at once, her
full, red mouth taking one erect cock while a second guy took her from behind.
Yeah, that image came easily to mind and was hotter than hell.
But could he see
himself
as one of the guys in that
scenario? That was another question entirely.
Amber put her forehead on her desk and groaned out loud. She
couldn’t believe she’d been so careless as to let Ray Ferris see her stash of
what she liked to think of as her “lady porn”. How could she have forgotten
that box of
ménage
erotica, which she normally hid in her file cabinet,
was mixed in with the other moving boxes in the stack? She certainly hadn’t
expected anyone but herself to go rifling through them.
What must he think of her? She’d always been so careful to
project a businesslike persona at the office. Now he knew her darkest secret, a
desire she shared with no one, not even her best friend Eva. She barely even
admitted it to herself.
Wait. It wasn’t a
desire
, was it?
Lord, no! It was a
fantasy
pure and simple. Just a
theme she’d gravitated toward when choosing books to order from the internet.
If it really came down to it, she’d be horrified to act out the steamy scenes
she so avidly read about. She couldn’t even begin to imagine having two men at
once vying to please her in bed. Two men kissing her, stroking her. Touching
her in ways that a modest woman like herself should never allow.
Amber squeezed her eyes closed tight, doing her best to deny
the thrill of arousal that was unfurling in her core. Suddenly she found she
could
imagine taking part in a
ménage a trois
. And while the fantasy man who
stood behind her—pinning her arms back as his hands reached around to fondle
her bared breasts—was a faceless stranger, the fantasy man she imagined
kneeling between her legs was none other than Ray Ferris.
Ray Ferris!
He’d never showed up in any of her
fantasies before—no white man had—but today there he was, bigger than life.
Shirtless, his naked pecs were hard and impressive, decorated with a fine
sprinkling of black chest hair, and the expression in his dark eyes was pure
animal hunger.
Fantasy Ray ran his big, capable hands down the inside of
her thighs, spreading them wide apart, stealing the breath from her chest. Her
legs trembled as she adjusted her stance for him. Then he pulled the crotch of
her panties to one side to expose her completely. Amber wriggled in her desk
chair as Fantasy Ray inserted one long, thick finger into her—
The phone on her desk buzzed. She jumped and made a grab for
it, knocking the handset to the carpeted floor.
“Staff meeting in ten,” Rosa, the receptionist, told her
after she’d recovered the phone.
“Thanks.” Staff meeting! She’d managed to forget all about
that. And she hadn’t prepared those reports for Saundra yet. Quickly she dumped
the documents in her print queue and pressed the start button.
All the department heads would be in attendance for this
weekly update on the progress of their move. That meant Ray would be there.
Could she really sit across the conference table from him and pretend that
nothing had happened between them this morning? Her pulse went into overdrive
as she began to pull the documents off the printer and collate them into neat,
stapled sets. If only she could do the same with her thoughts!
Wait a minute.
Nothing
had
happened between
them. He just saw a bunch of books in a box, right? Chances were good he hadn’t
even noticed the titles or the cover designs. And if he had, so what? It wasn’t
a crime to read erotic fiction, was it? It didn’t mean she was depraved or
anything.
By the time the reports were readied, she had convinced
herself that no harm at all had been done. But minutes later, as the half dozen
department managers settled into their chairs and turned to listen as Saundra
Moon, the company president, began to speak, Amber felt Ray’s gaze on her. It
was an unmistakable sensation, almost as if he was stroking her naked skin with
his fingers. He sat across the long conference table and down two chairs; she
had to look right past him to give Saundra her attention. Finally, feeling
brave, she let her gaze drift in his direction until their eyes locked.
Oh. My. God.
The look he was giving her now was exactly like the one
Fantasy Ray had given her earlier, just before he dispensed with her panties.
The expression in his eyes was dark and primal, full of knowledge of her secret
desires. His nostrils flared ever so slightly. Heart thundering, she dared to
hold his gaze, and felt heat rise from her neck to her cheeks. In response, one
corner of his mouth curved up in a little smile of acknowledgement.
Amber quickly looked away. She struggled to bring her
attention back to the words Saundra was saying.
“…and we’ll wrap that up the first of next month. Ray, how’s
the wiring and cabling going?”
“Should be done by this weekend. Got a guy coming in to help
me finish up on Friday.”
“Very good,” Saundra said, and then she went on to discuss
paint colors.
Amber fixed her attention on the printout of the updated
project calendar Saundra had passed around. Before she knew it the meeting was
over. With a sigh of relief, she slipped out the door and back to her desk.
* * * *
Eva Phillips stopped chewing the bite of salad she’d just
taken and stared at Amber, her dark eyes wide and incredulous. “Tell me you did
not just say what I heard you say.”
Amber forced herself to repeat the words. “Have you ever
thought about dating out? You know. Dating a white guy?”
“Never.” Eva punctuated the finality of her answer with a
forceful stab into a cherry tomato, then popped the little veggie into her
mouth.
For a moment the two friends sat in silence, Amber almost
wishing she could take back her ill-considered question. But Eva was her best
friend. If she couldn’t talk about her sudden attraction to Ray Ferris with
Eva, then who could she talk to?
“Listen.” Amber tried again. “I’ll be thirty in just a year
and a half. Time is going by and I’m starting to wonder if there are any good
black men left, you know?”
“Uh-huh. Tell me about it, sister. Half the black guys I’ve
met are out of work and the other half are blue-collar. I keep telling myself I
can do better, but where has that gotten me? Say, what about that big, handsome
brother you were so into last spring? He was some kind of a doctor, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. A
married
kind of doctor.” Amber winced,
remembering how ready she had been to get serious about Dr. Anthony Simpson,
the pediatrician who worked in the same building she did. “If I hadn’t googled
him before the third date I probably would have slept with him, the louse!”
“The bastard!” Eva’s fork stabbed a chunk of cucumber, which
she pointed at Amber. “What about church?”
“I haven’t found a church I like since I moved out here.”
“You’re welcome to go with me some Sunday.”
“You mean to tell me there are single black men at your
church and you’ve been keeping that to yourself all this time?”
Her friend laughed. “No. But Brother Louis would always
welcome another voice in the choir.”
“That’s only because he’s never heard me sing.”
Now they both laughed and Amber reached for her glass of
wine and took a sip. She really loved Eva. The two women had been getting
together every Thursday evening for the past year, sharing a meal and
friendship after their night class. They were both taking classes at Portland State University, both working on Masters Degrees in business administration. They
had hit it off from the beginning, single professional women on the way up. Eva
was really the only good friend Amber had in Portland.
“Seriously, though. What would be so wrong with seeing a
white guy?”
“It’s not right, that’s all. You know all the problems that
come along with dating out. And if
we
don’t keep the faith for the black
community, who will?”
“But for how long? Think about it, Eva. Almost all the
sisters we know are single, hanging on like we are, waiting for a good black
man to come along. I just don’t think our odds are very good.”
And Ray
Ferris is starting to look better every minute.
Not that she’d want to
marry
a white man. But what
would be so wrong with dinner and drinks? The man was respectful, considerate,
and no doubt made a very good salary in the IT profession. And he was obviously
intelligent; she’d never have to dumb herself down to have a conversation with
him.
“You’ve already got somebody in mind, don’t you?” Eva asked.
“Not really.” Amber took another sip.
“Spill it.”
“Okay. There’s a guy I work with. Computer guy,” she said
dismissively. “But there’s a no-dating policy at Crescent, so there’s no point in
even thinking about it.”
“But you’re thinking about it anyway.” Eva eyed her. “Is the
man hot?”
Amber felt her face warming as she flashed on the memory of
the commanding way Fantasy Ray had touched her body. “I guess.”
“You guess? Girl, you should see the color of your cheeks.
This man must be on fire.”
Amber laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess he is.”
* * * *
Ray took a bite of pizza and shoved the box with the last
piece in Calvin’s direction. They sat on the bare concrete floor, their backs
propped against the freshly painted walls. The plate glass windows surrounding
them were huge rectangles of shiny black.
“Eat up, Cal. We’ve got another couple of hours of work
before we’re done. Sorry to keep you so late, but I promised my boss I’d have
this cabling done today.”
Calvin shrugged. “I don’t care how late we go. It’s not like
I have a hot date or anything.”
“Woman troubles, huh?” Ray felt a stab of sympathy for his
shy cousin. Cal was tall and fairly good looking, but he totally lacked self-confidence.
It didn’t help that he was an engineer and a complete nerd to boot. As far as Ray
knew, the guy hadn’t had a date in years. He wouldn’t be surprised to find out
that Cal was still a virgin at the age of thirty.
“Does total lack of a woman count as woman troubles?” Cal gave a weak laugh.
Ray chuckled. “You’re probably better off. They can be a
tricky bunch.” His mind settled on Amber Jackson. She had been haunting his
thoughts all week, ever since he’d seen her naughty book collection and the
look on her face that told him those books might be more than casual reading
for her. Frankly, he was fascinated. “Women tend to say one thing and do
something entirely different.”
“What do you mean?” Cal asked.
For a moment, Ray considered telling Cal about the
conservative Amber and her anything-but books, then decided to let it drop. He
changed the subject. “You going down to see Gran and Granddad this weekend?”
Cal nodded. “I promised Gran I’d mow the lawn and stay for
Sunday dinner. Did it seem like he was doing any better when you saw him last
weekend?”
Their seventy-nine-year-old grandfather had suffered a
fairly serious stroke the month before and was making a steady but slow
recovery at home. It bothered Ray that his grandparents lived an hour’s drive
away in Salem, Oregon’s capital city. No one had been there to help his
grandmother when Granddad collapsed. Since the elderly man’s discharge from the
hospital, Ray and Cal had been taking turns going to Salem on the weekends to
do chores and offer moral support. But he imagined it was only a matter of time
before his grandparents would have to give up their spacious family home and
move to an assisted living facility. It broke his heart.
“Maybe a little better,” Ray said. “He seemed a little more
on the ball. He only called me Cal twice.”
Neither of them laughed. They finished their pizza, and
after a few minutes they rolled up on their knees and went back to work.
* * * *
Amber threw her pencil on the desk and sighed in
frustration. Her copy of the floor plan schematics for the new office space
didn’t show where the electrical outlets were in the reception area. Saundra had
left it up to her to order the table lamps for that room. Without knowing where
the outlets would be, she could hardly place the shiny new lamps on their shiny
new tables, could she? She decided she’d just run upstairs and check it out for
herself.
Amber found the elevator car still parked on her floor and
got in. She enjoyed working after hours when the building was so quiet. Only Stanley and Otto, the security guards on the main floor, would be there on a Friday night.
Upstairs she got off the elevator and entered the new
reception area. Lucky for her, someone had left the lights on. She took out her
pencil and began to make marks on the photocopy of the floor plan she’d brought
along.
Suddenly she heard a noise behind her. She spun around.
A man was standing in the doorway, staring at her. A
complete stranger!
She screamed and began backing toward the door.
“Wait!” he yelled, holding up both hands, palms out, as if
to ward off the noise she was making. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m helping Ray
with the computer cable.”
“Oh.” Amber clapped her hand over her mouth. The adrenalin
continued to pump through her system, making her knees feel like rubber. “Oh,”
she said again, her pulse beginning to settle. She let her hand drop. “Wow, you
really scared me. I didn’t know you guys were working up here tonight.”
Just then Ray came around the corner.
“Everything all right?” His eyes sought hers. Sparks of unmistakable interest lit their depths. “Amber. What are you doing here?”
“Same thing you are. Working late.” She waved the floor plan
at him. “Trying to figure out where the outlets are going to be in the
reception area. Your assistant startled me.”
“Sorry about that.” Ray grinned and Amber found herself
smiling back, a strange heat replacing the fear that had just been surging
through her body. He looked great in his snug blue t-shirt and tight black
jeans. His wavy brown hair had just a suggestion of sheetrock dust in it but
that didn’t detract at all from his appeal. Come to think of it, the other guy
was pretty cute too. A little taller than Ray, a little thinner, not as
muscular, but not bad at all.