Nessa Connor

Playing It Cool

Playing With You, Volume 3

Nessa Connor

Published by Nessa Connor, 2015.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

PLAYING IT COOL

First edition. September 2, 2015.

Copyright © 2015 Nessa Connor.

Written by Nessa Connor.

“All men are fucking bastards!”

Joelle Templeton swore as she stormed furiously through the front door of her apartment. She slammed the

door behind her so hard, a framed picture flew right off the wall in the entryway. The glass shattered upon impact

with the marble floor.

The short blonde woman on the couch jumped at the outburst. The tall redhead didn’t bat an eyelash.

“You’re home early, JoJo,” Scarlett Eire noted calmly. She took a gulp of champagne from the glass she held,

and unfolded her mile-long legs that had been tucked beneath her.

Rissa, Marilyn Monroe’s doppelgänger, went to her feet to give her friend Joelle a consoling hug, but the scowl on the brunette’s face sent her back to her seat.

“Well, okay, then,” Rissa tittered nervously. She was a pediatrician and the mother hen of the group. She was

always concerned with the feelings of others and was the one people turned to when they needed a shoulder to cry

on.

“I expected you to be burning the midnight oil on your first day,” asserted Scarlett. Her magnificent titian

tresses flamed copper and auburn in the September sun that cascaded through the floor-to-ceiling window behind

her. She looked like a super-model.

There was no reply from Joelle. She marched directly to her room and slammed that door, too.

“I guess now wouldn’t be a good time to tell her I drank the whole bottle of champagne you brought her,”

Scarlett whispered conspiratorially, leaning her thin, willowy torso toward her friend.

Beautiful, elegant Rissa giggled.

Scarlett was the one you turned to when you wanted to party - when you wanted to really rip it up and forget

your own name. When you wanted to paint the town red.

“I guess she had a bad day,” deduced Scarlett.

“I think that would be a gross understatement,” whispered Rissa.

The blonde doctor stood up to clean up the broken glass helpfully.

Meanwhile, Scarlett shamelessly chugged the last drop of her drink. She tipped the empty bottle over to catch a few last drops in her glass; the tall, slender Irish lass had been known to have a wee nip or two - or twenty -

from time to time when the occasion called for it. They had expected to be celebrating Joelle’s first day at work tonight, not bemoaning the sorry state of manhood in this century. She was ready for a night of fun.

“When do you think she’ll come out?” asked Rissa, wrapping the shards of glass carefully in a brown paper

bag for safety.

“Soon enough,” answered Scarlett. “She won’t get enough pity in there alone.”

Scarlett Eire and Joelle Templeton had been roommates since their freshman year at the University of

Chicago. During that first year of college, they had lived together in the dorms, but for their sophomore year, Joelle’s parents had purchased her an apartment. Upon obtaining her Doctoral degree in Architecture from MIT, they had

gifted her this upscale condo near the landmark Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago. She and Scarlett had

always been best friends and roommates, except when Joelle had moved to Massachusetts for two years to finish grad

school. Rissa Parannella was two years older than Scarlett and Joelle, and had also graduated from the University of

Chicago, for both her undergraduate degree and her MD. Now the three were inseparable.

“Men suck!” Scarlett shouted at the top of her lungs.

Rissa couldn’t stifle her laughter.

She knocked on Joelle’s bedroom door with concern: “Come out, JoJo. We want to hear about your day.”

“Men are motherfucking assholes!” yelled Scarlett again.

Still nothing.

“They are cock-sucking idiots!” the fiery vixen continued her rampage against the male gender. “All of

them!”

“Scarlett.....Shush!” Joelle said through the wall.

“Black-hearted ass-wipes!”

“Scarlett!” Joelle opened her door. “The neighbors are going to report you again,” said Joelle, finally

emerging from her brief, self-imposed exile.

“Was it a horribly bad day, JoJo?” asked Rissa sympathetically.

“Worse than horrible,” Joelle pouted.

She finally let Rissa give her a motherly hug.

“What could be that bad?” asked Scarlett. “You’re making six figures at your dream job at the company you

have had your eye on since high school. It is the top architecture firm in the city and you will probably be their first female partner.”

“Somebody made you mad today, JoJo?” Rissa empathized.

“One word,” huffed Joelle. “Connor Barton!”

“That’s two words,” ribbed Scarlett.

“I have way more than two words to describe that jerk,” Joelle worked herself into a dither again. “They are

all four letters and a lot of them start with the letter F.”

“There is only one four-letter word that starts with the letter F,” Scarlett deliberately provoked her in a sisterly manner. “Unless you count ‘fart’ as a swear word.”

“You know what I mean!” squealed Joelle.

“Connor Barton is a big, ugly, mean old fart,” Scarlett rolled her eyes.

“He’s not old,” Joelle sniped. “And he’s not ugly.”

“Sounds like someone has a crush on him,” Scarlett needled her again. Joelle had been bleating about how

much she despised this Connor Barton for the entire summer while she had worked at the architecture firm as an

intern. “You have got it bad, girl.”

“I do not!” Joelle stamped her foot. “Screw him!”

“Yes, screw him.
Please
. You might as well just screw his brains out and get it out of your system,” Scarlett

suggested. “Then we don’t have to hear about him every day. You have never even
spoken
to the man.”

Rissa offered Joelle her nearly-full glass of champagne with a lopsided apologetic smile: “You-know-who

drank the rest.”

Joelle just shrugged. They all knew she didn’t like to drink alcohol anyway.

“I talked to him today.” Joelle went to the kitchen and got herself a bottle of water.

“What did he say?” pressed Scarlett. Joelle sat next to her on the leather sofa.

“First, he sexually harassed me in the elevator.”

“He slapped your ass?” asked Scarlett.

“No.”

“He kissed you?” guessed Rissa

“No.”

“He grabbed your hair and slammed you up against the wall of the elevator?”

“No...none of that,” insisted Joelle.

“Darn it. Too bad,” Scarlett smirked. “Sorry, to hear it. That would have been fun.”

“What did he actually do?” Rissa clarified.

“He said ‘I like going down,’” recounted Joelle, her ears turning pink.

“As in, he enjoys performing fellatio on females of the human species for selfless gratification?” Rissa questioned medically.

“Yes, it was terrible.”

“Maybe he truly was referring to the physical elevation and descent of the elevator, not to performing sexual

acts on your anatomy,” Rissa tried to console her.

“No, he wasn’t,” Joelle answered with a sniff.

“Poor dear,” said Rissa.

“Yes, poor dear,” chimed Scarlett. “The hot guy you’re in love with at work wants to eat your pussy in the

elevator. Poor, unfortunate, girl.”

“It gets worse,” continued Joelle.

“I bet,” said Scarlett.

“Next, we were in the penthouse.....”

Scarlett couldn’t help but snort.

“....And he said I had to work ‘under’ him.”

“What did he mean by that, specifically?” asked Rissa pragmatically.

“To be his personal assistant.” Joelle fumed.

“Yes, that is quite demeaning considering your degree and your qualifications,” said Rissa. “You were the top

of your class at MIT. You should be regarded as a peer, a colleague, not a secretary.”

“He’s a Dom,” explained Scarlett.

Rissa and Joelle both stared at her blankly.

“BDSM,” she tried again. “He’s a Top.”

Wide eyes again.

“He likes to boss people around.”

“That’s why he’s a jerk,” said Joelle.

“He wants to order you around like Christian Grey in
Fifty Shades of Grey
.”

“Oooooh,” both girls exclaimed at once.

Scarlett saw the light bulbs flashing on in their heads and laughed aloud.

“Like punish me and spank me?” asked Joelle naively.

“Yes, precisely,” Scarlett replied.

“Like what
you
do to your men, Scarlett?” added Rissa.

“Exactly.”

“What else did he say?” Rissa asked. Scarlett could see the new S&M images popping into Rissa’ mind like

popcorn. Her eyes seemed to glimmer. Maybe there was hope for her to loosen up a little after all.

Not likely Joelle, though, Scarlett thought. She was as stiff as a board.

“He said: ‘Fetch my mail, retrieve my dry cleaning, bring me my coffee,’” Joelle repeated verbatim.

“That is very humiliating, JoJo,” Rissa commiserated.

“That’s the point,” explained Scarlett. “Humiliation and degradation are part of the game.”

Joelle tossed her head. “I told him I would not be treated like a dog.”

“Good Lord, Joelle,” said Scarlett with concern. “Did you actually use the word ‘dog’?”

“Yes.”

“Oh boy,” said the redhead. “Picturing you on all fours with a dog collar on....” she said, as if the point were

obvious.

Rissa and Joelle were still oblivious.

“....He probably came right in his pants imagining you like that!”

“Spontaneous ejaculation?” asked the physician.

“Yes!”

Joelle’s face turned fuchsia.

“He’s probably jacked off half a dozen times by now up in his penthouse office thinking about you as his

little bitch in heat.”

Joelle turned crimson.

“And then what did you do?” asked Rissa.

“Then I quit my job,” Joelle stated.

“Joelle Robin Templeton, you did not quit your job on the first day!” Rissa chastised her like an elder sister.

“This is your dream job at a top firm. You can’t just quit. What would your parents say?”

“You have to be responsible,” Scarlett added. “You can’t disappoint your parents.”

“Says the woman who slept through her own college graduation ceremony because she had a hangover,”

quipped Joelle.

Scarlett blushed. Although it had been more than four years ago the memory still stung.

“Left your parents stranded at their hotel, too,” Joelle went on.

“We never have gotten to meet them,” Rissa added.

“What did your boss say?” Scarlett returned the conversation to Joelle’s problem.

“Dick Simson, one of the senior partners, backed him up,” she said indignantly. “He assigned me to work

directly
under
Barton!” Joelle wailed with self-pity.

“Oh, I know you
want
to work ‘under’ him,” Scarlett said lewdly. “Flat on your back under him.”

“Every day! Day in and day out!” Joelle’s lament continued anew.

“Oh, yes. In and out, Connor,” Scarlett made vulgar noises to accompany a ribald gesture. “In and out, Connor. Deeper, baby, deeper.”

Rissa laughed.

Joelle scowled.

“He’s a pompous ass!” said Joelle.

“You want him to pump
your
ass,” countered Scarlett.

“I’m going back to my room,” pouted Joelle.

“Don’t be a baby,” Scarlett accused. That stopped Joelle in her tracks every time.

“It will all work out tomorrow,” Rissa assured her.

“I know....Let’s go out tonight,” Scarlett exclaimed. “Forget about that cock, Connor Barton.”

“Yes. Let’s just go have some fun,” Rissa agreed.

“It’s Monday night,” Joelle carped. “
Some
of us have to work tomorrow.”

“I thought you quit?” asked Rissa, winking at Scarlett above Joelle’s head.

Joelle knew she was caught.

“Anyway, you don’t
need
to work,” Scarlett said. “Your trust fund is a mile high.”

“I
want
to work,” replied Joelle. “Just not for that douche bag, Connor Barton.”

Rissa patted her back.

“Besides, what would I do all day if I didn’t work?” asked Joelle.

“Swedish deep tissue massage at nine, manicure and pedicure at eleven, lunch at the country club at one....”

Scarlett ticked off her daily itinerary. “Historical society committee meeting at three, cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria at five—-”

“—-Alright! Alright!” Joelle interrupted, finally giving in to laughter.