Say The
Secret Word
by Ann Douglas
'Jack boy, you have so nailed this,' John
Michael Robertson, Jack to his friends,
thought to himself as he finished reading the
report on his computer screen for the third
time.
A recent graduate of Northern
California
State, the
twenty-one year old was one of six interns
vying for a permanent position at Cornwall, Dunmore and Frost, and
while his performance the last few months had
made him the front runner, one other
candidate, Rebecca Blackwood, had turned in
equally impressive work. It
was all going to come down to their reports on
the Red Star Electronics merger, scheduled to be
presented to their department head come Monday
morning.
'There is no way that Rebecca's report
is going to be better than this,' Jack further
thought as he leaned back in his chair,
reaching down to pick up the beer he'd bought
when he'd run out to grab dinner. With
a great sense of satisfaction, he popped off
the top and took a drink from the cold bottle.
Drinking in the office was generally
frowned upon, especially if you were as far
down in the pecking order as an intern was,
and normally Jack wouldn’t have dreamed of
doing so.
But it was after eight on a Friday
night, with even the cleaning crews having
come and gone, and there really wasn’t anyone
around to object. This
was the fifth night this week that Jack had
worked late, not that he was getting paid for
the extra hours, so he felt justified in
bending the rules to have a little
celebration.
‘I can’t wait to see Rebecca’s face
when I win the competition,’ Jack
thought as he savored the pleasing brew.
The two interns had taken a dislike to
each other almost from day one, possibly
because each recognized the other as their
only real competition. The
best the other four participants in the
program could hope for was third place, and
all that got you was a few lines on your
resume when you applied for your next
position.
In fact, the same also held true for
second place.
With the stakes that high, there was
little Jack wouldn’t do to make sure that,
when all was said and done, his name was on
the top of the list. It
was beyond his thinking that Rebecca might not
feel the same way. It
wasn’t enough to make sure that you won, you
also had to make sure everyone else lost –
even if you had to help them do so by
sabotaging their work. It
was a belief that had been reinforced by the
events of the last few months.
The way the internship worked, in
addition to the regular duties that were
designed to give you real world business
experience, each intern was given an
assignment to write an evaluation of a
proposed business deal and was then judged on
how closely their report mirrored that of the
professionals.
To make it more of a competition, two
or more of them were given the same
assignment.
That had been the case during the first
month, when both Jack and Rebecca were given
the Northstar Electronics deal, and key
elements of Jack’s argument against the
proposed acquisition had also turned up in
Rebecca’s report – the result being that his
presentation appeared far less original than
he’d expected it to be. It
was possible, he had to admit, that the long
haired blonde might have come to the same
conclusions on her own – after all, it really
wasn’t that complex a deal and they’d both had
access to the same information.
But then a month later, on their second
assignment, it happened again, and Jack wasn’t
that much of a believer in coincidences. That
she might be as good at the job as he was, or
possibly even better, wasn’t something he was
willing to even consider. Somehow,
Jack concluded, Rebecca had to be getting a
look at his work beforehand and adjusting hers
accordingly.
How she was doing it was a mystery, but
it was clear to anyone who cared to notice how
men in the office went out of their way to be
helpful to the curvaceous twenty-two year old. To
say nothing of the fact that not a week had
gone by without one of them asking Rebecca
either out to lunch or for drinks after work. One,
or even a few of them, could very well be
helping her undermine him.
That an equal number of women in the
office had done the same for him never entered
his thinking.
In his case it would more likely be
drinks after work than lunch, and some of the
favors done for him would definitely not be
found in their job descriptions.
'Well, however she did it before, she's
not going to be able to do it this time,' Jack
assured himself as he took another long drink
from the bottle.
A musical ringtone from his cell phone
interrupted that thought and, in order to free
his hand to get the phone out of his pocket,
Jack put the beer bottle down next to his
computer monitor.
"Yo dude, what's up?" he
said after glancing at the caller id.
Intently, he listened to the story his
friend felt was so important that it had to be
shared immediately. The
story was indeed funny, so much that Jack
laughed so hard that he hit the edge of his
cubicle table, the impact hard enough to
topple the beer bottle, spilling the contents
across the countertop and through the cable
openings to the tower below.
Even as he began to react, reaching
outward in a futile attempt to catch the
bottle, the air filled with a loud popping
sound and the image on his monitor flashed
brightly before going totally blank.
"Fuck!"
Jack cried out in alarm.
He stared at the dead screen for a few
seconds until the sound of his friend's voice
from the phone he had dropped reminded him
that he was still on the line.
"Man, I gotta call you back," Jack
quickly said once he picked up the phone and
ended the call.
Taking a deep breath, Jack tried to
reboot the computer, but none of the power
lights came on.
He tried it two more times before
admitting to himself that the machine was
truly dead.
"Okay, now is not the time to panic," he
said out loud to himself. "Machines
get
toasted all the time," he
added, recalling several that had unexpectedly
died during his time at the firm. The
important thing was, his report was safe and
sound on his personal flash drive.
Slipping the small keychain drive from
the usb port, he slid his chair over to the
computer of the intern that shared his cubicle
and powered it up. Thankfully,
he didn't need a password to boot up any of
the computers, just to log onto the server. He
waited anxiously while the computer came to
life. Once
it did, he slid his flash drive into a usb
port and waited for it to appear in the
directory.
Long seconds passed but nothing
happened.
"Oh fuck, no," Jack
said, his words mixed with a groan.
Desperately, he tried the drive in the
computer's other two usb ports, with equal
results.
There was no denying that the flash
drive was also dead.
"Fuck, I am so fucked," he
again said out loud.
Not trusting the other interns any more
than he trusted Rebecca, Jack had not backed
up his work to anything but his personal
drive, which never left his person. Now
indeed was the time to panic, as there was no
way he could ever reconstruct his report from
scratch before Monday. Especially
since most of the people he would need to
obtain information from were gone for the
weekend.
'There's got to be something I can do,' he
thought, holding the flash drive and his
quickly vanishing future in his hand. 'Hard
drives go bad,’ he recalled, ‘but they can
sometimes still get files off them.'
The only problem with that comforting
thought was that he didn't know the first
thing about how to even go about trying. The
only thing he knew about computers was how to
use software related to his work; fixing the
damn things was someone else's job.
Again he glanced at the clock on the
wall, noting the time and the slim possibility
that any of the IT geeks would still be
downstairs.
Still, it was worth a try.
The phone rang enough times for him to
lose even that slim hope, but then, just as he
was about to give up, a voice came on the
line.
"Tech support,
Martinez
," a
female voice said.
Jack quickly explained what had
happened, well maybe not exactly what
happened.
In the version he gave to the woman on
the phone, he had no idea why his workstation
had suddenly exploded.
"Well, just put a ticket in and someone
will take a look at it Monday morning," the
woman said, adding that everyone else was
already gone and she was also about to leave.
"Couldn't you just take quick look at
it?" Jack
asked. "It
might be something really minor, just a quick
fix."
"It doesn't sound like it," the
woman said,
"but I guess I can spare a few minutes
to take a look."
"Thank you," Jack
said, hoping she was wrong.
-=-=-=-
When Carla Martinez appeared at the
doorway of his cubicle ten minutes later, Jack
couldn’t say he recognized her. Which
was surprising since she was usually on the
floor at least twice a day attending to one
problem or another. But
to anyone who really knew Jack, it was quite
understandable.
In his world, unless he had to deal
with them directly, women over thirty barely
registered on his radar.
The five foot one Hispanic woman was
definitely over thirty, but hardly looked the
forty-two years her company file showed her to
be. Short curly brown hair, mixed with a few
streaks of grey, framed features that most
would describe as pleasant but not beautiful –
average being the word most often used. Even
her most striking feature, emerald green eyes,
was hidden behind black, plastic framed
glasses.
Slim, but not skinny, Carla had small
breasts that, hidden beneath the loosely
fitting sleeveless white button-down blouse
she wore over black slacks, could easily go
unnoticed.
"I've got friends waiting for me down
at MacDouglas' Grill, so let's get this over
with," Carla
said as she stepped into the cubicle. "Which
terminal is it?"
Jack indicated the one to his left and
Carla stepped past him and sat down at the
damaged workstation. As
she attempted to boot the system, she was
already regretting having agreed to come up
and take a look at the computer. If
she’d recognized the voice, or even the name,
on the other end of the phone, she’d already
be on the way to MacDouglas'.
It wasn’t that she had anything against
Jack personally; in fact, she didn’t think
she’d even spoken to him before today, other
than a quick introduction a few months back
during the intern orientation tours. No,
it was his type that had always infuriated
her. Six
foot tall with a muscular frame and devilish
good looks, Jack was one of those guys who
always expected everything to go his way. She'd
heard more than one woman in the office
express a desire to know him in a biblical
sense. Three
of those who’d expressed such sentiments were
rumored to have done just that, and Carla knew
that in at least one case, it was a lot more
than just a rumor.
Not that Carla had anything against
sex, or people enjoying each other's company,
even on the job.
It was the arrogant sense of
entitlement that ticked her off. The
belief that they could bed any girl they
wanted, whenever they wanted. The
frustrating thing was, more often than not
that was true.
"Just as I thought, it's fried," Carla
said after two failed attempts to get the
machine to respond. "Put
the ticket in and I'll see that you get a new
one on Monday morning."
"My flash drive was in it when it
went," Jack
said, "now
I can't get that to open either."
"That doesn't surprise me," Carla
said as she got up from the chair.
Spotting the half empty bottle of beer
off to the side, Carla combined the dampness
she'd felt on the table and quickly surmised
what had happened. It
was an accident she’d once had herself with a
can of Coke.
Feeling a bit of empathy, and deciding
that she really had no reason to judge the kid
as harshly as she was doing, Carla told him
that she’d mark the incident up to a defective
drive so that he wouldn't get in trouble for
having the beer in the office.
"But what about my files?" Jack
asked, ignoring the fact that she was offering
to cover for him.
"You’ll just have to download back-up
copies from the company server," Carla
said matter of factly, as she reached into her
bag to get her phone so she could text her
friends that she was finally on her way.
"I… I didn’t back them up to the
server,"
Jack said.
"You didn't what?" Carla
asked, sure she had heard him wrong.
"I said I didn't back them up to the
server,"
he repeated. "I
didn’t want anyone else to see what I was
working on."
"Are you an idiot?" Carla
asked in disbelief. "Aside
from the fact that it's company policy, the
whole point of backing up your files to the
server is in case of mishaps like this."
"I figured the flash drive would be
enough,"
Jack said, his
tone reflecting a feeling of who did she think
she was.
After all, she was just a lowly
computer tech and he had a degree from a
prestigious college.
"Well, obviously it wasn't," Carla
replied sarcastically, not missing the
inflection in his voice.
"What good did it do to call you if you
can’t get my files back?" Jack
lashed out, preferring to snap at her rather
than face his own complicity in the disaster. "Now
what the fuck do I do?"
Carla thought about it a few moments,
her natural desire to help only slightly
winning out over her now rapidly fading
feeling of sympathy.
"Were you at least logged onto the
server?"
Carla asked, considering a possibility.
"I don't remember," Jack
replied, "but what difference would that make? I
told you I didn’t save it there."
"Well, if you're luckier than you ought
to be, I might still be able to save your
sorry ass,"
Carla said, reminding herself she
should still try and be professional . "What's
the tag number on your PC?"
"Tag number?" Jack
repeated, confusion in his voice.
"Never mind, I'll look without it," Carla
said
as she pushed him aside and sat down at the
still working computer on the other side of
the cubicle.
"What are you doing?" Jack
asked.
Her fingers moved too fast for Jack to
follow as she logged onto the server and put
in a series of requests. A
number of documents flashed across the screen,
until she finally stopped at one in
particular.
Then she slid her chair back to give
him a good look at it.
"Omigod!"
he exclaimed as he looked on the
screen.
"Look familiar?" Carla
asked, a smile on her face, his reaction
already giving her an answer.
"That's my report," Jack
said in disbelief. "How
did you…"
"One of the projects I've been working
on is a program that automatically copies
everything done on any computer connected to
the server, whether you back it up or not," Carla
explained.
"It's still in the beta stage but I
took the chance that your PC might've been one
of the test platforms, and luckily it was."
"You mean you’ve been copying
everything I do?" Jack
asked.
"Well, not me personally," Carla
replied.
"The software does it automatically. I’m
not the only one working on the test; that’s
why I
wasn't sure if your terminal was part of the
test program."
"That's how that fucking bitch got my
work," Jack
snapped unexpectedly, oblivious to the here
and now for a moment as he added two and two
together and come up Rebecca.
"I have no idea what you're talking
about, but a thank you might have been nice," Carla
said, her own tone now a bit perturbed.
"Rebecca Blackwood, do you know her?" he
asked, a bit of accusation in the question.
"Only in the sense that I met her on
the same orientation tour that I met you," Carla
replied, remembering that the young woman had
the same sense of entitlement she’d observed
in Jack.
"Yeah, right," Jack
said.
"Look, kid, whatever your problem is,
don’t take it out on me," Carla
replied, her patience now nearing its end.
"She probably has copies of this report
already too,"
Jack said. "I’ve
seen how the women in this place go out of the
way to make the female interns look better
than the guys."
‘That's it,’ Carla
thought, anger now replacing professionalism.
‘This kid needs to be taken down a peg or
two.’
Swinging back around toward the
computer, she quickly typed in a few
keystrokes and then backed away.
"What did you do?" Jack
asked, seeing that the screen was now once
again blank.
"Did you delete it?"
"No, it's still there," Carla
said as she got up out of the chair. "Take
a
look."
Jack sat down in the now vacant seat
and tried to bring his file back up, only to
have the cover sheet appear as a ghostly image
with a request to enter his password. Automatically,
he typed it in, only to have a new window pop
up saying invalid password.
"What's the password?" he
asked, turning his head back towards Carla.
Carla just shrugged, making a gesture
with her hands as if she didn’t know.
Jack thought about it for a few
moments, then tried the password his
supervisor had given him to access more
restrictive files. The
result, unfortunately, was the same.
"Come on, I don’t think this is funny,"
Jack
said,
frustration replacing anger.
"That’s a pity cause I think it’s very
funny," Carla
replied, a snide grin on her face.
"What’s the password?" Jack
repeated.
"Say the secret word and win a hundred
dollars,"
Carla quipped.
"What?"
Jack said in a confused tone.
‘I guess that reference is too far
before even my time,' Carla
thought, not imagining that a guy like Jack
spent any time watching old game shows on
cable.
"I’ll tell you what," she
offered. "I know you’re supposed to be a
bright boy, but I’ll give you a little help. You
can find it in that little book over there."
Jack turned his head in the direction
she indicated, only to find a four inch thick,
hard cover dictionary sitting on the counter. Staring
at the book for a few long seconds, he finally
got it.
"Alright, I’m sorry," Jack
said, trying to sound contrite.
"Why do I find that so hard to
believe?"
Carla asked, her arms now crossed
across her chest.
"No, really, I am sorry," Jack
repeated, pausing a moment before adding, "May
I have the password, please?"
Carla stood silent for a few moments,
appearing to be considering the sincerity of
his apology.
He was tempted to add to it, but was
uncertain if that would help or hinder his
case.
"Idiot,"
she simply said, the tone of her voice
and a slight shaking of her head telling Jack
that she hadn’t bought his penitent act.
As was his wont to do, Jack reacted
instantly and angrily. A response that took
Carla completely by surprise.
"This is fucking ridiculous," Jack
called out, his faux contrition turning back
to anger.
"You know, when Mrs. Swan hears about
this on Monday morning, I wouldn’t be
surprised if she had you fired."
"What?"
Carla said, unable to believe he was
going there.
"That's right, you're fucking around
with the wrong guy here," Jack
added, pumped up so much by his sense of
self-importance that he actually believed what
he was saying.
In response to which, Carla could only
laugh, which threw Jack totally off balance.
"I don't see what's so funny," he
said.
"I don’t think you would," Carla
replied,
a small chuckle still in her voice, "but
I think the fact that you actually believe
what you just said is simply hilarious."
That was definitely not what Jack
wanted to hear.
"I want you to think about it for a
moment,"
she said in a now fully serious tone. "I'm
a senior IT rep who was doing this job back
when you still needed someone to change your
dirty diapers.
You, well, you’re just some
snotty-nosed kid right out of college who,
although he might think he’s God’s gift to
women among other things, won’t even be
remembered a week after you walk out that
door."
Carla paused for a second to give him a
moment to think about that; then she made it a
bit more personal.
"Brenda Swan might find you charming as
all hell, but how much weight do you think
that is going to carry when you try and
explain how, not only did you spill a beer,
that you shouldn’t have had in the office in
the first place, on the computer, but you also
violated company protocols on data retention. Not
too bright, honey. In
fact, hardly the sort of thing she expected
from the boy wonder she was pushing for them
to hire permanently. She's
going to change her mind so fast that your
head is going to spin."
Jack’s face dropped. That
certainly wasn't the response he had expected,
but it was one that, now that he really
thought about it, he had to admit was
definitely true.
"Now if you'll excuse me," Carla
said as she picked up her bag, "I have things
to do and places to go, as they say."
She only made it as far as the door to
the hallway when Jack called after her. The
now believable change in his voice caused her
to pause.
"Please, I am really sorry," he
said. "You're
right, I can be an idiot at times, I know
that. You
offered to save my ass when you really had no
reason to and I should’ve been more
appreciative."
"And…"
Carla said after a moment's silence.
"And what?" Jack
asked.
"And that's it?" she
replied.
"You add a bit of real sincerity and
I'm supposed to just bail out your ass?"
Actually, that was pretty much what
Jack thought.
After all, it always worked in the
past. It
was quickly becoming obvious that this time
that wasn't going to be the case.
"What else do you want?" Jack
asked, wondering, as he did so, how much his
arrogance had raised the price of her help.
That was a question Carla didn't really
have an answer for. Five
minutes ago, a genuine apology and a thank you
would've probably satisfied her, but suddenly
that didn't seem enough. And
the thing of it was, she didn’t know why that
had changed.
No, that wasn't true, she had to admit
to herself, she knew the reason why. It
had been Jack's invocation of Brenda's name
that had set her off, prompting her own remark
about his thinking himself God's gift to
women. The
combination had gotten her thinking about
matters that really weren't public knowledge –
well, at least not to most of the public.
Brenda Swan was the office manager
responsible for the intern program, and the
one woman Carla knew for certain had enjoyed
Jack's company after hours. A
decade older than the twenty-something
secretaries about whom there had also been
rumors, the large breasted blonde was also
that much younger than the darker haired
Hispanic woman.
It was her much commented on assets
that drew the attention of most men in the
office – including Jack.
Despite the difference in their ages
and positions in the company, the two women
were, if not close friends, sometime drinking
buddies, and it had been on one of those
nights that Carla had directly asked her
younger companion if the rumor about her and
Jack was true.
A long pause followed, after which
Brenda's only reply was to point out that if
such a thing were true, admitting to it would
likely get her in a great deal of trouble,
since she was technically his supervisor. Trying
another track, Carla then asked her to simply
deny it if it wasn’t true. In
response to that, the blonde had simply turned
her attention back to her drink, saying not a
word. The
knowing smile on her face, however, spoke
volumes, both as to the truth of the rumor and
as a post-orgasmic critique.
"So what is it that you want?" Jack
repeated, snapping Carla out of her musings.
"What are you willing to give?" Carla
heard
herself say.
"Well, aside from money, which I really
don’t have much of, you can have anything you
want," Jack
replied, desperation clear in his tone.
Carla gave the appearance of thinking
the offer over, even though she already knew
what she wanted.
The question was, was she really the
kind of person who would take advantage of a
situation like this? Almost
a long minute passed, and then she decided,
why the hell not.
"You know, I’m actually a very good
friend of Brenda’s, we go back
quite a ways,"
Carla said, stretching the truth as she
watched for a reaction on Jack’s face. "In
fact, there’s little we don’t share with each
other."
It took a few moments’ thought for Jack
to connect the dots, but the expression on his
face slowly began to change. There
was no doubt in his mind exactly what it was
that Carla wanted in exchange for the
password.
"Well?"
Carla asked, her arms again crossed as
she waited for his response.
Ten long seconds passed, then thirty,
as Jack considered his options and what he had
to lose.
Finally, as the second hand on the wall
clock completed three fourths of its journey
around the dial, Carla shrugged her shoulders,
turned and again headed for the door.
She got no further than she had before
when Jack urgently called out his agreement,
deciding how bad could it be? A
quick in and out and his problem would be a
thing of the past.
-=-=-=-
Carla excused herself for a moment to
text her friends that she wasn’t going to be
able to make it at all. An
unexpected opportunity had arisen, she told
them, impressing herself with her witticism. As
she read their response, she took one last
moment to think about what she was doing.
She was after all, a married woman, as
the ring on her finger made clear. That
that fact wouldn't bother Jack was evident,
because Brenda wore a gold band as well. But
in Carla’s case at least, it didn’t have the
weight it once carried.
Two and a half years before, Carla had
come home unexpectedly to find her husband
David, a high school teacher who also taught
remedial courses at a local community college,
"in
flagrante delicto" with
one of his college students. The
tryst had, by his own admission, not been the
first.
The revelation of David’s infidelities
might have led to divorce court, but that
hadn’t happened.
The reasons why had been several, but
the primary one had been their dual
realization that, somewhere over the years
since they’d gone lustily to their conjugal
bed, they’d transitioned from bedmates to
roommates.
So with a sort of don’t ask, don’t tell
arrangement in place, they simply went on as
before.
Then, about a year later, Carla had
attended a technical symposium in
Chicago
where she’d run into Michael Reyes, an old
friend from her high school days. His
own marriage had ended in divorce, and the two
of them had gotten together for drinks one
night and, without much forethought, found
themselves in the same bed come morning.
Afterwards, Carla had chalked it up to
remembered adolescent fantasies and an
overindulgence in alcohol. Pleasant
as the night had been, she couldn’t imagine a
set of circumstances where it might be
repeated.
That had been true right up until about
five minutes ago.
-=-=-=-
"What the hell do you think you're
doing?" Carla
asked, stepping back into the cubicle to find
Jack undoing his pants.
"I thought you wanted to…" he
started to say, confusion on his face.
"Not here!" Carla
cut him off.
"Did you think I was just going to drop
my panties and bend over the desk?"
From the reaction on his face, it was
obvious to Carla that he had expected just
that. Evidently,
at least one of his conquests hadn’t been all
that particular as to the where and how of it.
She slowly shook her head in disbelief,
unable to understand how anyone could do
something like that. If
she was going to do this, she promised
herself, she was going to make the most of it
– and on her terms.
"Let's make this perfectly clear," Carla
quickly
said. "I
don't know what any of the other ladies were
willing to settle for, but it takes more than
a little "wham bam" to put a smile on my face. If
you're going to ring my bell, you're going to
have to work at it."
Carla's declaration left Jack a bit
stunned.
He definitely wasn’t used to having a
woman call the shots, at least not in this
aspect of his life. Still,
if he wanted that password, it wasn't like he
had a lot of choice in the matter.
"Okay,"
Jack acknowledged as he tightened the
buckle on his pants. "Where
do we go?"
‘That’s a good question,’ Carla
thought, so wrapped up in the excitement of
the moment that she hadn't really thought that
part out yet.
Home was out of the question. Aside
from the fact that she really couldn’t
envision calling David and asking him to go
out to the movies or something, it was also at
least a thirty minute drive. To
say nothing of having to get the kid back here
afterwards.
There were of course a few hotels in
the area, but she doubted the kid could afford
one and she certainly wasn’t going to pay for
it, however indirectly. Then,
in a flash, it came to her.
"Follow me," she
told Jack, coupling the instruction with a
motion of her hand.
Jack followed Carla down the hall to
what he recognized as the office belonging to
Brenda Swan.
Since it was the only one on the floor
with any real privacy, he assumed that was
where Carla had in mind. Especially
since he knew from past experience that it
also held a couch.
That notion passed, however, when Carla
told him to wait outside while, using the key
Brenda had once given her, ostensibly to use
that couch on late nights, she disappeared
into the office for just a minute. Once she
reemerged, he noticed a different key in her
hand, one with a six inch block of wood
attached to it.
Again motioning for him to follow,
Carla retraced their steps back down the hall
until they reached the elevators. There
they
took a car up two floors to an area of the
company Jack had only seen during his
orientation tour. He
felt more than a bit nervous being on the
executive level, but since Carla seemed to
know exactly where she was going he just went
with it.
"Are you sure this is okay?" Jack
asked nevertheless.
"It’ll be fine," Carla
assured him, making one last turn at the end
of the corridor.
The turn led them to two double doors,
the right of which had a keyhole into which
Carla inserted the key she had gotten from
Brenda’s office. Stepping
inside, she reached to her left and, hitting a
switch on the wall, filled the large room with
light. Once
it was illuminated, Jack could see a large
conference table on the far side of the room
and a number of chairs and sofas scattered
across the rest of it – sort of a combination
conference room and lounge.
"Well, are you coming?" Carla
asked when Jack initially didn’t follow her
inside.
Still a bit uncertain, Jack stepped
over the threshold.
He might have been even more worried if
he’d known that when she’d first opened the
door, Carla wasn’t totally sure they’d find
the room empty.
It wasn’t common knowledge, but some of
the senior staff used the room for exactly the
purpose she now intended. Brenda
was responsible for the more business-related
uses of the room, which was why she had a key.
Closing the door behind them, tripping
the lock as she did, Carla walked out to the
center of the lounge area and turned around to
face him.
Still taking his surroundings in, Jack
seemed unsure what to do next.
"Why don't we make ourselves
comfortable?"
Carla said as she removed her glasses,
further accenting her words with action as she
used her other hand to begin to undo the
buttons of her blouse.
During his dinner break, Jack had
changed from his normal business attire to a
t-shirt and jeans. Following
Carla's lead, he took hold of the edges of his
top and, in one quick motion, pulled it up and
over his head.
Taking in the well developed torso that
revealed, it was all the older woman could do
not to let out an appreciative whistle.
Carla's thoughts flashed back for a
moment to the words David had used when he
tried to explain how helpless he'd felt when
he tried to resist the college girl he'd been
caught with.
Even in his prime, the shapely beauty
would’ve been way out of his league, had she
not been all too willing to offer sexual
favors for an improvement in her grade. Morality
aside, Carla now understood how easy it was to
give into temptation.
Thoughts of the man now her husband in
name only quickly vanished, however, as Jack
dropped his pants and her gaze shifted to the
small, exceedingly tight, bikini briefs he
wore beneath.
More specifically, to the impressive
outline of his manhood through the thin
material.
Realizing she was staring, Carla forced
herself to stop and while Jack added his socks
and sneakers to the small pile of clothes, she
turned her attention back to the last of her
buttons, allowing her blouse to first fall
open, then with a slight movement of her
hands, drop to the floor. Her
slacks followed, leaving her in only a simple
white bra and panties, the former designed
more to conceal than support the small rounded
mounds beneath.
What she didn't notice at first, and
was greatly surprised when she did, was that
Jack seemed as interested in her body as it
was uncovered as she had been in his. It
never occurred to her that hers was the first
'real' female body he had ever seen. Real
being defined as what most people looked like,
and not the 'Barbie doll bodies' of most of
the women he'd shared intimacies with. Even
Brenda, who had been older than his norm,
usually hit the gym several times a week.
But thoughts like that were far from
Carla’s mind as, closing the distance between
herself and
Jack, she reached out and placed the flat of
her palm against his chest, slowly, sensually,
moving it across the smooth skin, feeling the
warmth of his flesh against hers. This
time she couldn't help but let out a soft sigh
of delight.
A sigh that had barely faded before she
draped both arms around his neck and, pulling
him down to her, brought their mouths
together.
The action took Jack by surprise, but
only for a moment as he instinctively began to
respond.
Even
more of a surprise was the quick realization
that the woman pressed against him really knew
how to kiss.
As he felt her lips brush against his
own and her tongue glide inside his mouth,
Jack was astonished that a woman this old
could be so passionate. He
always assumed that past a certain age, and
Carla certainly fell into that category, woman
just lost interest in sex. Brenda
had been his only other experience close in
age, but she’d had some sort of hang up about
kissing, feeling it too much of a shared
intimacy, and had only done so in a
perfunctory manner. It
had been a view he’d found amusing, because
she’d had no similar reluctance taking him in
her mouth or between her legs.
Carla's thoughts as he wrapped his arms
around her and pulled her even close were a
bit more basic.
'God, he’s hard,’ she thought as she
felt the thickness of his cock press against
her.
-=-=-=-
Carla pressed both hands against his
chest, moving them back and forth, tweaking
his nipples to bring them to hardness. Shifting
her head, she kissed each one, tickling the
tips with her tongue. From
his reaction, two things were immediately
clear. It
was the first time anyone had done that to
him, and he definitely liked it.
She did it a few more times, then
lifted her head back to the softness of his
mouth. Their
tongues interlocked, sliding back and forth
while her hands continued to play with his
chest. At
the same time, Jack ran one hand down the
small of her back, down to her cloth covered
ass to squeeze her cheeks softly. His
other hand moved in the opposite direction,
coming to rest against the back of her head,
where he sifted his fingers through her curly
locks.
Pleased at how much Jack seemed to be
getting into the spirit of things, Carla
guided a hand down the small gap between their
bodies and then beneath the tightness of the
band around his briefs. Jack’s
eyes, which had been closed as they continued
to kiss, snapped open when he felt her fingers
close around his erect cock.
Carla laughed softly at his reaction,
giving his hardness a playful tug as she did.
Her other hand followed, taking a grip
on the side of his briefs and pulled them
downward, just enough to free his manhood. Once
freed from constraint, his erection popped
upward out of her hand with such force that
she stopped mid-kiss to glance down at the
sight.
"My goodness, I think he wants to
play," she
smiled.
That, however, wasn’t her only thought. She
hadn't personally seen many cocks in her life,
but the one before her definitely stood out as
unique. It
wasn’t just the size, although it was
impressive in that aspect, but the fact that
it was totally manscaped. Smooth
as the proverbial baby’s bottom, there wasn’t
a strand of hair to be seen around or below it
– a fact that seemed to make it even more
enticing.
Returning one hand to the base of his
shaft, she again ran her fingers up and down
its length, continuing down under his balls,
where she cupped them in her open palm. Then
she took a half step away from Jack, giving
her just enough room to comfortably drop down
to her knees.
Leaning inward, she kissed the head of
his cock, twirling her tongue around it a few
times before opening her mouth wide enough to
close her lips around it. Jack
let out a loud sigh as she did so, the wet
warmth of her mouth washing across his body.
Slowly, deliberately, Carla slipped the
rest of his cock deeper into her mouth,
caressing its sensitive flesh with both her
lips and the tip of her tongue. Finally,
at about the two-thirds mark, she’d taken as
much as she could fit. If
Jack felt disappointed, he certainly didn’t
seem to show it.
Even with their 'roommate status',
Carla and David still occasionally enjoyed
sexual relations, usually on birthdays and
other special occasions. Still,
she would've had to go very far back in her
memory to recall a time when she'd felt this
excited with a man.
Back and forth her head moved, sliding
him in and out of her as she used one hand to
hold the base of his cock tight and the other
to play with his balls. Jack
now had both his hands against the back of her
head, holding it gently as she pulled him
deeper and harder within her.
"Damn!"
he exclaimed softly as the forces her
attentions brought to life fluttered across
his body.
Forces that, over the next ten minutes,
slowly but surely grew in intensity as Carla
continued to work her
own special brand of magic. Magic that brought
Jack to the pinnacle in quite a short time,
with a skill not found in women half Carla's
age.
Normally, Jack had enough self control
to hold back a bit longer, but this time he
felt the dam within him come crashing down
without warning.
His body stiffened for a long breath,
then exploded with thunderous force – sending
the fruits of Carla's efforts cascading
against the back of her throat. More
prepared for the eruption than he had been,
she was ready as the white tartness filled
her, falling back on a technique she learned
back in high school that allowed her to
swallow nearly all of it. A
line from a classic coffee commercial came to
her as she downed the last bit – good to the
last drop.
By the time she’d finished, Jack felt
totally drained and a bit weak in the knees,
yet at the same time totally satisfied. As
Carla let his now softening cock slip from her
mouth, she rose back to her full height and,
catching Jack by surprise, wickedly kissed him
hard enough to share the last drops of his
climax as her tongue slid past his lips.
Her action occurred too quickly for
Jack to protest, his mouth opening reflexively
at the press of hers. Although
he would never admit it, the act answered a
question he had long wondered about – what did
it taste like?
He'd heard girls describe it before,
but like with anything else, words only went
so far. Still,
he had never been able to bring himself to
taste it, even if it was his own.
Already moving past the kiss, Carla had
taken a few steps back, saying she would get
him something to clean himself up with. A
glance downward showed Jack that he needed
just that as his manhood was totally covered
by a sticky mix of saliva and cum.
By the time he looked back up, Carla
had a small cabinet open and was tossing him a
wet bar rag.
The assumption that the cabinet was in
reality a bar was confirmed when she reached
in a second time and brought out a bottle and
placed it on the top of the cabinet.
"My, my, look at what we have here," she
said as she put the bottle down. "I’m
surprised they didn’t have this locked up."
Glancing at the bottle while he wiped
himself, Jack saw the label but had no
reaction it.
He assumed from Carla’s comment that it
was something expensive but not ever having
been a scotch drinker, Johnny Walker Blue had
no meaning to him.
"Want a taste?" Carla
asked as she unscrewed the top and took a
quick sniff.
Jack declined with a shake of his head.
"Suit yourself," Carla
replied as she reached back into the cabinet
and took out a small glass, "but
you don’t know what you’re missing."
She poured about a quarter inch into
the glass, then lifted it up as if considering
a toast.
What she was actually doing was
wondering if anyone would notice that someone
had taken an illicit drink from the bottle. After
a moment’s consideration, she decided it
unlikely.
The fact that the expensive bottle was
left more or less available suggested that no
one was going to be making marks on its side. Besides,
Carla thought with a grin, she just gave an
intern half her age intern a blow job in the
executive lounge; how much more trouble could
she be in for the drink?
"Mmmm, that is good," Carla
said after first taking a small sip, then
draining the glass, comparing it to the common
variety she was more familiar with. "You
sure you don’t want to give it a try?"
Jack again shook his head no.
Carla considered pouring a second round
for herself, then decided against it. Rinsing
the glass under the tiny built in sink, she
wiped the glass clean and returned both it and
the bottle to the cabinet.
"Now, where were we?" Carla
said, the warmth of the scotch mixing with
that of the excitement of Jack’s climax.
Moving back to Jack, Carla took the
still wet cloth from him and, with a toss,
scored a two pointer as it landed in a small
waste basket next to the bar. Turning
her attention back to the naked young man, she
recalled that she was still wearing her
underwear.
A hand reached up to the straps of her
bra, sliding them over her shoulders and down
her arms.
Her other hand reached behind herself,
deftly slipping the small hooks free that held
the garment in place. It
took just another moment to drop it to the
floor.
Up until that moment, and especially
when Carla's attention had seemed to be
diverted by the expensive scotch, Jack
considered whether she might have had a change
of heart.
His experience with older women had
been limited, to say the least, and he really
wasn’t been sure what to expect.
Like Carla, Brenda had blown him,
although he wouldn't say as well, but once
she'd finished, she seemed to take a more
ambivalent attitude toward what they were
doing. Not
enough to change her mind, but enough to take
a great deal of the fun out of it. Leaving
her clothes on, she’d just bent over her desk
and hiked up her skirt for a zipless fuck. Those
awesome boobs that every guy in the office
dreamed of getting an unfettered look at had
remained unexposed. In
the end all Jack had gotten was a bit of
touchy feely.
An hour ago, if all Carla had wanted
was something similar, Jack would’ve been fine
with it.
Now, as he watched her bra come undone
and fall free, he was surprised to realize
that, had that proved the case, he would've
been quite disappointed.
Jack watched the tiny brown circles
that capped Carla’s diminutive breasts as they
came into view.
Both were smaller than what normally
caught his interest, so he only gave them a
casual glance.
When her panties also fell to the
floor, however, his reaction was quite
different.
Carla’s pubic area was as hairy as his
was bare, something he had never seen outside
of pictures in a magazine. All
of the girls he’d been with trimmed their
mounds to some degree, one even shaving it
totally bare, much as he liked to do. Yet
the sight of the thick, bushy mound between
the older woman’s legs was strangely
appealing.
Taking notice of Jack’s interest, Carla
finished undressing, then paused long enough
to give him a good look at her naked form. Then,
with a suggestive sway, she turned and began
to walk away from him towards the other side
of the room.
Bypassing two couches which, to Jack at
least, looked quite comfortable, Carla stopped
at a bulky sofa against the far wall. She
pulled off the bottom cushions, tossing them
aside, and then took hold of a long metal rod,
pulling it up and toward her. Stepping
backward as she pulled, the seemingly less
comfortable sofa transformed into a full sized
bed. Once
it was fully extended, Carla moved to a
cabinet to the left from which she withdrew a
folded, clean white sheet which she draped
over the mattress.
"Much better than that old couch in
Brenda’s office, don’t you think?" she
said as she turned back to face Jack.
The pull-out couch had belonged, Carla
had learned from Brenda, to a now retired
executive, who had a propensity to spend
nights in the office for reasons both business
and personal.
So much so that he had upgraded the
standard couch in his office to one more
functional and comfortable. It
had been later moved to the conference lounge,
where it could be better utilized by anyone
who might need it – for any reason.
Leaning down and then draping her body
across the bed, Carla turned around back
toward Jack and asked invitingly, "Well, are
you coming?"
-=-=-=-
"Oh that’s nice," Carla
moaned quietly as she felt Jack’s tongue wash
over her nipple, ripples of delight radiating
out across her breast.
To Jack’s surprise, as much else had
been tonight, Carla’s breasts had, despite
being smaller than he was usually attracted
to, had turned out to be both as soft and
sensitive as the larger variety – as was his
enjoyment of them. He’d
once overhead a less endowed girl make the
claim that anything more than a mouthful was
wasted, but had just chalked that up to
something that small breasted girls said to
make themselves feel better. Now
he realized that it might be at least
partially true.
He closed his mouth around the dark
circle, pulling it deep into his mouth,
rubbing his tongue across it with increasing
vigor. He
had been going back and forth between both
breasts for far longer than he had originally
expected to, long enough for him to wonder
what else he might have been wrong about.
Not that he had a great deal of time to
consider the question. Carla
soon had them reverse positions on the bed, so
that now she was on top. Straddling
him with her bended knees on each side of his
head, she brought her pussy down so that he
got a very close view of the thick bush that
had fascinated him such a short while before. His
task was crystal clear, and when she lowered
herself on to his face a heartbeat later, his
tongue was already reaching out to meet her.
Based on her original opinion of him,
Carla had expected Jack to be one of those men
who readily expected a woman to go down on
them, while rarely reciprocating with any real
eagerness.
She was happy to be proven wrong. She
wouldn’t quite call him skilled, but he
certainly was enthusiastic.
She arched back across his body, both
to give his tongue an easier time reaching her
clit and to allow herself to reach back and
take hold of a cock already half hard again. It
didn’t take much in the ways of manual
manipulation to bring it all the way there.
With one hand on Jack’s cock and the
other on the back of his head, Carla rocked
back and forth, pressing her pussy harder
against his mouth as she rode the rivers of
joy streaming within her. The
longer it went on, the better Jack seemed to
get at it, but experience told her that as
good as he was getting, in the end it wasn’t
going to be enough to get her off. Thankfully,
there were other, even more enjoyable, roads
to orgasm.
Rolling off Jack onto the side of the
bed, Carla turned herself around and. in
almost a single motion, again straddled him,
this time just above his midsection. There
she bent her knees, bringing herself low
enough that she could again take hold of his
cock and position its head right against her
pussy.
The quickness and deftness of her
maneuver only added to Jack’s rising
admiration of Carla’s ability. There
was absolutely no doubt in his mind right now
as to who was fucking who and he found he was
really enjoying it that way. A
smile filled his face as she brought herself
just a bit lower, just far enough to take the
head of his cock inside her. Then
she doubled that, rising again half the
distance before finally coming all the way
down to take his entirety.
A soft moan filled the air as Carla
savored his hardness inside of her, her body
gently rocking back and forth a few times as
she did.
Then, leaning forward as she reached
out with both hands to brace herself against
the bed, she began to slide him in and out of
her – slowly at first, but then at an ever
increasing pace.
Back and forth she moved, driving him
deep inside of her, sending waves of delight
through both their bodies. Considering
her
age, Jack had originally assumed that she
wouldn’t be as good a fuck as the women he was
used to.
Now he was discovering how wrong he had
been. Her
body
might have been far removed from her glory
days, but the joys she brought in its wake
were awesome.
He took hold of her hips and added his
thrusts to hers, meeting her forward motions
with equal effort. His
eyes became fixed on the heaving of her small
breasts, now seeing the beauty in their
rounded firmness. Carla
had moved her hands to his shoulders, bringing
their bodies closer together and in doing so
increasing the frequency of their joining.
Breaths became short and heartbeats
began to race, all while beads of sweat ran
down both their bodies. Their
difference in ages had been left behind and,
if but for the moment, they were simply a man
and woman enjoying nature's greatest gift.
Time seemed to slow and Jack had no
idea how long they had been going at it. He
only knew that Carla suddenly stopped, a fact
that took a few heartbeats to register. She
waited until she had his attention, then told
him that now it was his turn to show what he
could do.
Closing his arms around her, Jack
pulled her even closer and rolled the two of
them over so that he was now the one on top. His
hands quickly moved to her legs and lifted
them as high and wide as they would go. Then,
with all the strength he could muster, he
pressed himself back inside of her, repeating
the process over and over, as fast as he
could.
"Oh God, yes!" Carla
called out, appreciating the determination of
youth as seemingly every inch of her body came
alive.
For a fleeting moment, Carla remembered
the wicked smile of appreciation she had seen
on Brenda’s face when asked about Jack,
quickly deciding it had been an understatement
as Jack lifted her into the heavens. She
couldn’t remember the last time anyone had
done anything like that to her, but knew that
even if the CEO of the company came walking
through the door right now, there was no way
she could stop.
A sentiment that, if he was able to
spare a moment to think about it, Jack would
readily share.
Their bodies became a blur as two
became one, each spurring the other down the
road to paradise. A
road that grew shorter with each passing
breath.
"Now … now … now…" Carla
echoed as she felt the torrents within her
overwhelm the last of her self control.
Never had any single word ever sounded
so sweet to Jack as he too had reached the
limits of his endurance. How
he had managed to last this long was a
mystery, and he was sure that if it had been
with anyone else he would simply abandoned the
race and taken his laurels. There
was something about this woman that made him
want not to be the first to give in.
"Yes!"
he cried out a moment later as, feeling
her body shiver against his, the twenty-one
surrendered to the inevitable and let himself
explode within her. The
sense of gratification he felt as he did so
would long become his yardstick.
-=-=-=-
The minute hand on the clock on the
wall had moved a considerable distance before
either of the two exhausted bodies on the
couch began to move. Surprisingly,
it was Carla who opened her eyes first,
lifting the arm Jack had wrapped around her
naked body as they had slumbered, easing
herself off the bed as she did so. She
took a few tentative steps in the direction
she remembered her clothes as having been
tossed, stopping and turning back around when
she heard Jack began to also stir.
"That was certainly not what I
expected,"
the young man said as he pulled himself
up into a sitting position, running his hand
through still damp hair.
"Should I take that as a good or bad
thing?" Carla
asked curiously.
"Definitely good," Jack
smiled.
"I’m glad to hear that," Carla
replied, a smile on her face as well. "Looks
like
we both got more than we anticipated."
Turning back to where she had left her
clothes, Carla took a half step before
remembering what had started tonight’s events.
"Oh that’s right, you still need the
password to unlock your report, don’t you?" she
grinned.
The look that appeared on Jack’s face
was one that Carla would never forget – he had
actually forgotten about it. What
greater compliment could she ever have gotten?
Anticipation filled Jack’s face as,
savoring the moment, Carla made him wait just
a few more seconds for his prize.
"Idiot,"
she said as her smile broadened.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me," Jack
said, almost jumping off the bed. "After
all
this you still want to play games and …"
He paused in mid-sentence,
comprehension causing the rage on his face to
turn to embarrassment.
"Idiot is the password?" he
asked hesitantly.
"You get the hundred dollars," Carla
chuckled,
mentally imagining a stuffed duck dropping
down with the word in its bill, "well,
at least your report back."
"Fuck!"
Jack exclaimed, now truly feeling like
an idiot.
"Why didn’t you tell me that before?"
"I would have," Carla
said, "if
you hadn’t flown off the handle like you did
and pissed me off in the process."
"I guess that wasn’t the smartest of
moves," Jack
admitted.
"No, it wasn’t," Carla
replied, taking a breath before adding, "Look
at the bright side: if you hadn’t pissed me
off, none of this would’ve happened. That
is, if you really did enjoy this as much as
you said you did."
"Oh I meant that, I really did," Jack
said, pleasing Carla, since now that he had
the password there was no reason to say what
she wanted to hear if he hadn’t.
The two of them each located their
clothes and after donning them restored the
room to more or less the condition they had
found it in.
Watching Carla stuff the now soiled
sheets into a wastebasket, Jack inquired if
someone wouldn’t be suspicious when they were
found come Monday by the cleaning staff.
"It won’t be the first time they found
sheets in that condition," Carla
pointed out,
"and I’m sure they’ll have a good idea
how they got that way – just not who was
responsible for it."
Jack nodded his head, deferring to her
experience.
"Unless of course you want them as a
souvenir to remember tonight by?"
Carla
asked.
"No, I don’t think so," Jack
replied, realizing that was meant as a joke,
his voice then turning serious as he added. "I
don’t think I’m going to forget tonight for a
very long time – if ever."
That also pleased Carla to no end.
A few long seconds of silence passed as
both realized there really wasn’t anything
else left to say.
"I guess I should get going," Jack
finally said, a bit of reluctance evident in
his tone.
"I guess so; it is getting late," Carla
agreed, forcing a smile at the thought.
For a moment, it looked like Jack was
going to say something else, but the moment
passed and whatever it might have been went
unsaid. Carla
also felt that there should be some last word,
but none came to mind. So
action would have to do.
With a burst of speed, she sprinted the
half dozen feet between them and, again
throwing her arms around him, Carla gave Jack
a long, passionate kiss. One
which, as the saying went, curled his toes.
Releasing him long moments later, she
smiled and took a few steps back. Jack
was still speechless, but the look of deep
satisfaction on his face spoke volumes. Giving
her one last look, he turned and headed for
the double doors.
As she watched them close behind him,
Carla found herself hoping that come Monday
morning, Jack did indeed get the job. After
all, why should David be the only one having a
bit of fun?
END