Her name was Jana and his name was Bill. She was second generation American, married to an Indian immigrant in an arrangement made by their families. He was a British immigrant who had courted and married an American tourist in order to make it to the land of opportunity.

They were both programmers by trade, working for a small obscure firm in a small obscure suburb in a small obscure segment of the software industry.

In one of a long series of risky moves, all ultimately doomed to failure by the general stupidity of management, Bill was put in charge of creating an even smaller, even more obscure team within the company, a self-contained team with its own marketing and sales people, a team that would work together closely, without distraction, as a separate unit.

The first employee Bill chose was Jana, partly because she was the most quietly competent person he'd ever had the pleasure of working with and partly because he loved the idea of being near her, working with her, looking at her, day after day.

And so they did, every day for two weeks, in his office with the door closed, brainstorming product ideas in the morning, and reviewing personnel files in the afternoon, arguing over the merits of technologies and people with a gentle comfortable ease, stopping only once in the middle of each day to either go out to lunch or share a meal at Bill's desk. Some days they ate Indian food, and some days hamburgers. Bill had a thing for everything Indian, an obsession passed down by generations of Englishmen who had served the crown abroad. Bill thought Jana shared his passion for tandori chicken, nan and riata, and Jana thought Bill shared her passion for hamburgers. For Jana there was something deliciously illicit about eating hamburgers with her twinkly-eyed British boss, a very welcome break from her serious traditional Indian husband and the traditional Indian meals he insisted she prepare each night for dinner. Bill, on the other hand, found something almost erotic in their discussion of their fellow employees, a forging of a secret bond between them, a power they would share as managers.

More and more as the days passed in Bill's small office and over lunch in crowded restaurants they would catch themselves staring while pretending not to catch each other. They studied faces, Bill's bearded and somewhat craggy, Jana's smooth and somewhere between cute and beautiful. They stared at skin, Bill's pale and hairy, Jana's smooth and dark. Bill tended to wear thin white dress shirts, and Jana would find herself transfixed by his nipples and the broad flat chest and stomach, would picture herself undoing each button, running her hands over his skin, staring into his eyes. Bill would become visually lost in the swell of Jana's breasts, where her brown skin plunged beneath the light green fabric of her lowcut, loose fitting dress. Or was it more correct to say that they swelled up out of the dress? His mind went back and forth on the question, back and forth, up and down with her breathing. He compared the up vs. down question to her hair, a long braided rope of black which she always wore primly pinned on top of her head. His staring was so blatant that Jana could no longer pretend; she kicked him lightly in the shin under the restaurant table. He looked into her eyes, startled, but she winked and took another bite of saffron rice.

That night, like almost every night, Bill lay next to his wife, wide awake, while she lay peacefully beside him snoring in domestic bliss. He looked at her and stroked himself, he looked at her, but thought about Jana, thought about Jana's hair, pictured Jana loosening her hair, the hair falling to the small of her back, Jana turning to face him. Over and over the same clip ran in his mind while his hand played with cock. He fell asleep, still hard, still dreaming of Jana's hair.

Also that night, like almost every night, Jana fucked her husband in a variety of ritualistic and gymnastic positions, all highly erotic, visually stimulating, physically exhilarating, and devoid of surprise or spiritual connection or sharing. She pictured Bill watching them, enthralled, the way he had stared at her breasts over lunch. And with each orgasm she pictured him winking at her as she came.

The next day, the last day that they would be alone together all day, they finished early. There was an unspoken need to rush, a mutual undiscussed plan that hung in the air between them, as they drove to Jana's favorite burger bar. This lunch, between bites of big rare beef patties and swigs of strong beer, they stared at each other openly and Jana's foot, when it touched Bill's ankle was gentle, yet urgent. They left the restaurant walking side by side, hip to hip. Jana drove back to the office with Bill's hand on her leg, left the car, entered the elevator. It almost happened there on the elevator, but the ride was short and the office so near at hand.

Jana entered the office first. Bill entered behind her, closing and locking the door. Her movement, movements? a shrug? a shimmy? was so quick and subtle that he missed it entirely. She was standing in front of his desk, naked, the dress in a pile around her feet, stepping from it. He burned that image into his mind, the delicate sweep of her feet, the turn of her ankle, he marveled at how short she was, so almost delicate and yet how strong, and dark, and curving. His eyes followed the line from the foot up the leg across the swell of her right buttock and the strong curve of her back, and the arc of her neck. She was loosening her hair and, as in the dream, it fell, but not to the small of her back, to her ass, the ends of her hair pointing, guiding him. She turned, this time just as in the dream, and he was in front of her kissing her, bending down, lifting her, placing her ass on the desk, her hair tickling the dark wood, her hands unbuttoning each button of his shirt, caressing his nipples as their tongues danced, unbuckling his belt, loosening his pants, her mouth teasing his nipples, his cock ready, and she wet and warm and very ready for him to enter her. She leaned back slightly, guiding him in to her with her hands, wrapping her legs around his back, urging him on with her heels, sucking the fingers of his left hand as the fingers of his right pulled on her long hard nipples. But she needed him closer, needed him hard, leaned forward clamping his cock as in a vice, staring into his eyes, thrusting her tongue into his mouth, his hands beneath her ass, lifting, pounding, in and out, as she bounced helplessly on the end of his cock, both of them lost in the moment as their orgasms built and peaked and crashed and they almost screamed into each others mouths collapsing, panting onto the desk.

Bill leaned over her, kissing her again, licking her neck, taking her full dark breasts into his mouth, as she tried to push him off, but succeeded only in pushing his head down, between her legs, where he began to lick and suck and dart his tongue, and she, afraid to make too much noise in the office could only bite her hand as she came again.

Months later, during idle conversation at a company party, in a small group that included Bill, Bill's wife and Jana's husband, a completely pointless argument broke out over who in the company had the longest hair, and Bill, never one to let an incorrect conclusion go uncorrected, blurted out "But Jana's goes all the way down to her ass!"