Bonds of Attraction (Full Length Erotic Romance Novel) (22 page)

The world blurred around me. My lungs burned
as I ran past the elevator and darted for the stairs. I had to keep moving. I
knew that if I just kept moving in that moment, maybe the horror of what I had
seen wouldn’t wash over me like a tidal wave of pain. I jumped down the stairs
in twos and threes, pulling on the handrail as I did so. The only sound I could
hear was the frantic panting of my breathing.

Leon, inside of her, pushing, coming, crying
out in pleasure, moaning, grunting, looking at me, laughing, smiling, eyes cold
and without feeling. This was Leon Christensen. The woman from the file bent
over before him, bending over to him and his will, letting him inside of her,
painfully, aggressively, submissively, filled with him and pleasure, filled
with his want, his lust.

Through the panicked thoughts that seemed
without end, I wanted him to chase after me. I wanted to hear the sound of his
footsteps pounding down on the ground as he raced to stop me, raced to explain
himself, raced to apologize. I breathed heavy, my heart pounding through my
chest and blood rushing to my brain as I ran, but no sounds followed.

Outside, the sun had barely moved since I had
last looked at it rising in the horizon. Yet that had felt like years ago.
Could it really only have been five minutes? I raised my hand to shield my eyes
from the blistering sun and gasped for air, now realizing just how out of
breath I was. My eyes burned with tears as I scanned the parking lot for my
car, which wasn’t hard since the parking lot was empty except for my car and
Leon’s.

My hands fought against me as I searched my
purse for my keys. The fingers attached to my hands were no longer mine, gone
to the stress that now held power over my entire body. My defiant fingers
finally found the keys and managed to lock onto them, pulling them out of my
purse with such clumsy force that my wallet and lipstick flew out with it. I
dropped to my knees and picked them up, another flood of tears pouring out of
me. I knelt there for a full minute, crying.

Anger began to boil through the tears and
they began to feel like acid against my face. My hands that had been shaking
from shock now shook with rage. I clenched two fists and rose from my knees. I
ran my fingers through my hair and wiped the salty tears from my face. I
reached delicately into my purse and pulled out a tissue and blew my nose. I
breathed in deeply and clicked the button to open my car door.

I opened the door and looked over to Leon’s
car, still parked next to mine. I pushed away any thought of what he was doing
right at that moment and continued to stare at his car with a growing disgust.
The impulse to run my keys against the finish and slash the tires made me feel
alive with revenge for a full minute. In the end, I sat down in the driver’s
seat of my car and let the feeling pass. I would not give Leon the satisfaction
of knowing he had bothered me enough for me to act like a vengeful child.

I sat in my own car, a numb feeling washing
over me. I didn’t start the car; the keys weren’t even in the ignition. I just
sat, composing myself as the sun climbed higher in the sky.

How long had I been in the parking lot of
Leon Christensen’s office? I didn’t know. I only knew that I had to get out of
here; the sight of his office in front of me brought up a feeling of revulsion
that struck at my stomach, tying it into a painful knot of nausea.

“It was nothing,” I said to no one.
“Nothing.”

I put the keys in the ignition and turned
them to start the car. For a panicked moment I was positive that the car wasn’t
going to start and I was going to be stuck in the parking lot, forced to call
for a tow truck and wait until he came to save me. The hours would pass and of
course other employees would arrive. Leon would have to bring down the girl he
had savaged in front of me and bring her home eventually. We’d lock eyes and
maybe he’d try to invite me back to her place with him. Maybe he’d say nothing.
I wasn’t sure what would be worse.

“Stop it,” I said.

Leon’s abs flexed as he pushed in and out of
the woman before him, bent over and moaning with pleasure. I couldn’t remember
her name or even what her face looked like outside of an abstract
representation of pleasure itself. Beads of sweat formed on her perfect skin as
she let Leon take her in every way, not objecting as he pushed painfully inside
of her. I could see his eyes, dead of emotion and colorless, two black holes of
color that sucked all light into them. His muscles pulsed with the oncoming
storm of his orgasm, pushing inside of the girl with no name’s ass while she
bit down her lip.

I shook off the image and rubbed my eyes. A
voice on the radio began its morning recounting of the previous day’s news and suddenly
I was aware of the small vibration of the idling engine. I let out a sigh of
relief and for the first time since I barged in on Leon fucking another woman
before me with vitriolic coldness in his eyes, I laughed. I laughed at my own
foolishness and false panic over the car.

I drove the car away from the office building
and rather than feeling relieved, sadness wrapped itself around my chest and
squeezed. Gravity itself grew heavy and it was difficult to move. The radio
began to grow quieter and quieter as I drove on, lost in my own thoughts.

I looked up and realized just how far I was
way from Leon’s office. I had not been paying any attention to where I was
going. My mind would simply not focus on driving. The realization that this was
probably more dangerous than driving drunk cut through the static of my
thoughts and I pulled off an exit. Sitting in my car, I searched the internet
with my phone for a commuter lot and found one only a mile away.

I dialed in the number for a cab in my phone
and listened to it ring before a voice cut through and startled me, making me
almost drop my phone. I lied to the operator that I was having car problems and
told him where to send a cab to pick me up. The operator told me it would be
fifteen minutes and I thanked him, my voice steady, not revealing just how
flustered I really was.

I pulled into the commuter lot and parked the
car. I sat in my car and simply waited for the cab to arrive, not letting any
thoughts grow in my mind. I followed my breath and hummed along to songs on the
radio that I didn’t even know the words to. After a half hour, the taxi pulled
into the commuter parking lot and I grabbed my purse and walked out to greet him.

“Lucky break,” the driver said through his
open window.

“Excuse me?” I asked. I could not think of a
single thing that could be construed as lucky.

He tossed a cigarette onto the ground. It was
definitely illegal to smoke in a cab, but I didn’t protest that he had filled
the cab with stale smoke; I was grateful that he had come at all. Smoke
billowed out of his nostrils as he spoke.

“It’s a lucky break to have car problems in a
commuter lot,” he said, a wry smile forming under his thick black mustache. His
teeth were yellow, but otherwise perfectly straight and full. “Shit deal, no
doubt, but still much better than leaving it by the side of the road.”

I looked back at my car and nodded. “I
suppose you’re right about that one.”

I sat in the back of the taxi and stared out
the window, feeling dazed. My eyes had not puffed up from the tears, luckily,
but I still felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. The driver
listened to the same public radio station that I normally did and so we
listened together in silence, making no small chat. When we arrived at my
office, I didn’t even remember telling him where to go. Upon seeing my office,
I immediately wished that I had told him to take me home instead.

“Thanks,” I said as I got out. When I looked
down for a brief moment to grab my money to pay him, a cigarette appeared in
his mouth as if by magic. I handed him the fare plus a hefty tip. He eyed it
and looked back at me, nodding. As he pulled out of the office parking lot, I
saw a puff of smoke flow out of the window. In that moment, I wanted to flag
him down and bum a cigarette. I watched him go and the feeling passed.

In the office, April was as bright and
cheerful as usual. She greeted me. I greeted her back and put on my best smile.
April must not have seen the taxi drop me off because she made no mention of
the taxi or the fact that my car wasn’t parked in its usual spot. She didn’t
even question me as to why I was so late. When I sat down in my office, all the
thoughts that I had been hiding from the entire morning began to creep into my
mind again.

When I had locked eyes with Leon, it was as
though his stare was filled with razorblades that dug deep into my chest. The
shock had flooded my system and I was unable to process what I was seeing rationally.
Yet I had gone there with the intention of fixing a wrong that I had done. I
hadn’t gone there to profess my undying love for the guy or anything. It was
simply that I had overstepped the boundaries of professional behavior and
needed to correct it.

My night with Leon had been the biggest
mistake of all. I had slipped up by letting myself sleep with him. I knew that
neither of us would ever be
emotionally
invested, so what right did I
have to feel hurt by him being with another woman? Hell, I had even been the
one who had given him the file on the woman I had walked in on him with!

No, Leon Christensen had been a sexual
experience. An intense, satisfying, and incredible experience, but an
experience nonetheless. And an experience can never last longer than the moment
it is contained in. We both filled a void in that moment. I had wanted him
physically, nothing more.

I thought of Leon’s eyes reflecting the fire.
The sadness that had radiated from them into me had been so intense. And when
we had been together, it was beyond anything that I had ever felt before. I
felt a longing in my chest that I had never known was there. As my mind focused
in on that night, a wave of heaviness fell upon me and I wanted to cry all over
again.

It had never been like this with any of the
other men I had been with. Even with the few that I had maintained the faintest
semblance of a relationship, always based on sex, of course, I had never longed
for them. If I had caught them with another woman, it wouldn’t have hurt. This
had been a knife to my heart.

I got up from my desk and tried to compose
myself. I looked over at the clock on the wall and realized that I had been in
the office for almost two hours. In that time, I had not accomplished a single
thing.  I had sat at my desk, lost in thought, for the entire time.

When I opened the closet, the sexy black
dress that I kept there stared at me, still wrapped in the plastic cover that
the dry cleaners had returned it to me in. The last time I had worn it, I had
let a guy take me back to his place in it. He liked the dress so much he asked
me to keep it on while we had sex. After he came on the dress, he apologized
with a smirk and gave me some cash for the dry cleaning bill. I had taken his
money, but truthfully, it had been a huge turn-on.

Looking at the dress made me feel better. The
memory of the last time I wore it only added to the feeling. I looked good in
this dress. It was still a little early, but I could treat myself to a nice
dinner and then go out dancing. From there, I would let the night take me where
it would, although I had a strong feeling it would take me into a stranger’s
arms.

I changed into the dress. The heels that I
had on complimented them nicely and they were comfortable enough to be suitable
for a long night of walking around and dancing. Studying myself in the mirror,
I noticed that my makeup was still flawless, unsullied by the copious amount of
tears that had poured down my face earlier. Thank god for high quality
cosmetics.

I threw an overcoat on to avoid explaining
myself to April. When I walked out of my office, she looked up brightly and
smiled.

“Heading out?” she asked.

“Yes, I’ve got some personal things to take
care of, so I won’t be back in the office today,” I said. “Whenever you’re done
with your work, feel free to head out early as well.”

“Thank you,” she said warmly. Her face beamed
at me and I smiled back. I was starting to feel pretty good already.

Outside, I called the same taxi company. They
once again told me fifteen minutes, and I thanked them. The dress felt tight
against my skin. I liked the way that it grabbed hold of my curves and
displayed them proudly for the world to fawn over. Tonight, I was going to
forget about everything that happened and enjoy myself. Maybe I would be
enjoying some company as well.

The taxi pulled up after less than five
minutes. The driver said nothing and didn’t even look at me when I got in the
back of his taxi. For a panicked second I couldn’t remember where the commuter
lot was, but then I combed my memory and told him the general area. He nodded,
indicating that he knew the commuter lot that I spoke of. I breathed out
deeply, relaxing against the back of the bench seat.