The Messenger (A Lesbian Romance) (6 page)

“Hm, yea-yeah, no, I… “

She laughed.
 

“I bet you’ve never had one by someone who actually knew how to lick your pussy… ”

She sounded like she was on a personal mission. Ever so gently, she kissed my landing strip, then ran her tongue from the top of it, all the way down. I cried out. She gently shushed me.
 

“Poor thing… “

For a moment, she must have been watching my lips open up for her. I could feel myself getting even wetter, and I couldn’t stop myself from writhing in anticipation.
 

Finally, she ran her tongue across my clit. My hips bucked and I cried out in ecstasy, but this time she didn’t sush me. She went right to work, settling herself between my legs and burying her face in my honeypot. I looked down at her relished the sight of her diddling herself as she pleasured me. Although her eyes were closed, the look on her face suggested she was in a trance. I could feel her inhaling my musk and slipping her tongue inside me.
 

I couldn’t get enough; I grabbed her hair and began to fuck her mouth, and she made no move to stop me. I could tell that I was moaning and yelping extremely loudly, but couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. In a matter of minutes, I came so hard that my ears popped. My hips bucked wildly, but she held on and never took her mouth off me, even though she was in the throes of her own intense climax. When I finally stopped coming, she gently kissed my swollen clit and rested her head on my belly. I recall brushing the hair away from her forehead before falling into the deepest sleep I’d ever known.
 

Chapter Ten
 

I don’t know how long I slept. It was probably the first time in my life that I’d woken without an alarm clock. The sun glowed meekly through the roman blinds in the window, gently rousing me even though I probably could’ve lied there for countless more hours. There was the requisite moment of panic from waking up in a strange place, which was tempered by the happy, relaxed feeling still coursing through my veins like an opiate.
 

I looked to my side and saw Elena. She was lying on her stomach and snoozing. With the sheet wrapped around her naked body, she looked so young that I began to feel a little guilty, but then I remembered the expert way she’d handled me. She was no innocent.

She began to stir. For a second I was worried that she’d never intended for me to sleep over. I flashed back to all the times I’d made sure to let my latest encounter know that he wasn’t welcome to stay mere minutes after our fun was over. She opened her eyes. I tried to prepare myself to not take it personally if she told me I should leave, but if I’m being honest, it was the last thing I wanted to hear. I wanted to smell her skin again. I wanted to know everything about her. If I’d been a smarter woman, I might have realized that I was falling in love with her then.
 

She wriggled one arm free from the sheet and wrapped it around me. I can’t remember the last time anyone had made such a sweet and gentle gesture toward me. Her arm felt warm and good and heavy, like a security blanket.
 

“Hi”, she mumbled.
 

I couldn’t help but smile. “Hi.”

“I’m glad you stayed.”

She pulled me close. Without thinking about it, I ran my fingers along her back, a surprisingly intimate thing. It felt startlingly normal. I looked around her room. It was spartan, with only a dresser, one nightstand and a lamp as her furniture. The walls were adorned with art, and a piles of books climbed up the whitewashed walls. I felt like I’d woken up in an artist’s garret. She caught me looking.
 

“What do you think of those?” She gestured toward the canvases.

I didn’t know if I should lie. They certainly looked pretty, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of them.

“I… enjoy them.”

She laughed.

“You’re such a bad liar.”

I thought that was interesting; I’d made an entire hugely successful career of doing things that could be considered a lighter shade of lying. We gently stroked one another for a few more minutes. A thought suddenly occurred to me, one that I wish I could’ve tapped a delete button on.
 

“Hey… the next time you come to the office, it’s maybe best that we don’t, you know, acknowledge one another”, I said, for some unknown reason.

She stopped stroking me and raised her head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it wouldn’t look right.”

“
Wouldn’t look right?”

I knew I had to explain myself, but truthfully, I didn’t know what I was saying.
 

“Look, you might not understand what it is that I do, but it depends a lot on appearances, not only to my clients but to my staff. If a messenger came in, looking like you do, and acted familiar with me — “

She pulled away and looked at me with equal measures of disgust and bewilderment.
 

“What do you think I’m going to do? Show up with a bouquet of roses or something?”

“No, but you understand, right, it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

She rolled over and sat up, clutching the sheet around her chest as though she was suddenly embarrassed.
 

“You know, I wasn’t expecting a relationship or anything, but I didn’t think you’d be such a… such a…
tourist
.”

She didn’t even have to explain it. The word “tourist” cut me deep. Somehow, I needed to make her understand that this attraction, while primal and undeniable, was not based on some kind of ignorant assumption about who she was, just based on the color of her skin or her chosen profession. She had me so scrambled inside that I was saying things the exact opposite of how I meant them. I felt like my superpower had been wrested from my hands.
 

“You can show yourself out.”

She got up, throwing the sheets behind her, and stormed into the bathroom. I heard the shower begin running. Although I was bewildered, and spent an embarrassing amount of time sitting up in Elena’s bed wondering what had just happened, I knew better than to be around when the water shut off. I hunted around for my clothes. Somehow, my panties had ended up clear across the room. I quickly got dressed and made my way out. When I closed the door behind myself, I made sure to test the lock. Despite being kicked out and feeling like she’d probably spit on me the next time she saw me, I wanted to make sure she’d be safe.
 

The drive back down the hill felt windier than the trip up had been the night before. Probably because Elena was guiding me, and as long as I’d kept my eye on her sweet little ass, I didn’t notice how small the streets were, or how all the curves were blind. Slowly, I made my way down and joined the throngs of commuters on their way into downtown. Suddenly, I remembered that I’d skipped out on Mitchell’s meeting. I pulled off at a coffee shop to try and come up with a plan.
 

My phone charged up right away, faster than I think I’d ever seen it.
Traitor
, I thought.
 

As soon as it booted up, I saw an ungodly number of messages waiting for me. None of them could possibly be good. The regret weighed on me like a wet coat. What the hell had I been thinking? Who was this middle-aged woman staring back at me in the rearview mirror? I forced myself to watch the traffic go by for what felt like half an hour, hoping to get lost in its hypnotic rhythm.
 

When I looked at the time, however, only a few minutes had passed. I knew I had to face the music sometime, and had to accept the consequences of the choices I’d made the previous evening. What better way to gird myself for the messages awaiting me than with a coffee and a bear claw?
 

Both the pastry and the coffee were substandard, and were not much comfort as I played through the messages. I put my phone on speaker; although angry voices might fill my car, it was somehow more appealing than having them blasted directly into my ear. The first few, unsurprisingly, were from Mitchell. They began around an hour into the abandoned meeting.
 

His voice was shrill and panicked, like an elf who’d dropped a mallet on his foot. He was upset, understandably. After the first few messages that began with him screeching at me, I started to skip them. The last one, time-stamped well into the early hours of the morning, was of Mitchell slurring his words and spewing abuse at me. He must have gone home and had himself a hell of a drinking session, because he neglected to hang up after calling me a bitch for the tenth time in the message. The remainder of the recording was of him snoring.
 

There was one more message left. It had been left around the time I was being unceremoniously booted from Elena’s apartment, which told me that it probably wasn’t Mitchell. I played it and the voice in the message nearly made me choke on my tepid coffee. It was Barbara Copper, the matriarch of our corporation, the only person the board answered to. She’d single handedly taken the company to Fortune 500 status, and the rest of us labored constantly to match her brilliance. I’d met her only a handful of times in my career; she was the type to keep a hand out of the business unless it was absolutely called for. She asked me to come to her office that afternoon, then promptly ended the call. It was like being paged by the Great and Terrible Oz.
 

My thoughts raced. Had Mitchell been informing on me? Was I fired? I didn’t know what to do. Going straight to the office was out of the question. I realized that I wished I could go back to Elena’s place. I actually laughed. The only logical thing to do was to go home and do my best to clean myself up. I had been up and down so many times in the last twelve hours that I looked a fright.
 

Plus, I had an almost superstitious faith that looking the part would help me keep my composure amid all the uncertainty that was facing me. I seemed to have misplaced all my nerve and cunning, and felt that it might be hiding for me in the pocket of one of my well-pressed suits.
 

Chapter Eleven
 

Despite putting on what I considered to be my game face and my uniform, nerves were still jittering from within my bones as I made my way up to Mrs. Copper’s office. I'd never been fired from anything before; any job I'd ever left had been to make some great leap upward. However, I was glad that it would be her doing the firing, and not Mitchell. If it'd been up to him, I'm sure he'd have done it by meandering around my office with his hands stuffed into his pockets, going on and on about how "sorry" he was, while barely concealing a look of glee behind his beady little eyes. Granted, I had no idea how Barbara would deliver the blow, but I imagined that at least it would be done with a little more class.
 

As I sat in the lobby, I realized that I hadn't actually seen or heard Mitchell when I'd stopped by my office. It seemed strange; it was more like him to be lying in wait for me to give me the business, if not to gloat that I was being called on the carpet for letting him down. I just assumed that he was too hung-over to rub my face in it. It was dreadfully quiet, a stark contrast to our floor, where phones were constantly ringing and people hollered to one another instead of actually getting up. I should've bothered to prepare a speech of some sort, but I didn't; I deserved what was coming to me. I found myself longing for Elena the way one might long for a security blanket.
 

Finally, the big wooden door opened up. I expected to see a secretary, but it was Mrs. Copper herself. She was a sprightly old lady, and greeted me with a surprisingly firm handshake. There was no maliciousness in her bright, blue, twinkling eyes, despite the fact that she’d likely learned some unsavory things about me recently. She led me into her office, which, to my surprise, wasn't much different than mine, albeit with a much better view.
 

She must have noticed me gawking, because she chuckled and said, "Well, we must move you to a better location if you're this impressed with the view of the mountains."

Was she testing me? I didn't know what to say. Why would she talk of moving me if she'd probably called me up here to give me the chop? She studied me for a moment, then tapped on a manila folder on her immaculate desktop. I felt like my whole career was somehow inside that folder.

"I didn't build this company by being well-versed in small talk, Ms. Murphy, so I'll get right to the point. It's come to my attention that you skipped out on a meeting arranged by your colleague."

“That’s right.”

“What did you know about this meeting going into it?”

I racked my brain. No matter what I said, I knew that it would sound like a lie. I told her that all I knew was that Mitchell was backing out of a deal. As to the particulars of the aborted deal, I had no idea. She looked down at the file, then turned her gaze out the window.
 

“Is that all you knew?”

The way she said it made me question what I’d just said, as though I could no longer trust myself. I only nodded, before my mouth went off spouting words, just to have something to say in response. She stopped me with one wave of her delicate hand.
 

“I believe you. I didn’t think you had anything to do with it.”

I felt like I was missing something.
 

“With… what, ma’am?”

She smiled and leaned forward. There was that twinkle in her eye again.
 

“Well, it turns out that Mitchell was telling some tales to our clients. I don’t know how much I’m technically allowed to tell you, but considering that it nearly cost you your career as well, I feel it would be unfair not to fill you in.”

The wheels were turning now. Just what the hell was going on?

“The long and short of it is that Mitchell was conducting something of a Ponzi scheme, in-house. Promising payoffs to one startup while pocketing money from another for jobs he hadn’t completed. Those boys you were supposed to meet with last night were the alarm we could no longer ignore - they got in touch with me directly yesterday and told me what Mitchell had promised them. It was dismaying, to say the least.”