If
By Chance
By
Nickolas James
Chapter
Seven
As I drove west, I felt as if I were the only motorist on
the road. In reality, there were cars all around me, braking and changing
lanes, their owners trying to reach their destinations. In my mind, though, I
was alone. The sky was gray and the autumn wind was whipping leaves around that
had fallen, carrying them along the sidewalk, as if they were taking them to
some predestined location.
Yet, all of that wasn’t there. At
My mind drifted as I watched them walk passed, wondering
what kind of stress the day had brought to them. I used to feel pressure,
mainly job related, but it paled in comparison to the kind of pressure I was
under now. I smiled as I recalled an early memory of my time as Controller with
the company, when I thought things were out of my control. It was ironic,
really, especially given my job title. I was so worried about being
ineffective, and it was hard to get a handle on people and procedure at first.
I had to work hard to rein everyone in, and they all resisted.
One of the first things I did was to enact an office dress
code. It wasn’t a very popular decision, especially with the girls in Human
Resources, but I didn’t budge. It was my way of wielding a little power to show
who was in charge. One employee in particular, a female clerk named
Once people realized that I wasn’t going to tolerate
insubordination, they fell in line with the vision I had for our office and all
was well. I ran a tight ship, but I was nowhere near the tyrant people thought
I was going to be. I later learned from a former employee of mine, whom I was
still friendly with, that there was talk of a mutiny in the form of a series of
calls to corporate, but it fizzled out when I didn’t turn out to be the asshole
everyone took me for at first.
That kind of respect didn’t come easily, but it did
eventually come. Not always because of the hard line stance I took, either. My
first summer there, I set aside a day with Robin, Peter and a few of the
mid-level managers in the office where we locked our office doors and spent the
day outside, cooking hamburgers and hot dogs and dishing out ice cream for our
employees and any family that they wanted to have meet them for the cookout.
Later that year, we had our first Christmas party off site, and we spent a
pretty penny on a ballroom, an open bar and catered food at the Marriott. We
even offered hotel rooms to those who wanted to stay the night, and deducted
the cost in thirty-dollar increments from their checks.
From then on, I made sure that those happenings were an
annual occurrence for our employees, and Peter and Robin made sure that they
all knew I was the one to thank. That wasn’t exactly why I arranged for them to
happen, but it was nice to get the kind of gratitude I did from the folks in
the office. It seemed like all of the bitterness I dealt with before went away
after that, and it had been smooth sailing from there.
Sure, there was a little turbulence in the waters from time
to time, but it was nothing compared to what I was facing as I drove into the
covered parking area. I took a ticket from the meter and the mechanical arm rose,
allowing me to enter. When I parked, I turned my car off and took a deep breath,
the effect of so many good memories flooding my mind taking its toll on me.
When I walked into the office, it was somehow warm and yet, cool at the same time. A clean, almost minty smell about it,
mixed with the smell of new leather. The receptionist regarded me warmly as I
approached her station, knowing that I was a little more than twenty minutes
early.
“I have a
“Dennis Mead?” she said, looking down into her scheduler
before glancing back at me with another smile, and I nodded affirmatively.
“Please have a seat and I’ll let Mr. Fasola know you’re
here,” she said, motioning with her hand for me to take a seat in the empty
waiting area. All of the chairs and couches were upholstered in black leather,
and the floor was tiled in marble. While
I waited, I opened my briefcase and went over all of my documentation, the
reality of what I was about to do still so stunning to me. I couldn’t believe I
was taking things this far, but I knew I had the moral and legal obligation to
do the right thing. If not for myself, for everyone who was
in the dark about what was going on. For everyone who punched the clock
at that company. For everyone who invested money in our stock. For those people
whose kids ate and went to college with the money their mothers or fathers made
working for that company. For myself. For Gerald.
“Mr. Mead, Mr. Fasola will see
you now,” the receptionist said, and I hadn’t even realized that she was now
standing in front of me. “Please follow me.”
The sexual innuendo wasn’t lost on me. I guess I couldn’t
blame her for trying, though. She was just trying to make as much money as she
could, but I would be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel a little
uncomfortable to have such a young girl acting salaciously as she ran her hands
up and down my legs. She was new, no doubt. I’d never seen her before, and my
guess was that because of her age, her parents wouldn’t let her work there. She
couldn’t have been more than eighteen, if that.
I should have just asked for my regular girl. But the
chances of her being there on a Thursday night weren’t great, I knew. I hadn’t
seen her when I walked in with Gerald, and the new girl made a beeline for the
two of us, beckoning another girl to follow her to the counter, where we told
her what we wanted. She grinned eagerly and led us to the other end of the
shop, where we each took a seat in a recliner and let the girls undress our
feet, first removing our shoes, then our socks. Finally, they rolled our pant
legs up and filled the footbaths up with warm water and some kind of soap
before guiding our feet into our respective whirlpools, where they commenced
with our pedicures.
I’m sure that the seductive way she was staring up at me,
with an almost animalistic hunger in her eyes, would have been effective on any
heterosexual male. She had a very pretty face, long, braided hair and a sexy
hourglass figure. Her slanted eyes set the rest of her facial features off in
such a way that I couldn’t help but smile down at her, but I admit that most of
that was pity. She was fighting a losing battle, and to my left, Gerald’s girl
was in the same boat.
I decided to stop the bleeding by reaching over and taking
Gerald’s hand in mine, batting my eyes at him and saying, “I love you sweetie,”
out loud. He gave me a goofy grin and a giggle, then
he lifted my fingers to his lips and kissed the tip of each one. I looked back
down at my attendant, who got the picture right away, and smiled knowingly. She
went back to work on me, this time without all of the extra looks and risqué
slips of her hand running too far up my leg.
“Let’s get out of town,” I said.
“This weekend?” Gerald
asked, and I nodded. “What do you want to do?”
“Let’s drive to DC.,” I suggested.
“It’s easy to get reservations this time of year.”
“What are we going to do up there?” he asked, and I just
shrugged.
“We’ll figure it out when we get there,” I said. “I just
want to spend some time with you this weekend.”
“I want to spend some time with you too, babe,” he said with
a huge grin on his face. “Are we taking your car or mine?”
“Mine sweetie,” I said, wishing I could stretch my body far
enough over to give him a peck on the lips.
When our pedicures were over, the girls gave us manicures
that seemed to take just a long as the pedicures. They both did an excellent
job, and while I can’t speak for Gerald, I felt like a million bucks when I was
all done. I paid for both of us, then I tipped each
girl twenty dollars before we walked out of the shop, hand in hand.
Gerald was all over me when we got in the car, running his
hands up my shirt and across my chest before he attacked my mouth with his. I
cautiously looked around for passerby’s as I indulged in his sweet kiss, then I
let myself go and ran my fingers through his hair before we broke our kiss and
drove home. The bulge in the crotch of his slacks told me what he wanted, and I
knew what I wanted too, so I drove as quickly but carefully as I could towards
home.
While Gerald drew a hot bath for us, I filled my stove with
pellets and lit a fire to keep us warm. The house, while certainly not
freezing, was chilly. Once I was certain that the fire wasn’t going to go out,
I made my way upstairs and into my room, where I stripped down to nothing
before joining my boyfriend in the bathroom, where our hot bath awaited.
As usual, Gerald waited for me to settle against the back of
the large tub, then he climbed in and slid down, completely immersing himself
in the water, then he came back up and rested himself up against my chest. I
wrapped my arms around his frame and held him close to me, listening to his
breathing as I brought my chin down on his right shoulder and felt him nuzzle
his forehead into my neck.
Beneath the surface of the water, my libido was stirring,
causing my manhood to swell into the valley of his love. I shifted it so that
there was no danger of penetrating his body and causing him any discomfort. He
sighed when I did that, then he whispered into my ear, “I love you Dennis.”
My heart melted.
“I love you too, boo,” I said gently, taking the time to
gaze into his brown eyes before pressing my lips up against his caramel colored
cheek, then to his waiting lips. As our tongues danced, my hands ran across his
torso, desperate to feel every inch of my angel. My fingers grazed across both
of his nipples at the same time, and I gently stimulated them with a light
massage as our kiss continued.
“Let me wash you,” I said when our lips separated, and he
smiled up at me meekly. I used a large body sponge and Camay to wash his body
from head to toe, from front to back. I paid special attention to his manhood, wanting
him to enjoy every second of his bath. He lowered himself into the water again,
letting the suds rise from his body, then he
resurfaced and took the sponge from me, anxious to repay the favor.
From the tub, we skipped the bedroom altogether. Instead, we
walked nude down the stairs, where we settled on a blanket in front of the wood
pellet stove. Once again, I sat down first and Gerald sat between my legs so I
could wrap my arms around him and hold his naked body close to mine. We sat
quietly, the crackling of the pellets in the stove the only sound in the room
as our hands explored each other’s bodies.
My lips found the back of Gerald’s neck, and I planted sweet
kisses on his vertebrae while his palms ran back and forth on the inside of
each of my thighs. His stimuli was rousing my sex, and
I knew he was doing it on purpose. I let my fingers travel along each side of
his body, finding his rib cage and tracing along its ridges as he whimpered
softly and craned his neck so that he could kiss my cheek, just below my
earlobe.
As the moments became minutes and the minutes became hours,
we found ourselves in a new position. Gerald’s body was now facing mine, and as
our heads rested on each other’s shoulders, our hands continued to roam over
the area of our bodies. I felt his left hand grazing over my buns as his right
hand lingered underneath my navel. I felt his fingers brush through my pubic
bush, then he wrapped his hand around my throbbing
manhood.
In reply, I blew into his ear and brought my molesting hand
down into the valley of his love, where I found his treasure with my newly
manicured fingers, using each one separately to prepare him for the night we
had in store. He reacted by tightening his grip on my stiffness and looking
hungrily into my eyes until our lips met and our tongues dueled once more. In
the process, I carefully laid him on his back on the blanket. His left hand
traveled up my back and to the back of my neck, where he grabbed on as I swept
him away with the kiss I was feeding him and the digits that continued to probe
the walls of his sex.
“Make love to me,” he begged me when our tongues stopped
dancing, a hint of desperation in his voice. “I’m ready now.”
I smiled and planted one last kiss on his lips before I
pulled my fingers from deep within him and offered him my hand to help him up.
He grinned and gripped my wrist with both hands before he slowly made it to his
feet. He lustily consumed my fingers as we made our way up the stairs, where we
gave in to our desires and fulfilled each other’s needs.
His body fit me like a glove, and as his warm tightness
engulfed my manhood, I found it hard to keep myself from getting emotional. His
bright eyes were gazing up at me in wonder as I fed his love, exerting myself
to insure his total satisfaction before I allowed myself to finish. I wanted
him to spend himself not just once, but over and over again. As lofty as my
goals were, though, my sex had a limit, and after satisfying Gerald twice, I
gave in to the heat and intensity of the grip that his tightness had on me.
When I pulled out, I slowly slid the sleeve of protection I
had donned, off and tossed it in the garbage can by our bed. My angel smiled
lovingly at me as his legs fell to the bed, and I found it impossible to resist
the urge to cover his body from head to toe with French kisses, paying extra
attention to his manhood and to the love he had just surrendered to me. When I
was finished, I rested beside him and took him into my arms as he yawned
sleepily.
“I love you, boo,” I said softly, kissing the top of his
head.
“I love you too babe,” he said
through another yawn, nuzzling his head into my chest as he drifted off. As I
listened to him breathe, I felt a lump of emotion growing in my throat and my
eyes moisten. I loved him so much, and was willing to do anything to prove it
to him. I let my lips graze over the rim of his left ear and decided that the
next day, when Gerald got home from work, he was going
to find a dozen roses waiting for him on the table.
Taking Donald Fasola’s advice was easier said than done. The
thing was, he was right. I had an obligation to
continue to proceed against the corporation, even if it meant I’d lose my job.
“If anything, you’ll be awarded a large sum of money as a
whistleblower,” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice that I knew came from
his first hand knowledge of what I was going through. “You can’t be prosecuted
for anything as long as you initiate this, Dennis. You’re doing the right
thing.”
“That doesn’t make this any easier,” I said, and he nodded
with a reflective smile.
“It’s not going to be
easy, Dennis,” he told me. “It’s probably going to be the most important thing
you ever do, though. Trust me, the positives will far
outweigh the negatives.”
“What can I expect?” I asked pensively, but I already knew
the answer. I’d be fired as soon as I proceeded, but at this point, I figured,
what choice did I have?
“I’ve already contacted the Department of Justice,” he said.
“For the time being, just go to work and act like nothing’s wrong. If you’re
confronted by anyone about this matter, you walk away and call me. If you’re
fired, I’ll file a wrongful termination suit on your behalf.”
“Don’t you mean, when I’m fired?” I asked, and he just
nodded with a solemn expression.
“You’re preserving your career and your freedom, Dennis,” he
said with a reflective sigh. “I can’t tell you how many people have come to me
when it was too late. It’s not too late for you.”
With that, he laid several legal documents out in front of
me, and after reading them each carefully, I signed my name on them and became
an official whistleblower.