Addictive Choices Ch. 01

A boss meets a previous employee after several years, and reflects back on an affair he had with her best friend. Please vote and send constructive feedback.

"Shaun? It's been forever since I've seen you!" interrupted the melodic female voice next to me. I was in the midst of delivering a joke's punch line to the bartender at a watering hole in the basement of the bank headquarters high-rise where I used to work.

I looked over and it was Camden – or Cam, as she preferred to be called when she'd worked for me upstairs in a corporate office several years before. A characteristic sexual tightness immediately gripped me as I scanned her short, wavy, ash-blonde hair, light gray eyes and fair, fox-like face with an adorable chin cleft. When we'd worked together, I'd been professionally diagnosed as having a sexual addiction and – even though my current life was much more staid – I'd always harbored a secret, rapacious desire for this succulent married woman.

"Migawd, Cam! You look…uuh…great!" I sputtered, at a temporary loss for words. She noticed my eyes scan down over her body, clothed in a pearl gray, tropical weight, business suit covering a frilly white blouse that buttoned to her neck.

"Well, so do you! Gimme a hug," she gasped, pressing against me with one arm around my neck. Her embrace took my breath away as her full breasts flattened against my chest, and her flowery scent made me light-headed.

My hands were still on her narrow, tight, waist as we pushed apart and I said, "What're you up to?"

"Oh, just having a drink with a girlfriend. Would you like to join us?"

"Sure! If I won't be in the way," I said. As stunningly sexy as she looked, I remembered Cam as being an inveterate gossip and had always hesitated to intrude on her girl-talk.

"You…in the way? Never!" she beamed, and ordered a couple of drinks, which the bartender said he'd send to her table. She turned and beckoned for me to follow her. From behind she looked even more delectable than when we'd worked together. She'd lost a little weight – stood about 5'8" in heels, and was now around 36C-24-36 – with a muscular ass and legs that scoffed at straight lines. I remembered breaking into a sweat at her outrageous curves whenever I'd been with her and that hadn't changed as I checked out her legs. Her three-inch stiletto pumps – she must have owned 50 pair – exaggerated her calf muscles perfectly. In fact, when we'd worked together her choice of shoes had fed a fetish of mine for feminine ankles and feet.

A dozen paces toward her table and she stopped. Looking coyly over her shoulder, she caught me eyeing one of her luscious calves as it split the long, open kick pleat of her skirt, showing the back of her knee up to a scrumptious muscled upper leg. Her cheeks flushed slightly and she smiled as I muttered a joking double-entendre: "I'm right behind you, Cam. It takes longer for middle-aged men, you know." I was 43, nine years older than she, and had been divorced for many years.

We got to her table – set against a plush banquette against a wall – and she said to an attractive brunette sitting at one of its other three chairs, "Look who I found, Marsha! You remember me talking about my old boss, Shaun. Well, here he is…in the flesh! Shaun, this is Marsha."

As I shook hands with her friend across the table, Cam squeezed onto the banquette, curling one shapely leg under herself and sitting on it. When we'd worked together she'd driven me to sexual distraction by doing this when in my office, and this day was no different. Though the table covered her legs from the looks of passersby, her skirt had ridden up to mid-thigh. One surreptitious glance downward rekindled old lusty memories as the lacy top of a thigh-high stocking peeked up at me. I restrained the impulse to wipe my brow as Cam began telling Marsha about our innocent past.

"When I first met Shaun – six or seven years ago – I disliked him," she confided to her friend as her eyes pored over my frame. "He was hired from outside, over everybody else, to manage installing the new branch computer network. Then they made him head of marketing and training…again over everybody else! You can imagine how pissed off we all were."

What Cam meant was that many of the women at headquarters were seething because they'd been passed over for the position. At the time I'd understood their objections, but of course had kept quiet.

"You didn't stay angry for long," I chimed in.

"You know why, don't you," said Cam, giving me a sultry look and laying her hand softly on my forearm. I shrugged, and she squeezed my arm slightly as she related to Marsha, "First, you were very sharp. Second, I discovered that you and I had a lot in common…with our theatrical backgrounds and stuff. And third, my friend Sherri went gaga over you."

"That's an exaggeration" I said, anxious to stop this line of conversation. When I'd been at the bank, I'd tried to keep my sexual addiction under wraps, which – I was told by my shrink – was a result of my alcoholic mother's verbal abuse that eroded my self confidence in my formative years. I had taken the diagnosis with a shrug of the shoulders. Everyone has a cross to bear; I had a life to prepare for.

"Listen to him, Marsha. Here's a WASP god with a Ph.D., an experienced executive, divorced, six foot two and built like a pro athlete, just dripping with sex appeal…and he's modest!" Cam then turned to me and raised her knee, banging it hard on the table's underside and wincing before she pushed it against my thigh. "Sweetie, if I hadn't been married, I would've jumped your bones myself!" She punctuated her statement by signaling a passing waitress for another round of drinks.

Marsha declined, saying she had to get back to her office. I stood and shook her hand before she and Cam hugged goodbye, then she left.

"Hope I didn't chase off your friend," I said.

"Marsha? Oh, no. She's a two-drink person," Cam assured, untangling her legs and raising her knee to see if it'd been bruised on the table. Sitting ninety degrees to my right, her short skirt pulled open as she rubbed her knee, which must have been sore. My lusty eyes looked straight between her legs as her pose revealed – yes! – thigh-high stockings, delectable creamy flesh at their tops, and an inviting triangle of light-colored bikini panties covering her vulva that made me want to drool. She smiled slightly as she caught me looking and very slowly crossed her legs, breaking the stone silence with the sensuous rasp of nylon-against-nylon.

"How's Darryl?" I asked, referring to her husband, an attorney that she'd worked full-time to put through law school several years before.

She suddenly turned very serious. "Of course, how would you know?" she murmured. "We divorced, Shaun, after I had a baby girl. I'm a single parent now. The whole thing ended up pretty nasty. It nearly destroyed me. Darryl was my life choice," she said absently.

I was shocked. As flirtatious as Cam could be…and as consummately feminine…it had been understood by all that her marriage was inviolate. Though I'd known that Darryl had a wandering eye, I'd been convinced that Cam would always be a faithful wife. That was one reason why we'd worked so well together.

"I'm truly sorry, Cam," I said, cupping her hand in both of mine. "But, congratulations! A baby girl! I have a daughter, too, from my first marriage. She's almost twenty now."

"I remember. Do you ever hear from that woman you were living with? I've forgotten her name…the bisexual one who competed with you for women in your community theatre group?" she asked, saltily.

"Haven't for years now, but I'm still into theatre…I do a stage play every now and then, though my software business keeps me awfully busy."

"You're probably better off. Sherri said that before you left the bank you were screwing actresses by the dozen. That's the thing that broke her heart. She got married on the rebound after you, y'know…to some rich housing developer from San Diego."

"I'm not surprised. Marriage is what she wanted and needed," I said, picturing the lovely, tall blonde as a wealthy businessman's trophy wife. "I liked Sherri, Cam – I mean really liked her – but getting married and starting another family when pushing 40 wasn't on my agenda." I lapsed for a moment into a remembrance of my fabulous sexual experiences with Cam's old girlfriend and former employee of mine.

"After you, she got kind of desperate before she left the bank. Of course, I was having problems of my own," said Cam, herself staring blankly ahead as she recalled some distant mental image. "Migawd, look at the time! I've gotta get home and relieve my nanny. Here's my card…will you call me? Your office is out where you live, right?"

I wondered how she knew that. "Near there. The reason I'm here is I've got a new insurance client upstairs on the 40^th floor," I said, slipping her a card. "I'm here several times a week. My car's downstairs in the underground garage. Can I drop you somewhere?"

"That'd be great!" she said, and we hurried out. "I bought a townhouse here in the city…just a dozen blocks away," she puffed as we hastened to the garage elevator. She smiled as we slipped into my Jaguar sedan and crossed her legs again in that sensuous way. "Mmm, business must be good!" she purred, laying her head back against the leather and closing her eyes meditatively.

I pulled up to the curb in front of her fairly new, four-story building and said, "See you soon, I hope."

"You can bet on it, Shaun," she grinned. Leaning toward me, her hand slipped inside my suit jacket and squeezed my left pectoral as we hugged. Her soft lips grazed my cheek and I felt a glandular thrill as she gave me a peck. "After seeing you, tonight's gonna be a run down memory lane. Bye for now!"

All the way home, over dinner and afterward until bed, I daydreamed about those years before… about the stark contrasts of working with my former lover Sherri and her work mate Cam.

Time: Six Years Earlier

My first task on the new job six years before had been to meet my staff, one-on-one.

"You realize that there're a lot of bitter people on your staff," said Sherri, on the first day we met in my office.

"I'm not surprised," I responded, trying to fix my eyes on hers, rather than her elegant body, as she sat in a side chair next to my desk. I'd worked with women for years yet was never comfortable when dealing with the more attractive ones. Aside from my insatiable sex drive, being a single, divorced man only complicated the problem. That's one reason why I seldom socialized with females at work, leaving my after hours time free for more pleasurable activities.

"I'd like to help, if I can," she said, slowly swinging her shapely, nyloned calf up and down as she spoke. My eyes dropped to her long leg immediately – and the stiletto heel that she wore – captive of its seductive rhythm. A golden-blonde with hair cut below her shoulders, she was wearing a tailored maroon, faux-suede business suit with an above-the-knee skirt and an off-white silk blouse that matched her tan, butter-smooth complexion. Her green eyes – outlined in maroon shadow and brown mascara – were unblinking, and one elbow on her knee served as a fulcrum for her to lean her upper body – and her lovely breasts – toward me for emphasis. She noticed me appreciating all of her moves, waited for me to reply, then licked her broad, full lips, making them shine.

I cleared my throat, driving the sensuous thoughts from my head, and went back to business. Without telling her, I knew that my first mission was to break up old power bases, reassign people, and urge recalcitrant older employees to retire early or – in the cases of younger, under-productive workers – to get them to look elsewhere for a means of livelihood. I hoped that she wasn't one of the ones I'd have to let go, because she was so damned gorgeous. And, regardless of my impressive title, I'd also been saddled with more responsibility than I had authority. To my disadvantage, therefore, Sherri's simmering sexuality made me vulnerable as an executive, especially given my knee-jerk sexual impulses.

"I do need help," I said. "I'm interested in increasing productivity. I've been told that in the past, employee social lives have been liberally mixed with their professional obligations." Her face broke into a half-smile, and I sensed that she'd taken my statement as a sort of challenge.

She was one of the bright, ambitious women who'd been hired a while before I arrived, and had bumped her head on the "glass ceiling." She'd been held down by a few incompetent male managers, and was frustrated at not being considered for promotions or rewarding transfers. So, when she and her fellow workers were assigned to me I encountered an atmosphere of incipient rebellion.

"You're divorced, aren't you…and living with a woman?" she asked, raking her nails through her thick, golden mane.

"I'm impressed. You've obviously done your research," I said smugly, reflecting on my less-than-satisfying relationship with my current, live-in girlfriend, about whom Sherri knew nothing. But I was used to baiting female staff. It'd kept me on my toes for years. I was 37. After getting my Ph.D. in management I'd spent seven years at a think tank, working my way up to second in command of an entire division, made up mostly of women and two lone males. That's one reason why I'd been hired as a VP by the bank; that's also why my advance reputation had ruffled many female feathers. It was assumed that I was a rank sexist.

"We'll have to trade war stories," she said. "I've been divorced for four years. We could get acquainted over lunch…or drinks; maybe with Cam and her husband."

I knew then that Sherri would be challenging to supervise. In our first meeting alone, meant to introduce ourselves to one another, this 30-year-old divorcee from Chicago had begun her hustle. Very shrewd! I thought, inviting me out with a fellow employee and her husband! I was secretly flattered and a bit intrigued. She was tall and athletic, about 5'10" in heels, and carried a curvaceous 36C-24-38 body that looked as hard as iron. Built for endurance, a lot like that blonde evening newscaster on CNN, I thought to myself as I appraised her physically. I looked ahead with some anticipation to the next day when I'd meet the fellow employee she'd just mentioned, the equally impressive Camden.

When Camden arrived, I wasn't immediately sure of her agenda, since she nosed around the office rather presumptuously, like a restless, curious animal, getting to know me by observing – sniffing around – my lair. One psychological school of thought would say she was insecure and fearful.

"Mind if I just wander for a minute?" she asked, arrogantly, as she sashayed across the room. "This office used to be so boring; you've done some interesting things." She checked out a picture of my daughter on my desk, murmuring, "Cute little girl." She perused a collection of fiction I had in a bookcase separate from my business books, and spent a while reading the name plates on a few trophies, a couple of which were awards for amateur stage acting. While she did this, I pretended to be engrossed in reading a report while sitting on a corner of my desk. I could outwait her. And sure enough, my inattention apparently caused her some discomfort, since she wandered over to me, apparently unused to being ignored. I then led a casual stroll to the two sofas. She eased herself down onto one of them, curling a leg under herself, and I sat across from her in the other. My groin pulsed as I got a great look at her stupendous, muscular lower body. Here was a woman whose sexiness seemed unselfconscious, almost an afterthought.

Breaking the silence, I said, "Well, Camden, I'll be direct…".

"Please call me Cam," she interrupted.

"Okay…Cam…what do you see yourself doing in five years?"

She stuttered, for the moment nonplussed. "I…I've never been asked that by a boss before." Then she regained control. "I'd hope at least to be a Vice President…maybe to have your job."

"Well, I hope that you do. I can't imagine doing the same job for five years," I said, endorsing her goal. "Any plans for a family?" I asked, knowing that it was an "illegal" question in Human Resources lingo.

"Not at the moment," she replied, cautiously. Then she launched into a long description of her life with husband Darryl, their time at college and his law school years, until the present. "You should meet him," she said. "Why don't we go for drinks after work soon so we can really talk! I know Sherri would love to come along, too."

The two women had obviously been scheming. I agreed, confident that I could handle two female employees with an ambitious agenda. Two nights later we met at the bar in the basement of the headquarters building. As we drank, Sherri fawned over me, hanging on my every word to the point that even Cam's husband, Darryl, took notice. Not that I cared what he thought, particularly. He struck me as shallow and sneeringly over-confident. He was proud that he'd become a lawyer, though he'd gotten a law degree from an unknown school and his wife had shouldered the financial burden. I also noticed that his eyes followed every attractive woman in the room.

A couple of drinks later Cam excitedly agreed to audition in a couple of months for a play that I was going to produce for my community theatre group, since she'd made a point of bragging about her stage experience. I wanted to see how good she truly was on stage, even though it was clear that Darryl was displeased at the prospect of her dabbling in acting now that she was out of college and a working professional. They both left soon thereafter to leave Sherri and me alone together.

"Cam's excited about auditioning. Clever of you to ask her," said Sherri.

"Do you know them well?" I asked.

She hesitated before answering, stirred her drink with her finger, and looked directly at me. "Very well. Why d'you ask?"

"Just curious," I replied. The truth was, I'd sensed something between she and Darryl – a nervous feeling of unspoken familiarity – chiefly from him.

"Darryl's very possessive. He likes to be in control," Sherri said.

"Well, I'll bet he has his hands full with Cam," I cautioned, which caused her to chuckle.

"You'd be surprised. He can be very persuasive," she said. "But what about you? How's your sex life?"

"Uhh…fine. I mean, I live with a woman, and we both have friends." I was surprised as to how the conversation had suddenly turned to matters of the flesh.

"You mean, you have sex with other people," she said forwardly, to which I blanched. "It's okay, Shaun. My sex life is pretty open, too. I sleep with whomever I wish."

"Did you when you were married?" I asked.

"No, even though I was tempted and not getting enough sex. My ex-husband was…is…a brain surgeon with a very busy schedule, but I chose to remain faithful. Since I'd always wanted to have children I didn't take a lover…though I was nearly driven to it on more than one occasion."

"Probably wise," I mumbled. "Listen, I should go. But first I have to go upstairs and get my laptop before I go to my car."

"Mind if I come with you?" she asked, as we both rose from the table. She didn't wait for my answer, instead weaving her arm through mine as we left the bar and made for the elevators upstairs.