Caleb's Dream

"Er okay."

"Only okay?"

"Eve, keep this up and I'll come in my pants."

"Oooh, I'll back off until later tonight darling."

Darling? Caleb almost came in his pants at the thought of shafting her later that night. She did seem to be promising to open her legs for him.

Ninety minutes later, with Eve's two roommates at the movies, Eve dropped her skirt for Caleb and then dropped her panties.

He said hoarsely, "I sweat when I fuck."

"So do I but only a little."

Thirteen months later they married and remain married, although they rarely have sex. After baby Jane was born Eve announced she didn't think it was necessary for her to have sex any more.

Caleb knew he should have dumped her but she was such a fucking good cook and never required him to lift a finger around the apartment. But he helped of course and even initiated, considering himself a family man with responsibilities to discharge. He said well if he couldn't have sex with her he'd have to find it elsewhere and she just smiled and said she understood that and asked would he like coffee and a piece of brandied chocolate cake. He followed Eve to the kitchen like a lamb.

* * *

Caleb was thirty-eight when it happened.

As editor of the Herald, reporting to the executive editor, Caleb was invited to many function. Some women climbing in their career path who viewed him as being in a position of power would suggest they go for a drink. More often that not a proposal would follow: you get your features department to do a big piece on me Caleb and I'll have sex with you (usually just the once because he sweated, although it probably would be only the once anyway).

Females on his staff sometimes offered him sex without asking for anything in return. Usually once was enough for them because they became too wet having sex with Caleb.

One day Caleb received an invitation to visit a newspaper 400 miles away. The proprietor had had consultants in to advise on restructuring the editorial department and to update the newspaper in appearance, meaning such things as format, layout, selection of typefaces and style changes. Caleb had recently taken his own newspaper through that exercise and Cliff Manning had been impressed at seeing the before and after results. Cliff asked Caleb to stay two days to get a real feel for the newspaper before making his recommendations.

Cliff met Caleb at the airport. They knew one another vaguely from attending conventions but Cliff being older tended to mix with the older guys.

"The consultants are sending their Miss Nash for direct accessing of your input if that's okay with you?"

"Yep, why not. But I'll still write you a report. Interfacing with the consultants is not a bad idea as it may generate useful dialogue."

"Actually Miss Nash arrived on an earlier flight had booked in at your hotel. She assumed you were unlikely to refuse her company's request."

After booking in and inspecting his suite and approving it, Caleb returned downstairs to have coffee and a snack with Cliff who said Miss Nash would join them.

"Here she is now, Cliff said, standing.

Caleb saw a prim 40-something in a gray suit approaching but Cliff wasn't looking that way. Instead Cliff was facing a striking blonde in a silver suit, aged no more than thirty to thirty-two.

"Hi I'm Nancy. May I call you Caleb?" she said before Cliff had time to perform the introductions. "My father Max owns and operates Fast Track Media Consultancy Inc."

"Yes sure, nice meeting you Nancy. I recall meeting your father three years ago when he addressed a media convention I attended on the east coast."

Their coffee and finger food arrived.

Later they walked across the street to the impressive offices of 'The Guardian'. Cliff left them, saying Nancy knew he way about the place blindfolded and personnel were used to seeing her on the prowl.

Nancy looked at Caleb coolly. "I have spent hours and hours on research, conferring with personnel and compiling my report and recommendations. What will it take for you to not blow all that work apart."

"Sex?"

"Very well," Nancy said, lips curling.

"Nancy, I was just being flippant. If you have a bulletproof scheme you have nothing to fear. Many aspects of your brief involve subjective decision-making that I'd be unlikely to dispute. Just give me time to get the feel of this operation and then show me what you've got."

"I thought sex was off the agenda."

Caleb looked at her startled, saw the grin and grinned back.

They toured the editorial department, with brief introductions to senior people, and then went out to the printing plant that was a completely new replacement establishment with the same German-made presses the Herald had commissioned just two years earlier.

"Right, let's go to where two-thirds of reorganization and resistance lies, the production department."

"Okay Mr Know-all. It tells me you know your stuff."

"And you know what we achieved on my newspaper, as an internal team and entirely without consultants."

She laughed. "Yes and don't rub in that outcome with no consultants when were are in front of Cliff and his team."

"Now how could I possibly do that to a lady?"

"You have a sexy side to you Caleb."

Caleb grinned and decided to be honest. "I'm married."

"So Cliff made sure he told me. I'm separated."

"You mentioned the son. Is he a spanner in the works?"

He's company president and a right know-all."

"Oh fuck."

Nancy smiled. You use that term in front of ladies?"

"Yes, in error."

"You will be pleased to know the son is in Hawaii on vacation."

The director of newspaper production was wiry and looked to be running an ulcer. "Look, I can give you five minutes. We've lost enough time around here talking to Nancy and her team."

"Five minutes is okay by me. Cliff has invited me in to eye the strengths and weaknesses of the proposals so production doesn't get fucked up. I was about to invite you to lunch with Nancy and me but five minutes won't allow that."

"You'll mean you'll listen to my concerns over lunch?"

"Well if you prefer we can discuss Nancy's boobs."

Gary grinned and said, "Cliff told me you ran a good ship and were highly regarded. I believe he may not have been lying to me."

"Oh he'd be lying to you Gary. So your worries or debating Nancy's tits over lunch."

"Perhaps we could do both," Nancy deadpanned.

Gary roared with laughter and said, "Just give me time to inform my deputy that I'll be away for an hour."

"Make that two hours Gary. I aim to be into serious discussion."

"But we have the afternoon edition..."

"If your deputy is incapable of managing without you Gary, and you being only a phone call away, then fire him."

"Oh. Richard is okay, in fact very competent. Give me two minutes."

Nancy complained to Caleb about discussing her breasts with Gary. "You know what production people are like."

"That I do which is why I brought them up. Did you simply think I was an ignorant street bum?"

"Oh I see. Very adroit Mr Editor. I'm impressed although still rather embarrassed. We could have spoken in the same manner about your dick."

"And do you feel you could have held Gary's interest with that comment and thinking you and he were on the same wavelength?"

"Ah, there you have me. Will we have sex tonight?"

"Perhaps if you are a good girl."

* * *

After dinning with Cliff and his wife Josephine, Caleb and Nancy went straight to his suite, Nancy apparently loving the pawing and kissing she received in the elevator.

"I haven't had sex for quite sometime," she puffed excitedly. "God this room is fancy and expensive."

"Our executive editor knows Cliff and decided there would be no charge for my consultancy. So I guess he upgraded my accommodation."

Caleb pulled down the back zip of Nancy's dress and she squirmed and it fell to the floor.

"Ohmigod, what a beautiful bustier. I've always thought that if any women in a bustier is not fucked then something's very wrong."

"Oooh."

Caleb dropped to his knees and found she wasn't wearing a g-string or any other form of panty for that matter.

He licked the twin fat hairless lips and Nancy groaned, pulling his ears. As his tongued wormed into her Nancy relaxed and began crooning, quite musically in fact.

When she tensed and began breathing heavily Caleb stopped and stood. "Let's fuck now that I've gotten you well primed."

She grabbed him and wrestled him on to the bed and unzipped him before he'd got near it. He pulled it out for her and she moaned, "Ohmigod, a real man."

Then came quite a shock, although not quite a big a shock as if Nancy had announced she had a STD. She said almost shyly, "I need to warn you that I perspire a great deal when having real sex."

Caleb shook his head almost in disbelief.

"Say that again."

"I fucking well sweat like a pig when I'm engaged in passionate sex."

"Oh really. I won't mind that at all, being a sweater myself.

So they slapped and slammed their bodies together and at times slipped so much that whoever was on top at the time slipped off and the penis had to be reinserted.

They had a great time.

At last Nancy groaned, "I need sleep."

Caleb went for a pee and when he returned couldn't believe it.

Moonlight was coming in through the opened sliding doors, and the curtains were flapping. Moonlight illuminated Nancy's glistening body.

Her eyes opened and she saw him standing looking at her in awe. She smiled and sighed and said, "Come and fuck me darling."

* * *

The next day there was a series of meetings on various issues to resolve with the personnel concerned. The chief sub-editor and the chief page designer agreed with Caleb's recommendation that changes to families of typefaces should be even more narrowed than the consultants had proposed. Arguments developed over whether to retain Times Roman or move to Cheltenham. Caleb said Helvetica had been proposed but it was really not suitable on newsprint for body type and retaining Times Roman for the body type and using Helvetica faces for headings was mixing contrasting faces and was not the way to go.

The debate bogged down and he suggested some pages of the newspaper be printed in the typefaces being pushed for say three issues and then assessed with any unsolicited comments from readers.

Caleb disagreed with the consultant's recommendation that made-up pages composed electronically by sub-editors go direct to plate-making was not desirable at this stage. It would be best to wait until newer technologies were better perfected so that system ran like clockwork which was what newspaper production on a daily basis required.

Cliff said he was well-pleased by Caleb's contribution and said at his count fifteen contentious points had been resolved. He'd ask the consultants to put more work into their recommendation to change to editorial to direct plate-making with the production department being scaled down to just compose advertising and place camera-ready advertisements from agencies, working in concert with sub-editors completing the pages. He'd instruct that Caleb's suggestion that the two or three favored typefaces be tried in individual sections of the newspaper for three issues.

Nancy went with Caleb to the airport as her flight left only forty minutes after his.

"That sex last night was the best sex I've ever had," she said. "I've always been embarrassed at perspiring but with you it didn't matter. You are also so energized, capable to running me down, so to speak. Few men I've known had any show at doing that."

"And what about our general compatibility?"

"I think it's fine don't you?"

Caleb nodded. "Agreed."

They drove on in silence until Caleb said, "What say we meet every fortnight for two months for a hot night together and at the end of that assess where we're at?"

"That sounds intelligent."

"We then assess our possible life together with due consideration to our careers and if we are happy about that we proceed."

* * *

They never did come together permanently. Ten days after that conversation Caleb was promoted to executive editor upon the retirement of the incumbent. Then neither Nancy nor he would agree to give up their career and home city. So they drifted apart. Nancy's estranged husband filed for divorce and not long after that took effect she re-married.

Was she happy? Caleb never found out because they lost contact with one another. He thought it was ironic the dream of seeing a girl on his bed and bathed in moonlight had become reality and then that reality faded into nothing.

Caleb's answer to the gap left by Nancy, his replacement personal assistant, a married woman, who had no problem that he sweated during sex. A mature woman she was ever so grateful Caleb was more than interested. He found she also sweated during sex and loved hearing the wet slapping of thudding limbs and bellies.

And Eve? She was kept on because she was a damn good cook and a fine mother and didn't mind Caleb finding sex elsewhere. She rarely wanted it from him because she'd decided sex was not what it was cracked up to be.

Caleb's new recurring dream was picturing himself dying in the saddle. He'd wake up, sweating and sticky over one of his hands. It remained unclear whether death came before or after ejaculation. He'd sigh thinking it didn't really matter. At least it was a heroic death.

THE END