My Own Worst Enemy

There was a fourth possibility I should have considered but I did not see it until much later, until it was too late.

The worst part was that with the outcome of our meeting, Ever since that car conversation with my father, I always felt burdened with any obligation I could not immediately settle, and that included the terms of losing a competition. It would probably surprise no one that I detested feeling obligated to anyone. I mean, the whole point of competition was to win, to put me beyond people where I didn't feel like I owed them anything. And now I felt indebted to Mark in his generosity for letting me slide. And I hated it.

I knew I had to talk him into another challenge.

Monday morning, I arrived at the office bright and early again. I waited with my coffee for Mark to make his appearance and he soon did. I followed him to his office and slipped inside before he could close the door.

He glared at me and shook his head. "Jesus, you're worse than a stray cat that gets fed once. What do you want, Sophie?"

"I want to set up another challenge."

"Absolutely not. I didn't want the first one."

"Why did you accept, then?"

He looked away without answering.

"Look, Mark, I'm not going to dwell on the past. You may have won once but I can win the second and third and fourth times. If nothing else, I need to win once just to make us even, so I can clear my loss."

"You don't owe me anything. I waive your obligation." He set his briefcase on his desk and pointed at the door. "You're free to go."

"I'm free to stay, too. Besides, it doesn't work like that. You can't dismiss my debt because I'm the one who feels obligated."

"Get therapy."

"You can make this all go away by agreeing to face me again."

"No," he said with a scowl.

"We can do something scaled down."

"I said no. Get out."

I resisted the urge to rub my sweaty palms on my skirt. His flat-out refusal was one of the few outcomes for which I didn't have an argument ready. If I couldn't keep him engaged, then I'd never get another crack at the position. My grasp on the situation grew tenuous and I felt the opportunity slipping away. Aside from the office, a fresh terror—that I might be stuck in this land of perpetual obligation for him graciously allowing me to bow out—invoked a fear response. "There must be something, Mark."

He said nothing.

Desperate, I blurted, "Flip me for it."

The look he gave me was that I had lost my mind—an idea that was sounding more and more correct to my rational brain with every passing second of the conversation. "What?"

"Flip a coin." It was insane and hardly a measure of our skill but maybe if I won that, I could justify it to myself. "If I win, you can say it evens out my debt. If you win ..." I paused. I had no idea what to offer him and even though I felt like I was going insane, I wasn't about to bet another quarterly bonus on something that was sheer luck.

"You'll what? Pole dance for me this time?" Mark shook his head. "You don't have anything I want, Sophie. I don't need introductions or business contacts; I have plenty of my own. I don't want to meet any of your eligible friends. I'm not interested in stuff you can buy. I won't accept your money, your car, or anything of the sort—and you clearly won't do the one thing I want, which is to just stop pestering me. Please let it go."

I stared at him. Mark had stripped away everything I planned to offer. A sinking sensation took hold as I realized I only had one card left to play ... and between my anxiety and pride, I put it on the table. "You can have me."

Mark's mouth fell open.

"You can have me in bed for a full twenty-four hours to do whatever you want with me. Nothing off the table."

"Get out of my office."

"You're not married, right?"

"Not anymore but that's not—"

"Forty-eight hours. Friday morning to Sunday morning on this long weekend coming up. One coin flip." I was all but babbling now. I also realized that by making that offer, I had—at long last—broken my cardinal rule about separating sex and business. It was a stupid thing to do ... but I wanted to win that badly and something about Mark seemed to bring out the desperation in me.

I gestured down the length of my torso. "All this, for two full days. Are you really going to say you wouldn't enjoy that?"

"You really are out of your goddamn mind."

I was starting to think he was right but I was in too deep—and too arrogant—to back out. I also noted he hadn't denied my assertion. Maybe all those times I caught him sneaking look were more than him trying to figure me out. "Come on. One flip."

"If I flip a coin, will you leave me the fuck alone?"

I nodded.

Mark dug in his pockets and pulled a gleaming quarter. He held it up between us and reversed it so I could see both the front and back, then balanced the coin on his thumb. "Call it." He launched the disc into the air.

"Heads."

Mark caught the coin, shielding it with his hand. He peeked and grunted. "Okay, heads. You win. Obligation is cleared, now go away." He pocketed the coin and turned back to his desk.

"Wait a minute! I didn't see it."

"So?"

"So I have no idea if you're humoring me or not. I will not be patronized and when I win, it will be fair and square." My eyes narrowed. "Do it again, this time so I can see it."

He stared at me. "You do realize that you're upset that you think I am humoring you, when humoring you means you don't have to be my sex slave for two days ... and somehow, that makes me the bad guy?"

I flushed and lowered my gaze to the floor.

Mark stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. I refused to look him in the eye. When he spoke, his voice was concerned. "Sophie, I'm serious. I think you need some professional mental health counseling. If the stress of the job is making you act this way, then maybe a couple weeks' vacation would do you some good. But this is very irrational, and not like you."

Each word struck me like a hammer. I had no idea why he would think that this wasn't me and that this was irrational. I mean, it was but how would he know? Had he been watching me more closely than I thought?

Struggling to keep my composure, I murmured, "I-I know it seems like that, Mark, but this is me. This is who I am. I love the competition and I love to win. It's what I live for. But I have to do it honestly or it doesn't mean anything. I have to pay my debts and I have to do that honestly, too." Tears welled up in my eyes and I fought them back, determined not to cry in front of him.

He stared at me. For the first time, I noticed the flecks of green and gold in his hazel eyes. A girl could get lost in eyes like that. He said, "Sophie—"

"Flip the coin," I whispered.

Mark dropped his hand from my shoulder and took a step back. He rubbed his chin for a moment. "Two out of three. You already won the first. No matter what happens, this is the end of it—for good. Any more of this bullshit and I'm complaining officially to Chuck and to Stackford. Is that clear?"

I nodded again.

He positioned the coin, said, "Call it in the air," and tossed it.

I watched the silver disk tumble end over end. "Heads."

He caught it flat and showed it to me. Tails.

My stomach lurched. We were even. But we still had one to go.

Mark peered at me, his eyes searching my face. "I think I should just assume you have called the last one correctly."

My nostrils flared. "Flip the fucking thing."

He pressed his lips into a thin line and he sent the quarter tumbling one more time.

I followed the quarter. How the hell do you get yourself into these things, Sophie?

I knew, of course. Arrogance and overconfidence. Too proud, too determined to be the best. Stumbling from one confrontation to another, chasing yet another moment, another thrill of victory to the catalog of my life ... and now here I was, cornered by my obsession over winning, with my fate riding on the fall of a coin. I was in the midst of a debacle and it was one-hundred percent my own fault. A lot of ugly truths revealed themselves in that moment—truths about myself I'd long denied. I looked in my mental mirror and for the first time in forever, I didn't like the woman looking back at me.

Dad told me I was my own worst enemy.

All that went through my head in a flash. The quarter began to descend. I blurted, "Tails."

Mark caught the coin and slapped it on the back of his hand. He glanced at me. "Last chance."

I steeled myself and nodded.

Mark lifted his hand.

The profile of George Washington stared back at me.

Sudden dizziness swept through my head.

Mark dropped the quarter in his pocket. "I have to fly to LA late Sunday afternoon, so be at my apartment by eight Friday morning to start your forty-eight hours. Dress casually."

Numb, I spun and left his office, fear and dread hanging over my heart like a shroud.

#

I spent a lot of time that week trying to decide if I was clinically insane.

On the surface, of course I was. I had gambled sexual control of my body on the flip of a coin. Who does that? If it had been any other circumstance, I would have accused the other person of pulling a fast one, of hot-fingering the coin to get the result they wanted.

But I couldn't really say that about Mark. For whatever reason of his own, he'd tried like hell to push me away. Not only that, I was certain that had I gone to him the next day and humbly asked him to forget the whole thing, he would have. But that was the problem.

I didn't do humble.

I could have just refused. There was no way in hell it would be considered a binding agreement by anyone and it was completely unenforceable. If I gave the slightest hint to Chuck that I was feeling pressured, that would have been the end of it, and maybe the end of Mark too. I knew more than one woman that would have gone that route.

But I didn't. I couldn't walk away from a debt. It just wasn't in my composition.

But if I go through with it, then that means ... God, am I really going to let him fuck me?

The issue was so distracting that I stumbled through the rest of the day. I did my best to avoid Mark. When he passed by my office door, I caught him glance in both times, though his face was unreadable. It got so bad that by noon, I couldn't take it anymore. I went to Chuck's office. "Hey, Chuck."

He frowned. "Sophie? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"You look a little queasy."

"Must have been something I ate. Look, Chuck, I know it's short notice but do you think I could take a few days off?"

He snorted. "The Iron Broker? Asking for days off? That'll be the talk of the office."

"I'm serious."

"All right, sorry." He waved his hand. "Of course you can, you have a ton of comp time and sick days built up. Have you ever taken a day off since you started here?"

I shook my head.

Chuck leaned forward. "Take as much time as you need, Sophie."

Being at home wasn't much better. I didn't even have work to distract me. I moped. I paced. I fretted. I stress-ate a whole container of ice cream and then got sick. The following day wasn't any better. By Wednesday, I was ready to lose my mind. I found myself chewing my fingernails, a habit I had broken when I was a teenager.

The realization brought a flash of rage. Panic and whining were very much not who I was. I might have lost the challenge and then compounded it by being stupid but I was going to face the consequences with dignity. And Mark? I'd rather die than let him know how badly this had gotten to me. I'd lost but nothing said I had to be gracious in the circumstances. If he wanted sex, he'd get it ... but it was going to be irate, petulant sex. That decision made, much of my stress evaporated and I was able to relax a little. A distant part of my brain said I wasn't fooling anyone and that by hiding behind a veil of anger all I was doing was, as the kids say today, "capping hard." In other words, lying to myself.

I told my brain to shut up.

#

Friday morning found me standing in front of Mark's apartment door, my heart in my throat. I reached for the door to knock, only to note the trembling in my fingers. Seeing that made my ire flare anew and the shaking ceased. I recalled a character in a movie once saying, "Sometimes anger can help you survive." I huffed at just how applicable that was.

I'd considered wearing a pair of old sweat pants and a stained tee-shirt, and not showering or even brushing my teeth to try and put him off ... but that would have been a tacit admission that I was afraid of what was about to happen.

I wasn't afraid of the sex. I'd had hookups before, that had just been about two hard bodies giving each other pleasure, with no strings attached. While Mark wasn't the wealthy playboy, famous musician, or star athlete that some of my partners had been, he was decently good-looking and seemed to be in good shape. I had to admit he was also a confident, well-spoken guy, who other women seemed to like. Aside from the fact that I wasn't really interested in men shorter than me, on a purely physical level of attraction, the sex with him might be pretty good.

What I feared was the vulnerability. For all my life, I'd been in control of my sex life. Even when I let the man take the lead in a given encounter, it was with my consent. Now, I might very well have to look at someone on a daily basis who had penetrated me when I hadn't exactly wanted it. Yes, I was agreeing to it but it would still feel like a violation. Trying to parse that dichotomy and make sense of it could easily drive someone insane. Mark didn't strike me as the type who would hold it over me every time he saw me in the office ... but he could. The whole thing left me with a very uncomfortable, dehumanizing feeling.

Anger, Sophie. Stay angry. Get it done and put it behind you. And if he ever mentions this weekend to anyone, then job or no job, I will pull his balls off with my bare hands.

My outfit consisted of a pullover shirt, yoga pants, and tennis shoes. I'd kept my makeup light and tied my hair into a ponytail. I carried a bag over my shoulder containing my purse, some toiletries, and two changes of clothes. I hadn't bothered with sexy undergarments; Mark had his chance to enjoy me in those and he botched it. Besides, I wasn't about to give him the chance to rip my good lingerie to shreds in some fit of lust.

A glance at my watch told me it was one minute after eight, which meant my time was up. I took a deep breath and knocked. A moment later, the door pulled open and he was there.

Morbid curiosity had me wondering if he'd come to the door naked, or in a smoking jacket and pajama bottoms, like some latter-day Hugh Hefner. But he wore jeans and a polo shirt. He glanced me up and down. "Good morning, Sophie. Come in, please."

He stood aside so I could enter, and I did. His apartment was nice and tastefully decorated, if sparsely furnished for my taste. It looked and smelled clean. I caught my reflection in a floor-length mirror by the door and was glad to see I didn't look as nervous as I felt.

Mark closed the door behind me, walked around, stopped a few feet away, and faced me. I felt the shakes coming on but I raised my chin in defiance of my own fear and stared him in the eye.

He watched me for a moment, then pointed at the floor. "On your knees."

I blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

He plucked a large throw pillow from the couch, dropped it on the hardwood, and jerked his head toward it. "I said, on your knees."

I sneered. "Just get right to it, is that it?"

"Little point in waiting. My clock's ticking."

I sloughed my bag and set it on the floor. "Demanding blowjobs from a woman who owes you something... I bet you're just great fun on dates, though I can't see any woman agreeing to date you."

Mark laughed. "If that was your attempt at guilting me, it was weak. You can do better."

"Just pointing out what a creep you are."

"Quit stalling, Sophie."

"As if!" I snapped. I sank onto the pillow, which put my face on level with his crotch. I glared at him. "Well? Come on then, if this is what you want."

Mark hesitated, then sighed. "Never mind."

I took a deep breath. From the look on his face, he was about to call the whole thing off and again, my damnable pride wouldn't let that happen. I softened my voice. "Mark, come here. I can tell you want this."

It's obvious he does. But ... does he want it from me, or is it just the idea of getting his dick sucked?

Reluctance with desire warred in his eyes for a second before he stepped closer, until his groin was inches from my face. Even though his jeans weren't tight, I could still see the growing bulge. My hands still shook but I reached up, unsnapped his jeans, and drew them halfway down his legs. He wore silk boxers beneath. I put my hands on the hem of those and looked at him.

Despite the neutral look on his face, his eyes sparkled with desire, and he gave me a quick nod.

I steeled myself and lowered his shorts. His rapidly-growing cock sprang free. It wasn't the biggest I had ever seen but it was decently long and pretty thick. The airflow must have been a signal; Mark's prick grew even harder and more swollen and I could swear I could see it twitching.

I took a deep breath. You can do this, Sophie.

Moving slowly, I raised my left hand and wrapped it around the base. Heat radiated through my hand and it throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat. I leaned forward, extended my tongue, and brushed it across the cock head. I got a slight hint of soap and felt a trickle of relief. At least he'd showered. I wrapped my lips around the head and glanced up.

Mark still stared at me, his lust plain.

I drew my lips down his shaft, exerting pressure as his cock filled my mouth and pressed against my tongue. My mouth traveled all the way to the base. I gagged a little before pulling back up until only the head remained in my mouth. His dick pulsed against the inside of my cheek and I could tell he wasn't going to last long.

Good, at least this will be over quickly.

I began long, deep strokes with both mouth and hand. I varied my pressure and suction, increasing both on the downstroke and easing up as I pulled back. Without trying, I settled into a decent rhythm that helped me relax a little.

Mark's hands gripped the side of my head. I waited for him to yank on my ponytail or ears but he only stroked my temples and ran his fingers through my hair.

My thigh twinged, cramping. I shifted position slightly—and was shocked to feel moisture building between my legs. I wanted to grind my teeth; my traitorous body was actually getting turned on by me blowing him. If we went at this too long, I was sure to leave a wet spot on the pillow. The thought made me snarl.

"Easy, easy." Mark's hands on my head tensed. "Ease up on the fangs, there."

I popped his cock from between my lips and smiled up at him while my hand kept pumping. "A little teeth too much for you? Wimp."

He said nothing but pulled on my head, gently guiding my mouth back to his pole. I slurped it between my lips and resumed my pace, or even a hair faster. His cock swelled, growing bigger and I sped up again.

Without warning, Mark groaned and tensed. His cock pulsed and spurted, blasting his cream into my mouth. I froze and then gagged as he fired again, and then a third time. I lifted from his cock and turned my head, coughing. A fourth burst spattered my cheek. My eyes watered and a mixture of drool and cum dribbled down my chin. I got my coughing under control and resisted the urge to punch him in the stomach. "Thanks for the warning, asshole."

He stared at me, his eyes glazed and his breathing heavy. A small smile lit his lips. "Very nice, Sophie."