Toxic Attraction Ch. 09

"Get cleaned up," Dan said. "We're still good, we just need to get a better handle on this and be better prepared for next time."

"Okay," Sarah said as she returned to the water running over her body.

Dan stayed in the bathroom, his back to Sarah as she showered. He felt like he had to keep watch, like he'd failed her before by letting things get out of hand. He stood there like a sentinel, but his thoughts kept drifting.

He wanted nothing more than to take Sarah to bed with him, but he knew it wasn't a good time for her.

As the water turned off behind him, he turned his head and saw Sarah wrap a white towel around herself. God she is so sexy.

"Are you ready for bed?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah," Dan said. "Let's go get changed and turn in."

***

Everything seemed perfect at their house in Middleton. They couldn't have asked for a better day, the sun was shining and the weather was perfect. Birds chirped in the treetops. The girls were playing in the backyard and Dan was having a beer sitting on the back porch while Sarah had a glass of red in her hands and her feet propped up on his lap.

He felt a sense of calm and fulfillment that he hadn't felt in a long time. Everything seemed perfect. Then he started to hear a faint buzzing. Dan dreamily looked around to figure out where the sound was coming from.

He stood up and walked onto his back lawn. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. He shielded his eyes and looked up at the sky. The sun wasn't shining so brightly anymore; it was completely concealed by dark thunderclouds.

Dan turned back to Sarah but the porch was empty. Her empty wine glass sitting alone on the ground next to where they'd been sitting. Dan turned, looking around the yard, his daughters were nowhere to be seen.

Confused, Dan started to walk back inside, each step feeling heavier than the previous one. He opened the back door and walked into his kitchen. Long shadows seemed to creep from every corner of the room, drowning out the light coming in through the windows.

The buzzing was louder in here. He moved through the house, the buzzing growing louder and louder. As he walked toward the stairs, the shadows seemed to follow him. He could have sworn they were stretching out towards him when he wasn't looking.

As Dan ascended the stairs the buzzing intensified even more. Through the noise, he heard something else. Something familiar. He tried to focus on what it was. It sounded like a woman screaming. No, not screaming exactly.

A woman in the throes of pleasure, begging for more.

Dan reached the landing and started towards their bedroom. The buzzing and the sounds of enjoyment were growing louder. It sounded like Sarah was behind the door. Sarah was moaning.

The buzzing was starting to hurt Dan's ears. He needed to open the door and see what was on the other side.

He grabbed the doorknob and turned it.

A bright light shone into Dan's eyes. He blinked and raised his head to look around.

"Dan, get that," Sarah purred with her eyes still closed. They were lying in his small bed in the apartment in Chicago.

Dan blinked again and got his bearings. His phone was buzzing incessantly. He tried to shove down the memories of the night before and how twisted things had become. He focused on his phone.

Dan reached out to his end table and grabbed his phone, disconnecting the charger. He silenced it and looked at the number that was calling him. It was work.

He answered the phone with a groggy, "Hello?"

An automated message played. Some company-wide announcement. It asked him to log onto a Teams' call at 9:15 am.

"Fuck off," Dan said as he hung up and put his head back down on his pillow. He really wanted to see what was going on behind that door in his dream.

Sighing, he held the phone up to his face and checked the time. It was 9:10 am. Walt and the rest of the team really shouldn't be asking them to jump on a call on the weekend. They'd really been pushing what was acceptable lately.

Dan sat up and looked over at Sarah's form. God, she was sexy. He shuddered as he thought back to Lester plastering Sarah with his cum last night. His mind kept going back to Lester and his wife together.

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Dan swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He grabbed his laptop out of his bag, along with his set of AirPods and walked out into the hallway. He made sure to close the door behind him.

He walked into the living room and froze. He had planned to sit on the couch to take the call but it just dawned on him that he really didn't want to sit there. Not yet. Lester's recent triumphs had rendered the area almost radioactive to Dan. Strangely, he wouldn't sit in the area, but he always became rock-hard if he thought about the reason for his avoidance.

Dan made his way into the kitchen and started to brew a coffee as his laptop turned on. Within a few minutes, he was seated and logged into Teams. He was stuck in the meeting lobby until 9:20 am when the meeting finally started. As Dan glanced at the attendee list, it looked like the entire company was there.

Dan expected to see Walt as he usually ran the company-wide meetings. His spider-sense started to tingle as he recognized the head of HR as one of the four windows given the spotlight.

"Thank you all for coming on short notice and on the weekend. It is appreciated," the woman said. "The senior leadership team wants to start this off by saying what an amazing job you all have been doing this year and that we couldn't be prouder. We know you are all loyal and dedicated to the company and that each and every one of you would bend over backwards to help it succeed. That is how we know you are going to help us achieve the immediate goals in front of us right now."

Dan tentatively sipped his coffee. He thumbed his cell phone and started to scroll through his work email.

The woman continued, "As we look at our business, we realized we have opportunities to position our company better and be much stronger going into the future. But it will take all of us to put our heads down, do the work and make sacrifices to create this better future together."

Dan clicked on an email from the previous night from Walt. He had sent it to several senior members of the team, but he had included Dan on it as well. The timestamp was around the same time that Lester had begun defiling his wife on the couch.

Walt and the other directors had failed to appease Byron and the Lincoln Group. It sounded like they thought Byron was taking them for a ride, trying to get them to pay for expensive drinks and there was a bit of an argument. This coupled with what had transpired with Jesse seemed to hit a breaking point.

The Lincoln Group had dropped Dan's company and planned to withhold their outstanding payments. The company's cash cow was gone.

"That's why starting Monday we are going to undertake a new compensation policy, company-wide," the woman continued. "Going forward, in order to position us to be nimble and adaptable to market changes, we are going to examine new ways to find efficiencies and streamline our operations. As part of this, we will be recalibrating everyone's monthly compensation by a reduced forty percent. We know you are all willing to make this change to help put us in the best position going forward as we build toward our goals together. If you have any questions about this, please speak to your manager or an HR team member this coming week."

Forty percent. Dan sat back shocked. They were going to cut his wage by forty percent. He started to do the math in his head, trying to figure out their mortgage payments, rent, groceries and other expenses. Things were already way too tight.

"Thank you all for logging in, I speak on behalf of the entire management team when I say, I hope you all have a great weekend and we'll see you on Monday."

Forty percent pay cut. It wasn't going to be enough for them to survive.

***

Lester had watched Dan leave his room from the peephole. His initial plan was to slide into bed next to Sarah and see if he could push his luck and see what Dan's reaction would be. The previous night had gone easier than he expected. Lester had thought Dan would stand up to him like he had earlier in the day but it appeared he was just a passenger to events when his lust to watch his wife took over.

When Dan grabbed his laptop and headphones, Lester decided to pause his plans to see what happened. As he listened in through his computer on Dan's work call in the kitchen, he couldn't have been more pleased with what he'd learned.

As he watched Dan on the monitor sitting back in disbelief, Lester sat back and contemplated the new opportunities this development presented. Lester's face split into a grin as he thought through some of the same calculations that his roommate was probably making.

Lester's planning was paying off in ways he couldn't possibly have predicted.