Lexie's Affair

"So I began to hire my women, for sex, for, make no mistake, I do love sex and I love sex with women, for me, one and the same. That, however, allowed me to do something in my actual relationships with women that I'd not managed before. I became friends with them. I didn't want to sleep with them and those who remained, who didn't feel my repose as a personal slight and an existential rejection understood that and either never had or surrendered the delusion that they could put a bone in my nose and claim, if not me, than part of my fortune. I learned that I could desire my friends, and not have them, speak to them of that sexual desire, even for them, and not repress it but never act on it. Some of the women I count as friends now are the most beautiful women in the world, yet I've not had sex with them. I want to, some times desperately but I devour them only with my eyes, basking in the desire that they inspire in me. I would not surrender their friendship and so I am Sisyphus, my desire goes unsated.

"I savor the desire, letting it reign in me as a thing unto itself, utterly independent of whether or not I ever act on the desire or not. I have discovered desire and acquired the ability to separate having desire from pursuing its consummation. Do you know what that does?"

Lexie shook her head.

"It frees me to desire a thing...or a person, but not act to have it. I can keep desire alive for a long time, if I don't crush it with a hurried pursuit of satisfaction. I desire you. You are married. That is perfect for me. It means I can't have you, at least that is intrinsic to the matter, even if there is potential to defy that stricture, in you and in me. Oh, I've desired and made lovers of other married women, I just didn't do it just to gorge myself on my desire. I did it when and as the woman could meet my desire with desire of her own. Not until then."

He'd smiled then.

Strangely, Lexie understood exactly what he referred to. In a way, it relieved her, after that first more or less formal lunch with him, for she took him at his word, that he'd not require more of her than her presence and as the weeks went by, something happened.

While his invitations were sporadic, infrequent even, they proved enough to install in Lexie a lingering sense of him that ghosted everything she did. By the time they'd met a half dozen times, she was confiding in him the trials and tribulations of her life in intimate detail, the struggle with her father who had retired at 59 only to have his wife sicken and die and now his only son was gone of that horrible, tortured death by drugs that was a suicide of indifference and addiction. Her father was presently sitting in his unkempt parlor, drinking himself to death and when challenged, insisted Jack Daniels was all he had to live for. Both his daughters took that personally and felt the spear in the side and the holy water that marked the death of their relationship; Lexie however, emerged from her disposal of her cares on Walter with the hope that a resurrection was possible, that she could once more feel something besides dread for her father, if dread is an emotion you can direct at someone.

She spoke of her sister, Sophia, now on the way out of her second marriage, unhappy, bitter, sarcastic and snarling like a wounded wolf caught in a trap not of her own making with all the resentment that entailed. Lexie, happy, more or less, in her own marriage, loved to find the light in things, even when her own heart sagged and flagged in the daily effort getting out of bed and facing the day demanded.

Finally, after three months since Gary's death and the emotional melt down in the parking lot, she even told Walter about the struggles her husband was suffering, working long hours to make his small manufacturing concern profitable. Gustav's father had left it to him, dying of sepsis after cutting his thigh to the bone in that very factory, dying at 54, too young by a decade or a millennia.

Walking away from that discussion of her husbands travails, Lexie realized she'd given Walter a valuable insight into her world at the moment. An insight he could use to either seduce her or coerce her. She shivered with the recognition but another followed that, forcing away the shiver of fear that ran up her spine. "Better to trust and be wrong, then doubt and be wrong." She whispered aloud, the words long her mantra, her prayer.

She'd said those words a dozen times while helping her brother crawl out of some new slough of despond into which he'd blundered, despite all the signs clearly marking it. He could never see them and Lexie could never miss them, but she always trusted he could; he rarely did.

The next three months shifted the world under her feet again. A few weeks and a couple lunches with Walter later, he never asked for a late dinner, suspiciously scheduled in the restaurant of a hotel, Gustave arrived home, ebullient. A potential customer had appeared as if out of nowhere to ask for him to bid on a job. The bid was due in three weeks so he'd be working all hours and the staff would be on high alert to make the deadline and not bankrupt him by registering a bid too low just to satisfy the request.

"We might not get it." Gustav said, stopping to sober himself but the hopeful grin returned and he glowed with it. Hope is the ultimate aphrodisiac. That evening they celebrated and that night, he ravished Lexi, over and over with an energy he'd not brought to their bed for a long while.

Laying in bed, lately ravaged, the next morning, Gus departed, her body tingling from the pleasure of his attention and his attentive treatment of her, the thought first struck her that formed a large avocado pit in her stomach. She turned on her side and ran a hand down the curvaceous flow of her body, feeling the richness of her skin and the plushness of her form. Her narrow waist pleased her more than the—in her description—gigantic swell of her hips, for she would never wear hip huggers or have pants sagging off her ass. If she wore pants, and she did so very rarely, they were often stretched tight across her broad ass, fitting her like a second skin and clinging to her like a monkey cub to its mother.

She rolled onto her back, her sway back that made mounting her an easy thing for her man. The thought wouldn't go away. It lingered there, looming, darkening her mood and the leavings of Gustave's ebullience that he took out on her, in several distinct bouts of lovemaking. Despite that experience and the exhaustion she felt, she began to touch herself, idly at first but then, when the thought remained there, perched like a vulture in a spindly pinon tree in the desert watching a man crawl on his belly into the maw of death, with increasing vigor.

The results were namby pamby and she fished out a neck massager and added the stimulation between her legs so that the next climax that visited, lingered for a cup of tea, and then summoned friends. Not as satisfying as having Gus thrusting between her legs, or behind her while she crouched, her great breasts swaying beneath her, but enough to distract her mind.

It proved insufficient. The thought was there, waiting for her to open her eyes from her midmorning nap. She showered and sat down to have a cup of Earl Gray and fiddle on her computer. Finally, she resolved to face the awful possibility that the contract, or at least the bid for the contract was Walter Chamber's doing. Worse, and here she sounded just like Sophi, it was Walter's explicit plan to deprive her of her husband by working him at all hours so that when he came home, he'd drop to sleep beside her with no thought of sex or marriage or anything else but his father's factory and the chance he could rescue it from ruin. Walter had arranged this, went the scurrilous logic, to strip Lexie of her husband and thus make her subject to his, Walter's illicit charms. Desperation born of deprivation, designed to weaken her marriage vows and lure her into the orbit of the Chamber's charm, from which she had little hope to escape.

Through the next three weeks, she waited for a call from Walter, a call she'd certainly have concluded was to lead to a none too subtle bid to get her into bed. Lexie steeled herself repeatedly to those charms, as though they were there, always, yipping at her and nipping at her. Each week was quiet agony, compounded by her nagging suspicions being added to the frenzy of Gus and his employees to properly fill the request-for-proposal's requirements.

When the bid was in and things went back to normal, Lexie's mind turned to Walter, or rather rarely turned to anything else, lingering with him in nearly every moment with every thought she had. Making love with her husband rarely pulled him out of his distracted focus on the state of the bid. The RFP said the selection would be made after six weeks, but not precisely when, or how.

While she thought often of Walter, for nearly a month and a half she heard nothing from him. His company was often in the news so she tracked at least the larger scope of his life and saw there was a flurry of activity that, she told herself, kept him from contacting her. That their communication was one way, that she had no way to face a longing for him and then use it to motivate her action, all conspired to pull him into the forefront of her mind constantly and make him the last thought she went to sleep with and the first thing she thought of upon waking.

When his call did finally come, she was so taut with anticipation that she thought her ribs would crack and her chest burst open. She answered her phone and heard his voice. She swallowed any reference to how long she'd anticipated his call, to how long he'd made her wait, rather choosing to relish his voice.

"Hello?"

"Lexie?"

Ah, the thrill that ran down her spine but then curved down into the core of her, turning her to liquid. Her legs tensed.

"Walter, how nice to hear from you." She hesitated. "I've thought a lot about you." She offered this small concession to her desire to see him, and to let him know about that desire.

"I have been busy. I didn't want to call and tell you that I couldn't see you. That seemed both rude and arrogant but as one thing led to another, I found myself constantly shunted away from what I wished to do most." He sighed into the phone, a loud puff of wind in her ear that Lexie felt between her legs.

"Okay, I have to say it. I thought a great deal about you, too, Lexie. Thank you for saying that. It makes it easier to share my feelings with you." He hesitated. "I know what I said about desire, but the truth is, Lexie, I want to take you to bed. I cannot tell you how many times I have awoke in the middle of the night with the smell of your perfume in my nostrils and my cock hard from just that bit of stimulation. In my dreams, I have ravaged you, taking you on the restaurant table while patrons and staff watched in awe as you shook with orgasm after orgasm."

His voice cut off like his throat had been slit. He hissed now, sucking air between his teeth.

"Oh my god, Lexie, I'm so sorry. I didn't intend, I didn't mean...." His voice halted. When he next spoke, that stuttering voice was replaced by another voice, a sure, authoritative voice that transported her out of her body up into the aether where all truth resides.

"No. Fuck that. Lexie, I am in lust with you. If you see me, as my god, you must, I'll try to seduce you. I want you. I've wanted you since the rain stopped, started. I walked through the rain feeling this horrible emptiness but then, there you were, standing in the rain, your body looking like it was painted and naked just for me and I wanted you from that moment on. If, Lexie, if this is in any way uncomfortable for you, I understand. I have no right to interfere in your life. I have power and money and a little fame and compared to me, you have nearly nothing and I don't want you to be disenchanted with your life by comparing it to mine.

"I'm a rich and successful man and I have finally stopped apologizing for that, though everyone, or at least a large majority believes that my success can only occur because of concupiscence and vice, like I made a deal with the devil and I am soulless as a result. That's wrong, unjust and untrue. I have struggled to keep you at arm's length but I can't. Lexie, I want you. I won't insult you by comparing this passion in me to any other in my history but I will say this, that it has become so strong and so strident that I am not sleeping well because when I do, I dream of you, naked in my arms, kissing me and...oh god, I'm sorry." He stopped talking.

Lexie found she had a hand tucked between her legs. She moved it self-consciously and regretted it because it provided orienting, stabilizing comfort to her in the midst of the tilt-a-whirl world his words created in her.

"Say something. Please." His raw voice struck at Lexie, leaving her mindless and breathless which is no way to enter into a conversation. Her body screamed, "take me!" so loud, she had nothing to add and no second option so she clamped her lips closed and tried to clear her head. Walter rescued her.

"No don't. Just listen. I know this is not what we've talked about but I believe in passion, my passion and in life but here, now with you, its also true, if you fail at something for which you had no passion, you have your reward. If you fail when you are driven by passion, the journey is it. If you fail, you still have the joy of trying. Know this, I want you. I want you in my bed, and me planted deep inside your oh, so wondrous body! I will make reservations for Thursday at La Belle Chance," he hesitated, chuckling to himself. "Meet me there at six, prepared to be bedded, to be taken, to be used sexually until you can't whisper stop. I won't contact you again, if you don't show...no, I make no promises. I've just broken two I made to myself and that's not a good sign. Come or don't come, that is your choice."

Lexie knew he was gone but she cried into her phone anyway, "Wait!" He was gone. She lowered it and looked around the room his final, parting double entendre warbling in her ear. Something felt off, something felt askew, like immutable truths had shifted into being mere theories.

It wasn't clear to her just when she decided not merely to meet him but to take him to bed, to fuck him. When he called that Sunday afternoon, Thursday seemed too soon, but for each day of the week time seemed to stretch and yawn leaving her tense with...she dared not name it. To name it would have been to disregard her promise to herself, the promise to release this...this thing, this connection, this lingering doubt that lulled behind her breasts until her mind touched it and then it bloomed into that which she dared not name.

She resolved to not go to the La Belle Chance, but on Tuesday, she investigated it, reading the menu, published on the Internet with no prices. On Wednesday, she mapped out the route to drive there, researched parking and was just about check what hotels were close by, wondering which one he'd select to employee for their consummation when Gus burst through the door.

"We got it!" He proclaimed exultantly. They danced they hugged, they kissed and for a moment, Lexie thought her husband was going to sate the desire burning in her flesh. He quelled that hope, unaware of it and thus unmindful of his role in sending her to her fate.

"I must return to the shop. I'll sleep there this week, until I see we have everything going. They wired half a million dollars to our account this afternoon! Can you believe it? If we pass the first stage, meet their schedule and satisfy the QA review, this could be a ten million dollar contract! Oh, Lexie we're saved!" Gustav sobered immediately and the earnest stable man reappeared, every sign of ebullience gone. "If, if, if. There is so much work to do. I can't sleep. I'm so...there's too much work to do. You don't mind, do you my heart? If I make this work, we are saved. I can keep my father's business running and make it bigger and better. Please tell me you understand!"

Looking up into Gustav's eyes, she nodded, the knotty lurch in her stomach made her swallow, hard.

"Of course I understand, my love." She whispered. "Go. Do as you must. When you need me, call."

"Oh no, dear heart, I must do this alone. If I call you, you'll ravish me and I'll lose this focus. You know I can't live without you, don't you?"

Lexie felt the lurch in her stomach tighten. She nodded, a knot in her throat. Perhaps that was the moment she knew what she was going to do, but her mind denied it. Gustav showered and fled back to his office, afire with ideas and plans that she'd only tangle in her hair and beguile him, but she didn't sit still doing nothing.

She knew the name of the company that had contracted Gus. For two hours, she researched on the Internet until she found the first glimmer of a connection back to Walter Chambers. It was a tenuous connection, truly the thing of intuition and a dowsing suspicion but once made, she unraveled the trail back to Water Chambers. Acid bubbled in her throat. At first, she felt a vibrant rage. This man, this Walter Chambers was ensnaring her in a web in hopes that he could have her, purchased for ten million dollars, lock stock and bung hole!

That thought, crass and lurid, sent a jolt up her spine as her body, uncaring of her mind's misgivings, responded to the idea of the man violating her virgin ass with an excited shiver. So it was, as Thursday dawned, Lexie hadn't slept a wink. Her mind spun one scenario after another, trying to devise the exact right words of spite to deliver followed by her rise from the table, a toss of her wine into his face and then the walk away, leaving him humiliated and alone with his vast fortune and conniving ways. Each scenario was more foolish and impossible than the last. She rose, showered, felt tired at about nine and lay down just for a little cat nap, just to let her eyes rest.

She flinched awake, her heart pounding, her blood coursing and seeming to roar in her ears. She looked around and saw the golden light of late day and gasped. Her eyes found the clock. It read a quarter to six! The frantic flurry that followed slowed her down. Finally, the second time she removed her eye shadow after a hurried shower, she closed her eyes, ignoring the clock that read six-ten, and told herself to go slower. She breathed in and out for a few moments. The grumbling flutter in her stomach, part hunger and part...hunger, didn't abate. Still telling herself to slow down helped. She did and it was only six-thirty when she climbed into the car.

She stopped herself again. She called her husband, it went to voice mail, and she left him a message that she was going out and wouldn't be home, perhaps to Viola's if the mood struck her. Call her cell, if he needed her. She stared out the wind screen, her eyes soaking up the gloom. The green digital clock in her car read "6:47 PM."

"If he's gone, then he will be gone. This will be over and I will free of him." The tangle of emotions in her body felt like the white wolf and the black wolf tearing at each other with neither one gaining any advantage. The riot in her body stayed with her, making her driving erratic and difficult but she arrived at the parking garage at quarter after seven.

She got out of the car, looked down her body at the tight black dress, the form-fitting skirt that fluted down to her knees, ending just below them. She had a shawl that looked...out of place but her bare arms needed something. Her black high heels, the highest she owned glistened in the lurid car park light. Lexie oriented herself and walked out to the street and along it to the grand entrance to La Belle Chance. She took the tiered steps unsteadily and flinched awfully when the door suddenly opened and a gorgeously lean man in tails and white gloves opened it.