Lexie's Affair

"Mrs. Harcourt," he said in a voice modulated for Opera, "welcome. Mr. Chambers is waiting." That last phrase held the slightest burr of reproof. "Right this way. Let me show you to his table."

The journey through the restaurant was unnerving. The tables were not clustered together as the need is in most restaurants where you must rub either front or back of your body against someone's head to get between them, sometimes both. The tables were widely spaced, so, sparse, and thus the place had the atmosphere of a funeral, low voices, muted by the space and the low light, carefully illuminating the space from below, turning everyone into shadows with half-faces of glow and shadow, like masks donned to disguise but not to fool.

She groaned inwardly when she had the thought that she didn't know what she was going to say. After Walter's greeting, speaking was the last thing on her mind. The man was standing and he wore a brilliant white suit, a sort of tuxedo but not formal in cut.

"Thank you, James." Walter Chambers said when the pretty man gestured with a hand at the table beside which he stood. "I'll seat her. You may go. Wine in ten minutes." He smiled, not the lurid incandescent smile she suffered in her dreams but a peaked thing that suggested he was about to do some duty he could not avoid that revolted him. For the slightest of moments, they stood still, staring at each other across some four or five feet. Lexie felt her feet turn to stone, her legs to wood and she couldn't move.

Chambers moved. He crossed their little no man's land and touched a hand to an elbow and with the other, slid it through the hair at her neck to cup the back of her head. Then he kissed her. His lips crushed hers and Lexie had no thought in her head, no response planned or executed, just raw animal attraction seizing her. Her mouth opened, his lips burned against them. Her tongue sought his and for a moment her body flared with passion and burned with need. Then tongue and lips were gone and she stood alone once more, though he was so close, she felt the heat of his body, the sweet scent of his breath on her face.

"Come," he said, his voice velvet soft and sure as death, "sit down." He seated her across from him. They were seated virtually alone in a little alcove surrounded by windows on three sides overlooking a sort of square below, one of several sunken squares in the downtown area surrounded by shops and several clubs. In the blue-gray evening light, the square was populated with lovers, couples walking hither and yon, charting their individual courses without any thought of anyone else. Lovers walk the world alone together.

"Lexie," her name pulled her eyes from the down below scene but instead of looking at him, she looked at the white table cloth. "I have a confession to make to you."

For a moment, Lexie was sure she hadn't heard right. She was sure that he was going to confess his subtle duplicity and beg forgiveness. The lingering feel of his lips on hers, however, made that hope vain and foolish. She interrupted him, looking up at him.

"I'm sorry I'm late." She said. "I'm never late but...." Her voice failed her. Chambers held up his hand.

"I know. I know." He said. "I don't know why I did it but...I am not a patient man. I am accustomed to having things my own way and not because I'm such a greedy cad but because those around me rarely know what needs doing much less how to do it, so I tell them and with time, they come to trust me far more than their own judgment and do what I command, often without question." She shook his head, not looking at her, but down to his left, as though trying to see the floor in the spangled gloom, spangled by the lights from the square two stories below them and the gloom from the lack of lighting around them in the alcove.

"I must confess. I must."

Again, Lexie felt her spirit rise, perhaps she'd not have to accuse him, he'd relieve her of that need. Alas, not so, his words made matters worse, much worse.

"I had your place watched. I posted men around your apartment building and had them call me when you left. I knew you were coming. They told me you slept until nearly six but when you began to put on eye shadow, I had hope, but when you put on that dress, they assured me you were coming, so I waited. I don't often wait for anyone but for you, I was prepared to wait all night." Here he looked at her and his eyes were bordered with tension and the lines it made in his face. Lexie thought she saw a flash of blue in them, like light caught by a sapphire.

"I shouldn't have done that but...I'm a flawed man. I couldn't bear the idea that you wouldn't come or worse, that the moment I walked away, you'd arrive and we'd miss this opportunity, like the proverbial ships passing in the night. I had to know that you weren't coming but here you are. I had to know that too, for how often do our fears of failure staunch our passion for success? In all things, I say. So I had to watch for you without being there and I have people willing and able to accommodate me. I had them watch for you to protect my tortured heart. Forgive me?"

Lexie spoke, blundering immediately and botching her opportunity to have her say.

"There's nothing to forgive." She said, the blunder thundered in her head even as she made it. Her voice sounded papery, like she had too little air to make into words, a little choked, a little timid. What is more, she spoke the lie fully aware it was a lie but instead of chiding herself, she told herself it was the truth, regarding his watching her, proclaiming that having her watched constituted nothing, truly nothing to forgive for forgiveness is easy, forgetting is hard. Then she thought of her naked walk through her apartment drying her hair, she blushed, realizing that strange men had seen it all, her body and surely her untempered frenzy.

"I am sorry. I am but if...." Chambers stopped here and swallowed hard, a distinct action that was impossible to miss. "...if you stay, I had to confess to you who and what I am. If you risk the smooth continuity of your life to sit here with me, fully aware not only that I want you but that I mean to have you until this desire is at last sated, then you should understand as much as you can so it is wisdom you use to stay and not ignorance." He smiled then. "A woman's wisdom is like no other. I dare not defy it."

Lexie swallowed then and felt it as difficult has Walter's had been. She groaned, softly. Her burden remained. She clinched her eyes closed and looked up. The resolve was tenuous but it was all she had and so clutched it and launched her last attempt to escape the passion even then flaring in her, between her legs, but worse, with rationalizations aplenty in her recoiling mind. He had her watched! She launched herself into the accusations to escape that thought and the utter, primal thrill it gave her.

"I know what you did." She said but it came out a whisper. The easy rapport in the light of a daylight lunch abandoned them and she felt the oppressive dark, hiding his face or contorting it. "I know you fixed the bid, arranged for my husband to get it. I know you have arranged to have me." There, her throat closed and the rest of the thought was caged behind her ribs. Instead of clawing for release, it seemed docile and content to not see life in the air.

"Lexie," when she made to interrupt him, he held up a hand. "Let me speak or you won't get supper. I want you. I shall make no mistake in saying that but with you, unlike the entire rest of my life, my wanting is not going to automatically lead to my getting, having you. Yes, I arranged for Gustave to get the bid but I assure you, for his sake and ours, that his was by far the best proposal, the most thorough, the most complete and the most realistic. Others were lower, yes. Others had shorter times, yes. But they were all in the habit of underbidding and then collecting overages once the deal was made. Gustav has a history of making his deadlines and operating under budget. Giving him this bid was good business."

"You avoided me until how." Lexie whispered. Her stomach knotted. Hunger pangs. She'd not eaten all day! "Can we order? I, I slept all day, from exhaustion. I lay awake all night. You make me nervous, Walter Chambers, and I don't know why, exactly." The lie tucked amongst the truth of her hunger tasted acrid and sour and that reassured her, strangely. She knew exactly why he made her nervous; he wanted her and that echoed what she felt for him.

He smiled then and it had a little of the light she'd seen before.

A waiter arrived and Chambers ordered for them, touching this and that, asking after fresh cod or tuna fin, aged beef and the soups. He ordered appetizers and when the man was gone, they waited in silence until he returned and poured them wine, a light white.

They toasted and clinked their glasses together.

"To Gustav." Chambers said. Lexie hesitated, then nodded and drank with him.

"You invited me here tonight to tell me that you'd fixed it for my husband to get the bid, to draw him away from me, so I'd be alone, vulnerable, and indebted to you. I resent that." Her blunt truth feel on the table like a dead trout stinking with possibility.

Chambers shook his head.

"You do me injustice. Yes, I did stay away from you and yes, I waited until the matter was settled to invite you here. I have a reason similar to your accusation but subtly different."

Lexie cocked her head a little, waiting.

"You look glorious tonight, Lexie. You alone of all the women in this room, look a woman. You have hips and breasts and lips and when a man looks at you, he sees a woman ripe for sex." His voice rumbled with an immodest undertone.

Despite the sudden acceleration of her heart, Lexie ignored his words and returned to the subject.

"You explanation is subtly different than mine? How?" She looked straight at Chambers but his eyes didn't meet hers. It took a few seconds to realize that he was staring lower, at her breasts. She put a hand up to cover her cleavage, feeling her own hand hot on her skin. His eyes rose to meet hers. He blinked.

"Yes. I'm sorry. Having you here, I want to have you and I can barely think of anything else." He looked away then, out onto the square pocked by pools of light from old-style lamps designed to look like the oil kind that needed lamplighters. They checkered the square with light and pools of darkness .

"If you have me tonight, if I surrender to my lust, Lexie, and should it become an issue with your husband, my timing will serve you well. Here is what you may tell him, if you have me. I offered you the bid but insisted that you had to sleep with me. You refused. I arranged the request for proposal anyway but asked you to sleep with me and again you refused. You demanded that I make good on the promise that his company would get the bid and so we have gone without seeing each other. In that demand was the implicit agreement to surrender to me what I wanted, but I had to wait until the bid was delivered before having you. So I waited. And Lexie, it has been torture, a terrible thing for me. I wanted to call you a dozen times a day but all I could do was speak of my desire and I had to wait, until now."

"The subtle difference?" Lexie repeated, hearing the man speak only made her body quiver yet she dared not let him see the salacious sensations rising in her body.

"You waited and after he got the bid, you slept with me, to hold up your part of the bargain."

"So I'm a whore."

He shrugged.

"A ten million dollar whore. Some women find trading sex for money to be a wholly erotic experience and do it for much less for better men that I am. I have a friend who's wife plies her trade in a local hotel and his friends have all had her, and paid her. The rest of the time, he gathers the leavings and is glad of it. The rest of the time, he benefits from her excursions and it seems to have given them new life in a marriage grown cold."

"My marriage isn't growing cold."

Chambers nodded. Then looked away. "No. I have to tell all. I know. My dear, you should draw your shades more often. My men are all volunteering to watch you whenever Gustav arrives home. You are a very popular subject for my surveillance people."

Lexie felt her face grow hot so fast and so intensely she feared she glowed like a hot coal in the gloom but then thanked the gloom for hiding her shame. It wasn't the sort of sordid shame that demands a shower after, it was the lewd shame, the kind mixed with an intimate desire to know that it is recognized by others and, perhaps admired or better, envied, the shame of the fortunate and the lucky.

Chambers smiled.

"You're still here. I often do things that are effective but foolish, things that should remain hidden but I will not hide myself from you so that if you lay with me this night...."

"Who talks like that?" She couldn't help the interjection, the attempt to stop him talking. It failed.

"Fine. If you fuck me tonight, you do so because you acknowledge our mutual lust and you choose to let us direct you. What I have done is to grant you cover. If you fuck me tonight, and Gustav learns of it and confronts you, you can ask him if he wanted you to renege on your promise to become my whore if he got the contract, at least until the first five year deal is signed. If he does well, and fulfills the terms of his proposal, there will be more opportunity and it will put several million dollars in his pocket, and yours, before this is done. You'll be set for life. Is that worth a good, hard fuck or not? Will it be to him, or not?"

The food came and Lexie nearly joined it. Despite her mental resolve to have her say and walk away, she sat and ate, telling herself after the first bite, she was ravenous and she'd leave after she was sated. That was the word she used and the double entendre didn't matter to her at the time.

The subject dropped, for the moment, replaced with more polite and banal banter. She asked him about his business and the matters that were in the news, the stock market and such things as were public knowledge. She felt the distance between them and longed for it to vanish, to feel the intimate rapport they'd shared before in the light of day. After the plates were cleared and she was well fed, he sat watching her.

She felt suddenly clear. Then, equally suddenly, she felt completely and totally aroused. It came on her like a sea squall, appearing out of viral sunlight, lashing at her then vanishing away. It left her buffeted and unsteady but her resolve was firmly in place. Her chest tightened and her body longed for his touch. Even sitting, she wanted to feel his hands clasping her ass, her bare ass. The sensual banquet in her body did not cloud her mind but added tinsel strength to her resolve. Her decision was made and well made, so would she be too.

"I want you, Walter. I want you to take me, take me to bed." She spoke in her normal voice but the moment the words crossed her rich lips, her chest exploded with a riot of feelings; anticipation, eagerness, passion, desire, and simple, primal lust all seethed in her, bubbling and popping.

Lexie felt a wondrous sense of delight when the man looked shocked, stunned even and for a few moments, she thought he hadn't heard her at all. Perhaps she'd only said the words in her own head? But no, his face told the tale of her words and their impact on him.

"Check please." He said so softly no waiter or waitress with normal hearing could have comprehended his words. The light was suddenly lurid, slow moving shadows ebbed and flowed about them as orange and yellow illumination from candle flickers behind their private little cove spattered them.

"You don't want desert?" He asked and the words were still ripples in the air when his face fell. "Fool. God, I'm a fool!"

Lexie felt it then, the depth and breadth and width of his thin chagrin but beyond it, in a complex cubist display of emotions, his absolute anxiety, alien and awful to so strong and sure a man. That sense, full and brittle and awful calmed her. If he was frightened, she had no reason to fear. If he were nervous, she had no reason to be. If his was the anticipation and the risk of disappointment, then hers was surely pale and limpid by comparison and could be summarily dismissed as indulgent narcissism. She took the first deep breath she'd had, really since waking but it felt like it was the first clear, cool air she'd had in weeks.

"My darling man," she whispered in a tone that grabbed him by the throat and shook him. "You are my desert. Please serve that to me."

The effect on Walter Chambers was comical. He was on his feet as though levitating, seemingly without even leaning forward or moving his chair. He was at Lexie's side and pulling the chair out for her as though blinking from place to place; but that impression for her could have been caused by the slow, erotic blinking of her eyes, like shutters being closed by ancient servants in a grand house.

She felt herself rise, feeling like the law of gravity had been repealed. What legislature could do such a thing she had no idea. They were out the door and descending the grand terraced steps before the entrance to the street level before Lexie's brain uncoiled and caught the wind of thought and pulled her mind out of the blur of the last two minutes that seemed to have been days long.

"Aren't you going to pay?" She whispered. His hand hooked at her elbow but she was walking faster than he, and she didn't know where they were going. All she knew, all her body knew was that she wanted to get there and to get there soonest.

"I could walk out of that place a dozen times and not flip them a quarter and they'd shrug it off." He shook his head. "The world is out of joint, backwards; we give free things to the richest among us because they don't need them and demand full payment from paupers. It's strange but open eyes see all things strange and the rest of us are sleeping, dreaming, dulled and still." He touched her elbow. "I see you, Lexie."

She looked at him, startled by his words, a bit unnerved by them but then she registered that lurid tension in him and she felt elation swell in her chest. Her nipples took that moment to tingle and she stumbled and nearly fell on her face. Only his strong hand held her up away from disaster.

"My god, Lexie, are you okay?"

They staggered to a mutual pause at the curb. She looked at him. She loosed her elbow, turned to face him, reached up a small hand and cupped the back of his head and pulled it towards her. It was slow motion until their noses touched. Walter looked stricken, aghast for some reason Lexie could not imagine. Curiously, she wanted to put his man at ease.

"I am weak with desire, no, with need, no, no with passion, no, no, no I am weak with lust. Walter, take me to bed and make love to me!" Her words caressed his skin with puffs of her cherried breath and then before they poured into his ears and clotted his mind, she kissed him. Her passion bubbled up in her. Her lips pressed up to his, her hand pulled them together and he yielded fully to her demand. His lips parted immediately and his tongue traced the seam of her mouth pressed against his, back and forth.

Lexie kept her mouth resolutely closed.

"If I feel his tongue in my mouth right now, we'll be arrested for copulating on the street, I'll have to have him!" She thought that thought, a strange idea, a declaration of passion she'd not made before. She let her hand slip from the back of his head. The kiss lingered but a comma's moment and ended.

"Take me to bed." She commanded, her body boiling with agreement and surging with impatience.

Their hurried path to the Imperial Arms hotel must have looked like race walking shop lifters, trying to look inconspicuous. Lexie bent forward, not daring to watch where they were going but studying the sidewalk at her feet to insure she didn't stumble again because his hand was at the low end of her back, almost on her ass and she'd not be saved by it if she stepped poorly and fell.