The Appointment – Part I

It was not as if she had to come to see him. When he had said, on the telephone, “I have two hours open at four o’clock that I will hold”, it was not as if he even expected she would attend at his office.

But here she was, in the beautifully appointed but still institutional beige and brown waiting area, her back ramrod straight, insides trembling a bit, perched on the edge of the wing chair’s cushion. She crossed and recrossed her black stockinged legs. Perhaps she ought not to have worn the gartered stockings for this first meeting. If he noticed, what would he think of her?

She glanced at the grandfather clock. Not yet four. She could still change her mind. And then she heard the soft rasp of a door opening across carpet. Decision made. Correction: decision confirmed. She knew all along she would not pass up this opportunity.

“Salley Tyler?” She pivoted on her seat towards the deep, polite British voice saying her name. Her first impression was that he was terribly tall and her second was that his eyes were very blue behind the wire rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

She nodded, standing up slowly so that her slutty stockings would not be revealed, picked up her purse and walked to his office. Her steps were deliberate and measured, one stilettoed foot in front of the other, willing herself to be graceful, not to stumble.

He waited at his door, shutting it firmly behind them after she went past. Placed in front of a large white marble fireplace were a leather couch and two matching arm chairs clustered around a large coffee table. The desk was on the oppossie side of the room, in front of massive windows obscured by floor to ceiling sheer curtains. The effect was comforting, elegance tempered with maleness, the epitome of what she would have called an English lord’s library.

“Won’t you please be seated?” he asked, indicating the couch as he moved past her to take the leather chair opposite. He was so formal! Had he ever been this formal on the phone? Perhaps the first time they had talked, she allowed.

She perched on the edge of the couch, just as she had done out in the waiting area, and watched him sit down and lean back into the chair. He was dressed quite elegantly, she noted, in a charcoal grey suit, crisp white shirt, and a black and silver striped tie. Very austere. She was glad she had decided to be more formal and wore a simple black, long sleeved cocktail dress.

“Your flight was good?” he asked. She nodded, smiling at his very proper manners. “And you slept enough to chase away the jet lag?”

“Yes, I slept away most of the day,”she said. She ventured a look up at him, directly into those startling blue eyes. “Thank you for suggesting the place. And thank you also for sending the taxi to fetch me.”

Her appreciation appeared to have pleased him, his beautiful thin lips pulling back into a smile. There was a hint of a five o’clock shadow on his strong jaw. A frisson of pure sexual excitement coursed through her belly down to her vagina. She quickly looked down again.

“I’ve made us some tea,” he said, very conversationally. Didn’t he know what was happening inside her? Perhaps he did not feel it himself. “Would you pour, please?”

It really had not been a request. It was an order, her first real order. A test perhaps. It made her shiver, the accented strong voice, confident and assured. Conscious of every move she made, she rose and made her way to the sidetable where the silver tea service was laid out. She wanted to impress him. She wanted him to think her elegant and worthy of his attentions. She wanted him to want her and want her more than any other woman.

So focused on her duties and her thoughts of him, she did not hear him get up. She was pouring the second cup of tea when she sensed him behind her. He was close enough, without touching, that she felt his body heat. And then the hair at the nape of her neck moved slightly, back and forth; he was breathing in her soft scent of vanilla and pink sugar. She put the teapot back on the tray and did not move. He did not move either.

“You received the envelope?” he said so softly behind her ear, almost a whisper.

There was no need to pretend. She knew he meant the letter that awaited her arrival at the inn this morning. Her knees almost buckled as she nodded and she clutched at the edge of the sidetable to steady herself.

“And the terms,” he asked, this time moving his lips against the hair at her ear. “They were..acceptable?”

She nodded again.

“And you are certain? The terms are rather stringent.”

Another nod.

“I will be demanding”, almost a warning as he murmured that.

“Yes, I know,” she whispered back.