Just for a moment

Dark, ruby red gems gleamed up at him from the corner of his eye.

It was the color of her perfectly painted fingernails that now gripped at his biceps. The shine of the polish, his only fleeting tether to the fact that she was finally touching him. The vibrant shade stands out against his light gray suit. 

Her fingers, which don’t belong touching him in this intimate manner, dug into him and pulled him towards her. He did not fight the pull, his body tingled and awakened under her touch. Indeed, try as he might, he can not fight her advances any longer.

He lifted her up, his arms under her thighs, and supporting her full weight, he sat down on the couch. The cushion molds to his frame as the weight of their bodies press down into the fabric. She settles her legs on either side of his hips and her center positions on him in, oh God, just the right spot.  hits his lap in just the right spot. 

Everett loses his carefully, crafted control and with one hand he clings to her hip, holding Beverly in place. His other hand rises to her face, cupping her cheek and chin, placing his thumb on the corner of her plush bottom lip. Pushing down on it, he swipes his digit across to the other side, tugging her lip and distorting her lipstick. The cherry paint smears over the edge of her lip line but he doesn’t care.

He leans in and whispers into her ear, “I’ve waited a long time for this.” His soft admission has her body trembling in his arms and she moans her approval. And it’s true, he has waited a long time to be with her like this. No longer a requited love.

Ten, excruciating years he has watched her parade past his office, through the hallways, across the conference tables. All he had were stolen glances and dirty thoughts, it just wasn’t enough for him anymore. The timing was never right. Truthfully it was never going to be right for them, the line that had been drawn for them since the moment they met was never going to go away. He wasn’t sure if he even cares anymore about the consequences that waited for him on the other side.

This office, where so much of their relationship occurred, is the last place to be doing this. But it was late in the evening and their only company was the reflections of the city lights off the windows. They stretched from floor to ceiling and wrapped around his corner office. The cityscape, a mock audience to their exploits. The darkness of the room, save for the desk lamp across the way, a shroud covering them from the rest of the world.

Inhaling her sweet vanilla scent, he nuzzles his nose in the soft flesh below her ear, her skin warm and inviting. A home that he wished was his own to come back to. 

But one little nagging thought beds itself inside his mind, refusing to go to sleep, refraining to let him succumb to his desires.

When she sags against him and rolls her head back, stretching long and away from his face, the fog in his head clears, slightly.

It’s a moment.

A breath of a pause that allows him to pull up short even though his body thrums with heady need. 

What if this blows up in their faces? Will it be worth it, he wonders. Questions that need to be asked. Answers that he needs to hear from her. His need to hear how she feels about the possible repercussions give him courage to voice his slight hesitation. 

Is it worth it? 

His reservations feel like traitors to his deep inclinations but long standing practices frowned at this sort of relationship and he already had years of training balancing his home and work life.

When they had been introduced all those years ago, it felt like the cruelest joke befell them. The attraction was palpable but he was with someone at the time, and with her standing right beside him she felt like a thorn twisting into his hip. If she noticed anything, she did not let on. That wasn’t her style. Their relationship was already so late in the game that her security in them was unwavering. Unrelenting. 

Unbreakable as it was, when he met Beverly he wanted to break everything down to be with her. To get to know her.

And when he started his new position in the long standing company, and realized that Beverly and him would be working closely together, a newfound horror seeped into his bones.

He would never have a moment's peace. Agony at work, hell at home, that was all  working well for him - until she came to him at the end of the work day today.

He was buried in his paperwork, oblivious to everyone else leaving for the day. It was the weekend and the excitement to leave work and start enjoying the weekend was on everyone’s mind. Except for him. He was trying to avoid home. Avoid the questions and ignore the pleas.

He noticed Beverly at once. Her long body was leaning up against his doorway when she rapped her knuckles on the frame to alert him to her. 

The black pencil length skirt that she adorned enhanced her long hourglass figure, a pale satin tank top was tucked into the high waisted skirt. The light purple hues accenting her dark hair. Her normal unwavering face was apprehensive. Her eyes, green as the waters of the Caribbean, tried to hide how uneasy she was in his presence. The opposite of her usual composure. He cleared his throat and leaned back into his chair, waving his hand at the seat across his desk. 

Slowly she reached the seat and slumped gracefully into place. It was there where she laid it all bare. At one point he rested his elbow on the desk and supported his head with his thumb under his chin and his pointer resting over his lips. To stop himself from speaking out of turn, he didn’t know. She put into words what all those silent touches, lingering glances and longing embraces meant to her and the more she divulged, the more time had passed. The sun that was welcoming everyone else home had finally set upon the city and the moon took over the sky. It was then that she asked him what he wanted to do about it.

“Are we sure we should do this?” he finally asks, bringing him back to the here and now. He lifted his eyebrow for emphasis. A quiet nudge that he will take her lead. She snaps her head back up and stares him down. 

“I don’t want to hear how we shouldn’t do this anymore,” she scoffs, narrowing her eyes at him. “I want this and you want it too.” Her voice sure and unfaltering. 

“No one can ever find out,” his eyes darken at her. A warning. 

“Especially…” he continues.

“No one will ever know,” she interrupts. “This will be enough for me.”

Her hands wander up his broad shoulders, then weave through his dark, tousled locks. It will have to be enough, he thinks. He could never be in her life fully, in her home, in her bed.

But they have now entered into an unspoken agreement and find that they could be here in this moment together. For tonight. And maybe other nights too, if the opportunity presented itself.

There was a little too much space between them for his liking. He leaned his head down, hovering his lips over hers for just a second and then plunged down, seeking the touch of her lips feverishly.

He groans in ecstasy at the contact, vibrations run up his throat and he begins to caress her lips with his. Wrapping her hair around his hand he pulls slightly, bringing a gasp out of her, her lips part. Taking advantage, he slides his tongue into her mouth tasting her, finally, for the first time. His entire world narrows down into the feel of her on him.

Joy.

Ecstasy.

All come crashing down into the pit of his stomach and explode outward as the sensation of her fills him. Not with fulfillness, or contentment but with a hunger that could never be satiated. His fingers roam of their own accord, no longer following his mind’s commands as they rub, and squeeze at her soft body. It is everything he thought it would be. And more.

More.

More.

He chants his needs, his body now on autopilot.

Take her, his mind screams and the sounds that she makes for him tells him all that he needs to know. She is his, unequivocally. He moves to turn her, to position themselves fully when a gasp from the doorway zaps Everett from his frenzy. It was a foreign sound. One that he shouldn’t have heard between all the sounds Beverly and him were making, but maybe because it was a different voice it made him pull away from Beverly to open his eyes.

The space gave way to the calming of his heartbeat. Did they really just do that? For a moment Beverly stays enamored in the moment, lips still puckering out and eyes closed in bliss. Remembering the unwelcoming sound he glances towards the doorway where it came from and pure shock flares inside of him. It came from a voice he knew all too well.

“What’s wrong baby?” Beverly asks him as she finally notices something is amiss. Her once pristine golden hair that was initially pulled back in an elegant bun is now disheveled from his onslaught of tugging and pulling. Open eyes now peer down at him, taking in the twisted features that are surely written on his face and suddenly, she is toppling off his lap as he jerks to a standing position. Without his arms to hold her up she falls to the floor beneath them and she cries out in pain as her body collides with the hard surface.

“Sara, I…, ” Everett calls out to his wife who has now entered his office in mid hysteria. The initial fury that he saw filling Sara’s body when she first interrupted them was ebbing and flowing into something new. 

“What the… ever loving… fuck is going on?” Sara demands, the words choking out of her as she gasps for breath. She clutches her chest as the view of Beverly and him together brings her physical pain. Redness flushes her cheeks, paling her blonde bound hair even more. At a loss for words he watches it all as disbelief and horror cross her face. His stomach turns at the sight of her and what he had just done. Oh God what she had walked into.

His wife turns her heated gaze off of him just for them to drag over to the woman on the floor. They lock eyes and Sara stares at Beverly. The seconds tick and drag in the silent room as Everett watches the  realization settle into Sara’s soul. How do you take an impossible situation like your husband cheating on you and then insert the last possible person he could have cheated on you with. Sara’s face pales in quiet horror and disgust.  

“Mama?” Sara wails into the room, into his heart. It echoes off of the walls and the sound almost brings him to his knees. The keen she makes is a coal of blackness that piles into  Everett’s lumpy heart as he watches her scatter into oblivion. Her throat bobs with sure bile rising and she lunges to the wastebasket next to his desk. She blocks out the traitors on her way, arms flailing out as she runs. She drops to her knees and flings her head into the bucket, gagging and retching into the bin. The reality of the situation engulfs her senses, and swallows her whole. 

Beverly scrambles herself off the floor, the pain in her palms and knees forgotten. Everett watches as she tugs her skirt back down from where he had desperately pushed up. She then twists her shirt back to center but no matter how much she tries to right herself and her clothes, it will never right the wrong that they so clearly made to her daughter. 

Sara’s back arched as she still was heaving up her now empty stomach and Beverly chanced a glance over at her son-in-law.

His body seemed to be in a battle of wills with one option to go to his wife and the other to keep away from her. There was no third option of comforting Beverly though. One of his hands fisted on his hip and the other was clinging to his hair. Pulling and griping with anxious fingers. A nervous gesture he kept from childhood when he struggled with his tests at school he once told her.

“Shit Sara, I’m…,” he starts to say but trails off at the end. What could he possibly say to her anyway. There were no words he could say that would bring her comfort. He was an ass. Shoulders slumping, he falls back into the couch. He had severed ties to his wife in the vilest way possible. There was no coming back from this and worse, he had taken her mother away from her. Yes, physically Beverly was still here but their connection, their close relationship they had had for his wife’s entire life - gone. Sara would never trust her mom again and if they managed any sort of relationship, she would always wonder after her mother’s motivations. 

He didn’t know what all of their futures now entailed. After the initial shock of what he did, he was beginning to feel a little relief at the freeing of it all. He did regret the manner in which this all came about but if he was really honest with himself, he was slowly being buried alive from all the pressure. This building was owned by his in-laws, as they built their business from the ground up that spanned several generations back. He was fired for sure. Jobless in a trying economy was no picnic. Most likely, Sara would kick his ass out of their home and as much as he loathed having nowhere to stay, his wife’s suffocation would be a thing of the past. Thankfully, her nagging to have children fell on his deaf ears, so there was no one else at home that would suffer. Beverly could barely look at him now, he was sure she was full of remorse for the pain they inflicted on her daughter, so he could kiss her lips goodbye. The consequences of their actions reared its ugly head. Swiftly they came with no such remorse about the limited time of bliss given to Everett and Beverly.

There is, of course, a first and last time for such a thing as a lustful kiss, but what a kiss it had been.