Karen Ziegler

Her husband_s boss

CHAPTER ONE

Maxwell Alexander eased back in his plush desk chair and swung around toward the massive grey-tinted window behind him. Only two weeks ago, he had been able to gaze down unblinkingly through the golden May sunlight to the traffic-clogged Los Angeles intersection five stories below, but summer had come scorching in on the heels of spring and now the air shimmered with heat and a hazy blinding glare. The sky seemed to drop down suddenly thick with smog, like a stifling shroud over the sprawling city. The newspapers had been reporting that the level of air pollution was critical and had already reached the danger point twice during the past week. As usual, the papers had blamed it on the complexes of heavy industry that surrounded the city and editorial writers were crying out for more stringent anti-pollution measures.

With an impatient snort, Max turned his chair back around toward his broad mahogany desk and picked up the latest copy of New World Steel, Alexander Steel Company's bi-weekly magazine. He grinned perniciously at the striking cover photograph that met his gaze – a shapely, long-legged blonde sunbathing next to a sparkling bright blue river with a few gleaming white smoke-stacks rising over the trees in the background, gently puffing out pale balls of smoke into the unsullied sky. The caption read: "Pollution – What's All the Fuss About?" Even though the picture had been taken months ago, it still amused him to think of how he had been keen enough to take advantage of a steelworkers' strike to scrub down those smoke-stacks and then burn tons of newsprint in the huge furnaces to produce that innocent-looking white smoke.

The "clear blue stream" had been a bit more of a problem, considering the sulfurous waste that was being constantly dumped into the river by the steel mill, but, just as the photographer had said, "There's nothing you can't do with the right camera filters, and good equipment." Sure, it had been expensive and time-consuming, but hell, he thought smugly, it was well worth it. It was exactly this kind of clever, creative thinking that kept him in his position as president, and major stockholder, of Alexander Steel, the booming company that his Uncle Morton Alexander had founded.

Yes, he mused proudly as he chewed off the end of one of his expensive Havana cigars, he deserved every damned thing he had ever got. After all, it had taken him years to reach his present position, and by God, he had had to scheme and connive, in ways that few people could really appreciate, to gain control of this industrial empire. In a rare moment of humility, he found himself thanking the Gods of fate that he had become so thoroughly successful, had become a man who was wealthy and powerful enough to avoid the unpleasantness of the smoggy Los Angeles summer by remaining safely ensconced in the comfort of his lavishly-decorated, air-conditioned office.

Puffing reflectively on the lighted cigar, he flipped through the glossy magazine to the pages that outlined Alexander Steel's profits for the last fiscal quarter. Though he knew every figure by heart, he could not help but let out a low, satisfied chuckle at the sight of the marked increases in orders and profits that would make him and the other stockholders many millions of dollars richer this year. In the ten years that Max had worked under his aging uncle, Morton Alexander, he had learned the business well, so well that the old man had had almost no choice but to promote his enterprising nephew up to a vice-presidency, the position of power from which Max had gradually taken complete control of the company. That had been almost five years ago, Max recalled nostalgically, and the promotion had been Uncle Morton's single grave mistake in an otherwise brilliant business career.

Max never tired of remembering the details of his relentless climb to power and wealth. Because of his nephew's extraordinary business sense, the usually shrewd old uncle had tended to ignore Max's occasional unscrupulousness and the new vice-president's obvious impatience with ideas that ran contrary to his own. Max had a tendency to interpret everything around him in terms of dollars and cents in his own pocket, which after all, the old man thought, might be a good thing from a stockholder's standpoint. At first, the younger man's trenchant greediness about business matters had disturbed Uncle Morton a little, and the aging steel magnate would be tense and shrill after a few hours around him. But gradually, Morton Alexander learned to relax around his eager nephew and had come to regard the young man's impatience and demands as nothing more than healthy ambition.

Cautiously, and then with less care, the uncle had started to accept Max's advice on crucial new issues concerning important company policies and had eventually entrusted him with the handling of entire projects without feeling the necessity to oversee them or examine the end results of his power-hungry nephew's administrative efforts. Ultimately, with a great surge of confidence that Max would be able to work even more effectively with additional responsibility, the old chief executive had brushed aside the violent protests of the other board members and had seen to it that his ambitious junior relative was elevated to a full vice-presidency.

That had been the beginning of the end for Uncle Morton. He had sown the seeds of his own downfall as the reigning head of Alexander Steel Company.

It had been only a matter of time until, little by little, Max had thoroughly usurped his uncle's power and had phased the older man out of the company altogether with only a comfortable token pension and a relatively insignificant vote as a minor stockholder. The other executives who had been troublemakers in Max's eyes – the ones who had been foolish enough to show any opposition to his ruthless rose to the presidency and full command of the company – had been forced into either complete administrative slavery or dishonorable resignation with a bare minimum of compensation for their years of service with Alexander Steel. One by one, the vacant posts had been filled with fresh personnel that the new dictator had screened personally – a staff of people who filled all the necessary qualifications and were willing to accept low starting salaries with promises of handsome incomes in the future if they somehow managed to meet his high expectations of them in their various fields. No one had been able to stop Max from having his way as the president of the big corporation, and he knew that there was not a single employee who could justifiably criticize his effectiveness as a businessman – if one of them should even dare to think of criticizing him. As merciless and underhanded as he often was with other rival companies, and sometimes with his own customers, he had built Alexander Steel's quarterly profits up to all-time record highs. And even more impressive at least as far as the employees were concerned, he had introduced incentive programs through which everyone, from an ordinary laborer to a vice-president, could earn attractive bonuses if they were able to fulfill the production and sales quotas that he had posted on bulletin boards as being "Normal Standards", but which veterans of the industry considered beyond the capabilities of the huge plant as well as beyond the range of the available market. Nevertheless, sales and production continued to soar and, occasionally, much to the surprise of the company skeptics, Max's secretaries posted bonus lists throughout the plant.

In short, Max Alexander was an undeniable success in the world of business and, moreover, he enjoyed his position far too much to feel the smallest pang of remorse for anything he had had to do to become what he was. To the contrary, he often found himself almost wishing that he had not gained the pinnacle of his career quite so rapidly and completely… that there was still some challenge left in his life. Ironically, Max's knack for organization had made the company operate so efficiently that there was little for him to do now but count up the profits and amuse himself with an occasional new project – such as New World Steel, the company magazine that now lay before him on the desk.

The magazine, which had started out as a half-hearted effort to keep up with production trends started by other large companies, had become Max's pride and joy, an attractive, glossy testament to the success of Alexander Steel… and it's president! The ruggedly handsome middle-aged executive thumbed proudly through the smart little publication, nodding in pleased agreement with everything that his young editor Henry Cummings, had included so far. It had taken Max a good while to clear all the fancy intellectual notions out of the recent college graduate's head, but finally he had trained the boy satisfactorily.

The magazine was exactly as Max wanted it now, packed with colorful photographs of new plants and operations as well as busty, well-shaped girls to keep the stockholders interested in the meat of the articles. Yes, young Cummings was certainly coming along and, if he continued to remember who was buttering his bread, the boy might possibly have a brilliant future at Alexander Steel.

Max turned another page of the publication and suddenly the expression of smug-faced complacency began to fade from his craggy features. Below the thick mass of greying brown hair, the fifty-three year-old executive's face darkened and his broad chest began to heave beneath his expensively-tailored shirt and suit jacket until his appearance was that of a lion on the verge of roaring out its fury. On the desk before him the magazine lay open at its last page, the headline of which read: "A Message From Max…"

"Goddammit, Cummings, where's my picture?" the enraged bull-like man bellowed out in his spacious office. "How in the hell could you forget that?"

Then, remembering that the palatial office had been thoroughly soundproofed as a result of his own orders, and that no one but he could hear his indignant fury, he rose quickly from his chair and leaned over the highly-polished expanse of desk to jab impatiently at the buzzer that signaled his receptionist in the next room. His tall, still-muscular frame seemed even more ominous than usual as he bent over the call-box, punching his forefinger brutally down on the button until a red light suddenly lit up on the console.

"Yes-yes, Mr. Alexander," a nervous female voice finally chimed in from the speaker on the machine. "I-I was just away from my desk for a minute…"

The girl's obvious terror pleased Max in his sour mood and he found himself smiling evilly as he roared back in to the speaker, "You're damned right you did, blondie! And tell your friends at the water-cooler to break up the tea party and get back to work right away!"

"Oh, yes, sir," she squeaked timidly. Max grinned to himself sadistically as he imagined his deliciously built ash-blonde receptionist cowering at her desk, making frantic gestures to his small battalion of secretaries that they should return to work immediately. He required a fairly large number of girls in his personal secretarial staff because some of them were dead weight and had been hired solely for their looks. Well, what the hell, he thought defensively, what was the good of being president if he could not indulge himself in a few harmless amusements at the company's expense.

"Uh, Mr. Alexander, sir," the timid female voice from the speaker broke in again, intruding on his thoughts. "Did you want me for anything else, sir?"

His fury of a moment ago renewing, Max was just about to instruct the girl to summon Henry Cummings to his office when his wandering gaze fell on the page opposite his own "message" in the magazine. Almost against his will, he stared feverishly at the page headed "New Products" and at the picture of a buxom, round-hipped brunette girl seductively caressing a huge roll of glistening heavy-duty steel wire, one of Alexander Steel's newest lines. Though he tried to maintain his waning anger at the young editor, Max could not help but appreciate Henry Cummings' unerring taste in female flesh. Max wondered for a long moment if the magazine editor interviewed his models personally. Christ, the very idea of all those gorgeous young women clustered in Henry's tiny office, like a whole gardenful of flowers just waiting to be plucked by any man with balls enough to do it, made the steel magnate leer licentiously. It was no wonder that Henry sometimes forgot a thing as simple as including the boss' picture with his address to the stockholders, Max mused with a chuckle. Hell, the poor kid probably had had a hard time managing to think straight all the time.

"Did you say something, Mr. Alexander?" the receptionist asked at the sound of her employer's muffled laughter over the intercom. Max sat there in silence, continuing to stare at the juicy female morsel in the photograph, his temple beginning to pulse and throb.

"Aw, hell, buzz Miss Stillson in her office and have her come in her at once," Max finally ordered. "And tell her to make it snappy."

"Yes, sir," the receptionist's voice came back, a tone of frightened obeisance causing her to squeak a little. It was not two minutes after the intercom had clicked off that a small door marked "Private" sprang open on the far side of Max's office.

"Honey, you know I'm right next door, you don't have to go through a third party," a gorgeous raven-haired woman purred as she stepped into his office, clad only in a revealing sea-green negligee fringed with almost incongruous-seeming lace at the cuffs and down along the deep vee of the neckline. "I could hear you bullying that poor girl out there even over the sounds of the baseball game on my radio."

"Dammit, June, you're on my payroll as my public relations assistant, and you really ought to be dressed by this time of the day," Max grumbled with mock sterness as his glittering eyes hungrily scanned the generous, sexy contours of June Stillson's nearly-naked body. Although Maxwell Alexander's ravishing dark-haired mistress was in her late thirties, her provocative, voluptuous body was always enough to send his blood pressure soaring, and now Max rapidly forgot the younger girls on the pages of the company magazine.

He added with a leering grin, "What if one of my secretaries came into your office, baby? Now what kind of public relations work would you be doing in that kind of outfit? Christ, June, who do you think you are?"

"I'm just me, Max, and I'd be doing the same kind of work I always do," she replied with a confident smile as she began to stroll casually toward him, her full outward-curving hips swaying seductively beneath the sheer fabric of her negligee. "Don't worry, anyway, because I always keep the door locked when I'm like this. I just had a feeling you might want to see me this afternoon, so I dressed for the occasion."

Smiling at him cleverly, the statuesque beauty peeled the thin garment slowly from her sensuous body and, dropping it to her feet, did a small pirouette in the center of the spacious office before she walked nakedly to his desk and leaned her smooth rounded buttocks back on the hard wood edge, wriggling back along the top until she perched gracefully in front of him. Her deep amber eyes flickered smokily with suddenly-ignited lust as she stared expectantly into Max's hard but handsome face.

"By God, you really want it, don't you, baby?" Max growled excitedly at the beautiful woman whose buttocks were already moving slowly in tiny little circles of anticipation on the highly burnished wood surface of his desk, a scant few inches from his leering face. "You little whore, I'll bet you don't think about anything but cock all day long."

"Do… do you want me to think about something else?" June asked quietly, her sultry face suddenly changing to a clouded expression of uncertainty and confusion. "I always do anything you say, Max. With anyone." In her anxiety, her golden-eyed gaze darted nervously around the room. "Do you have some business friends you want me to entertain now? I will, sweetheart. I'll do anything for you. I always have… God, without you…"

"That's right, baby, without me you'd be right back in the gutter where I found you," Max chuckled cruelly, delighting in her obsequious show of absolute dependence on him, whatever his whims. That was the way he liked his employees… especially his women… answering gratefully to his every beck and call. "But don't worry. I think you're going to be with me for a long, long time," he added expansively, "because we understand each other, don't we?"

Relief registered clearly in the handsome woman's facial features and then, once again, desire kindled in her eyes. "You bet, sweetheart," she purred throatily and ran her slim fingertips lightly and teasingly down the front of his white shirt until they rested inquisitively on the buckle of his belt. Her long thick eyelashes trembled excitedly as she asked in a soft tremulous voice, "Do you have any… public relations for me to carry out today?"

"No, but I've got some private relations for you," Max barked harshly, suddenly impatient with the wastefulness of mere conversation. He rose hastily from his overstuffed chair and began to pull at the stubborn fastenings at the fly of his trousers. "My big old cock has just been waiting for the feel of your sweet lips around it, baby, and it doesn't want to wait any longer."

His lust-bright eyes fastened greedily on June's naked, tantalizing body as he pulled down the zipper of his trousers and jerked free his suddenly-hardening cock from the confinement of his undershorts. The hot-blooded brunette had been Max's live-in mistress ever since the high-powered executive had become bored with a life of all business and damned little pleasure, and he had discovered her one night where she worked as a cocktail waitress in a flashy nightclub bar. Though he had never claimed to be faithful to the willing, uninhibited brunette, the sexual electricity between them had never faded and now, as his appreciative eyes played lewdly over the exciting curves and valleys of her lush body, he felt ripples of hot desire rushing swiftly through the sensitive nerve-ends of his skin. His long, purple-veined penis jutted out of the opening in his grey flannel trousers and began to rise stiffly up below his slight paunch as he stood at the back of his desk staring down at his mistress' white, cream-like contours, displayed nakedly before him. His gaze rested hotly on the sight of her plush, full breasts, the narrowest of valleys running between the magnificent firmness of the twin globes. His thick heavy cock jerked higher as his eyes dropped lower to take in the milky, voluptuous hips that led down to the delicious sweep of long slender legs. Between the shapely, breath-taking thighs that draped enticingly over the edge of the desk, Max could see clearly through the soft pubic hair covering her ripe loins to the fleshy pinkness of her vaginal slit glistening wetly in the afternoon light filtering through the tinted glass window.

"Now, baby," he suddenly groaned, hoarse with mounting need. "Come over here and give me some of those sweet lips, the way I taught you."

With a soft moan of pleasure, his naked mistress wiggled across the desk, then leaned on one elbow until her beautiful face was poised directly in front of him, within inches of his now hard, pulsing shaft of flesh rising menacingly up from the unzipped front of his trousers. Her long, red-lacquered fingernails scratched lightly over the heavily-veined surface of the rock-hard prick, causing it to jerk convulsively as the hot air of her breath blew softly on it. Max's breath quickened even more as she began to expertly massage the massive cock, lovingly, up and down until one glistening drop of pearly translucent fluid seeped out from the broad, mushroom-shaped head. She then moved her slender fingers down lower to his sperm-bloated balls, cradling their softness in her palm. Max groaned and gritted his teeth at her expertly tender ministrations of his stiff cock and large drooping testicles.

"Do you like it, sweetheart?" she asked coquettishly, fully aware of the heated effect that her naked female body and the teasing touch of her fingertips was having on him. "Does it make you forget all about those nasty business problems that always bother you?"

"You know damn well I like it, bitch," Max growled, irritated by her mention of the business annoyances that he was trying so hard to forget. "Don't tease me, Goddammit. Just suck my cock!"

Suddenly, he moaned and jerked his anxious loins forward involuntarily as the delicious wet warmth of her parted lips closed over the sensitive, blood-swollen glans of his penis. He moaned louder and reached down to tangle his fingers tightly in her dark wavy hair, guiding the rhythm of her now-bobbing head below.

God, how he had needed this!

Max looked down to watch the beautiful woman's penis-filled face, her soft lips stretched wide with the thickness of his aching cock buried at least halfway up in her sucking mouth. June sensed his increasing excitement and began to suck harder, twirling her smooth red tongue titillatingly around the moist stickiness of the bulbous head. As he felt the tips of her teeth digging gently into the rubbery, resisting skin, he turned his head to gaze sideways into the huge mirror that filled the wall beside his desk for a better view of his gorgeous, willing mistress' face as his turgid, hard rod began to saw rhythmically in and out of the brunette's wetly ovaled mouth. Christ, just the sight alone was enough to drive him insane, causing his loins to tense more and jerk up into her laboring face until the reflected image he saw looked as though he were ramming his long, hard prick more than halfway down her slender throat. Practically all of his thick fleshy penis now seemed to disappear with each new powerful thrust he made until finally only a short stretch of it showed shining wet and white, protruding from her distended lips. She was gorged with his fiery blood-filled flesh, his pulsating length like a savage creature with its own existence and needs that had taken control over his body and mind.

Jesus, he swore to himself, the bitch could really suck cock, as though she had been born with one in her mouth and had learned to treat it as part of herself. Sure, he often desired other women – the younger and more innocent the better – but he could always depend upon June to deliver the kind of pure satisfaction he wanted… like this… and without any bothersome preliminaries.

June's experienced tongue worked with a nerve-tingling swipe of its tip on each out-stroke and was making his cock-head throb and lurch as if a live electric wire were being touched against it. The impassioned middle-aged steel executive was completely mesmerized by the lewd spectacle in the mirror, watching the pink moist flesh of her tightly compressed lips being focused on the labor of giving him this obscene pleasure. Her full, heavy breasts bobbed and swayed against her rocking torso, and the very sight of it incited him to increasing heights of brain-reeling passion.

"Keep on, keep on sucking my cock," Max hissed through tightly clenched teeth, wishing that all of his employees could give him as much pleasure as this one, this mature, full-bodied woman. Shit, if the editor of the company magazine were a woman and not Henry Cummings, how he would love to shove his stiff prick deep down in her throat, as far as he humanly could, to teach her a lesson she would never forget, so that she would never again forget to include the face of Maxwell Alexander in any future issue. The thought of the missing picture in New World Steel filled him with a renewed momentary anger and he wound his hand brutally in his mistress' soft brown hair, driving her face down viciously into his thrusting loins.

"Suck harder, suck faster, Goddammit," he snarled down at the woman slaving between his wide-spread, trembling legs. Her ripe body was beginning to gleam from the light beading of sweat forming on her ivory skin, and he was gloating and enjoying the sight of her lying subserviently on the desk, her lipstick-ovalled lips wrapped tightly around the thick roundness of his stone-hard cock as he stood over her, lunging his hips furiously into her lovely twisted face.

He could feel a powerful pressure building relentlessly up to a fever pitch in his painfully full balls, and he knew it would not be long now. His huge cock felt like it was ready to explode and spew the hot creamy sperm in his bloated testicles in all directions, everywhere in the room.

He drove his pelvis heartlessly into her face, even more cruelly now, and heard with delight the mumbled cry of protest that came from her as his long hefty prick drubbed deeper and deeper into her tortured, warm wet mouth, driving far down into her working throat. But he heeded nothing in his quest to end this exquisite agony, the ecstasy that was building, building, building to the peak of spectacular relief in his burning loins and within his balls.

Suddenly he felt a great upheaval in his lust-swollen testicles as the boiling white sperm began to race in a hot stream up the length of his thrusting cock. His own lips pulled back over his teeth in an ecstatic grimace and he gasped hoarsely as though in excruciating pain. His thick fleshy penis began a sudden wild staccato jerking that, without warning, flooded his beautiful mistress' hungrily sucking mouth with burst after burst of heatedly sticky cum, ballooning her smooth cheeks outward with each bullet-like spurt, so that she had to swallow quickly to keep from choking, yet still mewling and crooning at his driving loins.

"Don't stop, baby, suck it, suck it!" he rasped as he tightened his hands in her tawny hair and convulsively slammed his pulsating cock farther and farther into her lipsticked mouth and deep down into her distended throat. The naked woman obeyed and continued to suck insanely as he shot his lewd sperm into her, filling her mouth, almost drowning her, until at last he gave a shuddering sigh and pulled himself back and out of her lips for one final thrust. But he missed her still eagerly sucking mouth by a fraction of an inch when he lunged forward again. The blunt inflamed head rammed against the side of her face by mistake, leaving a long sticky trail of hot cum smeared lewdly along her upper lip and her right cheek. Undaunted, June twisted her head and maneuvered her voracious mouth to seize the base of his hard-throbbing staff of flesh between her teeth, like a dog with a stick. Then, grasping his scrotum with her fingers, she lifted her head to guide the glistening tip back into the warmth of her open mouth, squeezing up on the cock with her fingers to milk out and devour every last drop of the delicious white fluid.

Little by little, his sated penis deflated between her ovalled lips and, at last, Max collapsed back into his chair in exhaustion, pulling his prick from her lips with a wet little slurping sound that resounded wetly in the stillness of the office. A great sigh of relief escaped his lips, and June lay back happily on the desk, a loving, contented smile spreading across her beautiful, cum-smeared face. She lay there for a few moments, catching her breath, then sat up again on the edge of the desk.

"That's something you can't get in a board meeting, isn't it, Max?" the perspiring brunette asked with a proud little smirk, a sparkle of female triumph in her brownish-yellow eyes. Catching sight of the magazine that lay crumpled beneath her rounded thigh, she picked it up and added with a silly giggle, "Why don't you have Henry do a story on my blowjobs, Max? Think of the publicity you'd get!"

At the sight of the copy of New World Steel, Max's face darkened and he felt his irritation returning anew. He knew that it was no use trying to explain to June what that irresponsible punk, Henry Cummings, had done, for she would only laugh and tell him he was being too sensitive. Still, though, it was his magazine and his company, and he had a good mind to teach that young editor a lesson. Perhaps June might have some ideas, he mused inwardly.

Just then, his angry thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of the intercom.

"What do you want?" he barked gruffly into the console, abruptly motioning to June to get off his desk.

"You have a visitor, sir," the receptionist's half-frightened voice informed from the speaker. "I wouldn't have bothered you, sir, but she said it was personal and very important. She says her name is Mrs. Cummings – Mrs. Henry Cummings. Isn't Henry Cummings the…?"

"I know who he is, dammit," Max interrupted impatiently. At the same moment, however, a strange light of interest began to fill his crafty eyes. "Personal, is it? Well, ask her to please wait for five minutes or so, and then send her on in."

The red light on the console blinked off and Max looked up to see June standing before his desk, her hands placed defiantly on her full hips, hurt glittering in her amber eyes.

"Max, I don't try to tie you down, but after all, this is my territory!" she angrily protested. "Can't you take that girl somewhere else? I mean, after what we just did, that makes me feel awful!"

Max chuckled at her words, then broke into laughter at the pain-stricken expression that immediately came over her face. "Oh, but baby, you don't understand," he finally managed to say through his cruel mirth. "I don't even know this broad, but I do have a little score to settle with her husband," he added a bit more soberly, smoothing back his slightly greying hair with the palm of one hand.

Reaching across the desk, he gave June a quick reassuring pat on a generously rounded buttock cheek, then turned his thirty-four-year-old mistress around and shoved her gently toward the door through which she had entered his office earlier.

"Don't worry, baby," he consoled her jovially, "this is just business. If anything comes up, I'll make certain to call you in."

June shot him a long, unbelieving glance and started across the room, pausing only to pick up the flimsy negligee that she had dropped to the carpet when she had first entered the office. As Max watched the provocative sway of her smooth, cream-like buttocks on crossing the room, he felt a brief moment of regret that he had not had more time to spend with this always-exciting woman. She was so damned dependable. But then, just as quickly, he marshaled his thoughts back to matters of the immediate moment. He quickly zipped up his trousers, then, and sat back down in his chair, beginning to speculate over what Mrs. Henry Cummings could possibly want with him. Whatever it was, Max was going to make damned sure that that young editor, bright as he was, never forgot to put the company president's photo in the magazine again.

CHAPTER TWO

"Mr. Alexander is engaged right now, Mrs. Cummings, but he'll be free to see you in a few minutes, if you'll be kind enough to wait here."

Lost in her own thoughts, Kathy Cummings was startled by the sound of the blonde receptionist's voice, but after a moment, she murmured absently, with embarrassment, "Oh yes, of course, I'll wait. I know he's a very busy man."

By the time Henry Cummings' young wife had collected herself sufficiently to speak, the pretty receptionist had already returned to her desk and was answering one of the insistently buzzing lines on the switchboard in front of her. With a fleeting, nervous glance around the spacious, modern waiting room, Kathy ascertained that, curiously, there was no one else in line to see the president of Alexander Steel. She stiffened with irrational apprehension as she wondered again exactly what she would say to the powerful mysterious man who was her husband's boss. Now that she was here, sitting in the very building in which Henry worked, the nervous young woman wondered if perhaps she had made a foolish mistake by coming here. For the flash of an instant, she was tempted to turn right around and go back home again, to its relative safety, but the mental image of her and Henry's home made her remember exactly why she had come downtown today… and why she would not go home until at least some small step had been taken to set their marriage straight again.

But what on earth would Mr. Alexander think when she attempted to explain why she wanted to get a job, she wondered nervously. How could she ever make him understand that perhaps the very future of her marriage with Henry depended upon whether or not she could really prove herself to be a contributing, productive member of their marital partnership?

Kathy shifted anxiously in her chair, picked up a magazine from a nearby table, then quickly put it down again, deciding instead to make a last-minute check of her makeup in a tiny mirror which she withdrew from the expensive shoulder bag now on her lap. It would not do, she knew, to walk into Mr. Alexander's office with smudged lipstick or a grimy face from the long bus ride she had made from their suburban home into the industrial section of Los Angeles.

It took Kathy but a minute to pat her long, shiny strawberry blonde hair into perfect place and then apply just a touch more of pale beige lipstick, adding a slightly more pinkish color to her already full, sensuous lips. The thin line of eye makeup around her wide brown eyes was still perfect, though, and she knew from experience that, no matter how determinedly she powdered her face, the light smattering of golden freckles across her nose and part way down her cheeks would show through anyway. Even though she was almost twenty-two years old, those puckish freckles gave her the appearance of a teen-aged tomboy, despite her alluring curves, but she had learned to live with them over the years consoling herself with the memory of Henry once having said that they were "cute" and made her actually prettier. Despite what was to her the annoyance of the freckles, she could see in the little compact mirror that she was indeed a very attractive young woman, the kind of young woman whose sweet, almost childlike facial features were a direct contrast to the delectable, curvaceous symmetry of her sensuous-looking body. The long, lucent swing of her shoulder length reddish-blonde hair tended to sophisticate her pixyish beauty, so that she almost looked her age.

Replacing the mirror in her handbag, the exquisite young wife shook her golden hair ruefully. It was disconcerting to look always so cherubic and inexperienced, especially at times such as this afternoon, when she was determined to impress Henry's formidable boss with her maturity and potential efficiency – impress him enough to land a decent job. With an involuntary gesture of nervousness, she reached down to smooth out the short skirt of her crisp, navy-blue cotton dress over her silky, suntanned thighs, hoping that the prim little frock with its lace cuffs and collar was proper and demure enough to help her in her plan. It was the longest dress she owned now, one left over from high school days, and yet it still exposed a fairly daring expanse of shapely, sun-browned leg well above the knee, and its slim figure-hugging design did little to hide the lush contours of her body, the high-set, swelling breasts and firm, circular buttocks that accentuated her tiny girlish waist to such good advantage. Well, so what if she did look a little daring, she rationalized, it could not hurt her chances for the job – though, God knows, it had not been doing her much good in her own home.

At the thought of her dismal home-life with Henry, her bright, ambitious husband, the slight, satisfied smile that had begun to play across her perfectly-formed lips faded away and her high, clear brow wrinkled with anxiety. In the six months since her marriage to Henry, the beautiful strawberry blonde had been forced to arrive at the conclusion that something was basically wrong with their relationship, something serious, and until last night, she had been unable to put her finger on precisely what it was. Now she knew and the realization had spurred her on to the desperate action she was taking today. She would get a job and show Henry once and for all, that she too had a mind, a mind probably just as good as his, and that she was perfectly capable of making some decisions concerning their marriage – even if she did occasionally make a mistake.

The mere memory of what had happened after dinner last night made Kathy's heart race furiously and she felt the blood rushing to her pretty face at the humiliating recollection of her own husband's cold, objective lecture about her "irresponsible conduct"… as though she were some sort of capricious school child who needed to be rapped across her knuckles for naughtiness. All she had done was take advantage of a "once-in-a-lifetime sale" on needed household goods in a local department store, considering very carefully before she had bought the bathroom scale and… well, an electric blender. They were things they should have and no doubt would have bought sooner or later anyway, but Henry had acted as though her decision had driven them to the verge of total bankruptcy. The whole thing was almost too silly to take seriously. After all, Henry made more than enough money to live on – and, really, who needed a bank account anyway after less than a year of marriage? Seriously, who did, she fumed to herself, thinking with resentment of her husband's cautiousness.

"Why do you always have to be such a grouch?"

Kathy started at the sound of her own voice and, realizing that she had spoken her thoughts aloud, looked furtively around the waiting room, afraid that the receptionist or someone else might have overheard her voiced complaint. But the reception area was still deserted except for the busy blonde at the desk, who was working the switchboard and writing out messages, oblivious, it seemed, to Kathy's presence in the room. Her embarrassment quickly waned and was replaced by defiance again. What if someone had heard her, she angrily asked herself. Perhaps, somehow someone might have figured out who she was talking about and told Henry what she had said about him.

She hardly had the nerve to tell him anything and the fact that she always became so intimidated in his presence made her madder than ever, when she actually stopped to think about it in the light of their latest disagreement. All she ever said was, "Yes, darling," "No, darling," "I'm wrong again, darling," even when she knew perfectly well she was right – at least part of the time! Well, this time she was going to surprise him, really shock him, and be right for a change. As soon as she had a job, they would have so much more money that they would be able to afford a truly nice house as well as a healthy savings account… and maybe that would do something badly needed for their sadly disintegrating sex-life.

Kathy sat up straight in her chair and her hand flew to her cheek in horror that she had even thought such a thing. For a moment she wondered at her own audacity at daring to even mentally criticize her own beloved husband's judgment in matters which she knew so little about. After all, except for a few sessions of back-seat petting in college, she had been virtually innocent when she had married Henry and he was the one male in her life who had ever taken the time and trouble to be patient and teach her what bit she knew about physical love. At least he had in the beginning. But now that she was finally beginning to lose her fears, to relax and truly enjoy the sensation of her husband's hard penis pistoning in and out of her most secret place, instead of being frightened to death as she had been when they were first married, Henry seemed to be losing interest in her sexually.

There, she was thinking the same thing again, the pretty blonde realized with a sense of self-irritation, she had decided early in their marriage that it did her no good at all to question Henry's judgment in matters like this and yet… and yet, there was obviously something wrong. Her chocolate-brown eyes clouded over with regret as she remembered the nights, seemingly so long ago, when Henry would spend hours coaxing her to do things that seemed so terrible, like actually touching his hard, lustfully throbbing penis before he put it into her, and he had always been right. They never hurt her and Henry had always provided both of them with a strange extra enjoyment. That is, all except for the weird things that he could never convince her to do, things that she had heard about in school but did not really think normal people did. Lately, instead of talking about them, he became angry when she refused to let him perform those perverse acts with her, and angrier still, when she refused to do them to him. It was not as though she had not tried sometimes. God knows, she always wanted to keep him happy and in love with her, but she just couldn't force herself to go through with them, not and feel normal. Even now, in the business-like atmosphere of Mr. Alexander's waiting room, she felt herself quivering with revulsion at the memory of one night, not long ago, when Henry had tried to push her head down under the sheets and then the coldness with which he had treated her afterward, when she had tearfully refused to obey him. Why wasn't he more understanding, she sadly wondered. Why couldn't he realize that she had fears and doubts just like anybody else?

"Mrs. Cummings, Mr. Alexander will see you now."

"Th-thank you," Kathy muttered as she rose automatically, flustered by the sudden presence of the blonde receptionist a few feet in front of her chair. Though she knew it was silly, she could not help but be embarrassed by the idea that she had been mulling over such personal things, right there in the anteroom of Mr. Alexander's office. Suppose his receptionist had been able to tell what she had been thinking by the look on her face? It was ridiculous, she knew, and yet Kathy felt relieved as she stepped into her husband's boss' office and heard the door shut quietly behind her.

CHAPTER THREE

"How do you do, Mrs. Cummings," Maxwell Alexander greeted smoothly as he rose courteously from his chair and extended his hand to the desirable, fresh-faced young blonde, a wide charming grin on his face. "It's certainly a pleasant surprise to see – I mean, meet you this afternoon. Now tell me, please, what can I do for you?"

"Well, Mr. Alexander, it's a little complicated," Kathy admitted slowly and rather shyly as she glanced covertly at the ruggedly handsome, middle-aged man who had seated himself again after making certain that she was comfortable in her own chair. From Henry's occasional descriptions of his boss' appearance and temperament, she had expected Mr. Alexander to look like a little old wizened man and not at all the hearty, he-man-like individual seated before her. "You… you are Mr. Alexander, aren't you?"