Arnica Butler - Well-Constructed Affairs Page 2

  She blinked, and snapped herself back to reality.

  “This woman is from the city,” Ken continued, his tone angry. “She's an attorney. You have really picked the wrong woman to whistle at -”

  Adria cleared her throat, joining the ruse. “Excuse me, Mr...”

  “Foreman,” Foreman snapped. Adria had to suppress a smile to keep from laughing. He was really getting into the part. He looked as genuinely pissed off as he would have if he actually had an attorney from the city in his office.

  “Mr. Foreman. I think it's crucial to note, here, that this is not a case of these men having whistled at the wrong woman, is it? It's inappropriate, particularly on a job site where the contractors are being paid in city funds, for any woman to be subjected to this sort of harassment. Whether she is an attorney or not.” Adria was also impressed by her own acting skills. It was rather fun acting bitchy.

  The four men lowered their eyes, but they still seemed fairly unimpressed.

  “Tell me what the hell you idiots said!” Ken screamed.

  He was really getting into his role now. Adria stifled a laugh.

  The man Adria had been checking out gave his hard hat a spin between his hands. He looked right at her. “Look, we're sorry, miss...”

  “Mrs.,” Adria snapped. For lack of planning, she used her maiden name: “Greenmore.” She was very close to losing her false composure at this point.

  She thought she saw a flicker of amusement at the corner of the guy's mouth. He was looking right at her, and she felt like something was transpiring between them. She could feel her chest getting cool, and something convulsed inside of her.

  She hadn't felt this feeling for a long time. Of course, when she met John, she had been attracted to him, and she had a few flutters in her stomach for the first few months they dated. But this was different. This was a feeling that had very little to do with anything but wanting to have a man grind up against her body while he filled her with his hot, hard -

  She stepped down hard on her daydream, and shook her hair, pressing her lips together and looking at the other three men to take her mind off the good-looking one. She shifted from one foot to the other, and she could feel that the guy – this total stranger – had gotten her worked up enough that her underwear were actually going to be damp.

  It was so...vulgar.

  “We're really sorry if we offended you,” the guy said. He looked minimally sorry. He looked like he knew exactly how he had made Adria feel, like he knew that she was throbbing between her legs and her underwear were soaking through.

  Adria couldn't understand why he was making her feel like this. He was a real jackass, this guy. She hated when some guy like this stirred up this kind of attraction in her. Every bone in her body told her he was the typical arrogant jerk who got by on his good looks alone with the women.

  It had been a problem lately.

  Feeling like this about guys like that.

  Adria was staring at him. Ken cleared his throat. It was her turn to speak, and she had completely forgotten what she was doing.

  She looked at Ken. “Sorry,” she began, remembering the act she was putting on, “does not quite cover it, I'm afraid, gentlemen.” She opened her mouth to say more, but Ken was boiling over again, as though he were really in a rage, and she lost control of herself. She let out a snort as she tried to stifle the laugh that built up inside of her.

  The men looked confused. Ken looked briefly disappointed. Adria held up a hand and gave him a loose hug. “I'm sorry, Ken. I just can't keep it up,” she said, laughing.

  She pulled her hard hat out of her bag and placed it on her head as both she and Ken tuned to the four men in the office. The three looked surprised, and the ringleader-type who had spoken looked disbelieving but amused.

  Ken put his hands on his hips. “We're just fuckin' with you,” he said. “This is Adria Querte. She's replacing Mike.”

  Adria cast her glance along the row of guys. Her reputation, she knew, preceded her, and she had very little to do to win these guys over: she was good at her job and she knew it, and so did almost everyone in the business. When linked to the fact that men found it surprising that a female manager on a construction site was usually better than any other, the fact that she was “hot” made word about Adria Querte spread quickly. She could see the signs of recognition on their faces already. “No hard feelings?” she said sweetly.

  Two of them shook their heads. The smartass smiled, and she felt a sliver of pleasure inside, thinking that he seemed impressed with the joke. It quickly faded to guilt, and she gently reminded herself – as she had been a lot lately – that she was married.

  “Great,” she said. “Let's get up there and you can fill me in on what's going wrong in Structural.”

  They looked at Ken. He shrugged. Adria did things her way, and it was one of the reasons she was so well-liked: she listened to what the dregs had to say.

  She turned, and she knew that when she did, everyone's eyes went for her ass. She realized that she hoped the blue eyes went there, and felt another stab of guilt. She held up her hand with her middle finger extended. “Ken don't say another word about his fucking dress.”

  “It's nice,” he said. Adria knew that behind her the five of them were probably exchanging looks. That the looks were lewd, that she should find them offensive. She told herself all the time that she was just taking the path of least resistance, drawing the line only where it was absolutely necessary, letting some things go because it paved the way for her.

  But the truth was different, and there was no lying to herself about that. Especially if one of those sets of eyes belonged to the steel-blue-eyed man with the stubble. And the hard, thick biceps...

  “I have meetings,” she said, and her voice was snappier than she meant for it to be. She was impatient with herself. She tried to soften it to a joking tone: “Let's get this show on the road.”

  3 DANGEROUS THOUGHTS

  Sometimes Adria felt a little guilty, like a betrayer of the sisterhood, that she was so good at handling men, and that she used her sexuality as a piece of the formula, and that she enjoyed it so much.

  Of course, she'd never tell John that. She'd never admit it to another living soul. The party line was that she had to work hard to be taken seriously in spite of being an attractive woman, and she didn't enjoy a minute of it.

  Just like she wouldn't admit to a soul that she found men like Billy Stone, which turned out to be the name of the arrogant, smiling bastard from the office, attractive. She wouldn't admit it half of the time even to herself.

  After all, she loved John. She really, really loved John. He was everything she wanted in a man. He was smarter than her, which wasn't easy for her to find. He was athletic and good-looking. He was responsible, sensible, not ruled by his emotions, kind, and he would make a great father. He was a sensitive lover and they had some pretty good times in bed. Not always great, but after five years of marriage and almost eight years together that was normal, right? He was everything she wanted.

  Most of the time.

  She didn't want some guy like Billy Stone in her life on any permanent basis. Some scruffy, scratchy, rough-skinned man with sandpaper hands and oil streaked across his face, and dirty sweat on him like a sheen on a wild horse, lifting her up and slamming her against a wall, pressing his heady skin against hers, his muscles hard beneath it like steel.

  William Stone, who went so obnoxiously by Billy, had taken her through the concrete fiascoes that had plagued the site and gotten Mike Sternum transferred off the job.

  Billy had gone from smartass to cool professional, and it was clear he was pretty smart. He had the alpha-male gait, with his crew tagging along behind him and deferring to his good judgment. Adria had kept her cool but she found herself unnerved by him.

  In the car she tried to direct her thoughts away from him, tune into the radio, but it was all in vain. He was under her skin. She found herself imagining scenarios between him and h
er, anyway, despite her attempts to submerge them.

  Her feet crunched on the sand and rubble of the concrete floors. It was late in the evening; things were winding down at the site. She had returned for something (she cringed at the cliche in her own fantasy, as she imagined herself bending over to pick up a blueprint.)

  “You're here awfully late.”

  She heard Billy's voice and it sent a chill through her. A delicious chill, a combination of fear and excitement. She froze, letting the cold-hot excitement slide through her, heating her thighs and her abdomen, turning her limbs to ice.

  She turned to face him. His shirt was off. His chest was solid and smooth, streaked with dirt, slightly damp with sweat. Defined muscles undulated over his upper body, their shape heating her in her core. But her eyes moved to his jeans, to the place between his legs where she knew – she hoped – his cock was getting hard.

  She pushed her hair from her face. “I...just had to get these...” she babbled. She made a move for the stairs, flushed with excitement but longing to be a virtuous wife. Billy moved to lean against the wall at the top of the flight, blocking her. She was close to him now, and she told him she had to go in a low, breathless whisper. She had to go, but her body was attracted to his like a magnet and he must know that she only half-meant it.

  Billy Stone just shook his head, his steely eyes locked on hers. “Not yet,” he told her.

  His hand was already moving along her ribcage, slowly and delicately, up and up until he passed his fingers over the outer swell of her breast. Then in ward, over her nipple, up to her collarbone, along the ridge of it. His fingers were rough at the tips, and they sent a delicious shiver through her.

  And then, with his eyes on hers, he placed his hand over her mouth. Not violently, but with just enough force to communicate to her that he was going to get what he wanted. “Don't make a sound,” he said, and he pressed his hand against her lips as roughly pulled her skirt up, yanked her underwear down, and with his one, large, muscled arm, placed his hand and his rough fingers on her ass and lifted her.

  Then, before she had any time to stop him or escape, he was inside of her. His cock filled her, stretching her so completely that she had to bite into the flesh of his palm for the first few thrusts. He pressed his body against her, releasing her mouth: she didn't cry out because it was too late to stop the inevitable, and the only sound she could make was a gasp of pleasure each time he plunged deep inside of her. His sweat soaked through her blouse, her back scraped against the cold concrete, and she could hear the sounds of his thighs slapping against her skin as he ground deeper and harder into her.

  Adria felt a pang of guilt as she exited the freeway and stopped at the light. An old woman in the lane next to her looked at her, and it seemed that she could read Adria's dirty thoughts. She frowned. Adria turned the air conditioning up higher.

  She needed to get control of herself.

  She could feel that her fantasy had made her so excited that her underwear were damp.

  Try as she might, she couldn't shake the ideas from her head. She made it as far as a block down Centennial Drive, before her mind began wandering again to the hard body of Billy Stone, his smug face, his rough hands, his big, filling cock, and the way he would push her up against a wall and take what he wanted...

  There were darker thoughts in this haze of lurid fantasy, too. Sometimes Billy Stone would slide his rough hand up her shirt, under the fabric, over her breasts, until his palm reached her throat, and as she closed her eyes and her body stiffened with the rush of an oncoming orgasm, his fingers would close slowly around her throat...

  Or even darker:

  Billy would push her to the ground, so that she was on her knees, her bare skin cold and scraping against the cement floor. Maybe he didn't even need to press on her shoulders; his gaze alone would send her to her knees. He would lift her chin with his fingertips, and make her look into his eyes, submitting fully, as he unthreaded his belt and wrapped it around her neck. As he threaded it through the buckles and pulled until it squeezed her: not too much, just enough to let her know who the boss was, who had control. And then, with a gentle tug forward, he would guide her open, hungry mouth toward his cock, and tell her to suck him...

  Adria pulled into the driveway. Her pussy was actually throbbing. She had really wound herself up. She looked at the garage door as it opened.

  Inside, she knew John was there. He'd be open to having sex, if he was a little surprised.

  And it would be good.

  It was always good. John was a considerate lover. He was generous, not bad at working her to a climax with his tongue, and he was a decently-endowed man. They had tender, intimate lovemaking and occasionally, after too much wine, something a little more carnal.

  She wiped her hair away from her face impatiently. It was good.

  But one thing John couldn't do, and she knew this, was fuck her the way she imagined Billy Stone would. Slamming her up against a wall, maybe giving her a good spanking, choking her as he slammed his cock deep inside of her.

  She sighed. What the hell did she want that sort of thing for, anyway?

  Just thinking about it, though, had made her even wetter. She could feel it slipping against her thighs as she entered the house.

  “Jesus,” she whispered to herself.

  4 THINKING OF ANOTHER

  “You're home late,” John said, opening the fridge to retrieve Adria a cold beer.

  When he had met her, she had been a wine kind of girl. But years of trying to fit in with the guys at construction sites, he supposed, had gotten to her and now she preferred a nice beer. Still in the bottle. And usually something cheap.

  His wife seemed to shiver. “Am I?”

  John indulged for a moment in his own perverse fantasy. Maybe Adria had gone out with the guys. They all liked her, after all. He could see her letting her hair down at the bar, having a few beers, getting a little tipsy, while her crew circled her like wild dogs, each vying for the chance to get at her. He could picture her thumb twisting her wedding ring over her finger. Or maybe it was one of those days she removed it because she was doing something with electrical. Maybe she “forgot” to put it back on, sending out a signal to the whole gang...

  John sat down next to her on a barstool. She took a big swig of her beer.

  Adria also wasn't the type to come home and complain about work. She indulged in a little bit of bitching, but, maybe because it was a job with so many men around, she didn't have a lot of stories about the power struggles that took place in the typical office setting (he-said, she-said, email angst). She admitted this herself: guys seemed to have a big fight about something on the job site (sometimes an actual fight) and then get over it.

  She surprised him by setting her half-finished beer down with a thud, and turning to him in what seemed to be a very...sexual way. His cock responded immediately, but he wanted to be sure he was reading her right. There was nothing like getting excited, moving in, and then getting shot down.

  “So,” she said. “How was your day?”

  John blinked. Her voice definitely sounded inviting.

  She put her hands on his knees, and he looked down at her slender fingers in bewilderment. She was moving her thumb slowly along his inner thigh, sliding it closer to his cock with each stroke. He felt his cock pulse as her fingers curled inward and raked through his jeans just above where his hard dick was pressing against the fabric. “I, uh..normal, I guess.” He gave her a smile.

  She edged toward the end of her stool, and the sight of her squirming at to the edge of the chair made him even more excited. Her skirt slid up her thighs a little as she did, slowly exposing a few more inches of her pretty legs.

  Then she slid completely off the stool, and moved close to him, squeezing herself in between his legs. She put her hands on his shoulders, drawing her own face in to his. John was still a little stunned by how forward she was being: it wasn't really like Adria at all. He stared, pulse racing and
cock throbbing, a nanosecond behind his own wife in getting his own body moving.

  Her mouth came close to him, and she brushed her lips tantalizingly close to his. He recovered from his shock, and moved his hands down to her thighs. He tugged at the material of her skirt and bunched it in his hands to get at the smooth flesh of her upper lg as he did.

  Adria squeezed his shoulder, sort of hard, and looked down at his pants. She seemed impatient as she took his belt off and released his cock. She grabbed his hands, which he had been gently stroking her thighs with, and placed them on her ass, slapping them to her buttocks firmly. Then she hopped up onto his lap, giving him no choice but to lift her. She pressed her mouth against his, hard and demanding.

  He moved his fingers between her legs, and began to stroke her through the fabric of her underwear, trying to tease her a little before plunging his fingers into her. He was surprised to find that she was already very wet. Unusually wet. She grasped his hand by the wrist with an uncharacteristic impatience, and shoved his fingers beneath the fabric of her panties. He was immediately engulfed to the knuckles by her juices and her hot flesh. She ground her body against him, and he was hesitant but there seemed to be no choice except to let his fingers sink inside of her.

  She threw her head back, with her eyes closed. Her pretty white teeth nibbled at her shapely lower lip.

  He leaned in to her chest, and breathed in the scent of her white blouse. He nuzzled her, trying to get the fabric away from her skin.

  She sighed again, and it was the same impatient-sounding sigh. Then she ripped at her blouse, and popped a button as she tore it open. At the same time, she seemed to lose patience with the slow strokes he was using to pleasure her below. She leaned backward on the end of his knees, almost toppling them both, and grasped her panties. She pulled them to the side of her gash. John saw a brief and beautiful flash of her neatly trimmed bush, with her soft, white-blonde hair, slicked down by her mounting excitement. Then she pulled on his shoulder and sheathed his cock with a violent thrust of her own body.