Torn (17 page)

 

I would love to lick that sauce off your fingers…

 

I looked up and Ava was at my door.

“There is a gentleman named Caleb Martin here to see you.” She had a cheesy grin on her face. She
directed him in. I noticed that I could see him out my inner office window. He had been watching me eat
my lunch. Ava showed him and shut the door behind her.

“I was just thinking that either you had set up a video camera in my office or you are just that good.” I
laughed. “Sit down, want some of my lunch?” I asked.

 

“Nah, I would like to lick it off of you though.” Caleb said with a devilish grin and a wink.

I nervously laughed wiping my mouth and hands with my napkin. How was it that he could make me feel
so innocent? I looked him up and down, he was dressed in some business like black slacks and a white
button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his arms looked so tan and muscular. The top
button was undone to show just a little bit of his collar bone, which just drove me nuts.

“What are you doing here? I mean, I am happy to seeyou, but just thought that I would have to wait
until later to see you.” My voice sounded flustered.

“I was thinking about you all morning and I couldn’t wait until later.” He leaned in over my desk and
lightly kissed my forehead. “Don’t worry; I am not going to do anything inappropriate here. I did want to
let you know that later, after seeing you in this dress, I can’t promise that I am going to behave myself.
Ryleigh, you look absolutely gorgeous in it. You look gorgeous in nothing at all, though.”

“Caleb, you are making this hard not to think so many dirty thoughts right now.” I said in a whisper.
He got up from the chair and turned the blinds.

“Ryleigh, you are making it hard for me to behave myself in your office. How do you not have guys
jumping all over you all day long? I have been here for just a couple of minutes and all I want to do is
pull you up on to this desk.” He gently pulled me up from my chair to a stand. “Lay you down and kiss
every inch of your body.” He began to kiss my cheeks, jaw and my lips.

I moaned as he pushed his tongue into my mouth, welcoming the taste of him. His hands guided
themselves up and down my back. He gripped my ass and pulled me closer into him. I could feel he was
already hard against his slacks, like he was going rip them at the zipper.

We pushed my food carefully to the side to give us enough room to have me sit down. He reached up
my dress and grabbed my lacy underwear, guided themdown my legs and tossed them on the ground.
He leaned into me and began to fiercely kiss my lips.

“Caleb, I could get in trouble for doing this, but you have no idea how much I want this right now!” I
whispered in his ear.

 

“I can’t wait until later. I have to have you now!” He growled.

 

He quickly unbuckled his pants and I heard his zipper coming undone. He shoved down his pants and
leaned into me. I could feel him slide into me.

“Ryleigh, you are so wet and so tight. Let’s lift up your dress a little bit so we don’t get this pretty thing
dirty. I wanna see it on you later.” He scooted my dress up around my hips and began to thrust into me
harder. He knew that we had to be quick, I didn’t think I was going to last very long anyway with these
pushes into me.

I moaned into his shoulder, biting it harder so I wouldn’t be so loud. I couldn’t risk having Ava, or worse
a board member, walk in as I had one of the best orgasms of my life.

“Ryleigh, you feel so fucking good. I am so damn close and I want this to go on for the rest of the night,
even if it meant staying right here on your desk.” He pushed into me three more times into me, each of
them harder than the last. I could feel my nails dig into his back and I bit down hard on his shoulder.

He began to kiss me gently again. I could feel that my lips were swollen from rubbing them along his
shirt. He stood up and began to pull up his pants and straighten up his shirt. I quickly cleaned myself up
and smoothed out my dress. I slipped my underwear into my purse.

“You aren’t going to put those back on?” He asked with eyes starting to widen.

“Nope, it will give you something more to think about.” I said with a wink, walking to my door to open it
up. “Thank you so much Mr. Martin for considering our firm to handle your financial needs. We look
forward to handling your future accounts.” I shook his hand as I began to walk him to the elevators.
“Well you come highly recommended Mrs. Andrews. I think that my money and my business will be in
great hands.” He said with a cheeky smile. The elevator door closed behind him and I walked back
towards my office.

Ava had watched every second from the time I walked out of my office until now.

 

“Oh dear Lord, who in the world was that? I don’t see an appointment for him, was he a last minute
client?” She asked pulling up the calendar on her screen.

 

“Yeah, last minute. He is an old friend of mine and I…” Ava interrupted me.

“Ryleigh, your lip gloss was all over his shoulder.Do you want to tell me who that really was?” She
looked at me seriously. That smile she had most of the morning had now gone away. My face had
dropped as well.

“Come into my office.” I said walking in. “Close the door, I really don’t want this to get around. I need
you to promise me that you will not say anything. Shit really has hit the fan and I don’t want it to
become office gossip.”

“You can tell me anything. Ryleigh you may be my boss, but I really think of you as a friend and I don’t
want to lose either of those.” Ava said as she sat down.

 

“Look, I’m just going to tell you the shortened story. It was too much drama to sum up into a few
minutes. Liam has been cheating on me.” Ava interrupted again.

 

“What?! How?!” Her eyes about popped out of her sockets. She even slammed her hands on my desk.

“Ava, calm down. I haven’t exactly been the best person either. I have been seeing Caleb as well. He and
I never dated in high school, but he was my first love. We hooked up last week and things between us
are, well, I don’t know what they are. Either way, Liam and I are still trying to figure things out. It has
been just a shit weekend. That, my friend is drama in a nutshell.” I tried to search for a hint of what Ava
was thinking but she was just a blank canvas.

“Wow. I think that I have been speechless twice in my entire life and you just took spot number three!
Why are you trying to figure things out with Liam?” She looked very puzzled.

 

“I honestly think that we should give it a chance. Maybe figure out if this is what we really want.” I
began to bite my nails.

 

“Quit biting your nails. Do you really want to be with him? Liam that is, well for that matter, Caleb?”

 

“They both have their amazing qualities…”

 

“No, Ryleigh, what does your heart say? Not what your brain says.” Ava interrupted again.

“I don’t know.” I put my head in my hands.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry, I just am trying to help you figure this whole thing out. I know I only
heard the summarized story, but Ryleigh, this is a huge situation. The guy I was with when I had started
here, he was cheating on me. But that wasn’t the first time that I had caught him. This was the fourth!”
Ava began to tear up and I could just look her without saying a word, I was in shock. “Yeah, the first time
he said ‘I was his love of his life, I was everything and he didn’t mean to do it’, the next time it was
because of some mistake and his excuses became even lamer the third and fourth time. After that I was
so numb.”

I came around my desk and sat down in the chair beside her. I wrapped my arm around her as I could
see the tears were falling down her cheeks.

 

“Ava I am so sorry. I knew he was a jerk, but I had no idea about this.”

“It’s okay; I didn’t think that I would’ve wanted to talk about it. We finally ended and it was done. I am
not saying that you were right either. You are on my shit list too.” She laughed and grabbed a tissue
from my desk for the both of us. “The thing is, and this by no means justifies it, what it sounds like what
you did with Caleb doesn’t sound like just some cheap thrill or something that was meaningless. That is
what Liam did and that is why you have to know he did it just because he can, he could and he will more
than likely do again. What you did, it meant something he was your first love and things obviously never
ended. It was paused.”

Wow. Ava was right, it meant everything to me. Caleb was never really over, it just seemed like when he
came back into my life it just picked up where we had left off. Liam was picking random women and
having meaningless sex with them, or was it meaningless with any of them.

“Ava, thank you for listening. Again, please don’t say anything to anyone.” I hugged her.

“I’m not going to say anything, but when I did ask you on Friday; if you thought that he was cheating, did
you think about it before I said something or did I trigger something that made you look more into it?”
She inquired.

“I had a feeling something was up, but never did I think that he would do this. He actually gave himself
away when he sent a drunken text to me and it said that ‘she would never have to know’ and I am
assuming that ‘she’ was me. Or that he got arrested at a bar but told me that he had to run into work.
What hurt the most, though, was he was supposed to be enjoying the night with me. He was with a girl
and he and a guy got into a fight over her.” I was getting worked up at the memory of having to pick him
up from jail.

“You really did have a drama filled weekend. I am surprised that you’re here this morning.” Ava was
again having a shocked look on her face.

“Yeah you have no idea. I came in because he had togo to New York this week and I already took Friday
off. With him gone I will have time to clear my head.”
“Or get something, or someone else in your head.” Ava winked and elbowed me in a playful way. “So,
am I going to regret being around your desk or any other office furniture for the rest of the day?”

“Ava!” I slapped her arm. I didn’t want to tell her what just went on in here, but I know that she is not
dumb.

 

“You know, these walls are not completely soundproof and that window it is not that thick.” She said
seriously.

 

“Oh shit, do you think anyone else heard?” I could feel the blood leave my face.

 

“No, because they really are soundproof and I didn’t hear anything at all, I was just waiting for your
reaction and to see if you really did get freaky in here without actually telling me.” She laughed.

 

“Oh my god! I am so embarrassed right now!” My face regained the blood really fast and I could feel I
was ten shades of red in my face.

“Don’t be, if I had an office, Brantley and I would be all over it today. The man is awesome in the freaky
department and I don’t think that I’ll get enough of him.” Ava stood up and began to head towards the
door. “Ryleigh, you are a very smart woman. You have your shit together and you always seem to know
what to do. Don’t stay with Liam just because you are married, you shared some time together, you
have a past together. Stay with him because you know that he is going to truly change his ways. But that
means that you are going to have to stop with Caleb. If you decide to leave, you know you have the
support of friends, like me, and you will get through this. Do you think that Caleb loves you?”

“I’m sure he does. He has told me a few times. He wants to fight for me.” I smiled at the thought of
Caleb telling me how much he loved me.

“Then go for Caleb. Liam, he had his chance to fight for you and he let you go.” Ava headed out my door.
My head was not in my work for the rest of the afternoon. I just did a few reports for a couple of clients
that were small businesses, not really sure how they could afford our firm. I kept checking my clock on
my computer; I was so beyond ready to get out of the office. I could smell Caleb all over my office, not
that it was a bad thing, but it was a distraction. I really wanted to be with him.

My phone buzzed as I was trying to busy myself with some note taking for my appointments later in the
week.

 

I have landed. About to head to the hotel. Call or text me later. I love you.

After my conversation with Ava, I really didn’t feel like responding. I did need to ask him about
Courtney’s wedding though; did I really want to bring him to it? I wanted to bring Caleb more than
anything.

Love you too.

That was all that I could manage to text back. I set my phone down and looked at the clock. 4:57. I was
ready to get out of here, I shut down my computer and grabbed my things. Ava was also getting her
things together as I headed out of my office.

“You ready?” I asked. “This day has just dragged on and I am ready to get out of her.”

 

“You and me both! I’m so done with writing emails. This reminds me, your meeting is all set with Mr.
Rogers. He may be really nice, but he is annoying!” She rolled her eyes as she grabbed her sweater.

 

“Well, let’s get out of here and you can go release some of your day out on your new man.” I winked at
her as I pushed the button for the elevator.

 

“You have no idea! I’ve been dying all day and you get to have it right in your own office!” Ava joked as
she stepped into the elevator car.

I really needed to make sure that I watched what I was doing. I trusted Ava, but if someone else would
have known about what I did I could get in a lot of trouble. Or someone could find a way to tell Liam.
The rest of the elevator ride with Ava was silencebetween her and I. She was trying to text Brantley but
getting frustrated because of the lack of signal. Ikept going back and forth with myself on whether this
thing with Caleb was a good idea. I loved him dearly, but I was making my husband be this monogamous
guy and here I was sleeping with another person! I was going to drive myself insane.

I walked out of the building and started towards Caleb’s hotel room. My head was in the clouds just
thinking about our afternoon meeting. I had those butterflies in my stomach, I wasn’t sure that I was
nervous about seeing him, but just having the memories made it more of a warm and fuzzy feeling.
I walked in through the glass revolving doors of the hotel. I headed straight towards the bank of
elevators, when I was stopped by a lady at the front desk.