Unzipped? (9 page)

S
UAVE
S
CHOOL
started bright and early the next morning as Hal yawned his way into the gym. He spied Shannon easily by just following the gazes of every other man in the place. They were all trained on her body, while she, oblivious wearing a set of headphones, worked out like a madwoman on an elliptical machine.

Hal checked his watch and wondered how long she’d been at it. She was damp with sweat and her face shone pink under the lighting. Though the woman would still look edible if she’d been rolled through tar, her eyes looked puffy, as if she hadn’t slept.

That made two of them. Hal folded his arms and gazed at all the other men checking out Shannon. An older guy with a pinky ring and a gold chain around his neck couldn’t take his eyes off her breasts. An overtanned creep who looked like a refugee from
Baywatch
was absorbed in her rear end. A stocky college kid with a buzz cut appeared dazzled by the entire package. And yet another man lost his footing on a stair-climber and almost fell off while checking out her legs.

None of them had given her an orgasm over the phone. He allowed himself a small, private grin and made his way over to her, trying to straighten his posture and suck in his stomach as she’d instructed.

Hey…hey, behold the stud!
He caught sight of himself in the athletic club’s wall of mirrors. While his skin was still fish-belly white, he didn’t look half bad. He even got a couple of glances from women as he crossed the room.

Shannon saw him, waved and then frowned.

What?
Did he have a coffee stain on his shirt? Hal looked down. Nope.

“Cool,” she said as he approached, “does not mean walking like a rapper.”

“Huh?”

She pulled off her headphones but didn’t slow down. “You’re doing something screwy with your head and you’re bouncing in the knees when you walk.”

“Well, good morning to you, too. All I’m doing,” Hal retorted, “is keeping my shoulders back and sucking in my stomach, like you said.”

“Well, that part is good. Just leave your knees out of it and don’t swing your arms. And don’t do that thing with your neck—you look like a bobble-head.”

“Bobble-head,” Hal repeated, with growing wrath. “You didn’t seem to think I was a bobble-head
last night.
” His chest swelled and he looked down at her from his superior height.

“Perfect,” said Shannon. “Oh, very good! It’s that kind of…casual arrogance…that we’re looking
for. But no grimacing. It’s got to be a
friendly
casual arrogance.”

Hal stared at her. “You are the devil.”

“No. But you can think of me as an overgrown satanic elf, if you’d like. Now, hop onto this thing,” she commanded, getting off the elliptical machine. “We’ll start you out with some cardio.” In the absence of the personal trainer, she was in charge.

Thirty minutes later she’d worked him into a soggy pulp. “Have you ever,” he gasped, “heard of starting at the beginning? With reasonable, manageable goals?”

“No time for that crap,” Shannon said cheerfully. “We gotta make a he-man out of you in just a couple of weeks.” So saying, she slapped him on the ass.

Hal froze.

“C’mon,” she called, walking toward the weight room.

He sprang at her, furious, and caught up. He snaked an arm around her shoulders and honked a hooter.

Outraged, she turned on him. “What in the
hell
do you think you’re—”

“Do not. Ever. Slap my ass. In public. Again.”

She opened and closed her mouth.

“Understood?” Every man in the entire gym stared at them, expecting her to level him.

“Message received, loud and clear,” she said. And then she added, “Sorry.”

Hal relented. “But you can slap my ass in private, if you want.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I might even demand it, since after all, you’re my sex slave for the next couple of months.” He grinned. “Remember?”

She snapped her fingers in mock sorrow. “Damn. And I left my rubber dress and cat-o’-nine-tails in L.A.”

Hal lifted a brow, intrigued. “We could always order a replacement dress, you know.”

“Is that right.” She directed him to the lateral pull-down machine and started stacking it with weights. “Sit.”

“I thought the master gave the orders.”

“Not in the gym. Now let’s get to work.”

H
AL LAY
in a tanning booth in Betsy’s ’Burban Beach and tried to ignore the annoying buzz of the thing. His eyes were covered with weird little goggles and he had placed nasty whitening strips on his teeth which oozed evil gel. They thoroughly disgusted him and made his chompers sensitive to hot and cold.

He ached all over from Shannon’s workout, which had tortured muscles he hadn’t even known he’d had.

In short, this whole process of becoming a stud was totally emasculating, and the irony of that was not lost on him. He felt like a lab rat.

Worse, he was a lab rat wearing a tube sock and nothing else.

He wasn’t stupid: he’d heard all sorts of horror stories about people who got sensitive parts of them fried in tanning beds.

In fact, he could swear that his buns were smoking right now. And he was going to have to come up with a good story for people at work. How would he explain his metamorphosis from glow-in-the-dark pale to savagely tan?

The more he thought about it, the more ridiculous this seemed. Even Hal had heard of bronzing cream. Couldn’t Shannon just smear some of that crap on his face?

Hal shifted, adjusted the tube sock and began to sweat. He did not feel like a stud. Even Mr. Universe couldn’t feel like a stud under these circumstances. He’d had it.

He pushed up the lid of the lighted coffin and sat up. The stupid little goggles fell to the floor. He let the tube sock drop to the floor, too, and pulled the disgusting whitening strips out of his mouth. He tossed them into the trash.

Then he spoke directly to man’s best friend and life partner. “I’m glad you’re not toasted, there, buddy. Sorry I had to sock it to you…yeah, I know that was bad.”

He stood up and shut the lid of the human roaster. He stuffed himself into his new clothes and took a swipe at his hair, which now fell in an ingenious wind-blown mess without him doing anything to it at all.

And then he marched out to the reception area and the teenage Paris Hilton lookalike who’d sold him the tanning package. “I want a refund,” said Hal. “I am not doing this.”

In a few minutes he opened the door to the cool April air and smelled freedom from feminine tyranny! One step. Two steps. He was almost outside when the Paris clone called, “Sir?”

Hal turned, raising an eyebrow.

“Sir, do you want your…tube sock?” She was holding it by a thread and trying to keep a straight face.

It was a perfectly good sock. One that Shannon hadn’t swiped and thrown away. He saw no reason to waste it. “Thank you,” Hal said with great dignity. He took it and left.

“W
E ARE NOW
in stage two of training,” said Shannon, circling Hal and evaluating every inch of him. She had invaded his office.

“Uh-huh,” said Hal, who was hunched over his computer.

“Stage two means further development of stage one, but new work to do on posture—” she poked him in the spine “—conversation/social skills and media training.”

Hal ignored the poke and kept searching employee Internet logs.

Shannon poked him again.

“Didn’t I fire you?” he muttered.

“You thought better of it. Now, straighten up, Mr. Underwood.” She moved to the other side of his desk and sat in the visitor’s chair.

“Were you schooled by the Gestapo?”

“Quit whining.”

To her satisfaction, Hal gave up and pushed back from his computer. “You’re early. By my watch, I still had seven minutes of freedom.”

She grinned sadistically at him. “I just couldn’t
wait
to see you.”

“Mmm. Well, here’s what I’m thinking. As my sex slave, you should now get down on your knees and bark like a dog.” Hal shot her an evil grin.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “And here’s what I’m thinking.
Not a chance in hell.
”

“Insubordination from the slave leads to all kinds of dire consequences,” Hal murmured thoughtfully. A wolfish expression spread across his face.

“I could quit, you know.”

He rubbed at his chin. “It’d save me from having to fire you again. But you’d have to remain my sex slave. You gave me your word that if I pulled you out of the Dumpster, I could have my way with you for two months.”

She raised her chin. “I was…under duress.”

“Oh, here come the excuses.”

“I could probably even sue you for sexual harassment.”

“Oh, yeah? Who brought up the whole sex slave thing to begin with? And how many witnesses saw
you
slap
my
ass at the gym? I think you’d better think that one over before you act on it.” Hal lounged back in his chair.

“I was kidding. I wouldn’t sue you.”

“Oh? Why not?”

Shannon found herself admiring the rangy lines of his body and the raw intelligence of his face. His eyes held a mocking twinkle to which she couldn’t help but respond. “Because…I like you, Underwood.”

“You like to bully me.”

“No. Well, yes.” She grinned. “But I do really like you. You’re a good guy.”

Hal leaned forward. “Oh, yeah? So what am I good at?”

Her cheeks warmed. She gestured toward Hal’s server room and the whole floor. “Technology and programming, obviously.”

He stood up and moved around the desk, his hands shoved into his pockets as usual. “And?”

Her heartbeat quickened. “And…business. You’re about to go public, after all.” She tugged on his wrists. “Get your hands out of your pockets.”

“What else am I good at, Shannon? Hmm?” He leaned over her and shot her a bona fide stud grin.

Wow, he sure learns fast….

He allowed her to pull his hands out of his pockets, but he caught one of hers. A flash of heat went through her body as he guided
her
hand toward his pocket, inserted it, and moved it inward toward the hard ridge that had appeared under his fly.

Her breath caught.

He put his thumb in the center of her bottom lip and rubbed it gently back and forth, looking down at her with an enigmatic expression. She caught it in her teeth and bit it lightly. Smoothed her tongue over the
tiny ridges and whorls in the skin. Watched him catch his own lower lip between his teeth, and his pupils dilate.

Hal took his thumb back and then brushed his knuckles across one of her nipples. It was as if he’d pushed her On button—fire shot from the sensitive tip to her belly and between her legs.

She moved her head closer to his groin, her breath hot and teasing at his denim-covered erection. It swelled, straining to meet her lips.

Shannon removed her hand from his pocket and grabbed his hips, pulling them toward her. She placed her mouth directly over the top of his zipper and used her teeth to tug it down…one inch, then another and another.

She used her tongue to edge the fabric of his boxers back until she found just a tiny bit of flesh.

His breathing went ragged as she slowly licked it. She pulled her mouth away, looked up and smiled with the power of it—even though she knew what would happen next.

Just like any other man, Hal would grab the back of her head and pull forward, trying to grind her mouth against his penis.

He groaned, his eyes closed, and defied all her expectations. Hal simply ran a tender finger along her jaw. He caressed her lips again. He smoothed her hair.

She blinked with the shock of it. And then she said “thank you” in the only way she knew how. She placed her mouth on him again and eased more fab
ric aside. She kissed his exposed flesh. Moved her hands up to undo the button over his zipper. And took him, heavy and thick and muscular, out of his pants.

Hal gave an intense groan and groped behind him for the edge of his desk as she took just the tip into her mouth. She moved with him. She didn’t particularly care for this, but she wanted to bring him pleasure.

He didn’t try to ram himself into her mouth. He simply waited to see what she would do and expressed his appreciation for the gift.

She took her mouth away and caressed the shaft of him. How far was she willing to go?

Shannon bent her head as someone pounded on the door.

They both froze.

“Hey, Halibut! I got a—”

“No,”
thundered Hal. “Open that door, Ryan, and you are a
dead man.
”

N
OW
WHAT DID THEY DO
? Hal quickly shoved his pal back into his pants and zipped up, though it was difficult under the circumstances.

Shannon, far from being shocked or mortified, just sat in his visitor’s chair and laughed.

But even though they were decent at this point, how did he explain the urgency with which he’d forbidden Ryan to open the door?

“Do you want to get under the desk?” he asked Shannon.

“No. That just makes it look worse.”

“True.”

“Hal,” called Ryan’s voice. “I don’t want to know what you’re doing in there, but maybe the lack of a girlfriend is getting to you, bud.”

“Cabela, this is not what you think. Now go away!”

His blond torturess was holding her sides.

“I can’t believe he thinks I’m whacking off in my office!” Hal hissed at her.

“Well, it does look bad…”

“You might want to stop laughing for a minute and
realize that I’m trying to be a gentleman and save your reputation at the expense of my own, you ingrate!”

This set off another wave of laughter. “My
reputation?
What is this,
Gone with the Wind?
”

He stared at her, outraged, while she twisted her hair into a knot and secured it with an Underwood Technologies pen from his desk.

“Hal, honey. It’s past the millennium and frankly, like Rhett, I don’t give a damn.” She headed toward the door and then cast a regretful glance over her shoulder at his still-raging erection. “Good luck with that.”

She twisted the knob, pulled and Ryan fell into the room. Shannon prodded him with her toe. “What have we here?”

“That would be a specimen of Attorneyus Nosyus, a subset of the Lowlifeus variety,” Hal said in scathing tones, fixing his counsel with a hard stare.

Ryan grinned weakly. Then, still on his knees, he gazed up at Shannon, slack-jawed. “Hot damn,” he said. “What…so what do you charge?”

“Goddamn it, Cabela! She’s not a—”

“
Much
more than you can afford,” Shannon told him, and made her exit.

“T
HEN WHAT IN THE HELL
is she doing with
you?
” Ryan had asked, before fleeing from Hal’s office.

It was a really good question. Hal dug his fists into his tired eyes and thought about it. The goddess had gone down on her knees in front of him. She’d unzipped him, taken his penis out and—

Boing!
It awoke with a vengeance.

“Stop that,” Hal growled at the offending member. He grabbed two heavy software manuals off the bookshelf behind his desk and dropped them into his lap.

Now, where was he? Oh, yes. Shannon had been prepared to do something for him that probably wouldn’t have given
her
much pleasure.
Why?

He could understand the benefits to her of comfort sex or even just scratching an itch. But to put it crudely, goddesses didn’t need to give head. By virtue of their looks alone, they were pretty much exempt from it, like a charity was exempt from federal taxes.

He was more than a little mystified. Hal picked up another company pen and spun it between his fingers, remembering how she’d shoved the other pen into that wild, untamable, sexy hair of hers.

Maybe she likes it.

Oh, get real.
His sister Peggy’s voice popped into his brain. They’d once had a discussion about men, women and sex. Peg had told him a few home truths. “No woman likes it. How would you like having something the size of a cucumber shoved down your throat?”

Hal winced. When he’d asked about those sexy moans a past girlfriend had made, and her assurances that she didn’t mind, Peggy had snorted. She shot him a pitying glance. “God, you men really do live in fantasyland, don’t you?”

So why…why had Shannon done it? Or started to?

Well, duh. The whole thing had just been designed as a tease, that’s all. She would have gotten him all hot and bothered and then not followed through.

Hal forced himself to turn back to the Internet logs. Information leak? He had a leak in his brain. His gray matter was running out of the shell like raw egg white while he obsessed about sex with his image consultant. He couldn’t operate a successful business like this. It was time to get back to work.

Ryan’s sneakiness bothered him. There was a time when he’d have chalked it up to a boyish prank: a desire by Cabela to bust his balls later.

But under the circumstances, it raised the hairs on the back of Hal’s neck.

“Hey, handsome…” Tina, his receptionist, poked her head in, her hand full of message slips.

Hal almost looked over his shoulder before he realized that she was talking to
him.
“Hi, Tina. Ha-ha.”

“No joke! You are looking amazing these days. By the way, you forgot to pick up your messages when you came in.” She undulated into his office in one of her small skirts and handed him the stack. Hal noticed that her bare legs were very tanned. Had she been to an electric beach, too?

“You can just put people through to my voice mail,” he told her. “Really. You don’t have to take messages.”

“Oh, I don’t mind.” She smiled.

He opened his mouth to tell her that it wasn’t a question of whether she minded—it was all about the
most efficient use of her time—but he decided he’d just sound like a jerk. “How’s the layout for the annual report going?”

“Good, good. Well, back to work with me!” Tina turned and left his office, wiggling in all the right places. He was human; he noticed. But the white streak on the back of her calf told him that she hadn’t been to an electric beach: she was using a self-tanning product.

The world was a strange place: white people trying to turn themselves dark. Dark-skinned people trying to lighten theirs. It was all very silly. He thought of Shannon’s Dr. Seuss wall calendar and the star-bellied sneeches.

The sneeches hopped in and out of a machine that put stars on their bellies when stars were in fashion, and removed them again when they were not. Shannon was trying to turn him into a star-bellied sneech. He preferred to be a sneech without.

“You’re losing your mind, Underwood,” he muttered to himself. And his affliction was directly traceable to Shannon Shane.

“I’
M A REPORTER
,” Shannon said to Hal the next day.

“No, you’re the devil.”

They sat in the conference room of Underwood Technologies after chasing out Ryan and some members of his legal staff. Cabela, the little worm, had tried to mumble an apology to her. She’d raised a brow and patted him on the shoulder. “Wishful thinking,” she’d said. “I understand.”

It had been a masterful act of degradation, if she did say so herself. She was good in the role of bitch-goddess…if only she didn’t feel so insecure and screwed up inside. She’d spent the night tossing and turning while various strangers jumped out of crowds in her dreams and claimed to be her parents. Gomer Pyle had announced he was her father, while Morticia Addams declared she’d breast-fed Shannon as a baby.

Now she sighed and tapped her legal pad with a number two pencil. “I am not the devil. We’ve had this conversation. Now, once again—I’m a reporter. Let’s say I’m doing a feature on you and your company for the local TV station, okay?”

“Yup. I tell you that I have no time to talk with you and you can find out all you need to know on the Internet.” He seemed to have said it just to annoy her.

“No.”
She stabbed toward him with the pencil. “First, you are all about my comfort, if the reporter is at your office. Would I like a seat? Would I like something to drink? How can you accommodate me?”

“Seems a little obsequious,” Hal said.

“It’s
polite.
And that’s another thing. For a general television audience, you want to avoid five-dollar words like ‘obsequious.’ Nobody will know what it means. Say ‘brownnosing’ instead.” She rubbed at her temple and then shook her head. “Actually, just say as little as possible, but be friendly and open.”

“You’d pay five bucks? Just for ‘obseq—’”

“Hal! Stop being a smart-ass. We have a limited amount of time here. And—” she frowned at him “—why aren’t you starting to show some color?”

“Uh—”

“You’re not going to the tanning place, are you?”

He shook his head.

“Damn it, Hal! We don’t have much time! Your first interview is when? Next Thursday? That is less than a week away.”

“I want to use a bronzer instead,” he told her. “If it’s absolutely necessary. I hate lying in that coffin thing, and the little tartlet in charge made fun of my sock.”

She knit her brow. “Your sock?”

“The tube sock.”

Shannon put a hand over her mouth and stared at him. “You didn’t really…oh, Hal! I was kidding about that!”

“A guy can never be too careful.”

She laughed until her ribs hurt. Hal really was borderline hopeless, even if he was starting to become very good-looking. Finally, when she caught her breath, she said, “Show me your teeth.”

“I’m not using those whitening strips, either. Those things ooze gooey gel, they’re disgusting and they make me drool. I hate them.”

“I make you drool, too, but you don’t hate me, right?”

“You want the truth or a nice lie?”

“Ouch. Well, since I’m teaching you how to churn
out those nice lies, then lay one on me, baby.” She braced herself.

He stared at her, his blue eyes intense under the knit eyebrows. His arms were folded across his chest.

“Body language is important, Hal,” she said. “Your position right now is defensive, guarded and—”

“I only hate you about twenty hours out of the twenty-four,” he said in a considering tone. “I don’t hate you at all when we’re acting on our, uh, animal magnetism. I do hate you when—”

“—hostile.”

“—you poke me, prod me, lecture me and in general look me in the teeth.”

“But that’s my job!” she almost wailed. Then she recovered. “And you’re supposed to be telling me nice lies! What you’re telling me is the naked, ugly truth.”

He seemed to take pity on her. “I don’t really hate you twenty hours out of the day. Probably only about eight or nine. Is that more acceptable?”

“Definitely.” She went back to being flip again. But she didn’t want Hal to hate her at all. She wanted him to like her…a lot. “I can handle being hated during business hours. And let me remind you that you are paying me to look you in the teeth. Remember?”

“Yeah. That is a bummer. And very warped, too, paying thousands of dollars for a beautiful woman to insult me, manhandle me, steal my clothes, flog me into exercising and try to dye various parts of my body.”

“I’m not that bad…”

“You are very, very bad,” Hal said softly. His eyes
darkened and gleamed. “You are my dream bad girl.” He slapped his hands on the table. “It’s dangerous, in fact, for me to be around large flat surfaces when you’re near. I want to pull you onto them, naked, and take you for a spin.”

“Do you ever think about anything besides sex?”

“Yes. But it’s regrettable.”

“Do you ever think about
me
in any other context?”

He nodded. “A lot.”

“I mean as more than a taskmaster and a tormentor.”

He grinned. “I know what you meant. And the answer is, again, yes. I still wonder what it was that had you so upset the day we met. I wonder whether you sleep on your stomach or side or back. I debate whether or not you wear funny socks under those CFM boots of yours.”

Her insides started to melt into a marshmallowy goo.
Stop that! Where’s your starch? Where’s your Greenwich grit?

But Hal continued, making it difficult for her to breathe. “I want to know what toothpaste you use, and whether or not you like Rocky Road ice cream…and when the hell you’re going to take your car in to be cleaned and sterilized by a professional. I think about that day I first saw you—a wild, wet woman in leather driving in the rain with the top of her convertible down. At the time, I thought you were just crazy. Now, I think it had something to do with your upsetting news. Did it?”

She picked at her cuticles, then nodded.

“You’re helping me out, Shan. Why don’t we see if I can help you?”

She straightened her spine and rubbed at her neck. “This isn’t something you can help with.”

“I’ll bet you’re wrong,” said Hal. “Why don’t you try me?”