Chapter 13
GLORIOUS OBLIVION
Donna Dee's office was located on one of the upper floors of the Bond Building in New York City. After a night and half-a-day of deliberation spent alone in a Hoboken hotel room, Jeff Harlow had decided that Donna was his best bet.
Of course, several times during the night, Jeff had been sorely tempted to forget the decision he'd made about not seeing Freda again; to go to her apartment and lose his problems in the warmth of her pleasure-built body. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. It wouldn't be fair to go back to her now that he had no job; now that the problem of Val Salem looked bigger than ever and he was so deeply concerned about when and how he might contact Janice.
A girl with short dark hair, big brown eyes and a round girlish-looking face sat at the desk in the reception room in Donna Dee's agency, when he came in about three-thirty. She looked up at him and smiled pleasantly.
"Good afternoon."
He gave her his name and said he'd like to see "Miss Dee".
The girl's face registered sudden interest as if his name wasn't altogether foreign to her. She kept looking up at him from behind the paper-strewn desk as she opened the key on the inter-com and announced into the box that he was there.
Almost at once a door marked "Private" to the right of the desk swung open and Donna Dee came out. She looked a lot more business-like than she had last night. Her auburn hair was piled high on her head in an upsweep and she wore a white blouse and a mustard-clored suit; the jacket of which judiciously concealed the fullness of her breasts-so that there would be less risk of mixing pleasure with business.
She came forward, quickly, and took his arm and hugged against it, as she looked up at him, sort of misty-eyed. "Jeff!"
He grinned at her. "Rained a lot sooner than the weatherman predicted."
"Come into my office," she said enthusiastically as she squashed one of her large breasts against his bicep. "I got an umbrella big enough for both of us."
They started toward the office.
Donna hesitated a moment on the threshold to give the dark-haired receptionist a final instruction. "I don't want to be disturbed, Bunny. Not by anyone, you understand?"
"You have a couple of appointments," Bunny reminded her.
"Cancel them. I don't want to see anybody."
Bunny nodded without question. But she watched as the door closed on Donna and her male visitor. She had a strange expression on her face as if this was something she'd never seen happen before. She deliberated for several seconds, then she turned to the switchboard and quickly dialed a number.
Once inside the office, Donna quickly locked the door behind them.
Jeff frowned. "What's that for?"
She smiled. "This is the first time I've ever been alone with you. I mean REALLY alone. And nobody-I mean NOBODY-is going to disturb us." She walked to a well-stocked, portable bar at the far side of the office. "Drink?"
"Scotch."
"Soda?"
"Just enough to make it fizz."
"See-I didn't even know that much about you," she said as she poured about three fingers of amber fluid into a couple of thin glasses and topped them with ice and soda.
Jeff took that moment to glance around the office. Except for the delicate scent of perfume, it didn't look very feminine. Jeff sat in one of the huge leather chairs and waited until she came forward and handed him one of the two glasses, before he told her, "I was canned last night."
She didn't seem terribly surprised as she touched his glass with her own. "I told you that you rated some place better than over there."
"But it means I'm unemployed."
She took a sip of the contents of her glass.
"Got something for me?" he asked point-blank as he half-emptied his glass with one swallow.
She turned and walked slowly to the desk. Her mustard colored skirt fit tight across the hips and derriere. She was well-endowed with both as well as possessing a pair of very neat gams. She lifted her rounded behind up onto the edge of the desk and sat with her skirt hiked up just far enough to rate a long look.
She took another swallow of her drink then met his gaze, unblinkingly. "Jeff honey, how's about you and me having a man-to-man talk?"
"I'm listening."
"You know how long I've wanted to add the name of Jeff Harlow to my list of clients? For more than ten years. If there was a place in this city where I could book you, I'd be on the phone, right now, calling."
"I'll bet you're trying to tell me something?"
She nodded her auburn-thatched head. "I'm trying to tell you that if you don't work for Val Salem you're going to get mighty hungry in this town-and surrounding areas. I told you last night the guy's a wheel. He's got influence."
"So he rolled the black ball under your door, too?"
"And if I ignored it-he could put me out of business tomorrow. Me and anybody else who tries to buck him"
"So?""
"So-why don't you go to work for him?"
"Because he's a bastard," Jeff said disgustedly, as he finished his drink.
She got down from the desk and hurried forward. She took his glass and carried it to the bar for a refill. "The world's full of bastards. Especially in the entertainment business. But he's one bastard who pays top price. And I haven't heard yet that his money's any different from anybody else's."
She refilled her own glass at the same time she filled his and came back to where he was sitting. She handed him his drink.
"It has a lot of advantages," she tried to make him understand. "Right now you're a guy who's been away from the races for eight years. Nobody knows you-especially here in the east. But you take a job with him and you'll be showcased right in the heart of Manhattan. You'll be back on top in no time and that's where you've got to be to cross swords with Val Salem. Besides-"
He watched as she took a liberal swallow of her scotch then returned to the desk and sat on the edge of it, showing him a lot more thigh than she did before.
"-if you still got a yen for that wife of his," she continued, "you'll practically be sitting right in her lap every night."
Jeff didn't want to do a lot of explaining about why that would be the worst possible thing in the world he could do, not only for himself but for Janice, too. So he simply finished his drink and said, "I'll think about it." Then he stood up and looked at his empty glass. "Mind if I have another?"
She smiled. "Help yourself, to anything in the office."
He got up and started toward the bar. Halfway he detoured to where she sat on the desk. He placed a hand on her knee. He was starting to feel the warmth of the two drinks and Donna was beginning to look awfully good to him. She tightened a little as his hand moved up her legs off her stockings onto the bare flesh of her thighs.
"You've got goddamn nice legs," he said.
"Take you ten years to notice that?" she asked as he brushed her skirt higher to the border of her black nylon panties. They were nice-plump and round and smooth. She looked up at him as if she expected and hoped he'd continue upward under her skirt. Instead he took away his hand and re-sumed his journey to the bar, where he filled his glass to the brim with straight scotch whiskey.
"I feel like getting fried," he declared, well on the way.
She emptied her glass for a second time, then disconnected the intercom, took the phone off its cradle and placed it on the desk. She got down from her perch and stepped behind him. "Let's get stinking!"
She gave him her glass and he refilled it as she took off her jacket and tossed it into a chair. He could see the contours of her big, bouncy melons held in by a white bra under the sheer material of her blouse.
He looked down at them with full appreciation as she stood before him and took the glass that he handed her.
She sipped her drink and looked up at him over the rim of her glass, quizzically. "Why did you stop?"
"Stop what?"
"Your hand on my leg?"
"Oh." He fortified himself with a swig of booze. "I-I seem to remember hearing a long time ago that, well, that you don't exactly go for men."
She met his gaze unwaveringly.
"I go for you." Now it was her turn to reinforce herself with a lace of scotch.
"Since the first time I saw you sitting at a piano, I've been wondering what it'd be like to be laid by you."
"Why me?" he asked curiously, the booze taking more and more control of his thinking, as she grew more and more desirable in his eyes. "Hundreds of guys must've traipsed through your office-especially when you were back on Bedford Drive. Good looking movie stars. Muscle-beach boys. You could have had your pick."
She grinned and took the pins out of her high-piled hair and let it fall like a shower of red-copper to her shoulders, then took a step closer to him. "I'm just an agent. You want an answer to that, you're gonna have to look up a psychologist in the yellow pages. All I know, Mister, are the facts."
He put an arm around her and pulled her to him. He got rid of the rest of his scotch and set the glass on the bar. He placed his free hand on her shoulder.
She ran her tongue over her sensuous lower lips as she raised her head. He kissed her. Her lips were soft and moist and responsive. His tongue slithering between her perfect white teeth to brush her tongue and she moved her pelvis tight against his bigness.
When she drew back from him, her face was flushed and she was trying to control her breathing. He kept one arm around her; his other hand traced the neckline of her blouse to the row of buttons that ran down the front. He felt her tremble against him with the new emotion she was feeling.
She placed one hand on his arm and tried to steady her nerves and act nonchalant by taking another sip of her drink, as his fingers began to unbutton her blouse. He brushed aside just enough of the material to see her big, white melons bulging over the top of her too-tight bra. Her fingers tightened on his arm as he leaned forward and kissed the rising swell of her creamy breasts. Then he hooked a couple of fingers inside the bra and worked it down until one of her bright red nipples popped out, standing at attention in the center of her puckered areola. He covered it with his mouth and nursed it into a hard knot.
He wasn't exactly looped but at the same time, he was a far cry from thinking very clearly after those three potent drinks he'd consumed. He never remembered taking off her blouse, her bra, her skirt,, or even her panties. Neither could he say accurately whether he or she had removed all of his clothing except for his unbuttoned shirt-But that's how things were as she lay beneath him on the big couch, her wide-spread legs drawn up at each side of him.
For all her professed inexperience with the male of the specie and in spite of the way the sauce had unquestionably fogged her brain, Donna showed him one of the most delightful rides he'd ever known. She wrapped him deep in the warmth of her lush, moist body and took him with her to the uppermost peak of passion and she kept him there a most willing prisoner, until she was ready for the climactic plunge into the abyss of ecstasy. She went a little wild then in the tempo she established for them, clawing and tearing at his hair, biting at the soft flesh of his shoulders as she clung to him and tried to bring to him some of the fury that gutted her insides ... and then his body stiffened and he swelled inside her ... and in one magnificent moment she'd had her way with him and took him hurtling into space with her ... into glorious oblivion....