Samantha Cole, the potential client Miranda had insisted Fletcher stay at the office late to meet with, seemed very impressed.
"Thank you," she said, walking up to Fletcher and pressing her body tightly against his in an elaborately embroidered gold buttoned-and-tied-up jacket, nothing underneath but a push-up bra.
Fletcher wrapped his arms loosely around her. The bleach blonde soon-to-be divorcee responded by rubbing her bright red lips against his neck and running her hand down his back to his butt.
"I am so grateful to have an attorney I can trust," she said, sounding like something out of a porn when she squeezed his ass cheek seductively and winked at him before leaving the office.
Miranda had seemed impressed during the meeting, too, barely containing gleeful laughter as she watched the way Fletcher handled Samantha. When the last echoes of Mrs. Cole's stiletto heels had finally vanished, Miranda started giggling like a schoolgirl.
"You are good," she said. "You are very, very good."
She stood up on her long, slender legs, smoothed down her tiny, olive green skirt, and moved from the armchair in front of her desk to stand closer to her associate.
"You know, the Cole case is worth a truckload of money to this firm. If you win, I guarantee you'll make partner."
"Pshaw," Fletcher said, feigning modesty.
"In fact," Miranda said, "how would you like to make a partner right now, huh?"
The way she pursed her lips, raised her carefully plucked eyebrows, and got a firm grip on Fletcher's tie right below the Windsor knot made the innuendo impossible to miss. Still, Fletcher tried to act coy about it.
"Gee, I don't know. Maybe I . . . mughguhguhkgh!"
He couldn't finish the thought with her tongue in his mouth. She held tight on his tie like a leash, rubbing her lips back and forth against his, opening and closing her mouth so it was less like a kiss and more like she was trying to devour his face. The whole time, she made disturbing little moans of satisfaction.
"Mmm-ymm, ymm-mmm!"
Never before in history could just getting to first base have been less chaste or pure.
She bit down, hard, on his lower lip, pulling her head back and dragging him with her teeth further from the door and deeper into her office.
So this was happening.
Fletcher knew Miranda had a certain reputation, but he'd hoped it would never come to this.
It would be hilarious, he thought, if he could just travel back in time, travel back to when he was still a virgin, and then tell his virgin self that a night would come when he'd honestly much rather be eating cake and ice cream than having sex, and then watch his own reaction.
The truth was, Miranda wasn't his type. At all. Maybe he should think it was a good thing he was hooking up with a woman who was, in almost every conceivable way, the exact opposite of his ex. Audrey was a warm, loving, salt-of-the-earth type of girl-next-door. Miranda was a frigid, heartless sociopath with a soul as dark as her smoldering brown eyes or the deep brunette hair she was currently wearing in a naughty librarian up-do.
But a lot of men were really into that.
Miranda had serious drive to climb as far as she had in the firm of Allan, Stewart & Konigsberg. And it was the office's worst kept secret that she had serious sex drive, and that had helped a lot with the climbing, too. She'd started out as an ambitious ambulance chaser. But when it turned out even the creepiest, dirtiest old man in the office couldn't match her libido, doors really started opening for her. Any man who could help her career, no matter how professionally they tried to be around their co-workers, would find her being more and more forward in her advances, like a cat in heat, until she was practically crawling in their lap. And heaven help any man who encouraged her to take advantage by showing even an ounce of interest. A simple, "Nice skirt there, Miranda" would have her pulling their pants down to their ankles faster than they could say, "Just kidding. I actually love my wife."
Fletcher had heard stories about a man who worked with the firm before he'd started, Mr. Richards. Richards was rapidly approaching retirement, and Miranda was in a hurry to win his favor while he still had pull around the office. At a Christmas party, she'd approached the old man in front of his wife, asking if she could steal him for a few minutes to give her some advice on a case she was having trouble with in her office. After the wife waited awkwardly by the punch bowl for him for an hour, Miranda and Richards walked back into the party. It was obvious to anyone with working eyes what had happened. Miranda had ridden the old dinosaur like a rented mule.
She marched Richards to his wife and stood and watched while he told her to leave the party without him. He'd have to spend the rest of the night at the office, "helping" Miranda with "her case."
Miranda gave as good as she got, though, so to speak. Now that she'd risen in power, she did what she could to help the people lower down the ladder she'd climbed over. Specifically, the younger men she found attractive. They'd soon find themselves with all kinds of privileges around the office, providing that, once a certain mood hit Miranda, they'd return her favors by doing her favors.
Not that Fletcher was in any position to judge anyone in this situation. He was about to take that same ride, giving Miranda his body in hopes it would finally take him to partner. To judge Miranda for sleeping her way up the ladder when he was about to do the same thing would be an egregious double standard. Not to mention, sleeping with Miranda was nowhere near the same thing as Miranda having to sleep with Richards. She was still relatively young and, in her own severe, stately way, attractive. Fletcher was a mere mortal man, after all. It wasn't like he hadn't noticed that Miranda's ass looked good in her pantsuits, and that her legs looked a-fuckin'-mazing when she wore a short skirt.
There was another associate named Pierce that was Miranda's boy toy for a while. Fletcher hated Pierce. He kept being handed the highest-profile clients and highest-paying cases. And he had the funkiest breath Fletcher had ever smelled.
Once, after Pierce had left the room, Fletcher had tried to wave the stench out of the air.
"What the hell is up with that guy's breath?"
"It's the smell of Miranda's feet," another associate had said.
Fletcher shuddered with his full body when the mental image finally came to him.
"Just be lucky you called in sick the day it was her bootyhole."
"You'd think she'd at least let him have a shot of Listerine after."
Miranda didn't "make love." Miranda fucked. From all the water cooler gossip Fletcher had heard, she was the exact opposite of gentle. A lot of guys would love that. But Fletcher would much rather have avoided it all together.
But as willing as Miranda was to help the careers of men who satisfied her sexually, she would go to hell and back to ruin the life of any man who did anything to make her feel undesirable.
There had been an intern about a year back named Seth. Nice guy. Really motivated. Barely old enough to buy beer. At first, a lot of the lawyers found him really useful to have around.
But then Miranda took a shine to him. It started out as subtle flirting, so subtle at first Seth might not even have realized what he was in for. During the course of the week, she ramped up her attempts to get his attention. She'd suddenly become clumsy in front of him, dropping files on the floor so she could stick her ass up in the air right in front of him when she picked them up. One time, she was even bold enough to do it when he was so close that he bumped right into her. She rubbed her ass against his groin for a few seconds that time before standing back up.
Then one night he volunteered to stay late to reorganize some filing cabinets. Miranda just so happened to stay in the office and burn the midnight oil as well that night.
The filing cabinets remained disorganized, but after that Seth showed up to work with some extra pep in his step, more eager to run into Miranda than anyone else had ever been to see their boss.
And every time Miranda got bored, she would find Seth and, no matter where he was or what he was doing, she'd drag him away to the nearest abandoned office or conference room or washroom. She wasn't at all discreet about what they were doing, either. After years of sleeping with men up to three times her own age, Miranda wanted everyone to know that she, a woman in her late thirties, was pulling a boy who was barely legal.
Sometimes she'd even put on cheap lipstick, just so everyone would see it on Seth's face while he looked for somewhere to wash it off.
He was completely worthless to anyone but Miranda after that. He couldn't concentrate on answering phones or filing papers when he was constantly having his brains fucked out. Still, Miranda kept using her influence to keep him on the payroll. He continued getting paid by the hour, and he certainly didn't seem to mind that several of those hours were spent on his back on a conference table under her. He was certainly enjoying his job more than the poor janitors who had to keep wiping the conference rooms down.
Fletcher had even heard about a time Seth had been dragged along to sit in on a meeting Miranda found especially boring. She pulled his chair really close to hers, and then he struggled not to make funny faces or noises while spending the rest of the meeting with her hand down his pants below the table.
Then one day Seth found a girlfriend his own age, and he made the mistake of telling Miranda he wasn't going to do that part of the job for her anymore. Then, all of a sudden, she cared that he had been too busy daydreaming about that conference table to do quality work for the firm, and his promising career in law was over before it began. There was even a rumor that she managed to sabotage the healthy relationship he was leaving her for, nipping that right in the bud.
Pierce also disappeared from the firm. There was no explanation, but everyone contributed it to him making fewer and fewer visits to Miranda's office. His hot streak dried up when Miranda stopped getting her toes sucked.
She wasn't one to sulk, either. The night Seth was let go from the office, she'd gone to the bar by the courthouse, grabbed a lawyer mid-conversation with one of his friends, and dragged him straight to the restrooms so she could straddle him on top of a toilet seat. He was her favorite lawyer for a while after that.
The point was, Fletcher's mind was reeling with the opportunities Miranda could open up for him if he satisfied her tonight, and dreading the consequences of what could happen to his career if he didn't.
She pushed his back into a filing cabinet in the corner. His fingertips dangled into an open drawer, and when she pushed her body into his, the drawer slammed shut on his fingers.
"Ow!" Fletcher yelled.
But instead of stopping and asking if he was okay, like a normal person would, it just seemed to excite Miranda more. She went back to kissing him and thrusting her body into his, making the filing cabinet crash loudly into the wall over and over while also repeatedly slamming the drawer on his fingers and pushing it in tighter and tighter each time.
She finally backed up enough to let him pull his hand out, blow on it, and shake it out as she caught her breath and took off her blazer.
Then she was grabbing him by the lapels and pushing him towards her desk, pushing him back on to it so that he bashed his head down on her paperweight. Pens and staplers and other random office supplies dug uncomfortably into his back. Miranda clambered on top of him, making those weird hungry mouth sounds while giving him another one of her patented Cosmo-magazine's-"10-Crazy-Kisses-to-Drive-Your-Lover-Wild"-on-crack kisses.
"Do you think maybe you could just hold that thought?" Fletcher asked. "We could pick this back up next time we see each other? It's my kids birthday and I was already supposed to be at his party like an hou-oww!"
She had just bit down deep on his neck, and now was nibbling her way up towards his ear.
"I guess you'll just have to tell your brat you couldn't make it because I needed something from you," Miranda said. She reached down Fletcher's pants and gave the bulge in his boxers a tight squeeze. "Something big."
Fletcher tried desperately to come up with some other excuse.
"I have a head-AY-che!"
She'd bitten into his earlobe like she thought she was Mike Tyson. Obviously, biting played a huge part in Miranda's mating ritual.
"This always makes my headache go away," Miranda said, then started sucking on the tip of Fletcher's chin.
"I'm really tired," Fletcher said. "Long day." He faked an exaggerated yawn. "I just won't be able to give you my best performance, you know?"
Miranda kissed up and down his jawline while grinding her hips into him.
"I'll wake you right up," she promised.
"Okay, then at least let me call my ex and let them know not to expect me," Fletcher said.
"Fine. You can use my phone."
Miranda indicated the phone by the couch with a quick tilt of her head. She made no move to get off of Fletcher. He had to wiggle his way over the edge of the desk and back to his feet with her still on top of him and then make his way to the couch with her arms wrapped around his neck and her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, chewing on his lower lip like it was a piece of bubble gum and working on the top button of his dress shirt.
He sat down on the couch, which still reeked of Samantha Cole's cheap perfume, then grabbed the phone and dialed.
He looked at Miranda as she kicked off her lime green pumps.
"Can I have just a second of privacy?"
Miranda laughed and kept unbuttoning his shirt.
"No," she said.
When he heard Audrey's voice, Miranda was rubbing her breasts against his arm and repeatedly kissing his neck.
"Fletcher? Fletcher, where are you? Max won't let us cut the cake until you get here!"
Miranda kept kissing his neck while also massaging one of his nipples.
"Oh, man," Fletcher groaned. "Actually, something has come up."
The good news was Miranda sucking on his neck had successfully aroused him, so maybe he wouldn't have to waste mental energy trying to imagine she was June 1986 Playboy Playmate of the Month Rebecca Ferratti. The bad news, he was finding out, was it was hard to have an adult conversation while sporting a massive boner.
Miranda worked her way from his neck to his chest.
"I've got this problem on a big c-AY-se!"
He yelled in pain as Miranda bit down on his nipple, giving her a dirty look. She just gave him a quizzical look back.
"What just happened?"
"Nothing. I . . . I stubbed my toe on the desk!" Fletcher said. "I'm sorry. I just can't make it. The boss is . . ."
Miranda had a wild look in her eyes as she straddled Fletcher's lap, bouncing her tight ass up and down on him while unbuckling his belt.
"Really riding me."
Miranda yanked his belt off and threw it across the floor and then began running her hands up and down his body.
"Fletcher, it's his birthday!" Audrey said, anger mixed with sadness on her child's behalf bubbling up in her voice.
"I know! I know!" Fletcher yelled, starting to panic as he saw Miranda get off the sofa to get a firm grip on the phone cord. "I'll make it up to him, I promise. I'll pick him up from school tomorrow."
"You'll pick him up from school tomorrow?"
"Yes! Yes!" Fletcher screamed.
Miranda was pulling on the phone cord tighter and tighter, reeling him towards her, her eyes undressing him and not stopping there.
"Well, hold on a minute and let me get him. You can at least say 'happy birthday.'"
But Fletcher knew he couldn't. The look on Miranda's face told him the phone call was making it take too long for them to get naked, and she was ready for it to be over.
"No. Gotta go," he said quickly, right before Miranda yanked the cord out of the phone. "Goodbye."
"Hello!" she said, in a breathy, almost sing-song moan, putting her hand in his face and shoving him back, hard enough to send him flying back down onto the couch, and then quickly pouncing down on him like a cougar.
She landed in his face, kissing him in that same Cosmo magazine-approved gratuitous fashion, pushing his head down into her lumpy couch.
How could she let clients sit in this old thing? Maybe she was hoping this case would net her enough cash to redecorate the office. Or maybe this kept all her meetings moving quickly since whoever was seated here wouldn't want to linger long. Either way, Fletcher wondered how much more comfortable that conference table Seth kept begging for more of was.
She thrust her hips so hard that his entire body moved up the couch and he smacked his head hard on the inside of the armrest. Now the headache he had wasn't even a lie anymore.
She finished unbuttoning his shirt and then started rubbing his bare chest with her chest, making purring noises like a cat.
That didn't feel so bad. At first.
But then she hissed loudly and scratched, running her fingernails across his right nipple and chest deep enough to draw blood.
Again, he screamed in pain and, again, it only seemed to excite her more.
She hissed and then scratched again. Fletcher fought back tears of pain. Was it too late to ask for a safe word? Well, he couldn't right now, because Miranda was chewing on his tongue.
Then she thrust her hips so hard it knocked him right off the couch.
"Are you hungry?" she asked as he sat sprawled out in front of her on the floor. "Do you need a snack?"
"You got a granola bar or something? Because I could use something to get my energy back up."
Miranda laughed and then her foot flew into Fletcher's mouth, so hard he was worried she might have knocked a few teeth loose.
"How about you snack on these little piggies?"
Again, Fletcher was aware that there were plenty of men who would kill to be him right now. He'd seen men stare at her, trying to picture what she looked like naked, bending over backwards worshiping her to try to earn the kind of attention they'd all heard she lavished freely on certain men. But the truth was, they just weren't her type. The way she just wasn't Fletcher's.
He was aware there were plenty of men who'd line up to suck on her sweaty dirty pantyhose, make their face into her personal chair, and let her stick her fingers up their asshole and work them like a puppet. He'd have gladly let any of them trad places with him so he could go to his kid's birthday party while they waited on her every dirty whim instead.
He hoped from her angle Miranda couldn't see the way he was gagging as he held her dainty foot in his mouth.
She unbuttoned and removed her beige dress shirt and then took her foot out of his mouth so she could pull her skirt off, revealing the sheer chartreuse negligee she'd been wearing underneath. Then she pulled Fletcher back to his feet. She reached down, under her negligee, and removed her panties, wadding them up and shoving them right in Fletcher's mouth.
This was another experience that, again, Fletcher could imagine certain men lining up for. But it was just another taste he didn't want in his mouth. He tried not to be too eager as he turned his head and spat them out, then ran his tongue against his teeth and took deep breaths to try to get rid of the taste of her less than clean underpants.
She started kissing his chest, and her lips felt good enough to make him hard again, just in time for her to pull down his pants and pull his throbbing member out of the fly of his boxers. She stuck it in her mouth.
Her enthusiasm should have made this enjoyable for him but, given how much she clearly had a thing for biting, it was all he could do to try to maintain an erection through his fear.
Mercifully, she kept her teeth out of the equation.
She swished his fluid around in her mouth a few times before spitting it all over the carpet.
Then she pulled him back down on the couch, climbing on top of him again.
"Tell me how much you want me," she demanded, kissing him again.
Fletcher had never had any trouble lying before. It had made his career but also ruined his marriage, and of all the times for it to suddenly be difficult, why did it have to be now?
"I want you . . . oh-so-much."
"And what do you want to do to me?" she said, once again between kisses.
"I want to bend you over your desk and . . ."
"No!" she yelled, slapping him hard across the face. "I'm in charge!"
For all of the weird stuff she was into, Fletcher should have guessed that the one thing Miranda would never do in bed was let anyone else be on top. She laughed and kissed him again, indicating the slap was all just part of her fun. Fletcher just hoped she wasn't going to try to bend him over her desk. After all this, that might have to be where he'd draw the line. He'd never been interested in trying that sort of thing, and if he was ever going to, it was going to be with someone he really, really, re-he-he-heally loved very much.
He reached down into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out a condom.
"Is that really necessary?" Miranda asked.
What was the nice way to say "absolutely?"
Besides remembering the messages on TV that said sleeping with someone was like sleeping with everyone they'd ever slept with before, he really didn't want to have anything to do with bringing another little Miranda in to the world. He wouldn't even want to bring another Fletcher into the world, if it weren't for having Max when he was younger and more idealistic. He mostly had Audrey and her nurturing nature to thank for how awesome his son had turned out.
Fletcher didn't say anything, but eagerly tried to open the condom's wrapper. A little too eagerly. He ripped the condom.
Miranda looked at him expectantly. He fished around in his other pockets, but that was his last one.
"Maybe I could just run to a drug store or . . ."
Miranda's face told him it was now or never. If he put this off any longer, she was going to kick him out of her office and take her vibrator out of her purse instead. And unlike Fletcher, the vibrator wasn't going to miss out on an exciting job opportunity by giving a disappointing performance.
So much for being responsible. Still, Miranda didn't seem to have any intention on starting a family any time soon, so he figured it was a safe bet she was on the pill.
Seriously, it was time for a career change. Forget law school. Leave the firm. Go back to college. Get a PhD in physics. Uncover the secret to time travel. All just to visit virgin Fletcher and catch his reaction when he told him some day a not-unattractive woman would enthusiastically rip off all of his clothes and hump him half to death and he'd be absolutely miserable about it. Priceless.
Miranda grabbed his member again and angled it under her negligee and into her. Now that he'd survived the foreplay, she was actually pretty good at this part. Her pelvic thrusting against him felt so good. Maybe he could make this a quickie and be at the party in time just as Max's fat friend was grabbing his second piece of cake?
No. Being great in the courtroom but lousy in the sack meant he might as well not be doing this at all. His head would just be on the chopping block as soon as Miranda found a replacement who could do both. He just hoped he wasn't too good. He had every intention of this being a one-time deal, not an ongoing thing like she'd had with Seth or Pierce.
They fell off the couch and on to the floor. Once again Fletcher let out a cry of pain, and once again Miranda completely ignored it.
Fletcher's mind began wandering to all the women he'd made love to before. They came in all sizes, shapes, and colors, and he'd rather be with any of them besides Miranda right now. Of course, his thoughts lingered on Audrey, the woman he'd married, before the dreams they shared had withered and died.
And then he thought of Jerry, her dorky new boyfriend, with his neat blonde hair and smug face. And then he couldn't stop seeing Jerry's face. He looked at Miranda, and all he could see was Jerry's face, leering at him while Miranda's body kept rocking back and forth on his softening member.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. His cock was going to be limp as a noodle in no time if he couldn't get his mind off the man who had moved in on his woman.
He opened his eyes again, and was actually grateful to see the severe angles of Miranda's face again.
She began yelling excited, disturbing sounds.
"Mmm-hmmm-yhhh! Muh-yuhhhhhh! Uggggh!"
Now she was thrusting so hard that he was repeatedly bumping his head on the stupid sofa.
"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!"
But Miranda couldn't hear him over her own screaming.
"Give it to me, you amoral piece of lying degenerate scum! Take me, you truth-bending, ass-kissing son of a bitch!"
Her voice trembled more and more, and soon the words just gave way to moans and grunts as she rode Fletcher harder and harder until he knew he was right on the verge of climax as well.
She sighed in satisfaction and he quickly pulled out, spraying over her floor and at least partially on the front of that ugly, stupid couch.
Then she wanted to cuddle. She couldn't even do that without being the big spoon and squeezing nearly hard enough to break his ribs.
Maybe it had just been an off-night for her. Richards and Seth and Pierce certainly didn't seem to have any complaints. Maybe for them it had truly been a religious experience.
But if she had under-performed tonight, she certainly didn't have any self-awareness about it.
"Mmmmm," she moaned. "That was incredible. Was it good for you?"
She raised her eyebrows and smiled, maybe hoping she was prompting another round.
Fletcher just needed to lie one more time. Think of something to not just spare her feelings, but stroke her ego. He went through a list of possibilities in his head.
"I think I'm in love." "You're my new number one, babe." "I felt the Earth move and heard doves cry."
Maybe even just a nod and a "Hell yeah."
But when he opened his mouth, something unexpected tumbled out.
"I've had better."
He saw her expression turn sour before even processing what he'd just said.
Next thing he knew, she was tossing him out of her office and throwing his slacks at her face before slamming the doors and heading back in to sleep at her desk.
"I've had better?" he repeated to himself, wondering how he possibly could have undone all he'd just gone through for his career with just three words.
He stood up just as the janitor came around the corner, catching him in his unbuttoned shirt and boxers.
"I'd wear an extra pair of gloves if I were you, next time she asks you to clean up in there," Fletcher advised as he pulled his pants back on.