2
Dallas woke up at eight, took a shower, grabbed her room key, the small wallet she tucked into her back pocket, and her folder with a pen clipped to it. She could use her laptop, but did not want to carry it around just yet. She went down to the lobby, asked the desk clerk, and walked a half block up the street to a diner. She took a booth in the back and ordered breakfast from a sleepy looking waitress.
She ate between jotting down her own notes on Taker's schedule, doing things the way she did them for everyone. He had a busy week for just coming back from the injured reserve list. She saw a few things he could put off, if he wanted to. She used the blank inside of the folder to keep a running list of things that needed to get done.
She finished, paid for her food, and headed for her car and the arena. Dallas always felt overwhelmed on Mondays, because so much was going on. At least Taker was not a rookie. She had the most problems with the new guys, who could not seem to function unless someone pointed them in the right direction.
The arena was as quiet as it would ever be. Dallas saw Michael and waved. He looked at his watch and gave her a thumbs-up. She looked around and wondered if Taker shared the communal locker room, or if his status and longevity afforded him a private room.
He struck her as the private room type. Dallas hunted down the backstage manager and got the locker room assignments. And surprise, surprise there was Taker's name, with a P12 next to it. Private room 12. That meant he was right up the hallway. Dallas handed back the paper and moseyed down the hall, looking at the doors and tags. At P12 she knocked and waited a three count before pushing the door open. She didn't keep people waiting, and she didn't let people keep her waiting.
Taker was sitting on a bench, wrapping his left wrist with tape. Apparently he was getting ready for a workout before his meeting with Michael. He looked up, nothing at all showing in his expression. He was just blank. Finally he greeted her with a deep-voiced 'hey'.
"Hey, yourself. I have your schedule. If you want, we can rework it a little so you aren't doing stuff every day this week."
Taker shrugged and went back to his tape. "That's fine. Either way."
Dallas raised an eyebrow and opened the folder to read her notes. "Are you wrestling tonight?" She eyed his workout gear. She had been around long enough to know the guys and their 'game faces'. Some, like Cena, paced as show time got closer. Taker worked out. It was a way to build up steam for an appearance. "Because this doesn't say you're wrestling yet."
"I heard it's not called wrestling anymore." Taker muttered, more to himself than to her.
Dallas smirked. "Well. It says you aren't scheduled to roll around half naked with another guy tonight."
Taker rolled his eyes. "I'm doing a promo tonight. For the next pay-per-view."
She waited to see if he was going to add anything to that, but he just finished taping his wrist and set about torturing the other wrist in the same fashion. "And this attitude relates to me exactly how?" She finally asked, wanting to get the weird animosity out of the way first thing.
He looked up and Dallas saw that he did not realize he was acting odd. "Sorry. I've got a lot of shit on my mind today."
"Well…ok. Sorry for saying anything."
"It's all right. Got to just get back into the road life I guess." Taker wound the tape around his wrist a few more times and then ripped the roll, finished. "What happened to Will?"
"Out for personal leave. I don't know why. Craig handed me your stuff and that was all he said about it."
"Hope his kids are all right. That was usually all he talked about."
"I wouldn't know." Dallas flipped a page in the folder and went over her notes one last time. "Your meeting shouldn't take too long this morning. Michael has a couple of other story line meetings to go over before 3 this afternoon. So you might be able to bump this phone interview and do it today instead of Friday."
Taker leaned over to look at her notes and his schedule. "You cleared out Friday?"
"And Sunday. And Saturday. They had you doing shit all day every day. But we can do this interview today, and put it on a conference call. I can set up a line for you and let these guys call in for…" Dallas glanced at her watch, thinking. "An hour? If they don't have enough shit for their wrestling magazines and websites by then, tough luck. And this talk show thing…"
"What talk show thing?" Taker asked, looking up at her. Dallas smirked to herself, thinking if he got any closer he was going to end up in her lap.
"Somebody had you signed up for some ESPN interview. I scrapped it. Unless you had your heart set on it. They were already interviewing the unholy unnamable that day, and in true Hogan fashion, he would have killed your thunder. I rescheduled it for next Monday, after you do whatever you'll be doing on TV this week. So you can go in with a little punch."
"All right. What's this?" He pointed to something on Thursday.
"The Make-A-Wish thing. You're back just in time for that. You're kind of going to be a surprise." Dallas had been hearing about the luncheon the fed was hosting for months. Originally it was to be Cena, Randy Orton, and one of the female wrestlers. There were 100 children invited to participate, to meet a few of their favorite wrestlers. "Unless you want to scrap that too? We can try to set up your own…" But Taker was shaking his head before she could really get going on rescheduling.
"That's good. I don't mind working around the kids." He looked up again and Dallas realized that he was way closer than he really needed to be. As in, his face was barely six inches from her face. From this perspective, she could see the hazel undertones to his green eyes.
And that was all it really took. He was kissing her again, pushing her folder off her lap so that the papers went flying everywhere. Dallas tried to pull back but he caught her, angling his mouth across hers and using his tongue to probe at her lips. Dallas decided what the hell, it wasn't like this wasn't something that had happened before.
She parted her lips and hesitantly touched the tip of her tongue against his, making him moan softly into her mouth. Dallas reached out and ran her hands up his shoulders, until her fingers met behind his neck. He caught her lower lip between his teeth, nipping her before delving his tongue once more into her mouth.
Dallas felt him pulling her and she went willingly enough. He didn't break the kiss, just guided her until she was first standing, then facing him, then straddling his legs. His hands slipped down her back and then up, going under the cotton of her t-shirt. The contact of his hands against her made Dallas grind herself against his lap.
He kept a hand against her back, supporting her, and let the other slide around her ribs. His long fingers moved over one breast, then the other, brushing against her nipples through the soft lace of her bra, making her shiver.
Taker broke their kiss and looked into her eyes as he tugged lightly on one nipple. Dallas tried to reign in her libido a little. They were at work after all, and he had a meeting to get to, she had…that train of thought did not last long. He ducked his head and nuzzled her neck, sucking lightly on her skin. Dallas held onto his shoulders, aware that she was rubbing herself against his crotch. He was wearing shorts, she was in jeans, and for him it might have been painful but she could not seem to stop. It felt too good.
Dallas was at the point of saying screw the schedule for the day. Of course that was when someone chose to knock on the door. The door that she had not bothered to even think about locking. She had not known that there would be a compromising position she could get caught in.
"Yeah?" Taker yelled, pulling back from kissing her neck.
"Hey! Michael wanted me to tell you he's gotta get your meeting done early. He's in the office." A male voice called through the door. Taker sighed and met Dallas's eyes.
"Tell him I'm comin'." At that, a slow smile spread across his face. Dallas snickered and covered her mouth to keep it quiet.
Whoever it was walked away. Taker looked down at her, straddling his lap, and with real regret gave her a hand up. "You were coming, huh?" Dallas asked when she had composed herself.
"I wish." He grouched, shifting and trying to call on his willpower to reduce his erection. It was tough going. Dallas was giggling at the look on his face. "Ya know, instead of standing there bein' entertained, you could give me a quick hand."
"I think not. Michael's waiting." She bent to gather her papers and heard him groan. It probably was not the best idea to present the man with her backside, but hey! He was a grown up. He shouldn't have started what he didn't have time to finish.
He finally got up and finished getting ready. He would work out after his meeting, if it was over quick enough. The bulge was down, but Taker made it a point not to look in Dallas's direction for long. These grope sessions that happened erratically were damn near more than he could take.
There had been many times over the course of the past few years when he had been tempted to work his physical frustrations out with Dallas. Something held them back, though. He knew it was mostly his fault, for giving in when the temptation to just touch her overcame him. She did not complain, which made him feel worse. He had been engaged the first time they'd played this high school grope-and-run thing. Of course she hadn't known that. She wasn't mad when she found out either. But it was obvious there would be no repeat. Until he got divorced.
Taker actually liked Dallas. He liked her smart mouth and her fast brain. She absolutely did not care that she was working for famous men and women. She was a rare one that actually had a brain in her head, and wasn't interested in landing a relationship. Some of them were damn near predatory.
Every time he saw her, he vowed that he was not going to instigate…whatever a person would call what they did. And more often than not he found himself doing it anyway. Even while thinking it was a bad idea. She didn't instigate, but she did not say no either. He didn't want to start shit with someone he worked with. That had happened before, and he had spent three months fighting the bitch in court for things that were his. Of course she had been more than happy to use him because of who he was. As soon as he talked about retiring, the real trouble had started. Without him she really was a nobody. Now she wasn't even one of their female wrestlers. He could swing his weight when he felt like it. Often he did not. He just wanted to do his job, and leave the drama for the young guys.
When it came to Dallas though, he could not seem to help himself. The more he tried, the harder it was to hold back. With a groan, Taker got to his feet and stretched, finally getting a handle on his libido. Eventually their making out would turn into actual fucking, and that would probably be the end of the whole issue. It was the not having that set it off. He had already figured that out.