I wrote this one before I wrote the one that I’ve got out to be published now. I realize upon editing it 6 months after I wrote it that it’s very similar to the one that’s in the publisher’s hands now. I must be obsessed with coffee shops — you’ll see why I say that. I’m learning this trade, still. Enjoy!
—
Starbucks was packed. It was that little space of time, 1-1:15pm, that I occasionally steal for myself after lunch on a stressful day. I walked up to the counter, ordered a large — “venti,” she repeats, condescendingly, and I roll my eyes — Americano, got it, and then looked for a place to sit down. Of course there was nowhere completely free to sit, but there were a few chairs open at packed tables.
“Do you mind if I um?” I said in that clipped manner of a true high-speed coffee customer. She shook her head and I pulled up a seat, threw my satchel full of course plans and textbooks between me and the wall, sat down, and stared into my coffee trying to look small. I’m so shy…
“So, coffee partner, I’m Tammy. I take it you’re a either a new professor or a grad student. Undergraduates never carry that many books.” I looked up, vaguely aware of being talked to, and then my brain sped back up. It wasn’t just the books that screamed “New Prof!” It was also indie-hair and an dress just expensive enough to make me look intimidating to students. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going for with this look yet, but I didn’t look anything like a student.
“Yes. Hi. Professor, actually. I’m Kendra. You, ah, you’re a prof here too?” Now I began to notice things. Definitely not a professor. Expensive chocolate bar next to her coffee. Expensive suit. Expensive glasses (and wow did they fit her face). Eyes like… well, maybe I shouldn’t look at her eyes too closely. Yum.
“No, I was invited to give a talk at the business school for some workshop about women in local business.”
“We’re going to the same workshop, then… Oh, wait, that makes you the Tammy that’s CFO of The Wabash Endowment, downtown? I was just looking at the program notes. I wanted to talk to you after your lecture.”
I felt like a fan-girl all of a sudden. Eager, and a little giddy like I always get when I’m talking to someone I’ve always admired from afar. It choked down a blush and my embarrassment and asked what I was going to ask her anyway. We just couldn’t stop talking. I’d mention one thing and that made her think of another.
1:15 went by without me so much as checking my watch. Her talk wasn’t until 4, and I didn’t actually *have* to be back to my office for any good reason. No good reason other than I was looking to get tenure soon, and ought to be poring over all my notes, trying to cobble together yet another grant or publication without too much more work. Shmoozing with people who control purse-strings is always a good idea, though.
But the more she talked, the more I got into her and I started looking at her eyes again. Ambitious, knowing, alluring brown eyes, and I looked away, but not before she noticed and smiled. Maybe one eye half winked at me, or maybe it didn’t, but I got the impression that she was enjoying our conversation as much as I was. We went from dry academics to favorite foods, wines, restaurants, music, even ambitions and dreams, dancing from one conversation topic to the next, each a little more intimate, until after an hour and a half I felt like I had an old friend, not someone I’d met accidentally over a drink in a crowded cafe.
“Do you want another cup of coffee? I’m buying.”
“Sure! I can’t give a lecture to a bunch of stodgy old professors without at least another large.”
“I’m in that group now, you know.”
“Stodgy and old? Hardly. But without more coffee I’ll find myself trying to finish as fast as I can so we get to that question you were going to ask me after I’m done.”
“I already asked it,”
She grinned and it was her turn to blush, “So think of another one.”
I got up to get us another couple of coffees. Our eyes locked again and I was already blushing and nervous; I batted her nearly empty cup as I got up, right into her lap. I went from red to white in an instant.
She shot me an inscrutable glance and went to the bathroom. “Oh shit, I’m sorry!” I felt so bad I followed her to the back. The bathroom door closed in front of me. I stopped, frustrated and embarrassed, and then I noticed that the door to the bathroom wasn’t all the way closed. I peered in.
“Tammy? I’m sorry. Jitters from the coffee and not enough lunch. Is there a lot of it on you?” She took my hand, pulled me inside, shut the door, and locked it. She held my hands in hers. Then she looked me in the eyes again. I never saw the smile grow on her face, and I never saw her lips part for mine. I just saw the happiness and then desire in those eyes. I leaned into her.
She smelled like coffee, chocolate, and power. I drank her in as our lips met with force. She held me so tight, and it was like I wanted her to taste me, every part of me, I wanted her lips everywhere as soon as they touched mine, they were so strong and sweet. I couldn’t bring myself to take my mouth away; I wanted to grab her by her shiny brown hair and thrust her tongue, lips, and teeth down into my neck, down my shoulders, onto my breasts. I envisioned it all, felt it all, but my lips never left hers. We kissed all that time.
And then suddenly we weren’t. I shook at the shock of leaving her lips, and then at having her mouth pressed against the cut of my dress, and then again at her hand caressing the small of my back and just below. I arched my neck. I don’t know how long she spent there — it was a string of eternal perfect moments. Then I felt her hands strong on my shoulders and she pushed me to the floor, on my knees, facing her. I smelled the coffee on her slacks. I undid her pants like I might a man’s and pulled them down past her hips.
The second her slacks came off the coffee smell gave way to her own sweet, strong smell. Even her cunt smelled like power and I reveled in it. Here was Tammy, young, interesting, ambitious, powerful, beautiful, and for a painfully short time, she was utterly mine to touch, hold, kiss, and make love to. For that instant, I worshipped her. She had everything I dreamed to achieve in my career. My jaw ached with anticipation and desire. I traced my tongue and lips upward along her thighs, and with each kiss came a thought that I wanted to know more about her, see her, talk to her again. She spread her legs out, arched over me, standing, holding the hem of her blazer up and whispering demands for me to go on, to run my tongue along her lips, thighs, clit, to make her come.
I kissed closer and closer along perfect thighs. A drop of her own moisture hit my cheek. I licked the rest of the salty-sweet sex off her lips, and I dove into her purposefully with my tongue. She shuddered. She’d already been so close. I drew my tongue around her folds, sometimes lightly, sometimes with a driven passion. She came. She came, and she leaned back against the wall, and arched her whole body towards my mouth. I ran my hand along the groove of her ass, feeling strength and perfection, and all the while she kept coming for me. When she finally relaxed a bit, I pulled her pans back up and zipped them, then stood up, and she leaned on me, kissing my neck lazily.
“Do we have time for more?” She grinned. She was serious…
“God no! We’re in a public bathroom, and it’s almost time for your lecture. Oh my god and I’m going to smell like sex,” Not a complaint, I thought inhaling sharply.
“I’m not going to be able to stand through my lecture. I need food now, not coffee.”
“No joke.”
“What say after the lecture, we go out somewhere you could knock fine wine into my lap instead of coffee. Maybe Turkish?”