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My arch nemesis, Clara, hadn’t seen me. She couldn’t try to stalk me or ruin my life, at least not any more right this moment than she already had.
I was so glad to be out of that coffee shop and in my own car. Of all the gambits I’d pulled off in my life, successfully steering a Ducati with a full take-out cup of hot chocolate between my thighs ranked near the top. I made it to the office in record time.
Cup in hand for an accessible way to sip it, I blew past the security in the building, who damn well knew my face by then, and headed for the elevators. Suspicious Activity had started in a garage before moving to a disused factory in an industrial zone. My friend Cam and I had initially wanted to call it Factory Records, but that name was already taken, as were Virgin and Rough Trade.
The name that stuck came from an incident when the cops raided the factory space without cause, or a warrant, for the third time in a row. Apparently, they knew something we didn’t about our business, as they always seemed certain there was something illegal going on.
They were wrong. Some of the musicians we recorded smoked cigarettes, but last time I checked that was still legal.
I started to sometimes regret the name by my mid-30s, because it was a mouthful and it also kind of made us sound like hooligans, but it had already become our brand. Something none of us really expected.
Cam and I had started the label as a way to release our own stuff, following in the independent footsteps of The Beatles’ Apple Records and Frank Zappa’s Barking Pumpkin.
But we caught the attention of the local scene and grew from there, even after our band, Autumn Corrosion, broke up, due to a fatal case of dead drummer. With the change in fortunes came a move of locations.
Cam and I, and our other band mates, moved to our very own corner of the beating heart of the big scary city. We’d mostly grown up in Olympia, so it was something of a culture shock.
“Morning, Holly,” I told the receptionist.
“Morning, sir.”
“Please, you know you can call me Seth.”
“Sure, but do I prefer to?” she asked, with a cheeky wink.
I knew she had a boyfriend and was just playing with me. Like when servers ironically called me ‘young man,’ it being well understood by both of us that it wasn’t the ‘man’ part of that phrase that was in question, but the ‘young.’
“Your new intern, Jonna, is here,” Holly informed me. “She’s waiting in your office.”
“Oh, what’s she like?”
“Other than delicious?” Holly wiggled her eyebrows at me.
“Yes, other than that,” I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes, knowing she was kidding again.
“Seems eager. Certainly looks the part. Going by her application, she should at least be trainable.”
My heart skipped a bit. I didn’t think she meant it that way, but Holly’s mention of ‘trainable’ raised an instant attention in both my mind and my pants.
“Well, I’d better go say hello.”
Moving swiftly, I opened the door, not giving much forewarning of my arrival. The poor darling seemed startled, though Holly hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d described Jonna as ‘delicious.’ Instead, she had merely been speaking the empirical truth, even for a straight girl.
From her cherry red Converse sneakers to her white blond ponytail, she was the picture of perfection. The kind of girl they wrote poems and songs about.
“She Walks in Beauty” started running through my own mind, followed closely by “Jolene,” which reached almost the same level of exaltation, if you listened closely.
My eyes were drawn immediately to her chest. Partly by the sweet, lush fullness of her perky young breasts, but then to the iconic Autumn Corrosion T-shirt from our ‘98 tour. She must have gotten it online or somewhere. There was no way she was old enough to have been there.
I tore my eyes away from her ample breasts and couldn’t help letting them linger on the rest of her body, which was perfectly full of curves and just my type. I really wanted to squeeze her plump ass, and let my hands trail down her hourglass figure.
I felt like a dirty old man, despite only being 40. The age gap between us was rather large— more than two decades. I wasn’t old enough to be her father. But that didn’t stop me from having dirty, dirty thoughts about what I wanted to do to her.
In a weird way, though, it also caused me to feel like an echoing chasm every time I looked into her innocent eyes, though. They were full of both hope and wonder.
“Right,” I said, remembering myself. “Where would you like to start?”
Chapter Three
Jonna
I couldn’t speak. There were words in my head, but none of them would come out of my mouth. Seth was actually right there, talking right to me. I couldn’t believe it.
