Cally's War

The smell of her hair was thick in his nostrils as her kisses — interspersed with a few bites to make sure he was paying attention — trailed down his chest. More kiss than bite the farther she went. Finally, she was wrapped around one of his legs, her breasts rubbing against his thigh, nails and body clenched and shuddering against him in ways that showed him that she was having just as much fun as he was.

The ethereal opening strains of the next song on her cube pierced him with an oddly sweet sadness for a few moments before the hot, driving rhythm kicked in to add to the intensity of what she was doing to him. He didn’t try to remember the name of the band or the song, but it came to him anyway. It was a war-time band called Evanescence, the song, “Bring Me to Life,” and it couldn’t possibly fit their situation, but somehow he knew the music was deeply important to her.

The vibrance of the music bled onto every sensation, making it more alive — the scent of her, her hands and mouth on him. Her beautiful, pale skin, flushed with sex and luminous with a light sheen of sweat. Even the drab gray of the office walls seemed more intensely real. The music was singing in their bones, and he wondered what in the hell was happening to him. Sex had never been like this.

The thought wandered through the back of his mind that there was something a little perverse about doing it in a coworker’s office, but it was a small thought, and easily banished. Besides, Li had gotten a couch for his office. Not leather, but a reasonably good substitute.

Oh, my God…

Afterward, over a lunch of grinders, his ham and hers roast beef, they talked. He tended to avoid walks down memory lane when talking to her. Well, when talking to anybody, really. No matter how well you knew and believed your cover, there was always the chance of tripping yourself up. One of the things that made Sinda so easy to talk to was that she didn’t try to push their conversations into the past. She was happy to talk about music, or old movies. Okay, so she might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she had this amazing depth to her — and she hadn’t exclusively focused on chick flicks. The really incredible thing was she actually got the best parts. He’d never met another woman who watched the Three Stooges and laughed — really laughed. They’d both liked the scene at the end of one of the old spaghetti westerns where the hero “had a problem with his arithmetic.” Hell, she was the first girl he’d met in twenty years who’d ever watched them.

The toughest part of this situation was that he couldn’t let himself get involved, no matter how much he might like to. He was living a lie, and there was no telling how her reaction to him would change when she found out the truth. Would she see him as just another opportunist? Would she see him as being like the asshole? Just another predatory juv general? Or could she possibly understand why he’d had to do this?