Chapter One

 

A coffee house in the middle of the busy block looked far quieter inside than it was on the frenetic city street. The polished ceiling fan overhead turned lazily as if it was in some tropical place moving to a languid temperate time at odds with the real world. Jack Brando, proprietor, stood behind the bar that served a dozen blends of coffee and a thousand variations on each theme enough to please a thousand palettes. A man of forty-two, with just enough graying hair to be distinguished, wore his handsomeness as a mantle he'd had for many years. Naturally tanned skin, and muscles that never seemed to lose their shape, and a square cut jaw line, etched him in many people's minds as a man they would not easily forget, even though they might not know why they remembered him so well.

With the blackest of eyes, Jack Brando would study his customers with an attentiveness that would seem to swallow them up, it was so demanding, though not in a scary way. His vigilance was nurturing, as if for one brief moment nothing else mattered to him but the man or woman across the bar and their immediate need.

Standing on the sidewalk outside, as she had done several times before, Franny gazed at him through the clean glass window and smiled. She wondered if other people realized what was happening to them when they were under the spell of that man's consideration.

She watched him for sometime, while he was speaking to a woman at the bar whose crossed legs made her skirt ride high on her thigh, so high that the tops of her nylons showed and the garters that held them. Drawing a line with her eye, Franny saw the woman's thigh dangerously exposed, nearly to her panties-if she wore them. The blonde woman had a page-boy that brushed her shoulders, and looked very much like she'd walked out of an old movie. Too bad she didn't have a long cigarette drooping from her red polished fingers-one belonged there.

Jack smiled at her and served her steaming coffee, while he wove his aura about her, and she enjoyed the sensuous pleasure of coffee, the lazily moving ceiling fan, and Jack Brando, all at the same time.

Franny was about to walk away and find another time to enter the coffee house, but at that moment, the blonde rose from the stool and straighten her straight skirt. After wishing Jack a fair adieu, she blew him a kiss and swished her hips on her way out the door. Jack admired the woman all the way.

When Franny entered the coffee shop, she was stunned by the pungent fragrance, the aroma going straight to her loins, fueling a conflagration that needed no more instigation. She swaggered toward the coffee bar, noticing how Jack noticed her right off.

"I'm your new waitress," she announced.

His dark eyes widened as he studied the young woman approaching him, seeing her twentyish slim figure, a mop of well teased red curls atop her head, and a sassy smirk on her youthful face. Her face itself was pleasing, bright and open with a full mouth and full lips and slightly freckled skin to match her hair. Noticing her attire, Jack concluded that her skirt was much too short, bending over would be dangerously revealing, and that popping cleavage above her sweater would distract any man, and frighten most female customers. A new waitress? He was doubtful.

"You saw the sign in the window?" he asked.

"I did, and I need the job, and this is a perfect place for me to work, when can I start?"

"Presumptuous?" he remarked.

"What's that mean?" she replied, instantly not liking him using words she didn't know.

"You're assuming a lot, miss."

"Franny," she introduced herself, holding out a hand for him to shake. She had fine small fingers and perfect nails. Why he expected them chewed to the quick, he didn't know, but he was pleasantly surprised by her womanly manicure.

"You're an attractive young woman, Miss Franny," he said. "But I'm still in the process of interviewing."

She looked around the nearly deserted place. "You know at lunch hour this place is filled with people, and you're going to be so busy, you won't know what to do. You're going to need me."

"I may, but I've gotten along for a week without a waitress, I can wait for the right one."

"And what's the matter with me?" she asked, not looking at all hurt, it was a straight question, requiring an straightforward answer.

She was charming him, but not because he wanted to be. Naturally infectious, she was the kind of woman that could arouse him even when he didn't want to be. He'd be happy as a June Bug to have her exit his place and not return, though he had the feeling that was not going to happen.

"There's nothing wrong with you, Franny. But I was looking for someone more mature and sedate."

"Oh, like a grandmother? That should attract people in the door."

"Sarcasm is not a good employment reference," he warned, feeling very much like he was talking to a kid sister.

"But you're not the type to care about references," she countered him readily. "You'll hire me on personality alone. I know that. As well as I know, you're absolutely going to love having me here." She cocked her head and bit her lip just a little.

He would like to have his hands all over her, but that wasn't going to happen. He must have turned down a half dozen girls like her already. Forty was too old to get involved with the demands of a adolescent behaving "twenty-something" year old.

"Franny, I'm sorry, no," he said gently. "You've got lots of spunk. But I'm not at the time in my life where spunk works. If you'd only caught me last week . . . " His refusal to hire her should have gotten through with that.

"Jack," she groaned, as if she was talking to an old crony. "Don't make this hard, please. I need this job, and I hate like hell pleading. You're not going to make me do that?" She turned up her nose at the distasteful thought; and then made her eyes drip with such pitiful innocence, as if to deny her would be turning away a spring lamb. Such an actress!

"Are you running away from something?" he asked.

"No."

"But you have no money?"

"I have a little, but believe me, I need this job." There was a trace of desperation in her voice. Plans gone awry didn't suit her, and she wasn't about to be satisfied with a refusal.

"Work through lunch for me, and we'll see what happens," he said.

She smiled with a genuine appreciation that she couldn't say in words. But the expression of relief on her face told him volumes.

At the end of the day, they were both exhausted. Jack rarely was after work; but a bad shipment of coffee, a tub of shattered coffee mugs-not really Franny's fault-even he had to admit there was water on the floor when she slipped-and an unusually large crowd all through the afternoon, because of some march through the streets, had made the day brisk paced and all too frenetic trying to keep up with the demands.

"You can go now," he announced to Franny, seeing her wearily slumping in a chair. "Too much for you?" he asked.

Her head was bowed in the crook of her arms, as they rested on the table. Was she sleeping already?

"You okay?" he asked.

"Should be," she replied, sitting up and looking at him with a weary smile. "See, I did prove my worth."

"You did. I needed you today. But you're going to have to check back with me tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" she queried, looking as if the thought of returning to work the next day was far from her mind. "Sure," she said, leaving everything non-committal, which was fine with Jack, who still had no intention of hiring her.

"Listen, let yourself out," he said. "I'll have a check for you in the morning, if you want to stop by. I've got some stuff to do in the back now. Just lock the knob and push the door closed when you leave.

She nodded.

Every time he looked at her, he had a different picture before him, from innocent to wizened old crone, she was a chameleon of expressions. He never could tell what color her eyes were. As the light changed so did they. Hardly nondescript, there were no words for the hue he observed last as she gave him a little wave good-bye.

Retreating to his storeroom, he heard the door clatter and the lock click as she went out.

There was a lot to do to clean up the coffee house, things he'd ordinarily never leave until morning, but this had been an exceptional day, and he was exceptionally tired. Certain Franny had something to do with his exhaustion, he was glad she'd been there, but glad when she left.

Turning out the downstairs lights, Jack slipped into the stairwell that led to his apartment upstairs. Nothing beat the convenience of living and working in the same building. Hitting the bed quickly was his sole obsession. He wasn't even sure Venita, the blonde bombshell that often slept with him, could arouse him now.

Weary as he was, in the simple flash of an instant, his trek to the top of the stairs was abruptly interrupted by someone sitting in the middle of the staircase in the dark. He might have bumped right into her, but looking up briefly he caught a flash of red hair in the light that came from an upstairs room and shined down on her.

"What the fuck?" he gasped.

Her face was waist high, as he stood before her, while she remained sitting, casually waiting for something. And before there were any answers, even a single response to his repeated questions, she was reaching out, unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants.

"Good god, what are you doing?"

"Payment in advance," she said, reaching inside his trousers pulling out a cock that, once limp, was fast rising with the feel of her warm hands playing. She leaned forwards and put the head into her mouth and began to suck. Tight facial muscles worked the stiffening rod into something straight as an arrow.

There was no will to protest, not as good as Franny was, giving him one of the best blowouts he'd ever had. She could take him deep, and then draw back and tease the head, pull back the skin with her hand and trace a line around the rim with her tongue, then jolt him into nearly cumming with another deep shot down her talented throat. The orgasm leapt up on him unexpectedly, when at another time, he would have made certain that the satisfaction lasted much longer. As he shot, she wanted every drop of him on her face, and licked with a childish tongue, until she couldn't find anymore.

"What the hell do you want?" Jack asked, looking down at her while he was still panting.

The smirk that followed came straight from the devil's most fiendish abode, and the eyes that glimmered with colorless traces of light made him shiver. It had been years since he'd seen such an expression, and it startled him.

"I want you to tie me up," she said. There was a provocative lilt to her soft voice, as if she was fucking him with it.