5. Lucius
739 Words
Chapter 5
Lucius
Why is she prancing around like that? Is she trying to be annoying? Probably, and it’s working—to the point where my eyes are feeling itchy from watching her zoom back and forth in this tiny space.
Closing my eyes, I focus on the guitar riffs in my headphones, but somehow, I still feel her presence.
Probably because of how her scent moves around.
She smells like freshly cut grass and sunshine.
I peek through my eyelashes just as she pulls out a CD player from her purse and attaches it to wired headphones.
A CD player? Should I tell her it predates even the antique she calls a phone?
No. Better not to engage. She might sniff out the dissonance of me being so into tech and Ancient Rome, and remark that instead of an iPhone, my favorite calculating device should be an abacus.
I sneak another peek. She stops pacing and carefully sets down her huge purse in the corner. The thing looks heavy. I wonder what she keeps in there. A small horror-movie clown/demon, It style? A Chucky-esque killer doll?
I rub my increasingly itchy eyes. Another possibility is that she uses the purse as a makeshift sleeping bag. I’m pretty sure she’s small enough to fit inside it.
As she resumes her pacing, she fiddles with the controls of the CD player.
I pause my own music to hear what she’s listening to.
Hmm. It’s just some woman’s voice talking.
An audiobook? Do they still make those on CDs?
The one positive thing I can say about my partner-in-jam is that she’s done a good job of keeping my mind away from the clusterfuck that is my real estate meeting.
Until now, that is.
Fuck. If I don’t get that land, Novus Rome will have another setback, the first one being when those tree huggers raised a stink about deforestation at the original location I chose.
I sigh. Maybe I should’ve explained to those people how much oxygen would be produced by the vertical greenery I’m planning to cover all the skyscrapers with. Or that I would’ve planted new trees in Smart Central Park once the construction was over. Or that Novus Rome will strive to have a negative carbon footprint, with self-driving electric cars used as public transport and solar panels covering every surface.
Unfortunately, explaining isn’t my strong suit. I can be a tiny bit anti-social, which hurts me in business sometimes. On the plus side, if a zombie apocalypse happened and I had to sit in a bunker by myself, I’d be as happy as a clam on Prozac.
She stops her pacing, visibly shivers, and begins to dance from foot to foot while rubbing her upper arms.
Is she cold?
Probably. She’s not wearing all that much, and her creamy skin is covered in gooseflesh. Also, her n*****s are—
Wait. What am I looking at? f*****g biology strikes again. I have to ignore the—
The lights flicker, then dim further.
Ripping the headphones from my ears, I step over to the help button and stab it again. “Hello? This is Lucius Warren. Do you understand what that means?”
No reply—unless my companion’s sneer counts as one.
Grunting in frustration, I look down at her face and can’t help but notice how blue her lips are turning.
She’s definitely freezing.
“Here.” I take off my suit jacket. “Put this on.”
She stops her dancing and looks so shocked you’d think I pulled my liver out through my belly button and held it out to her, all bloody and disgusting.
“Your teeth chattering is very annoying,” I say coolly. “Do me a favor and put this on.”
The fact that it will cover those hard n*****s is a bonus.
She doesn’t reach for the jacket, just blinks her pretty eyelashes at me.
Speaking of blinking, I do it too, as my eyes feel even itchier.
She still doesn’t take the f*****g jacket, just stares at me like we’re in some cowboy movie standoff. Annoyed, I step around her and wrap her in it.
A huge mistake.
My fingers touch her silky-smooth bare shoulders, and a firehose of endorphins shoots into my bloodstream and circles around all of my appendages before settling right in my d**k.
Damn it. On top of everything else, I’m now hard.
- Writer
