Wor and Play

Hey all! This story is ridiculously more successful than I thought it would be. Thank you for all your comments and votes. There's still a lot of storyline to go, so make sure you keep up.

On to Work and Play Part 7.

*****

"Did you hear there's a company basketball game coming up? Basketball and barbeque. We never did that in California," Gabriel muses over a cup of tea. He has on my brother's button up and tie. Of course, he always looks good, but I think he looks especially good this morning. Maybe just because I dressed him up.

"Yeah, we do it every year in May to start the summer," I shrug.

"Are you any good?" he asks.

"Oh, no. I never play ball. I just eat a hamburger and call it good," I reply. I finish folding up two burritos and bring them to the table.

"Why don't you? Man, I haven't played basketball in years," he sighs.

I sip on my coffee and shrug. "I played for two years in high school—11th and 12th grades—and I was no good. Grayson though. He's really great. His team always wins is what I hear. I don't really watch."

"Well, I'll definitely be participating. I better head off."

"Where to?" I ask. We're both off today.

Gabriel kisses me on the lips once, and then again, slower with blatant sensuality. "Taking this to go," he says, wrapping his burrito in a napkin.

"Wait, what are you doing?" I chuckle.

"Furniture shopping with Jiao. And then I'm gonna see if I can pry the guy's name out of her. The one that's been bothering her."

"She didn't tell you?" I ask.

"No, no. Which in ways is a good thing. I'd... oh man I'd really mess him up. Okay, I'm off. How do I look?" Gabriel asks. I give him a thumbs up.

"Bye." With another kiss and a sip of his tea, he's out the door.

Seems pretty domestic to me.

--------------

On Tuesday, as soon as I step into my office, I'm bombarded by Shannon, who finally found my birthday gift in her car. Grayson drops by my office minutes later, asking me if I talked to Gabriel about my idea again. I haven't really thought about it. We talked over text for the weekend, and he called me to ask when he should bring the clothes back. I told him to keep them. Then he came over to my house to fuck me before work on Monday.

"How was your date with Sean?" I ask.

Grayson blushes, shaking his head. "Can't talk about it right now," he says lowly, ducking out of my office. Then he peeks back in. "He's amazing. Gotta go."

I can't help but smile to myself. I'm the one who made something happen, something that might possibly change someone else's life. That's just the greatest feeling if you ask me. It's this feeling that makes me want to be CEO and change lives every day, every week.

There's a meeting today, and from who's attending it, I can see that it's a test in CEO territory. No preparation or anything, so I'm trying not to freak out too much. I hate when I can't prepare for things

Once in a while, I get these spam text messages and haven't gotten around to cancelling my number from whatever service thinks they can suck me in. Today, my phone buzzes excitedly as I wait patiently for this impromptu meeting to begin.

80808: Think you might have AIDS or an STD?? Free AIDS TESTING at Holdman's Medical Center TODAY and TOMORROW only. Come in for FREE screening today!

I'd be lying if I say that doesn't stir me up a lot.

I doubt Gabe has anything of the sort, but something in the back of my head nags at me. I've never been tested. I slept with a lot of guys in college and I've never been tested. I'm not going to get tested for free at a hospital I know nothing about, but I should schedule something. I definitely don't want to go to a place where people know me, so I look up a place about an hour away and schedule an appointment.

I'm not going to worry myself over sex. I seem to end up in spontaneous situations when I worry about sex too much, and my last spontaneous situation brought me to fuck my own boss, after only knowing him from our brief arguing.

Not complaining, of course, although for the first time this weekend, I actually felt one of the real effects Gabriel was having on me. I'd been fantasizing about actually following through with something and setting up a room for my future dog when Gabriel interrupted me Sunday night. I offered to order a pizza or something. He had other plans, of course.

We started in my room first: I was on my knees in four seconds flat, eyes closed and moaning aloud as Gabe unapologetically smacked his cock against my cheeks and on my tongue, and then gently smacked my cheeks with his hands. It'd been a while since I tried to get my mouth around his whole dick, so I tried again. Failed, but tried. He ridiculed me in Spanish for "hurting myself" (¿Estás tratando de hacerse daño? Idiota.), and proceeded to laugh at how red-faced I was after he SHAMED me for trying to be a good playmate. I can't win sometimes.

Then, he made fun of me because I couldn't bring myself to calmly and sensibly ask if he could spank me in the shower. He ended up doing it anyway. Before that, I blew him in the again, 'cause he likes the shower lighting. I should've made fun of HIM for saying that, but he said he loved how blue my eyes looked behind the shower curtain as I looked up at him. No arguing there. I took him in my mouth, gracious and hands-free.

I don't know if I've mentioned how glad I am that he can pick me up and push me against the shower walls, but I am SO glad for that. It's a sexy sense of non-threatening vulnerability that rushes through me as I throw my arms around his neck, waiting for our next move. "I want you to tell me when you want each one, okay?" Gabe asked, referring to—yes—spanking my ass.

"That seems a little too sophisticated," I said quietly.

"You can just say 'go' or something," Gabriel chuckled.

"Then it seems like... a system or something—"

"You know what? Why do I even try?" Gabe mumbled.

"Okay, okay. I'll just let you know." I kissed him deeply, relaxing into his strong arms and running my fingers through the thick locks of brown hair. It's almost at his shoulders when it's wet. My body against his, muscles flexing and hands groping—I say it every time, I swear—but it just felt too good to be wrong. It felt too good to not have.

During a particularly stimulating kiss, Gabe gave me an experimental smack on my wet ass, and I felt its effects in a ripple throughout my body. Maybe later we'd find something else to do, but in the moment, all I wanted from him was his hands and his cock. Too much to ask.

He got three fingers in pretty well, and it was borderline more pain than pleasure, but I thought I could trust my body nonetheless. As soon as he tried to get the head of his fat cock inside me, I knew something was all wrong.

I cried out and immediately proceeded to smack my hand over my mouth. My vision blurred (more than it already was), and I shook my head frantically, which was bad, because Gabe's eyes widened immediately as he started panicking.

"Oh god oh god," Gabriel started whispering. And then he almost slipped, causing me to panic, and then we almost slipped again. "Did I hurt you? I'm so—"

"No, no," I said with a sniff. "I'm just sore. You're okay, Babe. I promise."

"You're scaring the shit out of me," Gabe said, kissing my lips and wiping a small tear from my eye. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know—"

"Shhhh. Just let me down. It's probably just a bad angle," I urged, making sure to smile so he wouldn't panic, despite the fact that my ass was NOT having any of this. I turned away from him, sticking my ass his way. He immediately wrapped one strong arm around my waist, kissing my neck with a delicate passion you wouldn't expect from a 6'5" tower like Gabriel. His other arm was beside my own as his fingers interlocked with mine.

"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't just assume—"

"As if I don't know how big it is by now, Gabe," I chuckled. I proceeded to touch my own cock, slowly jerking myself as I felt each of Gabriel's soft kisses against my wet skin. We always tried not to leave marks, but he must've had his mind somewhere else, because I knew the back of my neck would have at least one bruise by the time he was done.

Gabriel slowly traced the head of his cock over my hole again, and I winced. He tried again, snail-slow, but I knew from the time his cock touched me that it wasn't going to happen. It didn't help that I yelped again, tears rushing to my eyes and my whole body rejecting him again.

It really pained me to see the look on his face, like he'd really hurt me or something.

I told him probably twenty times that it was only partially his fault for having such a huge dick, and mostly my fault for having a sore ass ("Oh Gabe, you know I can take a pounding") which barely made him feel better. I could see the discomfort on his face at the thought of causing me any harm, and I'm not gonna lie: something in my chest clenched up at his expression. No thank you.

It took him a hundred "sorrys" before he felt comfortable enough to leave my house.

Does that make him a keeper? I can't even ask anyone if that makes him a keeper. That fucking sucks.

My desk computer keeps flashing, barely, between normal brightness and something slightly darker, and it's bugging the hell out of me.

"Zeke, a minute?" Grayson asks.

I almost slam my laptop closed. "You're back," I joke.

"Yeah..." Grayson closes the door. "I talked to Clay about moving his office to where mine is before I move, and he declined. Said the area was quieter and all that. That's about all I can do."

"No...no I can't—" I stop myself. "Okay. Thanks." Grayson grabs the door to leave. "Hey, you alright?"

He shrugs. "I'm as good as I need to be."

"I wanna know about your date," I urge. Grayson shakes his head. "C'mon."

"It was great. Sean is great. Sex was great. I'm not going to see him again. Gotta go." Grayson grudgingly leaves my office. What? I'm tempted to go after him, but he's seriously having none of it. What's his problem? I'm the one who set them up; what did I do wrong?

Two hours later, I'm fixing my tie and rehearsing generic, possible one-liners I might be able to throw into conversation at this meeting. I still know nothing about it.

"We need to utilize more ideas and build upon them instead of product pitching all the time. That is what businesses do on impulse, and OrtegaTech has prided itself on being different than our competitors," I say quietly to the small mirror on my desk. "We need to utilize more ideas and build upon—" my phone dings with a text from Beth.

BETH: Family reunion confirmed. August 23-August 26.

ZEKE: You're kidding.

BETH: Mom has Alzheimer's... she wants to see all of us together. Bleh.

ZEKE: Call you later. Have a meeting in 10 min.

BETH: Kick ass.

I'm sitting across from Gabriel, and I'm glad for it. He looks so good. He hasn't said a word and he still has control of the room. Every shift of his body, every facial expression he makes, every time he writes something down—everyone snaps to his attention.

Robbie Taylor sits down after introducing whatever he was saying (I don't know, I was distracted) and Gabriel takes over. "This is just a little test for you all, to see if you're genuinely thinking about what you can do to keep expanding the reach of this company. After brainstorming with Robbie, we have decided that we would come to you first to see what might be your first initiatives to officially kick off OTech's new era. We've set this up to show what it is really like to be in a room full of spontaneous idea pitching, and we hope you came prepared."

A lady stands up, clipboard in hand, along with a flash drive, which she hands to Robbie Taylor. We were supposed to prepare for this meeting? I scoured that email like the back of my hand. I didn't know we were pitching actual ideas oh my god. Where did I mess up where did I go wrong why did I miss the most important part of the email?

After about three short presentations and discussions and criticism, I have nothing. I'm a blank slate. Every idea keeps getting tossed to the side and people are frustrated and is it getting hotter in here? I swear this shirt wasn't this tight when I put it on. For a good ten minutes people are talking over each other and scribbling on boards and I'm talking to no one. I can't do it. Why am I even trying to act like I could handle this? What if I'm ever unprepared in the future? What—

"Ezekiel?" I hear through all the mess. My mind instantly clears and the room tones down. "Sorry. Sorry, everyone. I believe Ezekiel had an idea he told me about a while ago..." Gabriel rummages through his binder for a minute before throwing his hands up. "I seem to have lost it completely. Zeke, would you mind presenting your initiative to everyone here, and we'll see if we can play with it; maybe shape it into something we can all get behind?" Gabriel says, smoothing his hair back.

This motherfucker.

He looked through his binder for NOTHING. He was faking. He didn't even want to hear me out a couple of days ago. If this is some kind of mind game after everything seemed to be going solid, I'm going to be absolutely—

"Delighted," I respond, standing up and taking a deep breath. Gabe mouths a quick 'thank you', but I quickly look away. "We need to utilize more ideas and build upon them instead of product pitching all the time. That is what businesses do on impulse, and OrtegaTech has prided itself on being different than our competitors," I say, probably too quickly. One of the lines I rehearsed in my office space.

"But we don't have the structure. We don't have platform ideas," Robbie Taylor says.

"Well, that's what we would think... um, of course that is what's on the surface at this point," I remark, "But I... well, put it this way. We've already been the holding thread in business, and households... but in the last decade our relationship with people as individuals and our relationship with educators and students has been rocky." As I glance about the room and see people nodding, and see the tiniest smile on Gabriel's face, I feel that rush of energy. I control the room now. It's my time again.

I talk about the whole thing: starting up internships, scholarships, funding, setting up classes—things I didn't even think about even when I did talk to Gabe about it. It all just pours out of me. By the end of the meeting, people have taken notes, and I've had the most positive response out of everyone who has presented. Hitting curveballs.

I'm expected to have a draw-up of my exact plan by next Wednesday. And Gabriel has some anger coming his way later today. For now, I just smile sweetly at him on my way out the door.

________

"I heard you killed that meeting," Shannon says.

"I may be an impromptu champion, but hey. It's whatever," I say smugly. "I wish I'd been prepared though. Could've done a million times better."

"That's not what everyone's saying," Shannon disagrees. I roll up the sleeves of my shirt up and lean back in my chair. "Don't mean to be a downer, but do you know why Grayson is so upset? He hasn't smiled once. I thought he went on a date this weekend."

"He didn't tell me a thing. I didn't ask either." Shannon hands me a folder. "He said his date went well, but that's pretty much it."

"That guy seems really nice. I hope nothing happened." Shannon relaxes in the chair I set in the corner of my office. "Speaking of dates... I haven't forgotten about you."

"Don't—" I begin.

"Zeke, you think I haven't noticed how many times you sneak upstairs every day for 'coffee'?" Shannon teases. My smile fades completely. "Oh, Zeke. You're so cute."

"So, I get coffee often..."

"AND Jiao is also upstairs often. She's brilliant. And she's gorgeous, and nice... and she's talked about you on more than one occasion..." Shannon says.

I groan. "All of a sudden, you're worried about my personal life. I'm not even 25." I can't believe Shannon thinks I'm seeing Jiao. I mean, if she'd known about Gabriel, I would've panicked big time, but I don't want Jiao getting mixed up in this bullshit. My office phone rings, and I'm tempted to ignore it. "We'll talk about this later."

"Ask her out," Shannon says on her way out the door.

"Hello, Ezekiel Hartigan of OrtegaTech Colorado, how may I help you?"

"It's Sean Freeman. I had a question about a patent we were selling. Have you heard about that?" Sean's voice is still dreamy as ever over the phone. God, why doesn't Grayson like him?

"Absolutely. I know our department is scheduled to meet with a..." I quickly search through my e-mails, "Stephen Browning about it in two days. And how may I provide assistance, Mr. Freeman?" I ask.

"Well, Mr. Hartigan, since we have the same job, I'd like to tell you how you can be a good ten steps ahead of everyone in the running for CEO. You sell that patent for double what it's worth." Sean is referring to an older design OTech had for Bluetooth accessibility features in older phones. A smaller tech company wants it, and is willing to pay $5 million. If my calculations are correct, they'll make the money back in a few months, and then skyrocket from there.

"It's barely worth $3 million," I counter.

"And how much is CEO worth to you?" Sean asks. I'm not shooting for CEO for the money. But the opportunity, the influence—that's what I'm in for. Priceless.

"They'll never go for it. And I'm not the one negotiating."

"Zeke. So cute and naïve. You have no idea how much of the show you run over there. You could march up in that building yourself and wring out that patent. You really can. I'm just wondering what I can do on my end," Sean explains. "I can e-mail you the numbers I came up with."

I hesitate. "That'd be great."

"Alright alright, my friend," Sean pauses, and I can hear him typing. "And my other question."

"Mhmm?"

"Do you... per chance... know why Grayson won't say a word to me? I mean, I thought we had a good time this weekend," Sean says lowly. "Maybe I'm missing something here, but... I don't know."

I don't know what to say. I don't lie; I don't know how to cover this up. "Grayson is just nervous. He hasn't been in a relationship in a while. I'd give it some time. Do you want me to talk to him?"

"Hey, man. That'd be awesome. I mean, I don't want to force anything on him. He told me he's got trust issues big time, so I'm not tryna come up on him too fast, you know what I mean?" Sean says. "Tell him he can call me whenever he's ready. I'm not in a rush."

"Absolutely," I reply.

It's practically dead in here, as nobody has any work to do. I think about what Sean said about me negotiating the patent. Technically, it's my job to do so. I'm manager of ads and sales. I sell the patent. I want to do it.

I eat two Slim Jims at once and text my sister before I decide to bother Grayson about Sean. "Hello to the coolest boss on two legs," I comment.

"You're in a good mood," Grayson says.

I sit in Grayson's unoccupied chair. "Just talked to Sean. He wants to talk to you."

Grayson whimpers and rests his head on his desk. "He's perfect, okay? He's too good for me. I try to move on from... things... and then I realize that I'm a piece of crap for trying to move on because I CAN'T actually do it." Grayson's hair is messy and his cheeks are flustered. I stare at him, confused. "I can't be with a guy as amazing as Sean when I'm hung up on someone else, alright?"

"Grayson—"

"I can't. Now, if you want to know how the date went, great. But please don't tell me to move on so quickly." Grayson stares at me, his eyes telling more of what he's feeling than his words. I don't say anything, but just offer up a half-smile. "Okay. So, we went to a bistro closer to where he was staying. It was nice. I wish the food was a little better. I didn't eat much anyway though. This was on Friday. Turns out he's really picky about food, and made the waiter send back the soup he ordered. I thought it was rude at first, but he tipped the guy pretty heavy."