Becoming a Sales-Associate

Introduction

This is a story about a befriended couple of ours, here in Havana, a little north from Tallahassee. John-Paul is now 52. He had been married before, his three kids are all grown up. His youngest daughter is 17, living at her mother's. His ex had left him for some guy and lived downtown in Tallahassee. He's a practitioner and has his own practice, working 5 days a week.

He met Celine at a party at our house 5 years ago. They married the following year about two months before she gave birth to their baby daughter Annie. Celine gave up her bank job because of her pregnancy and is 32 now. Frieda, her best friend back from highschool had asked her to work with her for Amway ... selling their things. To introduce her, Frieda and Celine had set up one of those housewife parties at her home.

The Home Party

The Aperol Spritz left a faint citrus film on Celine’s tongue. She set her glass on the windowsill and watched the last porch light blink off across the cul-de-sac.

Marta’s minivan pulled away first. Then Priya’s Honda. Then the cluster of three neighborhood wives who’d walked, their silhouettes shrinking under the streetlamps, laughter trailing behind them like a scarf.

The Amway presentation had run late. Steve, the regional supervisor Frieda had promised would show up after Frieda herself bailed, had been … thorough. Patient with questions. Generous with the cooking demonstration - some titanium-coated pan that seared chicken breasts into golden submission. The women had leaned in when he’d lowered his voice to explain how this pan was a bargain as he could offer a $50 dicount just that day.

All women filled out their order form.

Steve sat on the couch, between Celine and Steff. He explained about the Achievers Invitational in Orlando at the end of the month. Steff sat close to him - very close. "I loved those conventions - never missed one!"

Steve had a way of holding eye contact that made the back of Celine's neck prickle. And his hands - she’d noticed his hands the moment he’d walked through the door, large-knuckled and deliberate, the kind of hands that could assemble a display stand without looking at the instructions.

The street went quiet. Celine turned from the window, ready to close the drapes, and saw Steve, walking the street to the left toward his car - a silver sedan she’d watched him park when he arrived. It sat under the sycamore tree three houses down. He walked with ease, his jacket hooked on two fingers over his shoulder.

But then he stopped.

Celine’s fingers went still on the curtain.

He looked around. A slow rotation of his head, scanning the dark houses, the empty sidewalks. The streetlamp threw his shadow long and sharp across the asphalt.

Then he changed direction. Not toward the car ... the opposite direction. He walked to a house just a little further to the right. The one with the blue shutters and the overgrown bougainvillea.

Steff - Stefanie Mueller, who’d sat at the end of the sofa all evening, quiet except when Steve had asked her about her old Amway territory. Steff, who’d worn a blouse with one too many buttons undone for a Tuesday night product demonstration.

Celine watched Steve climb Steff’s porch steps. The door opened before he could knock. Light spilled around his silhouette. Then the door closed and the light vanished and the street was empty again.

Her breath caught somewhere under her sternum. She held it. She held it until her lungs burned and she had to exhale through her nose, a slow controlled stream that fogged the window glass and blurred the streetlamps into yellow smears.

Hmm.

---

“Successful night?”

John-Paul didn’t look up from his tablet when she walked into the living room. He was sprawled in the recliner, reading glasses perched halfway down his nose, pajama pants riding low on his hips. The doctor home from the clinic, decompressing with whatever medical journal he’d downloaded.

“Yeah,” Celine said. “Good turnout. Seven neighbors. Sold a lot of cookware.”

“Excellent.” Still not looking up. “That’s my little entrepreneur.”

The words sat flat between them. Celine gathered wine glasses off the coffee table, one in each hand, a third pinched between her fingers. She carried them to the kitchen, ran hot water, added soap. The sponge made small circles on the rims.

She did not tell him about Steff’s door opening before Steve could knock.

She stacked glasses in the drying rack. She wiped down the counter. She folded the extra Amway brochures and tucked them into her tote bag for tomorrow.

John-Paul was already in bed when she climbed the stairs. She slid under the duvet, turned off her lamp, and lay in the dark with her eyes open.

Steff’s house. Steve’s hands on Steff’s thigh during the presentation - Celine had seen that too, a casual proprietary touch that Steff hadn’t flinched from. Had instead leaned into, her shoulder pressing against his bicep, her breath quickening the hollow of her throat.

Celine’s own hand drifted down her stomach.

She pictured Steff’s bedroom. The layout couldn’t be that different from hers - same builder, same floorplan. Was Steff’s bed against the far wall or under the window? Was Steve still wearing that button-down shirt or had Steff’s fingers worked the buttons loose?

Her fingers found the hem of her sleep shorts. Lifted it. Slid beneath.

She was wet already. The slickness surprised her - she’d been damp since the window, since watching Steve change direction on the empty street, but she hadn’t realized how much. Her middle finger parted her folds and found her clitoris with practiced accuracy.

Eyes closed. Breathing shallow.

Steve’s hands pushing Steff’s blouse up over her breasts. Steff’s legs wrapping around his waist. The grunt he might make when he entered her - John-Paul made that sound, a low involuntary expulsion of air, as if the pleasure knocked something loose in his chest.

She circled her clit. Slow then fast then slow again, building a rhythm that made her hips press down into the mattress. Her other hand cupped her breast, thumb grazing the nipple until it peaked.

The fantasy shifted. Steve’s face above her. Steve’s weight pressing her into Steff’s mattress. That thick deliberate body, the competence of his hands, the way he’d looked at her over the rim of his Aperol glass ...

Her orgasm broke without warning. A sudden clench, a gasp she muffled against her pillow, her thighs clamping around her own hand. The contractions rolled through her, four, five, six of them, each one drawing a small whimper from the back of her throat.

She lay still afterward. Breathing through her mouth. Fingers still pressed against her clit, feeling her own heartbeat thrum against the pad of her index finger.

Beside her, John-Paul’s breathing stayed steady. The tablet had long since dimmed. He hadn’t stirred.

---

The bed was empty when morning light sliced through the blinds. John-Paul blinked at the space beside him - sheets twisted, pillow dented, no wife.

The shower ran in the ensuite. He registered the sound, registered the ache of a full bladder, registered the morning erection pressing against his pajama pants. None of it urgent enough to move.

Then the shower stopped.

The bathroom door opened and Celine walked out and John-Paul’s bladder ceased to exist.

She was naked. Her long blond hair, damp and darker at the ends, clung to her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. Water droplets still beaded on her skin - on the delicate ridges of her collarbones, on the gentle swell of her belly, on the pale perfect expanse of her thighs.

And between those thighs. God. John-Paul swallowed. She’d shaved herself completely. Not a trace of stubble. The skin was smooth, the lips of her sex visible, a delicate pink fold peeking from the seam of her body.

She met his eyes and smiled.

“Let’s go for it.”

“What?”

She crossed to the bed, hips swaying with a deliberation that made his cock twitch. “I want another baby, JP, please. Cum inside me.”

Her fingers hooked the waistband of his pajamas and tugged. He lifted his hips automatically, a reflex honed by five years of marriage, and the fabric slid down his thighs. His erection sprang free, already slick at the tip.

Celine made a sound - a small pleased hum - and lowered her mouth.

The wet heat of her tongue met the underside of his shaft. She licked from base to tip in one long slow stroke, her eyes closing, her lips parting to take the head into her mouth. Her tongue swirled. The suction deepened.

John-Paul groaned. His head fell back against the pillow. His hands found her damp hair and twisted into it, not pulling, just holding.

“Jesus, Celine.”

She didn’t answer. She was focused now, working him with a single-minded intensity that made his toes curl. Her hand wrapped around the base of his shaft, stroking what her mouth couldn’t reach, and her head bobbed with increasing speed. Her saliva slicked him, dripped down his balls, made obscene wet sounds that filled the quiet bedroom.

Just when he thought he might not last, she pulled off with a gasp. Swung one leg over his hips. Paused there, hovering, her sex positioned directly above his cock.

She looked down at him. Her pupils were blown wide, her lips wet and slightly swollen.

And John-Paul had the strangest feeling, just for a moment, that she wasn’t entirely looking at him.

Then she sank down.

The first inch made them both gasp. The second inch made her nails dig into his chest. By the fourth inch she was fully seated, her pelvic bone grinding against his pubic bone, her inner muscles clenching around him in rhythmic flutters.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, yes.”

She rode him. Slow at first, rocking her hips in small circles, experimenting with the angle. Then faster, rising and falling, her breasts bouncing, her slick shaven mound glistening where they joined. John-Paul gripped her hips and thrust up to meet her, matching her rhythm, watching the flush spread from her chest to her neck to her cheeks.

She was beautiful like this. Unguarded. Lost in sensation. Her mouth open, her eyes half-closed, her damp hair swinging.

But her eyes - when they flickered fully open for just a second - held something distant. Something behind her pleasure, behind the friction and the heat and the building pressure in her core.

Steve’s face flickered through her mind. Steve pushing open Steff’s door. Steve’s hands on Steff’s thigh. Was Steff beneath him right now, somewhere across the cul-de-sac, still tangled in her sheets, still smelling of sex?

Celine’s orgasm caught her by surprise - a sharper, brighter version of what she’d given herself the night before. She cried out, a short shocked sound, and ground down hard on John-Paul’s cock, milking him with her own convulsions.

He felt her tighten around him. Felt the pulses ripple down his shaft. His own control snapped.

“I’m ... Celine, I’m ...”

“Do it,” she gasped. “Inside, please.”

He spilled. The first jet made him arch off the bed. The second made him groan her name. Her inner walls rippled around him, drawing everything out, and he pumped into her in short aborted thrusts until the last drop left him and he collapsed, boneless, into the mattress.

Celine stayed upright for another moment. Still straddling him. Still connected. One hand pressed low on her belly, as if she could feel the warmth of his release spreading through her.

Then she climbed off. Padded, still naked, to the bathroom. The door clicked shut.

John-Paul stared at the ceiling. His heart rate slowed. The sweat cooled on his skin.

The shower started running again.

---

The next afternoon, Celine walked down the driveway as Steff was checking her mailbox.

It was two o’clock, the hottest part of the day. The air shimmered above the asphalt. Somewhere a lawnmower buzzed.

“Steff.”

Steff looked up. Her expression was guarded, the easy smile of the night before nowhere in sight.

Celine stopped a foot away. Close enough to smell Steff’s perfume. Close enough to see the faint bruise on the side of her neck - a bruise no amount of foundation had quite managed to hide.

“I saw Steve,” Celine said quietly. “Entering your house.”

Steff’s hand tightened on a stack of mail.

“I’m not going to tell anyone.”

The mailbox lid creaked as Steff pushed it shut. She looked at Celine for a long moment. Assessed her. Weighed something behind her eyes.

“Come inside,” she said.

The blue shutters. The overgrown bougainvillea. Celine stepped across the threshold and into a living room arranged almost identically to her own, except Steff had better throw pillows and a coffee table made of reclaimed wood.

They stood in the kitchen. Steff poured two glasses of water. Drank hers in one long swallow.

“It’s not what you think,” she said finally.

“I don’t think anything.”

“My husband ...” Steff laughed, a short sharp sound without humor. “My husband is a good man. He’s a good father. He’s a good provider.” She ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “But in bed? Nothing. I mean he tries. But it’s over in five minutes and I never ... I never ...”

She broke off. Celine waited.

“With Steve it’s different.” Steff’s voice dropped. Her eyes met Celine’s and held them. “You have to understand. I’ve been married eleven years. I thought my body just … didn’t work that way. I thought orgasms were something other women talked about but I wasn’t built for them. And then Steve ...”

She set the glass down.

“Three, four times a night, Celine. He can give it to me three or four times a night. I have never felt anything like it. My husband can never know. Never. But oh my God. Last night. Last night I thought I was going to pass out.”

Celine’s mouth had gone dry. She sipped her water and felt it do nothing.

“How long has this been going on?”

“We hooked up at a company event two years ago. In Phoenix. And then again at the regional conference in Dallas. And then the spring launch in Atlanta.” Steff shrugged. “It’s nothing emotional. I’m not leaving my husband. He’s not leaving - well, I don’t even know if Steve has a wife. He doesn’t talk about himself. But his cock, Celine. His cock is remarkable. Seriously. It’s like it was designed in a lab.”

A laugh bubbled out of Celine’s throat. She hadn’t expected a laugh, hadn’t planned on finding any of this funny, but Steff’s deadpan delivery surprised it out of her.

Steff grinned. “I know. I know how it sounds. But wait until you ... ” She stopped. Recalibrated. “Anyway. That’s what happened. That’s what you saw.”

Celine thought about the Achievers Invitational. About the train ride to Orlando with Frieda. About the hotel room they’d be sharing.

“There’s a convention at the end of the month,” she said.

Steff’s eyebrow lifted. “Oh, I know.”

“Do you think ...”

“I don’t think anything.” Steff smiled. “I just know that what happens at those events … well. Let’s just say you should pack something nice for the dance.”