Invite Amy to dinner.

First Date

“Oh, sorry, I have my pottery class tonight. Dang it! Oh well. Maybe some other time.” Amy pats you on the cheek and makes it three steps away, exactly the amount of time needed for your jaw to bottom out, before turning around in peals of laughter. “I’m kidding! Gosh, you should see your face right now, seriously. ‘Amy chose pottery over me, wah.’ Don’t be mad – I’m only teasing! If you can’t make it through one little tease, how are you ever going to manage to impress Father enough to earn his approval to date me!”

“Your father…?!”

“Oh my god, Will, you really are an easy mark.”

Your lips purse all on their own. “So we’re going to dinner, or no?”

She beams, delighted at the effect her so-called jokes have had on you. “We’re going to dinner.”

You let Amy pick the place, and are immediately glad of it. Hiroto Shiso, a Japanese steakhouse she swears by though you’ve never heard of. Once you look up the address, it’s no wonder, downtown in the swankiest part of the city. The two of you agree upon 8 PM, then you head on home to clean up and kill an hour before you meet.

At 7:05, you receive a text from Amy Marchiano.

I’m bored and antsy. Can you get there sooner?

You’re seated at the restaurant before 7:30, with Amy already waiting.

---

Hiroto Shiso meets your expectations, chefs blending a dizzying performance with blurred blades and spatulas that double as percussion instruments. Side by side is probably not how you would have preferred your first date, but it affords ample opportunity for sidelong glances. Amy is dressed to slay, no doubt about it. A black top that’s so bare on the sides that every time the door opens you hope a thin breeze will come and drag it off of her. A tight black skirt and black stockings completely mismatch against a pair of white tennis shoes, but you can ask what happened there once things are on solid footing.

The menu is in English, ostensibly, but your lack of familiarity with Japanese cuisine leaves you perfectly happy to take Amy up on her offer to order for you. She does so in crisply enunciated Japanese, but the chef winds up having to ask for clarifications twice and corrects her pronunciation (albeit cheerfully) another three.

“So much for looking suave,” she grumbles after the exchange.

“It’s more than I can manage. My Japanese lags even behind my Spanish, and that covers directions to the library and ordering at Taco Bell.”

“So you can turn the tables and order for me on our second date? Show-off.” She grins.

“Me gusta la chalupa.” You drop your voice an octave and lean closer. “Con queso.” It’s enough to earn you a playful swat on the chest and the musical sound of her laughter. It’s almost enough to make you forget your afternoon.

“So. Will. How direct do you like it?”

“How direct do I…?”

“Yeah, you know. Straight talk, pointed questions – how many kids do you want, political party affiliation, favorite position – or are you more of a play-it-safe, flirt-it-til-you-make-it kind of conversationalist? Deal-breakers in pizza toppings, exchange of compliments just specific enough not to be banal.”

“Wow.” Your chef glances between you in the midst of dicing some vegetables; you hope Amy can keep from distracting him to the point of slicing a thumb off. “Um, maybe split the difference?”

She nods. “OK. In that case, let’s test those boundaries, shall we? I’ll go first.”

You pivot to face her. “Shoot.”

“Why did you wait so long to ask me out?” Her grin twists awkwardly at one side, which is to say the whole thing look awkward. “Not an accusation. Only an observation.”

“That’s splitting the difference? I’d hate to hear your straight talk question.”

She leans close, almost a lunge, and whispers in your ear. “I really like the way you smell.” Then she pulls back, all innocent smiles. “Better?”

“Wait, that was the straight talk opener, or the other one?”

“Tsk, tsk. You won’t dodge the question that easily, bucko. I’m glad you asked, but I thought I was laying on the cute pretty thick. Why now?”

On any other date, you’d be digging down for a right answer. Something flattering, but not fawning; truthy, if not necessarily the truth. After this afternoon, though, your shovel is too dull for the expedition. So tonight, she gets a real answer.

“All right, real talk then. Yes, you were cute. Are cute. I do like the new style and all.”

“This again? I told you, this is my style.”

You don’t abate. “You were on my radar since we met. Maybe I was a little daunted, a contractor hitting on a veep, but you seemed approachable. I figured maybe I’d engineer a way for our paths to cross again sometime. But then… everything got so messed up so fast. And I know I caused some of that, but that didn’t make things feel any less weird. Then there’s… ugh. Everything since I took this job has been so next level.”

“That bad?” She winces sympathetically.

“No! I mean, not all bad. Some of it’s been great. But when I say next level… you don’t even know.”

“Try me.”

Another couple sits down in your area, a middle-aged man in a smart business suit, his hair slicked back. His date might have been his daughter, but a man doesn’t put his hand that low on his daughter’s back when he guides her to her seat. The two sit down on the two seats on the far side of Amy. The young woman’s face lights up at the sight of your chef chopping fancily chopping up ingredients for your order. Whatever it is, it smells good. The man gives you a respectful nod around Amy’s shoulder which she just misses. You try not to mind.

Your date elbows your mid-section softly. “Hey. Try me.”

You lower your voice, not sure how much of this you want to discuss while sharing a table with strangers, with a chef being none too subtle about his eavesdropping. “Look, it’s just… No. Not ‘just.’ It’s everything. It’s a promotion I didn’t earn, people treating me like royalty, it’s my oversexed secretary, it’s hidden cameras and secret floors and the weirdest one on one I’ve ever had. It’s King and Aubrey and the whole damn Monarch enterprise.”

“Oversexed secretary, eh?” Amy seizes on that of all things. She wiggles a few fingers along the length of your forearm.

“I said it wasn’t all bad, didn’t I?” You shrug off her playful touch, but with a smile. “Come on. Look me in the eye and tell me you never… partook.”

“Partook?” she repeats, amused. “Aye, verily milord. But I prithee not divest this unto my master, lest he imbue me with his wrath.”

By the end, she’s giggling even harder than you are. “Come on,” you protest over your laughter. “You know what I meant. Don’t obstruct.”

“Fine, fine. OK, so sure. I mean, why not, right? If the getting’s good… You’re not getting puritanical over a little casual sex, are you?”

“Me? Hell no. But what about all these beautiful women strutting around in heat?”

“I’m in heat?” She arches a brow, but doesn’t yet seem to have lost her sense of humor about it all. “But no, I get you. Monarch’s a young company, with lots of young people. I’m hurting for data on hotties per capita as compared to the national average, but yeah, we’re probably up there. Men, too, if you hadn’t noticed.” She eyes you significantly.

You suppose there’s some truth to that. Not something you’d paid as much attention to, but it’s not unfair to say that the male minions of Monarch do disproprtionately take after their king. “Still. It’s weird. You can’t deny that.”

“Weird? I don’t really have a frame of reference. Monarch was my first job, so I’ve never really known anything else. It’s been this way ever since I got here.”

“Wow, worked your way up through the ranks quickly. I didn’t know that about you. Where did you start?”

“Hmm? Oh, right where I am. It suits me just fine, so I never wanted to go anywhere else.”

“I meant, where at in Monarch. You don’t strike me as the mail room type.”

She takes a long drink from her boba tea. “No, I heard you. Like I said, I started right here, where I am.”

“Wait, seriously? Your first job was as a VP?”

She eyes one of the elusive bubbles and tries to fix her straw on it. “Junior VP. Yeah.”

“Wow. Seriously? How is that even possible? Are you Nolan King’s niece or something?”

She at least gets the bubble in her straw and slurps it up with a triumphant high-pitched growl, then looks back to you. “Accusations of nepotism, eh? I’m sure what you meant was ‘wow, Amy, you must be really really smart to land a job like that.”

“No, I mean – yes. Yes, that’s what I meant, but still, starting that high up out of the gates… Are you a Yale MBA or something, summa cum laude, or…?”

“Relax, Will. I was teasing again. Honestly, I just know how to suck a man’s dick right off his body.”

Neither of you miss the man on the other side of her almost **** on his water, though only after a moment do you realize the chef’s knife got away from him and skidded across the stovetop, splashing hot grease onto the table. He apologizes nervously and rushes away with a muttered promise to get a waitress to help clean it up.

“Also teasing. I got it this time. Though you may want to take it down a notch or two before one of us catches a carving knife in the chest.”

“Yep, yep, totally teasing.” Her overearnest expression gives way to an impish grin. You wait for her to give an actual explanation, but she doesn’t. Like that, she’s back to bubble hunting, and she’s adorably intent enough on it that it’s difficult to even fault the woman.

Soon after, Amy excuses herself to the restroom, though she manages to glance back ninety percent of the way to the door to catch you (and probably half the restaurant) scoping out her ass, rebuking you with a look of playful yet also empathetic admonition.

“Monarch, eh?”

You might not have caught the words of the man opposite Amy’s vacant seat, but you can’t miss that duosyllable. Not with what it’s done to your life. You turn, but only your neck. “Yep.”

“Nice. Can’t say as I’m surprised.”

You nod, hoping he’ll piss off. Then you wonder, and wonder aloud, “Surprised about what?”

“You know. I don’t mean to butt into your business or anything, friend. Just that… well. You can’t help but look at a woman like that and think… maybe.”

Caught between a tense curiosity and male urges to defend your date, you pivot to face him. “Maybe… what?”

The woman on the far side of him glances around his shoulder, but he catches none of it. Then she’s looking at you, and with a gleam not dissimilar to the one he’s directed to the absent Amy Marchiano. “Hey, no offense intended, really. You just… well, you don’t look like the type.”

“You’re talking in a lot of circles there, ‘friend.’ Why don’t you just come out and say what you mean?”

Seeing you stiffen, he holds up his hands in surrender. “Whoa there. I can see I’ve upset you. It wasn’t my intention, truly. Why don’t I buy you and your little, ah, companion the next round, and we’ll call it a day. Yeah?”

You slide over to Amy’s seat. “No, you clearly have something you want to say, so just say it. We’re all friends here, aren’t we? So just say it. So we’re with Monarch. What’s it to you?” He shrinks back, if not intimidated then at least not looking to bite off this much.

“You’re… both of you?” He looks caught by surprise. Perhaps the reputation for Monarch’s women preceded its reputation for men in his eyes, too.

“Yeah. So?”

“No, nothing. I guess that actually kinda makes sense. So who’s pushing the buttons, then?” He glances around, though you’re not sure for what.

“Are you a snoop or something? Is this some sort of corporate espionage? Because if so, you’re terrible at it.”

He chuckles. “I’m just here to grab a bite, same as you. Or, well, maybe not the same as you, but… you know what I mean. Come on, relax. Tell you what. Your meals are on me.” You’re about to tell him that for the obscene salary Monarch is shelling out to you – to say nothing of whatever Amy’s raking in as a VP – you sure as hell don’t need his help feeding yourself, but then he suddenly leans in close, voice lowering. “Tell you what. Sign me up for a spin with your little friend, and you won’t need to reach for your wallet for a very long time.”

“Stephen!” hisses the woman at his side, incensed.

He rolls his eyes and turns back to her. “What, I don’t mind sharing, sweet–” But the woman throws her napkin at his lap and storms out, purse trailing along in her wake. The man scowls after her, and after a brief look at you, trots after.

The chef says nothing.

Amy’s back soon. She asks after a few minutes what happened to the other couple once she notices the extra elbow room. “They had a little lover’s spat. She bolted on him, and he had to run after.”

“Oh wow, really? Step out to snort one little line of coke and you miss all the fun!” She glances to your lurky chef, shaking her head to assure him she’s kidding. “Man, I am really bad at first dates.”

“At least I didn’t run out on you.”

“Yet,” she amends. But her legs cross, leaving her shoe nestled snug against your calf. She rubs at it softly.

“I like your odds.”

---

The meal is good. Not excellent, but pretty impressive for something you didn’t even pick out yourself. You didn’t recognize half the ingredients Amy explained to you. It’s no egg salad, though, that’s for damn sure. She insists on picking up the check, and finally the two of you make your way out to the parking lot.

“So now for date hurdle number two: having driven here separately, how do we proceed? Go home separately? Shoot for a spontaneous second course of public cohabitation?”

“You run hurdles at Yale, too?”

“First, I did not go to Yale, and second, I’m 5’5”, so no hurdles for me. Unless somebody has, like, the tee ball equivalent of hurdles.”

“Not that I’ve heard. As to this hurdle, I’d like to keep it going. You haven’t disappointed me so far.”

Her face lights up perhaps only a smidgeon disproportionately to the compliment’s merit. Her hands touch behind her back as she twists back and forth. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. So now you have the really hard part of the hurdle.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Because now you have to decide if we leave together, or separate.”

“Why is that a hurdle? That seems pretty simple.”

“Wow, I didn’t think your first date with me would be your first date ever.” She shakes her head reproachfully. “See, if we drive together, then someone’s car is left behind. That’s a big step.”

“How is that a big step?”

“Think about it. So we head somewhere else. Dancing, a movie, some corny romantic thing that’s objectively not that fun but got you somewhere in the past. Whatever. So either that goes well, or it doesn’t.”

“And?”

“If it goes badly, then whoever drove is now tasked with hurdle 3A, namely, whether to chauffeur the other person back to their vehicle in an awkward trip, or to accept their offer to call a cab, which is basically the same as saying ‘this was horrible and I resent you for the horribleness.’”

“You’ve thought about this a lot more than I have.”

“Or,” she continues, “it goes well. Then there’s hurdle 3B, where either someone works up the chutzpah the other person to come home with them, or else a different but still very awkward trip back here to get the other car.”

“I suppose hurdle four is if we do go home together, hoping that goes well enough to avoid yet another uncomfortable car ride back here tomorrow?”

“Oh, no, they’ll totally tow you by tomorrow. Hey, unrelated, how about I drive?”

You seize her by the waist and pull her lips to yours. Her body reacts like it’s rehearsed, it’s so ready. Her fingers sink into your neck, teasing the little hairs they find, and if not for the very fresh memories of Jenna and Avery and Summer, you could see how a man couldn’t imagine wanting any other woman.

You tilt her chin up to yours. She holds it there, plainly ready and hoping for another kiss. “So let me help you over those hurdles, Amy. I want to go home with you tonight. Whatever we do in the hurdle two interim, it won’t change that. And if you want me to take a cab or hitchhike or make the ride back here as awkward as humanly possible, I still want to go home with you.”

Amy rocks back and forth on her heels. “You are so into me.”

“You can’t hypnotize me, Amy. A hypnotist tried once, but it didn’t take. And I remind him of that every time I go over to wash his car, every Thursday, at six o’clock.”

She snorts. “Tell me you stole that.”

“Guilty.”

“Relieved. OK, so where to now? Movie’s out if I’m supposed to have adequate evidence as to whether or not to allow a man such as yourself into my home.”

“You mentioned dancing…? You dance?”

“It may or may not surprise you to learn that I have taken not one, not two, but three different dance classes. It may also not surprise you to learn that I was not very good in them.”

“The second part does surprise me, but what the hell. Let’s go embarrass each other.”

Amy drives. It’s a Tesla, though surprisingly spacious, and it runs quiet as a breath on the wind. She’s not great driver. Although you expect it has to do more with her choice to wear sunglasses at night, she’s plainly self-conscious about it enough that you don’t say anything, not even after running her second consecutive stop sign when she gets detoured into a neighborhood on the way to the club.

“The Whisper?” you comment as you step out of the car, waiting for Amy to hand off her keys to the valet before taking her hand. She’s changed her shoes now, a pair of black stilettos that complement her outfit, but otherwise still looks as dynamite as before.

“You know it?”

“I know it.” No easy way to explain it’s where you went on your first Monarch date, right before your first Monarch threesome. This place has been lucky for you in the past. “It’s a nice choice.”

“A friend of mine kept raving about the place. Said she hooked up with this crazy hot guy here.”

Remembering one of your mutual friends, one of the members of that threesome, you probe gently. “Oh yeah? Who?”

She opens her mouth, then stops. “You know? I forget.” Perhaps Ingrid’s raving went a little further? Regardless, Amy shrugs and leads you toward the front of the line. Mercifully, as you’re let right through into the club, you don’t see any familiar faces. After a couple drinks spent taking in the scenery and getting your joints used to a little rhythm, the two of you head out to the floor.

Amy wasn’t lying about taking classes, though you develop sincere doubts about her claims of having performed poorly. Her body moves like some fey creature unburdened by the disruptive presence of a skeleton. Every swish of that skirt, twisting of her arms over her head, the sinuous swaying of her neck and back… it’s almost hypnotic, though she doesn’t seem to be conditioning you to wash her car. With the sides as open as they are, anyone and everyone who’s inclined to look gets glimpses of her breasts as she flows across Whisper’s dance floor, and every man with an eyeline likely learns the color of her panties as her legs kick and at times wrap around your waist possessively.

It’s not subtle. By the third song, she’s practically humping you in the open. By the fifth, she is. If anyone minds that the young couple making out, fondling one another with only token efforts at rhythm, nobody says so where you can hear it. The only way you could go further is to start fucking Amy right there on the dance floor. Hell, after the past few weeks, the idea that someone might object to you enacting your every carnal whim is foreign.

Amy whirls, grinding her tight little ass right into your crotch. She may as well be jacking you off with her buttocks. Too worked up to think more of it, you hold her there with an arm wrapped around her chest, your grip flat over one petite breast. There’s no resistance; the only pushback is from two nipples pressing hard into your palm and forearm. Her hips undulate up and down, a deliberate stroke; the heat radiating off her pussy is burning a hole in your pants.

Oh, fuck it.

You pull down her underwear. There’s some voice in your head, the last echoes of sanity, telling you to at least tug it all the way off. You ignore it, instead leaving them right around her knees where the little slip of black satin can’t not be seen by lookers-on. Amy gasps, but doesn’t resist. Not even when you undo your fly and fish your cock out through the hole and slip it under her skirt.

“You want this?” you say into her ear. A shout, almost, but only a shout can pierce the veil of the music, the haze of lust.

Amy responds by adjusting her hips to rise up and then slam down, impaling herself in one go. She’s on your cock. You are in the middle of a dance club, surrounded by a hundred or more people, and you’re fucking one of your company’s vice presidents like you own her.

The fucking doesn’t stop the dance, though. With the beat pulsing through your sweat-dripping bodies, she’s still working her hips. More up and down now than side to side, but she’s still going. Her back arches, arms gracefully reaching back to grasp your face and pull it down to kiss her over her shoulder. The kiss lasts until it can’t, until the beat picks up and you’re fucking her too hard for her to avoid panting for oxygen. Dimly, you’re aware of the crowd clearing around you, expanding and then thickening as people watch the two of you rutting with open awe, open lust. Here and there you see strangers’ hands straying to strangers’ crotches, but for the most part, their attention is on you. You can’t blame them.

Your hands ease into either of the two immense holes around her sleeves, cupping and fondling Amy’s tits. She moans. She fucks you to the music, and moans. She comes with a shriek they can make out clearly way back at the bar. You don’t stop.

Surely someone is coming to disrupt this. Some moralizing priss or jealous mouth-breather or simply a bouncer coming to do their job. You’re pretty sure you see one of them, a man in a black shirt with arms as shoving his way through the densely packed crowd, but when he sees you, he stops and stares with the rest of them.

Whatever. You wanted to fuck Amy Marchiano tonight, and so you are. If it ends in being dragged out in handcuffs, what a story it’ll be. If Aubrey and King read about it in the paper Monday, their golden boy and rising star caught in the carnal act at some night club, well, at least you won’t have to worry about being sent back to 7.

Not that it was that bad. It was actually–

“Harder, Will,” Amy moans.

Right. You pull out long enough to spin her to face you, then heft her bare ass under her skirt onto your cock. You lock into position like her pussy was made to fit you, snug and wet and quivering in ecstasy. Her arms drape over your shoulders to help you bounce her, though you’re still doing the lion’s share of the work. No matter. It’s close. You’re close, that is. Amy’s been riding one orgasm after another for the whole of the last song, some techno piece punctuated rather aptly with the sound of a woman’s voice calling out, “more,” at intervals.

Amy leans back; you can barely hold her, but even with her body jutting forward from you like an extension of your dick, she’s not giving up wriggling those perfect hips. You come inside her. She comes around you. Again. And again.

The music stops. Someone starts clapping, and others follow suit. You’re busy helping Amy to her feet, trying to find where her panties fell off, allowing her to carefully zip you back into your pants. You never find the panties, but oh well. Amy can afford more panties.

She takes you by the hand and leads you out of the club. People are still applauding. “I gotta get me one of those!” shouts one man, to you or to his companions, you’re not sure.

“Good luck landing that,” someone else replies.

You make it outside. It’s hot out, hot and sultry. There’s no breeze. Amy’s body glistens with beaded sweat, and yours would do the same if it weren’t more covered. The two of you wait in companionable silence, side by side, waiting for the valet to bring her car around.

“Are you two… available?” asks a man’s voice behind you.

You turn, looking him over. He’s a man around your age, well built, handsome, his clothes fashionable in a too-planned kind of way. “We’re together, OK?” Not entirely proud of your macho response to the man at the restaurant, you try to moderate your tone.

“I get that. I mean, I’m cool with both of you. You know, whatever. I got money, if that’s how you wanna do it.”

Amy glances up to you, and you can see the deference in them. She’s horny, and happy, and even if both of those feelings are focused on you right now, they’re bigger than that, too. If you wanted to tag-team her with this total stranger, she’d let you. Let him fuck her in the back of her car, maybe, too. A kink? Submissive? Part of this whole commodity thing? Part of Monarch’s web of secrets? Shit, maybe employee benefits include some sort of all-inclusive sex club or something.

Shame on you for not reading the fine print.

---

Decision time. It’s a double decision this time, so vote once for how to finish out the night, and once for how to spend the rest of your weekend. Voting is open on my patreon to patrons $10+!

Tonight:

• See if Amy will let you pimp her out to this man.
• Take him up on it, score another threesome.
• Ignore him. Spend the weekend fucking Amy senseless.
• Enjoy your night more conventionally back at Amy’s place.
• Let her down gently and go home alone.

This weekend:

• Host a “work session” with a couple babes from Monarch at your place.
• Invite Jenna over.
• Send up a general invite to Summer, Avery and Ingrid and fuck any and all who show up.
• A couple strange interactions… try doing research on Monarch outside the company itself.
• Use your security clearance to infiltrate their network looking for answers.