I can wait

“No, Angel.” I pull my hand away gently, “I know you mean well, but I don't want to take over your life, I can wait until next week.” I see the confusion and hurt in her eyes at my rejection, but better to keep this relationship straightforward. Still there is no reason to be mean, so I take her hand in mine and squeeze it just as she squeezed mine. “I'm an old man, Angel. You don't want to wear me out do you?”

“You're not old Mr. P.” The response comes out reflexively, but I am old, and in her heart I think she knows that this relationship can never be like one of those Harlequins I gave her. Alison offers to clean up the kitchen for me but I shoo her away, telling her to get some studying done. She retreats with a shy smile on her face and I suspect that she's going to start working on the reading that I assigned instead of her regular courses.

The next few days pass relatively normally, the only change in the routine is that Dick does not come over for his usual booty call on either Monday or Tuesday. I try to explain my satisfaction at this change in routine to the fact that I won't have to listen to her bed banging, but I'm pretty sure that there is more to it than the peace and quiet. In fact, Alison is so quiet on Tuesday after dinner that I find myself silently creeping up the stairs to check up on her. I try to be a decent landlord not invade my tenant's space, and this definitely falls well in the creeper category, but I just can't seem to stop myself. At the top of the stairs I see the bedroom door is slightly open and I peek in cautiously. She's not lying naked on the bed masturbating, or watching porn on her laptop, but what I see is pretty sexy in its own way. She is sitting on her bed reading one of the Harlequins with a wistful smile just visible in the dim light of her desk lamp.

I can just make out just enough of the cover to recognize it as the one where a boss fucks his **** secretary. Of course I can't tell if she is at one of the 'good parts', but whatever she is reading, it has her complete attention. I guess that is just as well, because if she happened to look up she would see me staring at her like a lovesick fool and then what do I do? I honestly can't say how long I remain there staring through the narrow gap in her doorway, but it must have been close to a minute, it is only when she turns the page that I come to my senses and slip away before I am caught.

I vaguely remember the plot of the book, but I just skimmed through it that first day, so when I'm back on my armchair, instead of heading to the typical porn sites, I download an e-version of the book and spend the next hour reading it again myself. The heroine is a novice secretary who, with the help of a doctored résumé, has unexpectedly landed a job as the personal assistant to a billionaire businessman. After a few chapters where the tension between the two grows, there is a scene where she loses an important file that her demanding boss needs for a meeting. It does not take the boss long to catch the inconsistencies in her resume and he confronts the young woman. Instead of firing her, or some other reasonable consequence somehow the businessman ends up punishing her ineptitude and deceit by kissing her fiercely and stripping off her neat white blouse as she struggles weakly in his arms. It doesn't make sense in any real way, but the paragraphs describing the passionate kiss and it's aftermath are well written and I could only imagine Alison's reaction to reading something like that.

They don't fuck. In typical Harlequin fashion, a phone call interrupts the moment so the heroine is not bent over the boss's desk like you'd imagine, but in a way it is even sexier to know that it is just a matter of time before the innocent young woman will have to let the older man claim her. He uses her falsified job application to keep her under his control, threatening to ruin her career if she tries to cross him or escape from his sphere of influence.

It takes a couple more chapters before the innocent young woman finally ends up in his penthouse spread out on his bed, protesting and struggling futilely under him as he pulls open her knees and takes her. It surprises me that in this day and age of the 'Me too' movement that this book even got published. At the very least this is classic sexual harassment, and what occurs in the boss's bedroom is clearly a ****; the last words out of the heroine's mouth before her deflowering were literally 'No, don't!' I guess because of how willing she becomes once her boss has popped her cherry and the fact that the billionaire is a caring lover who brings her to a mind-shattering climax, the publishers were willing to overlook the troubling technicalities.

Apparently, my impressionable young tenant isn't in the least turned off by the **** nature of the sex scenes. Just as I finish the last chapter where the pair are married off and all the transgressions on both sides are brushed under the rug in a happily-ever-after ending, I hear the sound of Alison's bed rocking against the wall. It is nowhere near as loud as when Dick is fucking her, but there is no doubt in my mind as to what is going on just up the stairs from where I am sitting.