Chapter 1

I was warned, several times, that if I accepted the Regional Director’s position for my entire state I would hardly spend another night at my own home again. They weren’t kidding either. During the first six months after I started, I could only barely even find the time to supervise the movers packing everything I owned, except for my career wardrobe, so that I could rent my house out ... since I was never home at all! My salary is good, perhaps even excellent, and my company pays me a more than adequate per-diem, plus expenses, and perhaps best of all I have virtually no living expenses of my own.

Then, as now, about two years later, I live in a sequence of five hotel rooms in five separate cities, each and every day of every month. About six days each spent at the offices of various franchisees in one city, then the same in other cities for the next three weeks. Then, for a day or two on or around the last Friday of the month, I’ll visit corporate HQ in another state to write and file reports to my boss and coordinate efforts with our other visiting Regional Directors. Then, back off on the road and do it all over again.

My boss told me when she hired me that I’d either become a multi-millionaire in five years or else in be in a mental institution with a breakdown. Perhaps even both. Five years was the longest that even the most determined road-warrior could handle this sort of job, in any of their existing six district regions. I was just finishing my third year now and quite unsure how the next two would handle me.

Living in a hotel room for every day of your life can get deadly dull. I had no current husband, no children, not much family (none nearby) and really nothing other than work to ground myself with. Yes, I was getting rich and the VP’s chair was looking closer to my grasp every week, but was any of this really worth it?

I was almost forty and gaining still about half a pound a month that even nightly gym workouts wouldn’t melt away. Too much fine dining and rich food, nearly every night, I was sure of it. I wasn’t fat yet, but I had the middle-aged spread starting from my hips that looked out defiantly at me every morning in the bathroom mirror.

At this point in time, I knew that I was already in a malaise, that my figurative sails were done and the river was carrying along my boat now, not the other way around. Could I even do this job another two years without really going crazy or did I want that corner office too badly? To show off for old school friends I didn’t see or talk to anymore or my parents, who had always been ambivalent about my independence and success? What was the point too of getting richer every day when I hardly ever spent a dime of it ... and only rarely for just fun?

It was the end of the month and I was checked in my hotel later than usual thinking about the early afternoon meeting at HQ tomorrow. I’d needed to stop at a troublesome franchisee location that Friday morning and had stayed past noon, dealing with a system problem that was mostly between the new owner’s ears, and not our Point of Sale system. I took a later plane flight than usual and then went in a cab straight to the corporate office, bags still in hand.

Now, it was after seven o’clock and already dark before I took a short taxi ride to my usual hotel to stay for the night. I could have stayed anywhere, but this one was the most convenient. They were a mid-sized national hotel chain with branches nearly everywhere, but not terribly fancy. Not the Hilton but not Motel-6 either. Always clean and comfortable, with a decent breakfast too ... and most importantly, the closest place to stay near our corporate offices.

Since it was also the last Friday of the month, and the place was unusually busy. The main convention room was crowded and loud dance music could be heard. Many of the ladies, seen now seen arriving, were mostly in very short dresses with very adventurous plunging cleavage. Very bold, I thought, fit for clubbing or dance attire perhaps but not for a function at a hotel!

The usual evening manager was not behind the desk, but I recognized a college-aged girl that I thought was his niece. I was friendly, even chatty with her uncle, when I saw him every month, but she didn’t know me at all. She politely confirmed my reservation and billing information and then handed me my room key ... along with a second keyring that bore my room number tag, and an attached small wooden block painted pink.

“What’s this for?” I curiously asked.

“Oh ... are you not with the swingers group in the ballroom? That’s for you to put into one of those two big fishbowls over there on the table by the elevator. Blue fishbowl, if you like a man to visit your room later, or the pink one, for ... you know, if you’d prefer a woman. Like that...”

The girl was clearly a bit embarrassed, having to tell me about the rules for their ‘key party’, but she didn’t seem all that virginal or innocent. In fact, she winked at me and smiled when, after some indecision over whether to participate at all, I dropped my pink key token with my room number into the pink fishbowl.

It was a completely impulsive decision and I still don’t know why I decided to throw my room tag in! I usually checked here in far earlier in the day and I’d never had the faintest idea that on the last Friday of the month the local swinger’s club came here as well.

It can be a very lonely life living on the road and I admit that about once a month, or perhaps more, I’ll go downstairs to the hotel bar at wherever I was staying and would sometimes allow myself to be ‘picked up’. I’d been divorced for over ten years now and sometimes late at night I’ll miss the companionship in bed ... and the sex, especially if it’s good. Only sometimes was the sex ‘very good’ ... as for exceptional or outstanding, well, mostly not.

Bored late at night in my rooms, I’ll sometimes also turn on the X-rated movie channels and watch while in bed, rubbing myself off two to three times in the process. Enough to clear out my tired head so that I could sleep in peace. Lately, I had started to really enjoy, prefer even, watching the girl-girl scenes and lesbian themed movies. Watching them, women lovers, now really aroused me and I was starting to view women now sexually, in much the same sort of way I would have looked over a man as a potential bedmate.

I’d never touched another woman sexually before ... but I had fantasies now about this, like the touch of her breasts and her soft lips. I’d always had sex with men, and while that has different feelings of its own, men are not soft. Softness, to feel another woman for the first time tonight, to live out my fantasy, was what I wanted!

I had a second of doubt or regret, shame perhaps, but I pushed the elevator button to enter and go up to my room before the urge to retrieve my pink key overwhelmed me. Once there, I ordered a chef’s salad from room service and took a long hot shower.

When the door knocked about forty minutes later, it was the salad that had arrived and not my fantasy female lover ... but she arrived next, about ten minutes later and my meal was entirely forgotten.

She was a little older than me, but not by much. Unlike me, she didn’t seem the slightest bit shy or embarrassed. A strange woman had appeared at my hotel room looking for sex ... which was what I both wanted and was terrified about. Now, all of a sudden, I wasn’t sure that I wanted the fantasy to become a firm reality!

“Hi, I’m Katherine, but you can just call me Kate.” She said, as I nervously shifted about, blocking the doorway.

“Uh ... I’m Patricia, that’s Pat, I guess.” I stammered, suddenly not at all feeling as adventurous as I had been earlier. I still had one hand on the door and the other on the doorframe, as if ready to just slam the door shut on her and my entire fantasy.

“You’re new,” she decided with a slight smile, “is this your first time ... for this?”

Still confused by my conflicted feelings, I just nodded, and she took a step forward and kissed me on the cheek, soft and very tenderly.

“Well, can I come in then, or would you prefer that we talked out here in the hallway? You do still have your bath towel on.” I did, wrapped all around me still from my recent shower. I hadn’t had time yet to even put on my robe.

“Do ... come on in that is, I did just get out of the shower. Let me go ahead and change real quickly or at least put on a robe.”

She laughed, “You don’t have to my account, and I’d rather you didn’t ... you’re very lovely, even with wet hair.”

She stepped inside the room and I closed the door. Perhaps a bit too hastily and firmly, as if I were afraid that she’d be the one to turn and run away. I think I was now standing there trembling, nearly frozen with nerves and indecision. I was naked, just wrapped in a bath towel with a strange woman in my hotel room! Kate was dressed reasonably conservatively, compared to most of the swinger ladies, and wore a short mid-thigh black skirt with a black silk camisole, bra-less. Her breasts were a little larger than mine, perhaps with a bit of sag, and she wore a wedding ring.

I had just a moment to turn and take a closer look at my guest when she gently took my hands in hers and gave me another soft but lingering kiss on the cheek. I must have nearly melted and I turned my head to kiss her cheek when our lips met. The kiss was electric and it made me jerk in her arms for a sudden moment, but I held the kiss and for a moment our tongues even met, until I suddenly took a step backward to catch my breath, and realized that my towel was now falling away from my body, leaving me naked.