Chapter 11

She'd graduated near the top of her class two years previously, summa cum laude — with the highest honors — and the future was bright. There were many lucrative offers to put her business degree to work, but she applied for a graduate program instead. Not in business administration, as her father might have hoped, but in public relations. And not for any real reason, Sofia told her friends and family, it was just an idea, a hunch, as she liked to put it. Being only twenty-three and more than a little headstrong, there was little anyone could do to dissuade the girl.

She studied hard for two long years and then, one day...

"Get a Michelob down here, buddy?" a guy asked loudly, leaning between Sofia and a young man named Vincent who was sitting beside her at the bar.

"Hey! You mind?" Vincent gave the newcomer a frown and he'd tried twice to start a conversation with the petite blonde beside him, but she'd largely ignored his charming efforts.

"Whoops!" The guy, the rude one, had bumped Vincent's dirty martini with his elbow and it fell into the young man's lap ... olive, onions, and all.

"Son of a bitch!" Vincent fairly leapt from his stool, a trick made all the more impressive as he'd been able to catch his glass before it could shatter on the floor.

"Sorry, pal," the newcomer, an older man in a dark Brooks Brothers suit, apologized. "Let me get you another one..."

"Look at my suit!" Vincent said in a loud, indignant voice.

"Okay..." the older man shrugged and looked Vincent up and down slowly. "It's nice. What is that ... silk?"

"What?" Vincent stared at the other man for a moment before stalking off towards the men's room, still carrying his empty martini.

"Get that Michelob any day now," the guy said to the bartender, sitting on Vincent's recently vacated stool after a quick glance to ensure it was dry. "My wife's getting pregnant tonight. I wanna be there to see it, ya know?"

"Excuse me?" Sofia blinked at the man as she suddenly realized he'd been speaking to her.

"My wife," he explained. "She loves kids. I dunno. I never really had the time myself. How about you, Sleeping Beauty?"

"How about me ... what?" Sofia smiled despite herself, finding the man to be wholly outside any previous experience.

"Kids? Family? You want a big backyard with a tree someday?" the man wondered. "I'm Paul."

"I'm..." she looked at the man's hand and shook her head, " ... not interested."

"Not interesting, you mean." Paul gave her a smile as the bartender put a bottle of beer and a glass on the bar in front of him.

"Uh..." Sofia's small mouth opened and closed for a second as she tried to think of a reply. She knew she was attractive enough and she'd had her fair share of come-ons, but never had someone called her uninteresting.

"That's because you're still sleeping," Paul said, picking up his Michelob and taking a swallow.

"Look. I don't know who you are, but..."

"A shame really," he ignored her protests. "A pretty girl like you? Smart as hell. Ambitious ... You didn't even get the prick, but here you are."

"Prick?" Sofia's cheeks reddened and she wondered why she hadn't slapped the guy yet, or at least walked away.

"Your finger," Paul said, smiling as if the girl should have known what he was talking about. "Oh! You thought I meant ... No! But you could probably use a good prick about now, huh?"

"Stop!" Sofia really did blush then, glancing around her nervously, afraid that everyone in that mid-town bar had heard what he'd just said.

"How long has it been?" the man sighed, leaning his head close to hers and lowering his voice. "Three years? Closer to four, I bet. I'm never wrong, Sofia."

"Bastard!" she breathed, determined finally to leave, but then her bright green eyes widened. "How do you know my name?"

"Are you ready to wake up, Princess?" Paul asked her gently.

"Who are you?" The girl felt her heart beating quickly now and her voice quailed with ... not fear ... just ... confusion. Nobody had ever spoken to her this way before and she didn't understand any of it. The world didn't work this way.

"A friend of a friend," he shrugged, tilting his bottle and looking at the girl from the corner of his eyes.

"I have to go," Sofia blinked quickly, licking her lips and gathering her purse.

"Wait..." Paul whispered and when Sofia turned her head to look at him, the man kissed her on the lips.

"He kissed you?" I asked with a soft giggle and Sofia nodded in the dark, cradled in my arms while we spoke.

"I was shocked. I was mad. I was scared," she laughed lightly. "I mean, God! He was cute, sorta, but old too and he just ... kissed me."

"Yeah," I sighed, remembering the first kiss Paul had given me.

"The next morning he..."

"Wait wait wait..." I laughed, putting my fingers over Sofia's mouth. "The next morning?"

"Uh ... yeah," she said with a nervous giggle. "We sorta went up to his hotel room."

"Sorta?" I was sitting up, staring down at the girl in the dim light.

"Well, okay. Yeah. But he kissed me!"

"I got that part. And you went to his room? All night?" I laughed. "That must have been some kiss!"

"You have no idea," Sofia sighed, smiling as I lay back down beside her. "Talk about waking up! I still had no idea what he was talking about, but it was like somebody threw a switch..."

Paul's tongue slipped easily into Sofia's small mouth and despite her anxious confusion, the woman accepted and even welcomed the intrusion. It had been a long a time since any man had touched her this way, and not for lack of trying, but Sofia had never felt herself interested in romance or even sex. There just wasn't time for all the complications, or so she'd spent much of her adult life telling herself.

Now this stranger, this man who was old enough to be her father, was working his tongue against hers, the tip exploring the roof of her mouth, the soft hollows of her cheeks. He tasted of beer and cigarettes, slightly bitter and alien to her delicate senses, and yet she couldn't loose the man from between her lips. Sofia's eyes were shut and without realizing it, she'd leaned into him, nearly falling off her barstool and onto Paul's lap in her efforts to get closer.

The girl's hands were on Paul's thighs, sliding higher as she moaned into his lungs. He was drinking the soft noises of pleasure issuing from deep within her belly. She was aware of his hands moving from her shoulders down, sliding between them to cup Sofia's small breasts through her blouse and bra. She gasped at the sudden pressure, forcing her tongue past Paul's and into his mouth, arching her back to feel more of the man against her throbbing tits. Her hands, both of them, found the bulge hidden beneath Paul's expensive suit and she squeezed his cock, tugging at the man as if she could somehow free him that way. Her mind was awash with desire, her sex burning between her spread thighs and the girl had never felt so alive in her life.

"Alright. Come on, kids..." the bartender was rapping on the bar, " ... break it up or I'm gonna have to start charging a cover here."

"Wha..." Sofia jerked, sitting upright and blinking rapidly. Her face was red and she fought to catch her breath, smoothing her blouse and pinching at her bra beneath it. Her left breast was exposed, the pink nipple plainly hard and visible through the thin cotton. Her skirt had ridden high along her thighs, enough so that the tops of her stockings were exposed and she burned with embarrassment, struggling to fix everything all at once.

"No tip for you, buddy," Paul said, dropping five dollars on the bar and taking Sofia's hand. "Are you ready, Princess?"

"I don't ... Uh ... Where?"

"Upstairs," he smiled at the blonde's confusion. "I have a room, you know, in case of blondes."

"Blondes?" Sofia giggled, feeling giddy and almost drunk. She didn't understand why she was letting Paul guide her out of the hotel bar and into the lobby of the Mid-Town Marriott.

"Emergencies," Paul chuckled. "I never met a blonde who wasn't an emergency ... Have you?"

"What?" she blinked at him. "No. I mean..."

People were watching them, Sofia knew that. The men in the bar, dozens of executives and lawyers, the table full of women, secretaries probably, they'd all witnessed what had happened. It frightened and humiliated Sofia beyond words, but at the same time the new experience was thrilling in a perverse way. She couldn't deny the warmth inside her, an unexpected passion that being taken by a man without her consent had somehow aroused. It had only been a kiss, true, but the moment was lingering. It wasn't over. She hadn't run away and Paul hadn't released her. This was merely a different continuation, walking hand in hand towards the elevators, parading past people who would know Sofia wasn't the man's wife. She was going to his room. They were going to have sex.

The elevator was crowded with three other men and two women who had been waiting for it. Paul and Sofia pressed themselves inside, standing in the center with the burnished doors closing. When Paul reached behind Sofia to push the button for the fourteenth floor, his arm stayed there, his hand finding the diminutive girl's ass through her skirt and he didn't pretend otherwise. Sofia stood still as a statue, holding her breath and trying to ignore the patient looks and smiles people share on long, slow elevator rides. She could sense more than see the other passengers standing to her left and right and behind, and she felt herself to be the unwilling focus of their attention.

"Umph!" Sofia grunted softly as Paul's thick middle finger found her anus, pushing inside the girl's dry, virgin ass. Not painfully, but with a rude discomfort that put her on the tips of her toes for a second before she could find a way to relax against the pressure. Her eyelids fluttered and her body stiffened against the intrusion, and to her left a man, old like Sofia's grandfather, gave her a paternal smile. That look, as much as anything else, forced the girl to endure Paul's insistent probing.