Page 21 of Pride and Protest
“What on earth is going on here?” Jennifer, who had, of course, followed Dorsey down the hall, had her fists balled at her sides.
Liza heard Dorsey groan. This had all the trappings of bad werewolf porn.
Heaving bosom of the damsel in distress
Man inexplicably sweating in a cool office
Ripped-open shirt
Ripped bra
Liza took one hard yank on her shirt and pulled it loose—not without an adequate tear in the fabric, however.
“That’s what I was trying to avoid,” Dorsey said. To Liza’s surprise, Jennifer rounded onher.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Jennifer demanded.
Liza snapped her shirt closed, as mortification mixed with anger and something else, something hard to name, washed over her. She didn’t know what to feel first.
Dorsey wanted to roll the shirt off Liza’s shoulders and bury his face there. He should have said that, if only to knock the presumptuousness out of Jennifer’s tone. Even if the woman had walked in with Liza bent over the desk and him ballsdeep inside her, Jennifer did not have the right to outrage. “My suspenders got caught on her shirt just as you were walking in. It’s no big deal.” His voice was strained.
“Why were the lights off?” The steam had come out of her voice.
“Better view,” Dorsey and Liza said in unison, and he turned around again. He was abuzz with energy. Mercifully, she’d snapped that damned shirt closed. He had been nearly paralyzed at the sight of her skin. The sugary-brown tops of her breasts nearly bursting out of a lacy black... oh, this was no good. The blood rushed away from his head and pooled in his midsection. The beginnings of an erection.Think of skeletons, think of soccer. Think of skeletons playing soccer.He was no thirteen-year-old humping pillows, but he had never been so overwhelmed with raw sexual feeling. He wasinhis body—and finally, for once, not in his own head. Had he been alone, he would have roared, beat his chest, howled at the moon, or whatever primal beasts did to display potency, but he wasn’t alone, and he had to get this bad boy down. He risked a glance at Liza. Mistake number 307. He saw the gooseflesh rise on her neck and thought about how it might feel to kiss her there.
Did I do that to you, Liza? Did I give you goose bumps?
He was roaring back to life, and skeletons playing soccer wouldn’t save him for long.
He left with no valediction to either woman.
Liza was left with Jennifer in a weighty silence. Her stomach was still upside down from the surprising physical reaction she was having to Dorsey’s nearness.
“I’m sorry I misunderstood what was happening,” Jennifersaid, contrite all of a sudden. “I should have known. One time I got my hair stuck in those same dumb suspenders. He wears them with almost everything. I think his biological family gave him all sorts of trinkets and knickknacks when he went to Manila.”
Liza wanted to shake this woman.You don’t have to do this, honey.
“I feel like we got off on the wrong foot, you and I. Do you want to take a walk around and chat?” Jennifer asked.
Liza looked up, surprised.Maybe she’s apologizing?“Sure,” she said warily.
Jennifer looped her arm around Liza’s arm. It was a forced intimacy. Liza noted how often Jennifer craned her neck looking for Dorsey.
