Page 54 of My Forbidden Boss

I half stood from my chair and made a show of bowing to the decanter, tipping my imaginary hat in her direction before slowly whispering seductively, “Milady.”

Tisha’s smile remained a smidge smaller, but her eyes watched me with bottomless indifference.

Once I was once again seated, she continued as if the interruption had never transpired.

“Think about how long she’s been stuck sitting alone inside that thick glass bottle. For all those years… all she did was wait in the dark, hoping for and dreaming of the day when that sommelier’s smooth hand would come squeezing around her waist or, if she was a kinky wine, choking her by the neck. In all that time, she could have been dropped, shattered, and sprayed over the ground, wasted like drunken wishes down a dried-up well. She could have gone sour, tempted into touching tips with the dastardly magnum bottle next door and opening her purity to his countless unprotected indiscretions, corkscrewing around with corks covered in the sin of fermented perversion! She could have been lost in the cellar, abandoned to waste away in the darkness like all those vintages buried with their Pharaoh masters. She was just another cellar slut, gathering dust and cobwebs over her shiny, fragile exterior, wishing for the day when some unappreciative, lowlife jerkoff requested her. No! He rescued her! Valiantly and thirstily from the depths of that darkness, he brought her out into the sunshine, showing her rays of brilliance and warmth that she had always longed for, but never once witnessed.”

I blinked, wondering if I should be writing this down.

Tisha carried on, abruptly making it crystal clear whether hers was a story of comedy, tragedy, or both.

“When our silky smooth, tannic beauty was finally released, well, let’s just say her virtue didn’t stay intact much longer. You can be sure that someone fingered her punt, screwed her, forcefully plucked her cork, and probably smelled it, maybe even breaking off a little piece and leaving it to plop down into her innards. And she’s an older gal, so she was strained, then left to take the air in our little decanter. You see, she’s gone through some foreplay on her way to get her to us, but she’s as pure a virgin as they come. Plus, I guess you could call her a MILF since her time spent aging ultimately ironed out all of the harsher days from her youth.”

“Tisha… I hate to interrupt, but I think I just swallowed what was left of your lady friend there. I’d like to say that I’m sorry if I, uh… stole the last of her virtue, but, well…”

Her coldness was relentless, only evaporating as my laughter echoed, bouncing over the patio stones before dissipating out into the shade of the surrounding mountain glen.

“You’re a dick, Hollis. You know that?”

I grinned, catching my breath. “Yeah… Maybe. But let’s digress and ignore your friend there coming to open us up another virgin to sacrifice. Are the different varieties like… ethnicities or something in your little fairytale? Because that could take a dark turn thatHansel and Gretelfans would even shrink over. Never mind all of that. Tell me, what was it that you wanted me to start spilling, anyway?”

She rolled her eyes. “You, dummy.”

“Oh, that’s even darker! Wow, Tish! Don’t you think it’s a little early in the night for us to start thinking about blood orgies? I mean, I’m not judging, if that’s what you’re into.”

She tried to look disgusted, especially when I winked, but we both knew by now that her sense of humor was probably leagues deeper than my own.

“Ugh, gross, Hollis. Blood orgies aresolast year. Jeez, you really need to keep up with the times. Do you have some schoolteacher fetish that you want to go ahead and warn me about?”

The wires in my brain felt spliced, tangled, and dangerously ungrounded.

“Um… school teachers, Tisha? How the hell did you jump to… Oh.”

She sneered proudly. “Get it? Because all I’ve apparently been good for tonight is slowly, painfully, trying to help bring your education up to speed?”

I sighed. “Yep. I’ve got it, Tish. That’s a good one, though. You know, it really isn’t that often that I feel slow around anybody, but I have to tell you, the range of your imagination is truly something special. That isn’t the first time, either, where you’ve jumped from ‘A’ to ‘Double J’ or ‘B’ to ‘L.0147.’”

Suspicious, she stopped in the middle of sipping from her glass and squinted sideways at me.

When I failed to react, Tisha pulled it away from her lips. “Is that a dig? If so… you lost me on that one.”

I shook my head, sampling from the plate of tempura we were sharing.

“No, not at all. That was sincere, I swear. You make me want to pick up some brain teasers and riddle books and stuff to get my mind moving. Sure, part of it, I guess, is that I don’t want to keep looking like an idiot every time you aim an uppercut my way. I just sit there, taking it full on the chin while I fumble around trying to figure out what you said. Please quit looking at me like that… It wasn’t a dig! Alright, so for date number two, I’m going to be doing sudoku and flashcards for wine and you…”

Her shoulder flinched away, leaving my hand behind as she gaped over at me, unconvinced that I had dared to utter such nonsense.

Dramatically, she cleared her throat. “Um… Excuse me? You go ahead and do your little puzzles. I’ll even get you some crayons to fill out the flashcards. If you do good, you might even earn yourself a gold star, but as for me, what in the world kind of homework do you think that I need to be doing? Are you saying that I’m subpar? That I need to improve to your standards in order to earn my dinner?”

I wriggled an itch from my nose and quietly sat, biding my time.

“ And who gave you the idea that there was a second date to be had in all of this? Am I not the keeper of date designations? Is that not my calling? My purpose? My fate, my destiny, and my ultimate superpower?”

I sighed, letting my wine wait abandoned on the tabletop lest I miss my lone opportunity to break in.

Tisha paused, panting from the apparent effort.

I blinked. “You, uh… Are you just about finished?”

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