The birthday party was underway when Harper stepped out of his limo at the front door of the small mansion. He strutted to the double wood door with the gold hardware checking every few minutes for the large diamond ring he bought Elisabeth. He checked one more time in his breast pocket.
When the door opened for Harper and he entered the foyer, Emily was walking out of Elisabeth’s room and down the stairs in her black and white uniform.
Her eyes turned to Harper and they locked eyes. Her greens to his blues and his breath hitched. Emily stopped. She couldn’t move. Harper’s eyes compelling with a burning faraway look held her and wouldn’t release her.
He didn’t move and she didn’t move. They stood watching at each other. Emily couldn’t disguise her heart beat and Harper couldn’t deny he heard it hammering in her chest. Or the flood of arousal coursing through him, and the heated flash of passion and desire changing the color of his eyes from blue to gold.
Behind Emily strode Elisabeth who saw the exchange. She waved at Harper before bounding down the stairs, then meeting him half way as he passed Emily. Elisabeth took Harper’s hands and pulled him up the stairs, passing Emily with a cold glance, and into her room.
She whispered, “I have something for you.” This drew a smile from Harper.
“Where are your parents?”
“Don’t worry about them. I’m going to be a married woman soon,” she glanced up at Harper with innocent wide eyes, “That is if you’re planning to ask me to marry you.”
“It’s what I dreamed of since I met you.” He placed his hand to his breast pocket and the ring was there. He pulled it out. Elisabeth’s eyes sparkled. “I want to give it to you in front of your parents.” He closed the box and tucked it back into his pocket.
Smiling at Harper with pleasure and excitement, overcome by the size of her engagement ring, she unzipped his pants, and before he could open his mouth, she was on her knees, and she had his penis in her hand and she was looking up at him.
This time she wouldn’t tease him by giving him a hand job, it would be the real thing. She saw how he was looking at Emily, and she thought she had let enough time pass where he would do anything to get into her pants.
That was her plan to ensnare him, and get him to marry her. And she had been right. But Harper was in love and it wouldn’t have taken much to get him to ask her to be his bride. That was before he laid eyes on Emily.
When he passed Emily he didn’t know what came over him. Never had he been this attracted to anyone like this before. He could smell her, he could hear her heart beat, and he became overcome with impatient desire to have her. He stared wordless at her. Sudden shock and warmth surged through him. Her jade eyes captured him and made him breathless. He felt a desire to mate with her.
Did his mind say mate?
Elisabeth wrapped her lips around the head of his penis and pushed it into her mouth. And the surprise jarred him back to Elisabeth.
“What are you doing?” It felt good, but he had imagined Elisabeth differently than any of the other girls. He didn’t feel comfortable with her satisfying him in this manner. Not the future mother of his children, he thought. He reached and pulled his penis from her mouth and brought her to her feet.
“What’s wrong, Harper? I thought this is what you wanted.”
“I thought so too until...”
“Until...”
“Not until we’re married,” he said but it wasn’t what Harper thought. He had second thoughts after seeing Emily.
“Well, I’ll save that for our wedding night,” Elisabeth said using her finger to wipe her lips. “Go. I’ll meet you downstairs.” He zipped up his pants and he turned and she pushed him out of her room. “Go.”
He smiled at her and walked through the door and trotted down the stairs and met Emily passing with a tray holding Champaign.
Stopping her, he said, “Do you work here?”
“No. I just break into strange parties, put on a maids uniform, and carry around a tray hoping you will pass and take a glass of Champaign from my tray,” Emily said to Harper with a straight face.
His eyes brightened, his dark eyebrows arched mischievously, and he smiled. He was the most beautiful man she had seen. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Tall, dark hair accentuated with wide blue eyes. His face rugged and handsome with a square jaw and two dimples on the side which cut deep when he smiles.
When he slanted his head, she saw his profile, dark against the lights of the large chandelier overhead. His face smooth and sensitive.
He thought the same of her. Beautiful, he thought. What is it about her that made him want to hold her and kiss her? What was happening to him? He never had eyes for anyone but Elisabeth, until now.
But then he thought about the ring burning a hole near his heart as if it had life. He began to sweat.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Samsa?”
“You know my name?”
“Yes. You’re Elisabeth’s fiancé.”
“Not yet. But I will be,” Harper said not too enthusiastic about it.
They were looking so deeply into each other’s eyes that they didn’t see Elisabeth walk down the stairs and touch Harper on the shoulder and raise an eyebrow to Emily.
“You haven’t gotten far,” Elisabeth said kissing Harper on the cheek while cutting her eyes to Emily. “I find you standing at the stairs talking to my maid.” She turned to Emily with a short closed smile. “Emily that will be all.”
Tucking her arms under Harper’s she said, “There’s my mother and father. You can break the news to them.”
Emily scurried away into a crowd of guest in the next room, amid the chattering of voices, and clanging of champagne glasses.
Her job was important and she didn’t want Elisabeth to get the wrong impression. But under any other circumstances she would have done anything to catch this man’s eye. However, she thought she wasn’t qualified to have a man like him. What obviously rich young man from a good family would find her appealing?
Emily’s background was nothing to speak of. She hadn’t come from money. Her father was a drunk. He came to San Francisco after a stint in the Army to get into the technology field, but he had such a drinking problem he couldn’t get a job. He met her mother where she became pregnant without knowing anything about him. They fell in love her father had said. After Emily had been born, Emily’s mother took off a year later for Seattle, leaving her with her father. Emily never heard from her mother again.
She and her father moved around every six months for none payment of rent. Her days and nights were filled with trying to make it through school and now college. She thought if she could get a good paying job, or at least a job to keep her from having to move from one vermin infested motel to another she could have a life.
This job as a maid with room and board was all that interest her now. Except for Harper Samsa, a man she could never have, so she put him out of her mind. Her job here would afford her the opportunity to graduate, and get her a position as a teacher at the local school.
“Teaching is a respectable job,” she was told by the recruiter when she asked about the pay. “Not a job that pays a lot of money, but a job that has its rewards.”
With the sky high rent in San Francisco, it was impossible to make it on a teacher’s salary in San Francisco. She would have to move out of California. Maybe go to Arizona or Nevada she thought. It was cheaper to live there.