Karim al-Zib

Her week at mountain mansion

Tall and blonde, beautiful Cherie Daventry, the youngest secretary with the Intercorp business group this week, was getting to know her way around the big house after being there for twenty-four hours, learning to find the cosy room they had given her overlooking the swimming pool that was built in the atrium of the house, getting to know the twisting and turning of the halls that led to the many rooms where the executives and the secretaries were staying during this most important business week of the year, trying to establish a friendly relationship with her colleagues, most of whom she had known only very superficially, if at all, a few days before.

This was the week that the executives of the powerful Intercorp Trading Company got together in the seclusion of the San Bernardino Mountains and brainstormed on methods to improve business in the coming year. The men brought the best stenographers from the secretarial pool and met daily around the great mahogany table in the large, warm, and comfortable conference room downstairs to make suggestions, air complaints, and generally toss around ideas that could make trading more efficient and profitable. The secretaries were always on hand with stenography books and were lodged in an adjoining, but separate, wing of the house. Not that the men and women were that rigidly separated. The way the girls were given their own section was more to make them feel comfortable than to create a wall. Cherie was sure there was at least some mixing going on when it suited two people, though they must generally be discreet meetings that occurred, for the young nineteen-year-old had only noticed one definite romance.

That was last night when she had looked out her window over the pool. She had been asleep when some noise, the voices of a man and a woman, had awakened her. The young girl had crept to the window and observed while Diane Layne, one of her colleagues in secretarial, had howled out her orgasm as Cleophas Powell, the massively built black man who was supervisor of marketing, had humped and pounded between the brunette's uplifted white thighs until she had shrieked in hedonistic joy. Cherie had peeked ashamedly, repelled and excited at the same time by the sight of the black man with the white woman, as she observed the sex act for the first time in her life. She had had no idea what it would be like to watch – or could be like to actually participate in – for Cherie was a virgin.

She had watched the provocative sight, hoping that there was no one in the other rooms across the atrium who might see her from behind those dark windows, for there was one room whose window, always wide open, was perpendicular to hers, and just a few feet away. She had wondered if there was anyone occupying that room, but decided that it was not being used this week because she had seen no light or movement in it.

And so with wide-eyed wonder she had watched the animal display below her while the summer breeze wafted through the folds of her diaphanous nightgown and the heat of vicarious excitement had burned between her tender and untouched thighs.

Cherie had only been working for Intercorp for a few months when the excellence of her work had brought her to the attention of the higher-ups. Her shorthand was superb and her typing, at ninety words a minute, was very accurate. She was meticulous in what she did and her mind was sharp and alert. A brief session taking dictation for her boss, Herb Melville, had shown her potential and so he had personally invited her on the working week in the mountains.

Herb Melville was a big and powerful man with a handsome, ruggedly-lined face, thinning hair, a generous businessman's paunch, and a striking, hawklike nose. His eyes were warm but sharp and Cherie knew that she would have to watch herself this week to make sure she didn't spoil her chance of a raise and a higher position. She didn't need a very sharp mind to know how much she needed this job, what with her mother so deathly ill and the doctor's bills that needed paying. No, this job was more important to her than just a career move – though that could be in the offing now that medical school seemed such a difficult attainment – it was a matter of life and death necessity, when she thought about it.

Pressures were severe at home. Mother, usually so loving, had attacks of irritability – due to her dangerous illness – that were often directed at Cherie herself. And that sweet, devoted woman had been reluctant to let her teenage daughter go away for these two weekends and the five days in between, leaving her to shift for herself. Mother had complained that Cherie would not be going to church as always, way up there in the mountains. Cherie had promised in turn to bring her Bible – but she had forgotten it at the last minute.

Cherie opened the door to her room and walked in to begin immediately getting ready for bed. It had been a long day, full of work. She had taken more shorthand, transcribed more cassette tapes, and typed more letters than she cared to think about. They had spent most of the day sitting around the huge conference table in a large room on the first floor of the house, she and two other secretaries taking orders from the eight male – and one female, Allison Cooper – executives.

Cherie had been lucky to be able to come along this time and have the opportunity to show the execs what she could do. She could easily have had to wait years to get this chance, so when the usual girl for the junket – a stunning, slender redhead named Sally – had come to her and asked her to take her place for the nine-day stint, Cherie readily accepted. When Cherie asked why Sally did not want to go, the older secretary was vague as she expressed her distaste, stating that she had already been on three of them and that it just wasn't her kind of the thing, now that she was engaged to be married to a lawyer. Cherie had no idea why her engagement should get in the way of work, but she had no intention of protesting the opportunity that had just been laid in her lap.

So Herb Melville had called her in for an interview, remarked with a smile that she was very, very pretty, and then filled her in on the details of what she would be doing up there in the mountains with the most important men in the company. And so here she was.

When she drove with Herb through the gate of the house, she gasped. Here, set in the midst of the forest, high in the mountains, with the noon sun of June filtering through the leaves of the trees, was a beautiful house with four wings, three stories, and a wide veranda flanked by stone columns. Cherie got out of the Mercedes and mounted the stairs while a man in work clothes carried in her suitcases. And then, as she walked through the front door, with Melville behind her, she ran full into the hard masculine chest of the handsomest young man she had ever seen. Tall and blue-eyed, with smooth skin, classically chiselled features, and light brown hair, his eyes sparkled when he saw her. Their eyes met, deeply, and she caught her breath.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Ron Wolter."