Read Online Helene Blackmailed by Elliot Mabeuse - Free Book Online

schoolgirl with a secret, and when he called her at ten-thirty that morning she felt the kind of excited anticipation she hadn’t felt since junior high.
    She took his call at her desk, immediately dropping what she was doing and swiveling in her chair to look at the pure, late-summer light shining on the buildings across the way. The sound of his voice made her feel small and secret, and her chair, her office, suddenly seemed very large and strangely foreign.
    He invited her to a late lunch, though given their present relationship it could hardly be called an invitation, and just the sound of his voice made her aware of her achy emptiness and her need to see him again. He gave her the name of a nearby restaurant and after he’d hung up she sat there a moment, savoring the lingering echo in her body from the sound of his voice. Then she attacked her work recklessly and with less deliberation than she should have. It suddenly seemed so trivial.
    Meeting him in public meant she would be able to be with him and talk without worrying about falling under his sexual spell and losing control of herself again, and she wanted very much to put this relationship on some sort of firmer footing than the merely physical. She slipped into her coat at exactly ten minutes to one and told her secretary she’d be taking a late lunch. She walked out into the crowds of downtown people with her head high and full of ideas.
    But once again her composure seemed to vanish when she entered the restaurant and saw him sitting at a table toward the back. He’d chosen an old and venerable Chinese restaurant, one left over from the days of elaborate, tropical cocktails and Cantonese food, red and black lacquerware and dragons painted on the walls. The sight of him sitting behind the white tablecloth and the thought of what he knew about her made her feel weak and uncertain and yet ringing with a nervous hunger for his attention again. For all her achievements and responsibilities at work, she suddenly felt very young and vulnerable. It could hardly be love, she knew, but she was at a loss to know what else to call it.
    He stood up when she approached the table and smiled a kind of secret lover’s smile. He came around to hold her seat for her, something no man had done for her since her junior prom. She barely remembered what to do.
    “Well,” he said, and all Helene could do was nod in agreement.
    She felt his eyes on her and felt them beneath her clothes as well, and again there was that feeling of shame and excitement that so bewildered and intoxicated her. It was a feeling of being both worshipped and controlled, and once again she found that she could think of no way to put into words what she wanted to say.
    “Did you order those things I told you to?” he asked, after the food had come.
    “I ordered some of them last night. But I was too tired. I’ll finish this evening.” She was afraid of displeasing him, but he seemed to take no notice.
    She ate little, her appetite having fled, but she studied him as he ate. Away from the motel he was civil and polite and even friendly, though she sensed there was a barrier there that wasn’t hers to cross. He made small talk mostly, telling her of his dealings with her company, and when he told her the name of the outfit he’d represented, she was dismayed to find that she remembered it only vaguely. A real estate development firm was all that came to mind. The deal had passed through her hands only briefly.
    Finally she got up the nerve to ask, “Tell me, this is all so strange to me. Do you meet many women like this, I mean—” His eyes were on her, sharp and penetrating.
    “Excuse me,” she said, backing off. “I don’t mean to pry…”
    “No I don’t,” he said. “In fact I’ve never done anything like this in my life. I noticed you, of course. I noticed you when I first came to your office and several times since. I became quite preoccupied with you, Helene, but the truth is if I