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traverse the ample flesh of her breast to toy with her supple soft nipple. He was a good looking man and had a good physique for someone who was not a local; surfers had the best bodies hands downs. He was taller than her, which she liked. She strung him along until he grinded into her buttocks. Then she cut him off.
    “This is not a good time,” she announced icily. He staggered with frustration.
    “It hasn’t been a good time for a while now,” he replied. Lionel’s cockney had lost its appeal and now the way he spoke just plain got on her nerves.
    “Yeah well the way you threw me under the bus at the presentation today, sort of killed my joy for you,” said Dionne getting mad all over again.
    “You promised that no matter how it went, that you and I would keep seeing one anover,” he whined.
    “Th, th,” Dionne hissed. “The word is a-noTH-er.”
    “I can’t help it. Jeezus,” he recoiled. “So you were fucking me for the contract, weren’t you? What did you do? Stalk me? Plan this for months?”
    Dionne stepped outside onto her security lit patio and lit a cigarette. She didn’t smoke often but indulged when she felt like it. She kept a pack on the mantle of the fireplace next to the door. Lionel smoked too. All the foreign geeks in Silicon Valley did, especially the Brits. California didn’t grow their own cigarette smokers; it imported them.
    Except for her. California born and bred, Dionne Ellis was a mold-breaker in a number of ways. A beautiful black woman in the land of the California blonde and blue-eyed icons. And a woman in a man’s world. Even in progressive California, the word ‘geek’ conjured a homely white dude with military-issue glasses. At 5’10”, 130 pounds and a face that could have rocked fashion magazines if she went that way, Dionne Ellis was anything but. Still she was a geek through and through. And she believed Silicon Valley owed her something for her uniqueness. For her brains and her talent. She was calling in her marker.
    Lionel looked at the ground, clearly thinking to himself as they talked. She could see he was not liking what he heard.
    Dionne explained, “I don’t think that under the circumstances we should associate. Look, I’m tired, and quite frankly, I am coming back from a date.”
    She dropped her cigarette and mashed it out on the cement. Having experienced a wildfire a little too close to home, Dionne was extra cautious. She thought that the cement was the safest place for that butt to be. She would pick it up in the morning. Morning. It was fast approaching and Dionne loved her sleep. She wanted Lionel gone.
    “Go,” she said bluntly. “Go now and don’t ever show up uninvited again.”
    The look on his face was ferocious. It almost turned her on. But at the moment sleep won over sex.
    “I think I will ruin you,” he said casually, dragging his cigarette one last time before his joined hers on the patio.
    “I think I will ruin you back,” she replied as though his attempt was tired. “And I will enjoy doing it. Now go.”

Chapter Two
    As predicted, the morning came way too early. Dionne had no choice but to go in to work. Hooky wasn’t an option. She had pissed off Lionel, her partner in crime. She had to be quick about covering her back. As she sat up in bed, she could smell her coffee, set by a timer to brew automatically. Small mercies.
    She got up, put her robe on. It was going to be a pretty temperate day. The sky was magnificently clear and blue. It would be baking outside soon but the inside of the house was chilly. Something about the architecture of her house made the interior temperature almost always perfect and it rarely required heat or air conditioning. She tied her robe at the waist and poured herself a cup of coffee. Perfection. She drew a bath, ignoring the presence of a slight hangover. She hated feeling anything less than a hundred percent.
    Her phone buzzed. ‘Morning beautiful’ said the text. It wasn’t Lionel. It