“Okay. I know you’re probably busy. Glad your home safe.” His attention shifted to Colt. “Thanks again for keeping her safe.”
Colt nodded as he slowly started his cart rolling.
I stopped at the wide double doors leading into my lab. “Willow!” Marsha called as I opened the doors. “Welcome back. I heard there was some excitement out in the field. You okay?”
The other three people working in the lab quickly clustered around, wanting to hear the story for themselves. Colt and I pushed the carts into the room and I closed the doors. “Yeah… I’m okay. This is Colton Arne… my guardian angel.”
“Nice to meet you, Colton,” Marsha said as the rest of the staff nodded in agreement.
“Same,” he rumbled. “Call me Colt.”
Hanna, a big-boobed brunette was giving Colt the once over, probably wondering if she could get some personal protection from him, and I smiled to myself.
“Are the stories true?” Ben asked.
“That I was attacked by drug runners, shot at by machine guns, and was involved in two car chases?” They all nodded, their eyes bright and faces eager. “Yeah. It’s true, as far as it goes.”
“What do you mean?” Hanna asked.
I spent the next fifteen minutes retelling my story as Colt stood silently out of the way. I made sure to give all credit to Colt and the BDMC, and I was enjoying how everyone kept glancing at him. Marsha was old enough to be my mother, but I could see her melting as I told my story, and Hanna, fresh out of college and the youngest of us in the lab, was all but panting over him by the time I finished. I could also see Ben and Lyle measuring themselves against Colt, and realizing they were lacking.
“So, that’s it,” I finished. “Hopefully that’s behind me now and things can get back to normal.”
“And no idea who or why someone was trying to kill you?” Lyle asked.
I shook my head. “Not a clue, but we think it had something to do with drugs… though I have no idea why or how.”
“Wow,” Hanna breathed. “Is he still guarding you?”
I glanced at Colt and had to fight the smile. He was playing the tough, no bullshit, bodyguard shtick to the hilt. “For a few more weeks… just to be sure.” I couldn’t help but smile with the idea of spending the next few weeks in his arms. I didn’t want anyone shooting at me, but I wouldn’t mind a bit of danger in my life just so he had to stick around. Maybe I could hire some guy to occasionally skulk around in my neighborhood at night, so he wouldn’t leave. “Okay… that’s it. Enough of story time,” I said, shooing them away with my hands. “You have work to do, and so do I.”
-oOo-
“I’m not going to get anything done today,” I grumbled. In the last hour, I’d had to pause and tell my story twice more when visitors stopped in my lab to say hello.
“Maybe you should just call everyone together and give them the story all at once. Get it over with,” Colt suggested as he reached into the sample case and pulled a core out of its padded holder.
I pointed where I wanted the core placed. “Maybe. You don’t think that’s a little over the top though?”
“Rather than repeating the same story a dozen times?” he asked as he carefully placed the cylinder of rock where I indicated and turned back to the thick plastic case to extract the next sample.
“Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
“Hey, Willow! I heard you were back. How’s it going?” Jerry called as he entered the lab.
My back to the door, I rolled my eyes at Colt. “Okay, you’re right,” I whispered before I turned to face my latest visitor.
Jerry was responsible for the company fleet. He claimed he was paying me a visit to see if I still needed the truck, but nobody in the lab believed that. I told my story again, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. The story was getting shorter with every telling.
After Jerry left, I pulled Colt into my small office off the lab proper and shut the door. “Nobody is going to get a thing done today for all the tongue wagging that’s going on. Especially the women.”
“What about the women?”
“Oh, come on! You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed how they’re all looking at you. Everyone woman in this place is jealous of me, wondering if we’re sleeping together, and if you’re good in bed.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
I tried to not smile at the obvious white lie, but failed. “Whatever you say,” I murmured before I pulled his lips to mine. We kept the kiss quick and innocent. “I normally go out for lunch, but today I think I’ll have lunch in the cafeteria, and get this over with. Would you trust me to stay by myself long enough to go get us some lunch?”
“You’ll stay in the building?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Then sure. I’ll leave now, go get my bike, and then pick up something and bring it back. What do you want?”
I smiled. “You.”
He grinned. “We going to do right here on the desk?”
A wave heat rolled over me with the idea. “You wouldn’t,” I challenged.
I playfully slapped his hands away when unsnapped my bra. He was expert at that trick and had proven on multiple occasions he could have it opened before I realized what he was going to do. “Stop!” I growled, drawing the word out long as I reached behind me and refastened the clasp, but I couldn’t hide my smile.
Grinning, he bent and pulled me into another kiss. I wanted more, much more, but I forced myself out of his embrace and held his gaze. My smile spread. I had no doubt he’d have been willing to fuck me right here, right now, if I hadn’t stopped him. My smile spreading, I opened the door, adding him fucking me in my office to the list of things we were going to do. Now the only question was, did we do while the rest of the staff was here and working? I felt flushed. It’d sexy as hell fucking the shit out of each other and not being able to make a sound because people were working in the next room. Damn him! Now there’s another reason I’m not going to get shit done today.
.
.
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COLT
I spent another thirty- or forty-minutes watching Willow work as she moved around the lab with practiced ease. I helped where I could, mostly moving the cores to where she wanted them, but I spent most of my time sitting on a stool in a corner so I wasn’t in her way. She prattled way with her staff about things I knew shit about, such as void fraction, permeability, and hydraulic conductivity.
When she wasn’t answering questions about her adventures in the field, she was cutting the cores into thirds lengthwise, slabbing she called it, carefully recording and labeling each piece before she stored one of the slabs in a huge room full of other such slabs, and then boxed up the second slab for shipment to the government as part of the conditions of their drilling rights. She then subjected the third piece of the core to a few tests, washing the samples with various solvents and looking at them under black lights.
About ten, I called for an Uber. “My Uber is here,” I said as I rose from the stool. “I’ll be back as quick as I can with lunch.”
“Okay,” she said. I’d reached the door when she called me back. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“What?” I asked as turned and walked back to her.
Holding her gloved hands away, she stretched her lips toward me. “Kiss.”