Inspired by Night: - a sexy new age romance

INSPIRED BY NIGHT

L.E. May

Olivia Jones is a nerd. The computer programmer doesn’t get out much, preferring to spend her time playing video games and watching movies. While she is successful and intelligent, she is also anti-social and sexually naive. Steven Teller has just graduated and landed his dream job working for Olivia. He’s young, handsome, and full of enthusiasm. He’s eager to impress his new boss, but employment isn’t the only thing he wants from Olivia.

An online introduction to Steven’s friend, Chris Knight, leads the two of them to start exchanging flirtatious emails and instant messages and while his attention flatters Olivia, his personal questions both shock and intrigue her. It’s not long before Chris encourages Olivia to explore her body and her sexuality under his guidance. All the while, Steven’s feelings for her make themselves known, and Olivia is torn between the mysterious, enigmatic stranger she met online, and the charismatic young man right in front of her. 

Contents

Chapter One

August 2009

It was the knocking that woke me up: quiet at first, then more insistent. Who would want to speak to me at that hour? Hardly anyone ever called round; I sometimes wondered if anyone actually knew where I lived. If I died in my sleep no one would find me until the landlord came round to complain about late rent payments.

As I woke up fully, the knocking became louder and faster, interspersed with a gentle moaning noise. I groaned. My neighbour. I’d never met my neighbour but I knew more about her sexual desires than I knew of my own. I closed my eyes again and waited for the words. They were always the same: ‘Faster, oh yes! Yes, just like that, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.’

Sounds like he’s doing just that, love, I thought.

I don’t know what compelled me to lie in bed listening to my neighbour achieve her orgasm. Envy, perhaps? To say it had been a while was a major understatement – I was practically a born-again virgin. It had been so long since that door opened I was sure it had sealed over. It wasn’t that I didn’t get offers – well maybe not so much lately – but I was reasonably sure I could probably have had the varied, exciting sex life my neighbour enjoyed if I’d wanted to. I’d always found sex a bit awkward, though. I didn’t really like talking about it; I verged on the prudish and for the last few years I’d found it less stressful to just avoid it completely.

I dragged myself out of bed and made my way to the bathroom. I’m not much of a morning person and working for myself usually gave me the freedom to roll into work whenever I wanted, but I was officially becoming an employer and I wanted to make a good impression. Well, not a good impression as such, the right impression. Not that I had any idea what that meant, exactly. I figured it couldn’t hurt to be there before he arrived at least and appear as though I had this running a business thing down to a fine art.

I didn’t, of course. When I started out, I’d had no intention of running the type of business that employed people but my last job got quite a bit of attention and suddenly I was the hottest programmer in London. Seemed stupid to turn down the work when it could be contributing to my early retirement fund, or that little house in the country I’d been secretly dreaming about sharing with Mr Right. But I could only take on so much by myself, so it was time to bring in reinforcements.

It always took me a long time to get ready for work. It wasn’t that I took a great deal of care over my appearance, I could never be bothered doing anything with my hair, which is long and thick and hangs in that undecided limbo between straight and curly which borders frizzy. On a good day, I would throw my head upside down between my knees and scrunch a bit of spiral curl serum into the tresses, but most days I just piled it into a knot on top of my head. It had to be a really special occasion for me to get the hair straighteners out and even then, I had to plead with my best friend Ruth to straighten it for me. This was done with caution, however, because Ruth could never stop at my hair, and before I knew it I would be all trussed up like a doll and feeling pretty stupid, as though I was in fancy dress … as a drag queen.

That’s unfair actually. Ruth always looks good and tries her best to guide me with my fashion choices, but I just don’t feel comfortable unless I’m in jeans and a T-shirt.

My main morning problem though, came down to motivation. I didn’t want to get out of bed, especially if I’d been rudely awoken by my noisily sexually active neighbour and missed out on a large chunk of my forty winks. Usually, when I did finally crawl out, I would stand in the shower far longer than was necessary, just enjoying the water. Warming my body on cold days, cooling and refreshing me on hot ones. I loved being in water. My dream country house would have a swimming pool and a spa!

Then, after I’d showered, I liked to sit wrapped in a towel staring into space while my body dried. Perhaps it was testament to just how lazy I was that I couldn’t even be bothered to dry myself and instead waited for the air around me to do its work. Perhaps in my dream house I’d have servants who dressed me.

I realised my dreams had been tainted by BBC costume dramas. Perhaps sexually I belonged to those times, but my career was far more technologically advanced and I wouldn’t swap that for all the tea dances in Derbyshire.

Eventually, two hours after I’d dragged myself out of bed, I got dressed. That didn’t take me very long at all; my clothes lived on the floor at my feet and I just chose something that didn’t smell too bad. Then I headed out the door and was on my way to my office.

On this day, however, I wanted to make a good impression. I wanted to be the best boss in the world. But I wanted to be respected too. I had no idea how to achieve that so I decided to aim for respectable and introduce laid-back Olivia afterwards. I drew the line at wearing a suit, though. I couldn’t comfortably work in a suit so I decided on smart jeans and a plain T-shirt. I wouldn’t be advertising my love of
Star Wars
or
Doctor Who
or
Batman
. I would be the busy and important owner of Inspired Programming. 

Chapter Two

It was no coincidence that my office, in a converted school in Camden, was within walking distance of my flat. I commuted to work for four years before I went self-employed and wasted a lot of hours that I’d never get back. I don’t know how it happens, but no matter where you travel to in London, it takes an hour. I vowed that I would at least live on the same Tube line as my office but when I found this place in Camden I knew it was where I belonged. Not just the building either, but the area. Camden reaches out and spreads its feel-good vibe, infecting everyone that walks within its boundary. Once I started working there, it was only a matter of time before I lived there too.

The school closed down eight years ago and the Church put it up for sale. They were about to demolish the building after six years, intending to sell the land when Dave stepped in. He bought the building, renovated the classrooms and converted them into office and studio spaces for creative artists and organisations. There was a sense of belonging to the building; even though we were all self-employed, it somehow felt like we were a team. Unsurprisingly I often got called on to fix the computers of some of the other tenants, and I helped out occasionally with designing flyers and websites and things like that for them. I enjoyed this because those favours provided a nice distraction from the more complex projects I generally undertook.

A knock at the door signalled the arrival of my new employee and brought me out of my reverie. I stood as the door opened and started making my way towards the kitchenette.

‘Hi, Steven. Come on in. Would you like a tea or coffee?’

‘Hey, Olly. Tea would be great, thanks. Milk, two sugars please.’ Steven replied.

Olly? That’s Miss Jones to you, young man, I wanted to tell him. Or at the very least Olivia! As the kettle boiled, I watched him dump his bag on his desk and sit in the chair, leaning back comfortably and swivelling in small half-circles back and forth while he waited for me to make his drink.

He was confident and relaxed. He wore black skinny jeans and baseball boots. A waistcoat was buttoned up over a casual, plain shirt, unbuttoned at the collar. His dark hair was short at the back, trained forward at the front and was thick and messy. He looked too cool for school, a far cry from the mass media portrayal of the average computer nerd. It annoyed me slightly. I remembered James fondly, and wondered if I’d made the right decision.

I’d interviewed four people for this job. In truth, I could probably afford to hire all four of them, but I was nervous about releasing full control over the work going out under my name and I wanted to ease my way in slowly. I’d devised a small test to find out how well they worked, their attention to detail, and techniques they used. Steven was quite cocky about the test afterwards, like it was nothing to worry about, while James had been nervous and over-analysed his work. I was childishly pleased that Steven had made a small error – nothing critical, but an error all the same – but James had made an error that was actually my mistake in the test design. When I corrected it, I found James would have been right.

Steven was confident, straight out of university and his training was completely up to date. The latest techniques, the latest software; he could probably teach me a few things. He also seemed likely to be good at schmoozing customers and clients – the one area in which I did not excel. Luckily, my work stood for itself, but I was sure I could bring more clients in if I could get the networking right and I had a gut instinct that Steven would be better at it than James.

I kept James’s CV, though. If I decided being an employer was OK I thought I’d bring him in. I imagined I’d need someone else in the office who was more like me; Steven might just drive me insane!

I glanced over at him while I stirred the sugar into his tea and tried to swallow the feeling of annoyance at his confidence.

‘OK, so first things first, there is a café in the front of the building and they deliver lunch to all the offices in here. You just have to get your order in by 10:30 a.m. and it’ll be brought around by noon,’ I said as I handed Steven a menu and picked up the phone to call Steph. It was answered on the second ring.

‘Stephanie’s, Steph speaking.’

‘Hey, Steph, it’s Olivia. How are you?’

Steph was the easiest person to talk to in the world; with so many customers in her café, she got so much practice that she could win prizes for small talk.

‘Hi, Olly.’ Steph exclaimed, ‘do you want the usual?’

My usual was Chinese chicken and salad in a tiger-bread baguette with a bag of roast beef flavour Monster Munch.