Women might have made significant progress in breaking through the glass ceiling in the corporate world, but they were still barely beginning to chip away at the thick layer of sexism in DC.
He rushed through the rest of his small talk with Aaron and got off the phone at the first available opportunity. Sighing, he set the phone down, shaking his head. He forgot, sometimes, how tiresome it could be to deal with all these little toadies, each one puffed up with his own self-importance and needing to be massaged and coerced into seeing things from Tanner's point of view.
He glanced down at his watch. He'd meet with Alicia tomorrow morning, but he had the rest of the evening open. He'd need his sleep, would need to be up bright and early to get ready for this meeting. No clubbing for him tonight.
He did, however, still have the number of that blonde bartender from the Capitol Lounge. What was her name - Candy? She'd given him quite the enjoyable evening the night before, ending with a wonderfully wet and enthusiastic blowjob, right on the front steps outside her apartment building!
Tanner grinned. Just thinking about her big, heavy tits and that soft, wet mouth was giving him a chub! He could head home, hit the gym and pump some iron for an hour or so, and then grab a quick shower and let Candy into his own luxurious apartment. A bottle of wine, maybe cook her some dinner - girls ate that shit up. He'd have her naked and on all fours, moaning as he took her, before midnight.
Briefly, as he tucked away his computer and headed out of the cafe, he wondered whether Alicia was wild in bed. He likely wouldn't get that far with her, but he still allowed himself a moment of fantasy. Maybe all that repressed good girl attitude was hiding an absolute wildcat in the sack.
Wouldn't that be just his luck?
Chapter Five
*
A single glance around Alicia's new Washington, DC office the next morning revealed that Tanner's guess was right on the mark. The walls were still covered with unframed posters from her election campaign, many of them tacked up at haphazard angles as if put up by drunken staffers celebrating her recent win. Those staffers were probably all unaware, of course, that the relocation to Washington would end up putting most of them out of a job.
"A nice place," he said politely to the bespectacled little man in front of him, leading him through the office.
The man - George Duecent, he'd named himself - just shook his head, using one finger to push his glasses up as they started to slip down his nose. "We've worked out of worse," he muttered, not slowing as his little legs flew back and forth to move him along in a scurrying sort of motion.
Tanner turned sideways to slip through the narrow gap between two desks as he followed after Duecent. He'd spent almost an hour getting ready this morning, spending time considering every single choice in his outfit. He'd ended up going with his cheapest, most wrinkled suit, pairing it with an older white shirt that bore a couple faint hints of bleached-out coffee stains. Of course, Tanner had carefully sponged the coffee onto those locations before washing it away, but nobody else knew that, and the shirt and suit combination gave the impression of someone who considered his appearance, but didn't make it his highest priority. The knot on his blue tie was ever so slightly off-center, adding to the illusion.
Looking around, Tanner wondered if, even with these steps down from his typical wardrobe, he might still have come slightly overdressed. He didn't see another sportcoat in the entire office - Duecent wore slacks and a baggy white shirt with an obvious marinara stain on the collar - and several of the staffers were even dressed in jeans, for chrissake! Bunch of yokels, the lot of them.
A moment later, however, Tanner reminded himself that he shouldn't be thinking in such a fashion. He needed to sell himself as, if not one of these hayseeds, at least someone who could work