THAT MAN 7 Page 5

  My mind raced. “You could wear some loose sweats.”

  He glanced down again at his humongous erection and shook his head. “Are you fricking kidding? With this thing? It’ll stick out like a sore thumb, no pun intended.”

  He was right again. His erection was so big it likely wouldn’t fit under his father’s conference room table. And what if he had to stand up, which usually he did? I put my thinking cap back on. Think, Jen, think. And then all of a sudden it came to me.

  Fifteen minutes later, Blake was wearing one of his crisp white dress shirts, a beautiful black gabardine jacket, shiny leather loafers, dark socks . . .

  And what my parents had bought him on their trip abroad earlier in the year.

  It was better than nothing.

  Literally.

  Chapter 8

  Blake

  I was ridiculously clad in the red tartan kilt my in-laws had brought me back from Scotland. Yup, a fricking kilt of all things! But I had no choice. In my current state, it was the only thing that fit me. And fit it.

  Jennifer stared at me as I stood before the floor-length mirror and adjusted the leather pouch it came with over my groin. I despised man bags, but this one was functional and it concealed my ginormous boner though it couldn’t mask the acute pain I was still in.

  My wife gave me a once-over. “Blake, I think you look incredibly sexy in a kilt.”

  As sexy as Jamie Fraser? I wanted to ask.

  She smiled. “You can be my highland warrior anytime.”

  I did not return the smile. Instead, I made a face, my eyes trailing down past my knees, where the hem hit, to my hairy muscular calves. In addition to feeling extremely uncomfortable, I felt very vulnerable, one safety pin away from exposing my erection from hell. I wasn’t wearing anything beneath the pleated skirt. My throbbing cock hurt too fucking much to slip on boxer briefs so I was going to work commando.

  Dressed in a sleeveless A-line pink shift, my tiger looped her arms around my waist. Her body brushed against mine, skimming my hypersensitive groin.

  “Ow!” I yelped as she stepped away.

  “Sorry.” She made an apologetic face, then gave me a sweet seductive smile. “I think it would be fun to fuck you in a kilt. Or give you a blow job. Or a hand job. I’d just have to remove the safety pin and simply slide my hand underneath the flap.”

  Under any other circumstances, I would have been turned on, but my painfully swollen dick couldn’t bear to be touched. The pressure was insufferable. Poor Mr. Burns.

  “We should go. I can’t be late.”

  Jen grabbed her backpack and her car key. “I’ll drive.”

  Letting Jen drive me to the office in her new Mini was my first mistake of the day. Conquest Broadcasting was a half-hour drive from my condo and could be more with the morning weekday traffic. It was getting worse by the day. Uncomfortable in the compact car, I squirmed, not used to sitting in a skirt, and I suddenly became aware of how itchy the wool fabric was, which made my dick feel worse than it already did. Needing as much legroom as I could get, I slid the passenger seat back as far as it would go.

  “Buckle up, baby,” ordered Jen as she started up the car.

  “I can’t,” I groaned. “I don’t think my dick can tolerate it.”

  Wordlessly, Jen glanced my way and buckled me in. At the click of the metal buckle, I yelped.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “No!”

  “You’ll live, my poor baby,” she said, driving out of the underground garage.

  As we headed east on Wilshire, I had to keep adjusting my seat belt so it didn’t hurt Mr. Burns. Every little jolt sent a cringe-worthy bolt of pain to my raging boner. How the hell was I going to make it through the board meeting? Let alone this drive?

  I distracted myself with my iPhone, pretending to catch up on emails, but in truth, I was googling everything I could find on priapism. Today’s second major mistake. Maybe the third, if you counted waking up. The more I read, the more I shuddered. Jen had not told me the worst-case scenario.

  “Oh, my fucking God!” I cried out.

  “Blake, what’s the matter?” Her voice filled with alarm, my tiger took her eyes off the road and narrowly missed getting hit by a FedEx truck. Her tires screeched as she swerved into the left lane, and my fingertips dug into the leather seat, probably making dents.

  Frankly, getting into an accident was nothing compared to the god-awful fate that awaited me. And I wasn’t referring to the Board telling me to take a hike.

  “You didn’t tell me!”

  “Tell you what?”

  I read word for word from the WebMD article. “Treatment of priapism may involve draining blood from the penis. Jesus! They’re going to have to put a needle into my cock!” Though I could slay a dragon for my wife, I was a chickenshit when it came to needles. It went back to my childhood and I could still remember bolting out of the doctor’s office whenever I had to get a shot. Once I even tried to steal the needle and stick it in the doctor’s eyes. That resulted in me having to see a child shrink until he offered money to my parents to send me to boarding school in Switzerland.

  Jen was well aware of my morbid fear.

  “Put your phone away! Reading about this condition isn’t going to make things better.”

  She was right. It was making things worse. Way worse! Terror ripped through every fiber of my being, the phone shaking in my hand as I read more.

  “And surgery may be necessary to prevent further damage! And I may have to have a shunt inserted! And did you read this? . . . the longer you wait to see a doctor, the greater the chances of having irreversible damage! Permanent ED! Impotence! Holy Christ! What am I going to do?”

  And if things couldn’t get worse, I read this. “In extreme cases, gonorrhea may set in and amputation may be necessary.” Oh my fucking God. The giant lump in my throat was like a wrecking ball. Kill me now.

  Jen kept her eyes on the road, her fingers gripping the wheel. “Do you really have to go to the Board meeting?”

  “YES! My father will blow a gasket if I don’t show up.”

  “How long do they usually last?”

  “They can go on for hours!” Panic filled every word. Every blood vessel. Every cell.

  Jen blew out a shaky breath, and a tense silence saturated the air until we turned into the Conquest parking lot. Then, out of the blue, a wicked smile spread across my tiger’s face as she pulled into her reserved parking spot. I’d seen that smile only once before—the time she’d come up with a plan to avenge Katrina after the psycho bitch had drugged and tried to rape me.

  “Jen, what are you thinking?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “What?”

  She turned off the ignition. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  The twelve-member Board was already seated around my father’s stately conference room table, bingeing on coffee and assorted pastries while looking over the agenda when I stepped into the room. Impeccably dressed in a silver gray power suit, he was at the head, the empty seat next to him waiting for me.

  “Stay cool. Calm. And collected,” I told myself as all eyes turned to me. My father’s bushy brows shot up. He cleared his throat.

  “Umm . . . Blake, did you by chance forget your bagpipes?”

  The Board, which included three women, roared with laughter. “Nice legs,” quipped one of them, which was followed by a pack of wolf whistles. So much for a bunch of so-called professionals. Scowling, my father did not look one iota pleased.

  “Can you perhaps explain today’s choice of outfit, son?”

  Yeah, I’ve got a boner that could rival the Leaning Tower of Pisa and it’s fucking killing me. And if I don’t get the hell out of here soon, my dick may never be standing up straight again.

  Not answering him, I took my designated seat and placed my laptop on the table in front of me, hooking it up to the slide projector while my father welcomed everyone and went over the agenda. The agenda w
as five pages long—running the gamut from our development slate to our bottom line. And first, we had to go over the minutes from the last forever-and-a-day meeting. Shitballs. We’d be here for hours. Maybe till after dinner. My heart sunk like the Titanic. I only wish my cock went down with it.

  Yadda yadda yadda. Totally distracted by my throbbing dick, which barely made it under the table, I couldn’t focus on a word my old man was saying. I had no clue how I was going to make it through my presentation, let alone this hellish day.

  Suddenly, a quarter way through the agenda, a deafening alarm blasted through the room. Over the sound system came a commanding male voice: “Everyone please evacuate the building!”

  The Board members leaped to their feet, scurrying to the door. My father and I did the same, following them out.

  “What’s going on?” I asked my dad, suppressing a groan. Jumping up like that was killer. I was in sheer agony.

  “We must be having a fire drill,” he replied, moving quickly down the hall with the Board members and hordes of other employees to our assigned emergency exit.

  A few minutes later, we were all outside, gathered on the street. Another set of sirens blared in my ears and on the next blink of my eyes, dozens of blazing red fire engines were pulling up to the lot. Holy crap! Conquest Broadcasting might be on fire! Everything my father had worked for could go up in flames!

  My eyes frantically searched the masses for Jennifer. My heart beating double time, I couldn’t find her anywhere as the valiant firefighters, armed with axes and hoses, charged into the Conquest complex. The lot was vast . . . several acres that included office buildings, sound stages, postproduction studios, and trailers.

  Though I didn’t see any smoke or flames, panic surged inside me. My stomach knotted and my heart hammered. What if there was a real fire and Jen was trapped inside? Conquest Studios had once caught on fire before when I was thirteen, resulting in one unfortunate casualty. My tiger couldn’t be the next!

  Then, suddenly, a familiar slender hand gripped mine.

  “Blake, let’s go! We have a window of opportunity to get out of here.”

  A few short minutes later, we were back in her Mini, my tiger behind the wheel driving like a maniac. The speed limit was thirty-five, but she was driving twice over that. With every bump in the road, Mr. Burns silently cried out in agony.

  “Jen! Slow down! We’ve got to go back! My father’s company may be burning down!”

  “It’s not,” she replied, her tone totally nonchalant.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I set the fire.”

  “What!?”

  “It was just an itsy bitsy one in a wastebasket. I called it in anonymously . . . but put it out with some bottled water way before the fire department arrived.” With a screech, she turned north onto busy Robertson Boulevard. “I told the 911 dispatcher that I saw someone set it. A guy in jeans and a hoodie. Arson!”

  That description fit hundreds of Conquest employees. An investigation could take hours! Days! Weeks! A new frightening reality set in.

  “Jen, if they investigate and discover you’re behind this, you could go to jail!”

  “They won’t.” The confidence in her voice assuaged my trepidation. “No one saw me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. A hundred percent positive.”

  I believed her . . . but still. “Tiger, wasn’t there any alternative?”

  “How else could we have broken up the Board meeting?”

  I drew a blank. With my dick’s existence at stake, my brain was in a thick fog. I glanced out the window, my surroundings a blur. “Where are we going?”

  “To Cedars. You urgently need to be seen by a doctor.”

  “Why don’t we just go to Dr. Klein’s office? It’s right up the street and probably open now.”

  “I called his office, but he’s out today. The nurse practitioner on duty said you need to go to the emergency room right away.”

  A shiver skittered down my spine. I hated hospitals. They were filled with sick people and my tiger had come close to dying in one once—Cedars, no less!

  “We’ll be there in no time,” Jen beamed as the traffic suddenly came to a standstill. Up ahead of us, red lights were flashing. Police cars. It looked like three cars had rear-ended each other though I couldn’t make out the extent of damage. The only damage I was focused on was the impending permanent damage to my cock. My heart raced as panic clawed at me. We had to get out of this clusterfuck before it was too late.

  “Jen, what are we going to do? We’re fucked!”

  “Hold on!” Gripping the wheel, she cranked it to the right and with an ear-splitting screech, the car swerved onto a side street. Jesus. Was she also trying to give me whiplash?

  A smug smile curled her lips. “Detour. We’ll go up La Cienega instead and be there in no time.”

  Fingers crossed she was right.

  For the first time in my life, I wanted my big fucking cock to be small.

  Chapter 9

  Blake

  The emergency room was packed. Old and young alike hacking with coughs . . . moms holding wailing babies . . . kids howling with bloody knees . . . others sitting in wheelchairs looking like they were about to keel over . . . and more. How could so many people have life and death issues so early on a Tuesday morning in the middle of summer? None, however, could be as pressing (literally!) as mine. My throbbing cock was so heavy I thought it might snap off. I even glanced down at my feet, expecting to see a hard slab of flesh writhing on the floor until all life ebbed out of it.

  “My husband has a medical emergency,” Jen breathed out, her rapid-fire words coated with urgency.

  Seated behind a Formica console in front of a large desktop computer, the frizzy-haired attendant on duty looked up at us, with a roll of her eyes. “So does everyone else here. What seems to be the problem?”

  She eyed me up and down and dressed in my kilt, I felt myself cringe. Maybe she thought I was a cross-dresser who’d had some kind of psychotic break. Jen responded.

  “His erection won’t go down and he’s in a lot of pain.”

  The woman, who had a nasal voice, flashed a snarky smile. “We haven’t had one of those in a while. Sign in and take a seat. We’ll call you when it’s your turn to be seen.”

  “Do you know who I am?” I spat out, my clammy hands fisting by my sides.

  “Yeah, a dude with a boner problem.”

  I clenched my jaw along with my hands so I wouldn’t say or do something I’d regret. Like punching her in the face. Or squeezing her neck. Then, lucky for her, a distraction. Coming my way was a chubby little boy, about six or seven, with his mother. His wrist was encased in a lime green cast and he was sucking a matching color lollipop. He’d probably fallen off a jungle gym or something like that and fractured his arm. I’d done that once. My first of many visits to the emergency room. At the sight of me, the kid burst into hysterical laughter.

  “Look, Mama!” he squealed, pointing a grubby little finger at me. “That man is wearing a skirt! That’s so funny!”

  It’s not funny, you little brat. THAT MAN, for your information, is a gift to mankind. A superhero. I felt my blood simmering, my face reddening with rage. I was in grave pain; I didn’t need more humiliation. For a brief moment, I thought about flashing my monstrous dick at him to give him something to cry about, but for obvious reasons I squashed that impulse. Instead, I stuck my tongue out at him and then smugly watched as his incensed mother dragged the shocked kid away by his good arm. See ya, sucker. May you choke on your stupid lollipop and vomit up green shit.

  I celebrated my small victory with a mental air punch, but on my next breath, whatever red cape I was wearing in my head flew off into space. My attention returned to my dire situation and the hospital administrator.

  “Do you need a wheelchair?” she asked, her beady eyes focused on my crotch.

  A wheelbarrow was more like it. My throbbing
cock felt like a block of concrete that some hardhat was drilling. “No,” I grumbled as I scribbled my name on the sign-in sheet.

  Frizzball gazed up at me. “Do you have insurance?”

  “Yes, of course, I have insurance,” I snipped.

  “Can I please see your insurance card? And your I.D.” Her tone was curt. “Well?”

  Shit! In my haste to get out of the building when the fire alarm sounded, I’d left behind my computer bag, which contained my wallet with my insurance card, credit cards, driver’s license, and a few hundred dollars.

  “I’m with Aetna!” I gritted. “You can call them and they’ll verify it.”

  “I’m his wife and we both are,” chimed in Jen. “Conquest Broadcasting, the company we both work for, insures us.” Digging into her backpack, she produced her insurance card and flashed it.

  The dubious administrator squinted at it. “Fine. Now, please take a seat. There are dozens of people ahead of you with their own emergencies. Some bigger than yours.”

  Was she kidding? There couldn’t be an emergency bigger than mine, at least size-wise. I wanted to suffocate this bitch with my big dick. Shove it down her throat until she took her last breath.

  “Next!” the woman bellowed, the line behind me having multiplied.

  Jen hooked her arm in mine. “C’mon, Blake. Let’s take a seat.”

  “No!” I refused to leave.

  I hated to pull entitlement shit, but in my precarious situation, I had no choice. Fuck it! If Mr. Burns were to survive, I needed to be seen by a doctor immediately. Every second mattered. I looked at the pigheaded administrator straight in the eye, noting her nametag.

  “Vilma, I happen to be Blake Burns . . . the son of Mr. and Mrs. Saul Bernstein . . . who happened to have donated the wing that is named after them. The Helen and Saul Bernstein Women’s Pavilion. Does that ring a bell?”

  Vilma looked at me blankly, then dismissively scrunched up her face. I don’t think she believed a word I said, and it didn’t help that I’d shortened my surname to Burns years ago. Rage was rising inside me like mercury; I was reaching my boiling point. As I was about to burst into a tirade, a familiar face joined us. Ughh! It was my sister’s despicable ex, Matt, who like her was an OB-GYN. They’d once shared a thriving practice, but that had been dissolved, each now on their own. He raked his snakelike eyes over me.