Chapter Four #2
She thought about Xavier's desk. Clean and ordered, nothing on it that didn't need to be there.
She thought about his hands. She thought about herself bent exactly like that woman and Xavier behind her and the complete absence of anything professional or reasonable about the thought did nothing whatsoever to stop it.
Her hand slid under the hem of her skirt.
The fabric of her panties was damp.
She kept the image open on her screen.
Her fingers traced slow patient arcs through the wet fabric and she let herself look at the photograph and let herself think the thing she shouldn’t be thinking and the wanting was so complete and so embarrassing and so entirely beyond managing at this point that she stopped trying.
Her phone rang.
She startled, her hand jerking away from between her legs, and grabbed the phone off the desk.
Xavier.
She sat up straight and pulled in a breath and answered.
"Claire." His voice was even, direct, giving nothing away. "I just sent a survey to your email. I need you to complete it before you leave today."
She looked at her screen. Her wet fingers were still on the phone.
"It's not a formal HR document," he said. "It will only be seen by me. Understanding how you receive feedback and what motivates you makes me a better leader." A pause. "It is important. Will you take care of it before you go?"
"Yes Mr. Morrow," she said. She hadn't called him that before. It came out before she decided to say it and she didn't take it back.
"Good. Enjoy your weekend."
The call ended.
She set the phone down and looked at the image still open on her screen. Then she opened her email. The survey was already there.
She clicked the link.
Her hand returned to her thigh before the first question finished loading.
Our product is advertising. What kind of advertising imagery tends to perform best for our clients?
A) Clean and professional
B) Stylish and modern
C) Bold and attention-grabbing
D) Sexy, provocative, and impossible to ignore
She looked at D and thought about what she had just spent the last forty minutes watching.
Sexy, provocative, and impossible to ignore.
The question was about their product.
She thought about Xavier’s voice. You are the product.
The thought arrived without invitation and sat there. Her horny, traitorous mind had just connected those two things and could not unconnect them.
She read D again, imagining how she would perform best for her clients, for Xavier. Sexy, provocative, and impossible to ignore.
She selected it.
Her hand moved to her inner thigh, her skirt riding up as her knees parted, and her fingers moved slowly up the inside of her thigh.
She clicked Next.
Great advertising lives and dies on its creative assets . In your opinion, the most effective creatives we produce that stop the scroll are:
A) Safe and professional
B) Smart and sophisticated
C) Beautiful and elegant
D) Seductive, limit-pushing that bypasses rational thought and speaks directly to primal needs and desires.
She stared at the screen. The first question was about product.
The second question about creative. The mantra he had said to her all week, just rearranged, her answers going nowhere but to him.
She didn't know if it was deliberate, but her body loved the thought that it was.
That he had built this for her specifically, that every question had been written with her in mind, and that thought was so much worse and so much better than anything else she had been thinking that she stopped pretending to fight it.
She read the choices again. Not as an advertising question. As a question about herself. About how Xavier would want her.
She selected D. Seductive, limit-pushing that bypasses rational thought and speaks directly to primal needs and desires.
Her fingers now against her panties.
She clicked Next.
How do you prefer to receive recognition from your leader?
A) Public recognition in team or all-staff settings
B) Written feedback submitted through the performance review process
C) Increased responsibility or expanded scope as a signal of confidence
D) Private verbal praise from my leader
She thought about his voice. The way he held her attention. The way he said her name.
Her fingers moved to the waistband of her panties. Tracing the edge.
She selected D. Private verbal praise from my leader.
She thought about what that would sound like coming from him. Thought about him looking into her eyes after something done well and hearing that calm deep voice praise her.
Her fingers slid beneath the fabric.
The contact was immediate and exact. Her pussy improperly soaked, and she swallowed a sound in her throat before it could become anything louder. Her hips shifted forward in the chair.
She clicked Next with her free hand.
How do you feel when all eyes are on you and you are the center of their attention?
A) I get nervous and my performance drops significantly.
B) I don't like the attention and try to direct it elsewhere.
C) I get a little nervous but at the same time I feel a rush of energy that sharpens my performance.
D) I hate to even admit it and would never say so publicly, but I privately like the attention and it heightens everything for me. I become more present and more switched on.
She thought about what Jason had said in bed and how her body reacted to it.
She selected D. I hate to even admit it and would never say so publicly, but I privately like the attention and it heightens everything for me. I become more present and more switched on.
Her fingers circled her clit slowly and her eyelids half closed.
Her phone lit up on the desk.
Jason.
She looked at it. His name on the screen and the phone buzzing against the desk and her hand was under her panties with her fingers moving against her soaked pussy.
She reached over and silenced it.
The guilt arrived immediately, a brief hot flash of it, and underneath the guilt was something worse, the awareness that silencing it had made her wetter, that the wrongness of what she was doing had its own charge that she couldn't separate from everything else she was feeling and didn't particularly want to.
She turned back to the screen.
She clicked Next.
When you make a mistake at work, what helps you to reset and perform at your best again? Check all that apply.
A) A structured debrief through the formal review process
B) Peer perspective on how to approach it differently
C) Understanding the impact the mistake had on the team or client
D) Direct, personal correction from my leader
She read option D three times.
Direct, personal correction from my leader.
She thought about being bent over his desk. The weight of his focus when it wasn't approving, when she had been bad. She thought about the Velour photograph still open on her other monitor. The man's hand raised. The woman submissively bent over his desk.
She selected D out of pure need. Her fingers worked steadily and she was close enough now that her hips were moving in the chair. She selected C as well, because she was still trying to appear reasonable to herself, but D was the one that had her struggling to keep quiet.
A low moan escaped her lips.
She clicked Next.
How do you feel when a strong leader consistently pushes you past your previous limits and stretches you fully? Check all that apply.
A) I have hard limits and don't want to be stretched.
B) I'm capable of pushing past my own limits and don't need a strong leader.
C) I feel alive and energized at the idea of a strong leader pushing me further than anyone has and further than I would take myself.
D) I want to be stretched fully by my leader.
Her hips were moving faster now. Small rocking movements against her hand, the chair silent beneath her, the office quiet and locked and the floor beyond the glass going about the ordinary business of a Friday afternoon.
I want to be stretched fully by my leader.
She pushed two fingers inside her pussy and thought about being stretched fully by her leader. She worked her fingers in and out and the moan came out uncontrolled, filling the quiet office for just a second before she pressed her other hand to her mouth.
She selected C and D both, her fingers pushing deeper, and bit down hard on her lower lip.
She was going to submit this to him. She was going to click the button at the bottom of this page and send him her answers and he was going to open them and read them and know all of this about her.
That thought finished her.
Her fingers curled and her back arched away from the chair and the orgasm broke through her without warning or mercy, a full body clench that pulled a sound from her chest she barely managed to keep behind her closed mouth, her palm pressed hard against her lips, her hips grinding forward against her hand as the waves moved through her one after another and she rode each one until she couldn't anymore and finally went still.
The office was completely quiet.
She sat there with her hand still between her thighs and her chest heaving and looked at the submit button.
She clicked it.
Thank you for completing your submission.
She closed the browser. She withdrew her hand slowly and sat for a long moment just breathing. Then she straightened her skirt and gathered her bag. She unlocked her door and replaced the sign in its holder on the wall.
She pulled out her phone on the way to the elevator. Jason's missed call sat on the screen.
She stared at it for a moment.
Then she put the phone in her bag and stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby and watched the doors close.