Office Subjugation

The number was in her head before her eyes opened.

Two thousand two hundred dollars. Two months' rent. Due today. The eviction notice was in her bag, folded into quarters, the paper soft from the number of times she had taken it out and read it and folded it back and put it away again. She knew the sentences.Failure to remit. Legal proceedings. Locks changed. Belongings removed to storage at tenant's expense.She could feel the paper through the canvas of the bag.

She showered in the dark. Dressed in the order she dressed in every morning: cup-less bra first, mesh thong, stockings up the leg one at a time, garter belt, clips, heels, skirt, blouse, makeup, pony-tail. Her hands did the work without her.

Two thousand two hundred dollars.

Two hundred and eleven forty in her account.

He said he'd handle it.

She said it again at the bus stop. The wind cut under the hem of her skirt and through the thin blouse and she wrapped her arms around herself and watched the street for headlights and said it again. He had said it on the Monday in the office with the brass key clicking in the drawer and the contracts on his desk. She said it again.

The bus was late. When it arrived, she took the back row and put her bag on her lap. She did not take the notice out again.

---

5:32am. Hallway. Fourteenth floor.

She undressed in the corridor the way she had undressed in it every morning that week. Blouse and skirt folded, heels on, hands at her sides. She did not wait to be told to stand in Resting. Her feet moved into it. Spread apart. Wrists crossed behind her back, left over right. Chest forward. She held it.

She had not listened for the elevator in six days.

7:41. The elevator chimed.

He came through in charcoal. Briefcase, phone, the usual sweep of his eyes that was not a look so much as a check. He did not speak until he reached the door.

"Inside."

She gathered her clothes off the carpet and followed him through.

---

Positions ran in sequence on the Persian rug.

Resting. He looked at her the way he looked at a page and moved on.

Bra. She cupped her own breasts, pinched her own nipples between thumb and index, lifted. He traced the underwire. No comment.

Back. She squatted, arched, presented. He tapped the mesh, pressed through, hooked the thong aside, circled her rim once. No comment.

Front. Hands behind her head, elbows wide, hips forward. He wedged the strip of thong into her slit the way he wedged it every morning and rubbed his two fingers back and forth across the bare outer lips on either side of the wedged strip. He did not comment on the wetness.

"Back to work."

She pulled the blouse and skirt on over the wedged thong. Went to her chair.

---

8:04. Typing.

9:00. Filing.

9:30. Coffee. Knelt to deliver.

10:00. Phones.Alexander Williams' office.

The rent question sat behind her teeth the whole morning. The number sat in her stomach. She ran the same calculation, and the same calculation came out with the same number, and she pushed it down and opened another file.

Maybe the landlord has the money already. Maybe it's been deposited and I haven't checked the right place. Maybe he paid on Friday and the notice is just a late notice the agent forgot to pull.

She rehearsed the question.Sir, I'm sorry to bring this up but my landlord -and no, that was wrong.Sir, I was wondering if -no. The question never found a shape that fit the office.

The wedged thong pressed between her lips where he had put it. She did not adjust it. He had not told her she could.

---

11:15. She dropped the files.

Eight client folders, heavy, cardboard stiffened with a year of correspondence, carried the length of the office from the cabinet to the edge of his desk. Her heel caught the edge of the Persian rug. The stack tipped forward out of her arms.

They hit the floor in a cascade. A stapled brief separated in mid-air and the pages fanned across the weave. Manila folders splayed open and their contents slid loose: depositions, affidavits, letters with law firm letterheads she did not recognise, photographs clipped to blank pages. Twelve months of a client's case unordered on the rug at her feet.

She dropped to her knees. Started gathering.

"Stop."

She stopped. Both hands full of paper, her knees on the dark wool weave, her pulse in her throat.

He sat back. The chair leather creaked. His hands folded across his stomach, the fingers interlaced at the knuckles, thumbs meeting. His face was still. His grey eyes rested on her the way they had rested on her every morning that week.

"Leave them."

She set the paper on the rug. Moved her hands into her lap.

The office was quiet. The clock on the bookcase marked seconds. Traffic fourteen floors below was a low hum under everything. She heard her breathing and she heard his and hers was quicker.

"Do you think you deserve to be here?"

The question hit her under the ribs.

She looked at the edge of the rug. At the scattered pages. At the dark leather of his shoes.

Say yes. Say yes, Sir.

"I." Her voice did not work on the first try. "I don't know, Sir."

"You don't know." He said it the way he said a witness's answer back to them. Flat. Letting the inadequacy hang. "Let me rephrase. Do you think you've earned your place in this office?"

The number was behind everything. The eviction notice. The two hundred and eleven forty. The paycheque. The coffee she had burned last Tuesday. The filing error he had found on Monday. The positions she was still losing her grip on. The dropped folders on the rug between them.

"No, Sir." It came out quiet and true. "No. I haven't."

"No." He let the word sit. "You haven't. I've invested significant resources in your training. I've extended more patience than most employers would have. And this is what I get." He nodded at the scattered paper. "Carelessness. Inattention. A client file it took months to assemble on the floor because you can't walk a stack of folders across a rug."

"I'm sorry, Sir. I'm so sorry, I -"

"What should happen to an employee who damages client files?"

The question had edges. She felt them against her tongue.

"I." A pause. "I don't."

"It's a simple question. You made a mistake. Mistakes have consequences. What consequence do you think is appropriate?"

I don't know. I don't know what he wants me to say. I don't know what the right answer is because there is no right answer, there never is.

"I could stay late, Sir. I could reorganise everything. I could -"

"You already stay late. That isn't a consequence, that's your schedule."

The silence worked.

"I'm asking you what a suitable disciplinary measure would be."

Her hands went cold.

"Sir, I -"

"Don't make me ask again."

"I should be. Disciplined, Sir."

"Is that a question or an answer?"

Her eyes stung. She blinked hard. The blue weave of the rug blurred and steadied.

"An answer, Sir. I should be disciplined."

He tilted his head. Not satisfied.

"Disciplined how?"

"I don't. I don't know, Sir."

"You don't know." He let it sit. "Let me explain your options. If I were to handle this the way it would be handled for a woman - an adult professional - you'd be dismissed before the end of the day. Termination for cause. Client files damaged through carelessness. Final paycheque, no reference, out on the street by five."

The blood left her face.

"Is that what you'd prefer?"

"No, Sir."

"No." He leaned back. Crossed his arms. His voice dropped a quarter note into a register that was almost patient. "So. A woman gets fired. A little girl gets disciplined. Tell me which one I should treat you as."

Her mouth opened. Closed.

"Which one, Chloe."

The use of her name was a shock. He had not spoken it in three days.

"A." Her voice worked around something. "A little girl, Sir."

"Say it properly."

"I should be. Treated like a little girl, Sir."

He nodded once.

"And what happens to a little girl when she misbehaves?"

She could feel the word in the shape of the silence.

"She gets." Her voice stopped. Restarted. "She gets spanked, Sir."

She said it. She was the one who said it.

He studied her for a long beat. Then he exhaled, slow, the exhale of a man being asked to carry something heavy.

"Fine. If you think that will work, we'll give it a try."

He said it like a favour.

"Stand up. Come here."

---

She stood. Walked the length of his desk, past the leather chairs and the credenza with the scotch decanter, into the space behind the desk that was his. The rug was thicker on this side. His coat on the stand, his window behind it, the dark wood of his bookcase. She stopped in front of him.

"Turn. Face the desk."

She turned. The oak surface stretched in front of her at hip height. The leather pad in the centre, his pen on the right, the coffee cup she had brought him at 9:30 still sitting where he had set it down.

"Bend over."

She bent at the waist. Hands found the far edge of the desk. Her forearms settled on the leather pad. Her torso pressed the oak. The cup-less bra gave up what it had been holding and her breasts flattened sideways against the surface, the bare chest above the bra cool against the wood.

"Pull your skirt up."

She reached back with one hand. Hooked the hem. Worked the pencil skirt up over her hips, over the tops of the stockings, over the garter clips, over the swell of each cheek, and left it bunched at her waist.

"The thong. Pull it down."

Two thumbs in the waistband. She peeled the mesh down over her hips, over the round of her ass, to mid-thigh. The wet strip that had been wedged between her lips since the morning's Front position hung slack between her thighs. The office air found skin that had been covered.

She was bent over his desk with her bare cheeks in the office light and the damp strip of mesh at her knees and everything below her waist on display.

"Ten."

She waited. Her fingers tightened on the far edge.

"You will count each one. Out loud. After each, you will say thank you, Sir. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sir."

"If you lose count, we start over."

"Yes, Sir."

She pressed her forehead against the leather pad. Closed her eyes.

Ten. It's ten. Some firms do this. He's old-fashioned. It's better than being fired. I said it, he didn't. I said spanked.

---

The girl was bent over his desk with her skirt around her waist and her damp thong at her knees and her fat round pale ass tipped up toward him. Plated for him. The cheeks were flawless. Pillowy, tight from youth, unmarked. Not for much longer.

He took his time. Below the swell of her ass the bare slit showed, puffy-lipped and still glistening from the Front position wedging. Her asshole pink and pucker-tight between the parted cheeks, winking closed and open the way it did when she was embarrassed. He measured the distance his palm would travel. Watched the goosebumps rise along the back of her thighs.

The ass wasn't the prize. The ass was inventory. The prize was the dumb corn-fed conviction that she had earned this. The way she had said it.She gets spanked, Sir.Volunteered, from her own mouth, her chin trembling and her eyes wet. Believed. Thought he was being reasonable. Thought this was just what happened to girls who dropped files.

He flexed the hand. Opened it. Closed it again.

He was going to enjoy this.

---

The first one was nothing she could have prepared for.

His palm came down full force on the crown of her right cheek and the crack filled the office the way a gunshot filled a room. The sound bounced off the bookcase and the window and came back at her as its own echo. Her hips slammed forward into the edge of the desk, the leather pad softening none of it, her breasts crushed sideways against the oak and her fingers scrabbling on the far edge for grip they had already lost.

The pain arrived half a second after the sound. A bloom of white heat mapped exactly to the shape of his hand. The skin went from numb to screaming in the time it took to draw a breath.

Her mouth was open and the sound that came out of it was not a word. It was a grunt, short and wrung out of her, a noise she did not recognise as her own.

Count. Count.

"One." It came out strangled. She swallowed. "Thank you, Sir."

She heard the shift of his weight on the rug behind her. The displacement of air as his arm came back.

The second one hit her left cheek. Same force. Same flat crack. Her body jolted into the desk again. The matched pain bloomed on the other side. Both cheeks felt the same now.

"Two. Thank you, Sir."

Three landed across the centre, both cheeks at once, the impact rippling through the soft weight of her, and her grip on the edge of the desk slipped and caught and slipped again. Her knuckles went white. Her vision blurred.

"Three. Thank you, Sir."

Four on the right cheek, on top of the first, and she made a sound that was closer to a scream than a grunt, and her hips jerked against the desk and pressed her bare mound into the hard edge of the oak.

"Four. Thank you, Sir."

Her muscles had started bracing before the strikes. She could feel her cheeks clench before the hand came down, and the clenching made it worse, the tight flesh with nowhere to take the impact.

Five on the left, overlapping, and she was crying now, tears tracking sideways across her face into the leather pad and her nose running and the taste of salt at the back of her throat.

"Five. Thank you, Sir."

Six across the centre, and her body convulsed, and she bit the inside of her cheek hard enough that the taste came up copper.

"Six. Thank you, Sir."

Seven was lower, where the curve of her ass met the top of her thigh, where the skin was thin enough that a strike there was a meaner kind of pain, a sting that cut through the deeper throb of the others. A welt rose under the impact. She felt it as a raised line throbbing with her own pulse.

She screamed. High and ragged. Her voice cracked.

"S-seven. Thank you, Sir."

Eight on the right cheek, directly on top of a welt, and the pain whited out her vision and her arms went forward across the leather pad and she pressed her whole face and her chest flat against the desk as though the wood could hold her together.

"Eight." A whisper. "Thank you, Sir."

Nine on the left across two previous welts and the sound his palm made was wetter, thicker, meeting swollen skin. She could not scream any more. The noise that came up was a low moan from her stomach.

"Nine. Thank you, Sir."

Then he let her wait.

Five seconds. Ten. Long enough that she felt every welt separately. Long enough that the dread built in her body the way the pain had, her punished flesh clenching and releasing without her permission, her breath coming in small fast ragged pulls.

Ten landed full force across both cheeks, and the crack was the loudest yet, and her hips left the desk, and her back arched, and her mouth opened on a scream that did not come out because she had no air in her lungs to make it with.

She collapsed forward against the oak. Her fingers clawed the leather pad.

"T-ten." She had to fight air into her chest. "Thank. Thank you, Sir."

---

Silence.

She lay against the desk and cried. The sobs came from deep in her chest in a rhythm she did not control. The welts on her ass pulsed. She could feel them as individual shapes now, raised and hot, each one a separate territory.

She heard him step closer. The creak of leather, the small shift of a man moving a foot on a rug.

His hand settled on her ass.

She flinched. Every muscle she had clenched at once. Her cheeks contracted on the welts and the pain jumped.

But his hand did not strike. It rested. The palm flat against her right cheek. Broad. Warm. Covering the worst of the welts. The weight was gentle.

Then he rubbed.

A slow circle. The palm tracking over the swollen heated flesh, the pressure light, the motion unhurried. His thumb found a raised welt and traced along its ridge, one side to the other.

She sobbed harder.

Why. Why is this worse.

His hand moved to the left cheek. Same slow circle. He cupped the punished flesh in his palm and held it, the heat of the welt radiating into him, his thumb resting in the crease where her ass met her thigh. The callus at the base of his thumb dragged faintly across brutalised skin.

She had counted the strikes. She had thanked him after each one. She had held.

The gentleness broke her.

She cried in a way she had not cried during the spanking. Quieter. Deeper. Her mouth open against the leather pad, her breath coming in uneven drags, tears running into her hairline where her head was pressed sideways.

"Shh."

The softest sound he had ever made. The same voice he used when he said good girl.

Her chest opened. A flush climbed from her throat into her face. Her shoulders dropped a quarter of an inch. She did not want him to take the hand away.

He stroked one long slow glide from the top of her ass to the curve below and rested the palm in the hollow of her lower back.

"I didn't enjoy that." His voice was low and measured and exactly as patient as it had been when she had dropped the files. "You forced my hand. You understand that."

He didn't enjoy it. He's checking for injuries. Like a doctor would after a procedure. He's being responsible. He's being kind.

She nodded into the leather pad. The tears were running into her open mouth and she believed him. It was easier than not believing him.

"Yes, Sir." Her voice was hoarse. "I'm sorry, Sir."

"I know you are." One more slow circle. The palm memorising the shape of what he had done. "You can stand when you're ready."

He stepped away. The chair creaked under his weight. A pen clicked. Papers moved.

She lay against the oak for two more minutes. Her ass throbbed in time with her pulse.

When she stood, she pulled the thong up first. The wet mesh dragged over the welts and every raised ridge announced itself. She hissed air through her teeth. Pulled the skirt down. The fabric settled over the ruined skin and the pressure was constant.

She walked toward her desk. Her eyes went to the rug. The scattered pages were still there. She changed course, knelt on the weave, gathered them into a stack. The kneel pulled the welts tight. She stood with the stack in her arms and carried it to her desk.

---

The chair was leather. Firm. No give.

Her welted ass met the seat and the pain cut up through her and she sucked air through her teeth and took hold of the armrests. The welts compressed under her weight. The heat was trapped between her skin and the leather.

She shifted left. Worse. Shifted right. The same. She settled centre and sat still.

11:47. Seven hours left in the day.

She sorted the stack by date. Cross-referenced the correspondence. Every time she reached across the desk the welts shifted under her weight from a new angle and a fresh wave of heat climbed her back. By noon a welt on her left cheek had split. A thin seam opening along the raised ridge where two strikes had overlapped. The sting was sharper and smaller than the throb around it. She did not look. She did not want to know.

12:15. Coffee. She made his second long black and knelt beside his chair to hand it up. Sitting back on her heels was its own punishment. Her calves compressed against the backs of her thighs. Her thighs pulled the skin of her ass tight over the welts. She held the position until he took the cup.

"Good girl."

A warmth moved through her that she had not asked for. She hated that the welts did not stop it.

She went back to her chair. Sat down again. The welts compressed again.