Office Subjugation

Chapter 12 - The Gifts

Saturday. 8:02am. The lock clicked.

She had been awake since seven, lying on the cracked leather in the bra and the mesh thong, the thin grey blanket pulled up to her collarbones, watching the gap beneath the door for the stripe of hallway light that meant he was there. The light had come on at eight. The lock had not turned. She had counted the ticks in the wall until it did.

He stood in the doorframe in a navy sweater. No tie. His sleeves were pushed up to his forearms. The grey at his temples caught the hallway light and he looked ten years younger than he looked on Tuesdays.

"Get dressed. Something comfortable."

She blinked. She did not own comfortable. She owned five discount-store outfits and the lingerie underneath them.

"Sir?"

"We're going out."

She sat up. The blanket slid. She caught it with one hand across her chest, before realizing her modesty was more his than hers now, and let it fall to her lap. His eyes did not move.

-

Going out where.

-

He was already leaving.

"Ten minutes."

---

His car was black leather and tinted glass. She had last been in a car the night she had arrived from Ohio, and that car had been a taxi with a torn back seat and a pine-tree air freshener on the mirror, and it had not been anything like this.

She slid into the passenger seat in the nicest of her weekday outfits, a simple black office-dress, mid-thigh cut, tight, deep neckline. The seatbelt clip was heavy, the belt framed between her bulging tits. The leather was cold through her dress until her body warmed it. The door shut with a sound she felt as much as heard, the way a safe shut.

He got in on the driver's side. Pushed a button. The engine came on so quietly she thought it had not, and then the car moved.

The bus rattled. The subway shrieked. This car did not. The engine made a sound she could feel with her soles and not her ears. The tyres on the road were underneath that, somewhere. The city outside had the volume turned down.

She looked at her own knee. She looked at the seam of her dress where a thread had come loose above the knee. She did not look at him.

She did not ask where they were going. Not speaking unless spoken to was only a rule during inspections, but it had crept into the rest of her hours too, an unspoken expectation she had placed on herself. She was not sure whether she did it to please him or to avoid his displeasure. Likely a mix of both.

Maybe when I can think of something worth saying. When I can hold my own in conversation with him, like a grown woman... not yet.

He drove one-handed, his right hand resting on the gearstick. She watched the city become a version of itself she did not recognise. Narrower streets. Iron grates around the trunks of the trees. Awnings. The awnings had names she had only ever seen printed in the corners of magazines.

The car slid into a space between two other black cars and stopped.

"Come on."

---

The store smelled like money.

She recognized it the moment the glass door closed behind them, the way the temperature of the air changed against her face. Clean. Warm. Some kind of sweetness she could not place. Heavy glass bottles on glass shelves. Tissue paper in every drawer. Saleswomen in all black, smiling in a way that looked trained.

He walked the aisles like a man walking his own hallway. Picked things up. Turned them. Set them down. She followed two steps behind him, her hands clasped at her waist because she did not know where to put them, her heels loud on the wood floor in a way the rest of the store was not.

"Deodorant."

He chose one. A crystal bottle with a brushed silver cap. She caught the price tag in her peripheral vision. It was nearly half her share of a week's rent at the apartment she no longer had. For deodorant.

"Sir, that's - "

"You'll throw out what you have. This is what you'll use from now on."

He uncapped a perfume. Held it to his nose. Considered it the way he considered a page before he signed. Held it out to her wrist and pressed once.

Woody. Warm. Something amber underneath.

It was the smell of his office. She recognized it before she placed it: the air behind the leather chairs, the air at the credenza, the air in the pocket of his coat when he hung it up on the stand. The air at the back of her own nose when he leaned in during an inspection.

He held her wrist a second longer. His thumb on her pulse. Then he set the bottle back on the shelf.

"Not for you."

He worked along the row. Lifted, sniffed, set down. The fourth bottle was different. Pale gold. He pressed it onto the inside of her other wrist.

Vanilla. Honey. Something white and floral underneath.

"That's the one."

Into the basket.

"Lotion. Makeup - the whole set, we'll have it matched. Toothbrush. Toothpaste."

He read each item off the way he read filing instructions. The basket filled.

The makeup counter was at the back of the store under a hanging lamp. A woman with flawless skin and eyebrows that looked drawn with a ruler sat Chloe on a tall stool and held small plastic sticks up against her wrist and her jaw. Williams stood behind the stool. Chloe could feel him in the mirror before she saw him in the mirror, a charcoal presence at her right shoulder. When the woman held a sample up, Williams nodded or did not nod, and the woman adjusted. Chloe did not look at the mirror directly. She looked at the rim of the lamp above her head.

-

He's investing. This is what an employer does. My old makeup came in a plastic tray from the dollar store. That was embarrassing. This is professional. This is normal for women in offices.

-

The towels were at the back. Thick and white. She pressed one against her cheek because the saleswoman told her to feel the pile, and the towel was so soft she did not know how to respond to it. Her towel at the apartment had been thin enough to dry in an hour. She had been using the same towel she took with her from Ohio.

He walked past the razors without slowing.

He reached up one shelf and lifted down a box. Not razors. A small kit in a wooden-trim box. The label listed pre-wax oil, post-wax soother, heating pot, spatulas.

"Waxing is the standard," he said. Conversational. Not a whisper. "Shaving leaves stubble. Even when you think you're smooth, run your hand against the grain. There's resistance. A prickle. That isn't bare. That's half-finished."

The saleswoman three feet away was ringing up another customer and had stopped moving her fingers. Just for a beat. Then the fingers moved again.

"From now on, you wax. Every surface. I'll know the difference."

The basket was already full and he set the kit across the top of it. She nodded because her face was hot and she had nothing to say.

He paid. The total on the screen made her dizzy. It was more than a month's rent at the apartment she no longer had. He did not look at the number. He tapped his card and lifted the bags with one hand.

"Your old things go in the bin when we get back. All of them."

"Yes, Sir."

---

The clothing store was a block down. Bright. High ceilings. One dress per rack. Saleswomen who looked at her shoes before they looked at her face.

He had called ahead. A woman in a charcoal blazer met them at the door, said his name with a small private smile, and led them through a curtain into a section at the back that was not on the main floor. The racks were already set. Colours Chloe had never worn: burgundy, emerald, cobalt, cream, on padded hangers, the dresses spaced along the rail as if none of them were interchangeable.

"These are the sizes you specified."

Not suggested. Specified. Chloe read the tag on the nearest dress and the number was a full size smaller than any number she had ever bought.

Williams was examining a deep-green dress. Rubbing the hem between his thumb and forefinger.

"Try this first."

She took the dress into the changing room. A plush carpeted room with a velvet stool and three mirrors set at angles. She pulled the curtain. Unzipped the black office-dress and stepped out of it and stood in the cupless bra and the mesh thong she had pulled on that morning.

She looked at the dress.

She stepped into it.

It moved across her body in pieces. The fabric had a weight to it her uniform did not, and a give where her uniform had only stretch. The skirt slid over the flare of her hips and stopped where her hips ended. The bodice closed on her ribs as if it had been measured to them. When she pulled the zip up the neckline parted over her breasts in a cavernous V, the deep-green fabric framing her cleavage like the opening of an envelope, her breasts lifted and squeezed by the cupless bra beneath and mounded above the dress-line as the clear centre of the garment. The hem sat higher on her thighs than anything she had ever owned.

She turned in the mirror.

Her uniform had been tight by accident. Cheap fabric pulled tight over a body it had not been cut for. This dress was tight on purpose. The seams ran with the line of her hips. The fullest part of her cheeks pressed into the cloth and the cloth pressed back, splitting between them in a clean curve that printed every shape underneath. The back of the dress traced the dip of her spine. The front lifted her tits a half-inch higher than she carried them on her own. The hem ended where her thighs were thickest. Every part of her that she usually tried to hide had been measured and re-presented.

In the mirror was a girl who belonged at a brunch table by a window, with three other girls in dresses just as expensive. Girls with last names she had only seen in the corners of magazines.

"Let me see."

She stepped out through the curtain.

He was in an armchair with his legs crossed. The saleswoman stood at his right shoulder with her hands clasped at her waist. They looked at Chloe together.

Her body placed itself.

Legs shoulder-width. Heels planted. Shoulders back. Chin up. Chest forward. Not quite Resting - her wrists were at her sides, not crossed behind her back - but the spine was curved, and her chest was presenting, and everything from the waist up was a pose he had drilled in over weeks of mornings.

"Turn."

She turned. Slowly. Her hands stayed at her sides.

"The fit is deliberate," the saleswoman said. "It's meant to sit close."

He nodded.

"The color's right. Try the burgundy."

She tried the burgundy. Then the cobalt. Then the cream. Then a black dress with a neckline she could not breathe in without flashing an areola. Each time: the stall, the cupless bra, the step up into the dress, the zip, the walk out through the curtain. Each time: the stance her body did without her permission, the turn, the assessment, the yes or the no. The saleswoman took notes. Williams said yes or no. The pile on the armchair beside him grew.

-

He's investing in me. He wouldn't be doing this if he didn't see something. Nobody does this for a girl they don't care about.

-

The pile grew and the number on each tag grew with it and the warmth in her chest grew underneath both. She had to be worth this. She had to become worth this. He had seen something in her she had not seen in herself yet, and the dresses were what it would look like when she caught up.

---

The lingerie store was three blocks east. He set the toiletry-store and clothing-store bags in the boot of the black car and drove. He parked at the kerb in front.

The store was smaller and quieter than the clothing store. One mannequin in the window, headless, dressed in blush pink so fine it looked damp. Inside, the air smelled like jasmine. The hangers were matte black. The garments hung with space between them, one per hook, like none of them were replaceable.

The assistant came out from a door at the back. Hair in a low chignon. Nude lipstick. A black dress that looked as if it had been put on her in a workshop and tailored to her body over an afternoon. She looked at Williams first, then at Chloe.

Chloe saw the catalogue happen. A flick of the assistant's eyes across the age gap, across the money that had walked in with them, across the discount-store outfit on the girl standing three inches behind him. Then the professional smile arrived and stayed.

"Welcome. How can I help?"

"A full set. Cupless bras, thongs, stockings, garter belts. Multiple sets. Matching. Some variety, not just black."

"Of course. Sizing?"

He said the numbers.

They were again a full size smaller than the numbers on her sets.

The assistant wrote them down. She did not repeat them back. She did not glance at Chloe to verify.

"Please take a seat. I'll pull a selection."

He led her toward the back of the store. A single tall partition stood out from the rear wall, dividing the back half of the floor in two. They walked around its right edge into the fitting area on the far side. A deep armchair facing a low table. A velvet ottoman beside it. A rack on castors. Three change rooms behind those, each with a charcoal curtain. The carpet was deeper here than out front. The lamps were the same brushed silver as the bottle in this morning's basket. The partition had no side walls. From either of its open ends she could see straight back into the racks of the main floor and the customers standing at them.

He sat. The same armchair posture - legs crossed, settled, unhurried. Chloe stood at his elbow until he glanced at the chair opposite and she sat, knees together, hands on her thighs.

The assistant came back with an armful. She draped each set on the rack beside the change rooms: plum, slate blue, ivory, forest green, the blush pink from the window.

"We can start with the plum."

Chloe took the plum into the change room. The assistant followed.

The store was not empty. Two women browsed near the front. A man on a low sofa near the window was scrolling his phone. Nobody was looking back here right now. But the partition had no sides. When she walked out, anyone who turned would have a clean line of sight on her.

The assistant's hands were quick and certain. She unzipped the black office-dress and slid the straps off Chloe's shoulders, easing the fabric down Chloe's body, crouching at her ankles to free first one foot from the puddle and then the other. The dress folded over her arm. The discount-store cupless bra came off next, peeled down Chloe's arms and folded onto the velvet stool. The mesh thong slid down Chloe's hips on the assistant's index fingers. Folded onto the pile.

She was naked.

The assistant did not pause. She lifted the plum bra from its hanger and held the straps for Chloe to step into - one arm, the other arm, the band fastened behind. Then her hands were on Chloe's breasts, lifting and adjusting, settling each one into its cup, pushing the soft underside upward until the underwire seated correctly, drawing the cleavage closer with a small inward press at the outside of each tit. It was the touch of a tailor on a sleeve. Chloe stood very still. The assistant's fingers were cool and her grip was decisive and the handling did not linger anywhere. Chloe had never been touched on her bare breasts by a woman in her life and her brain did not know what to do.

The assistant moved behind her. The garter belt clipped at Chloe's waist, cool elastic on her hipbones, the assistant's hands smoothing the band flat and tugging the front clasps to test the hold. As her fingers moved to centre the seam at the back, they paused for one half-beat. Chloe felt the assistant's eyes settle on the welts. Two overlapping handprints across both cheeks, the worst purple gone, the yellow-green of week-old bruising still legible underneath. The assistant's eyebrows lifted. Her face did not otherwise change. She did not say a word. She pressed the rear clasps flat and her hands moved on.

Then the assistant came round in front. She knelt.

She was eye-level with Chloe's bare mound.

The plum thong was in her hands. She held the leg-holes open. Chloe stepped into them, one foot then the other, the assistant's wrists guiding her ankles. The assistant's breath landed on Chloe's thighs as the thong came up. Her eyes were on the work. The work was Chloe's exposed cleft and the smooth pink seam of her shaved lips and there was no way to do the work without looking. The fabric arrived. The thong settled over Chloe's mound. The assistant smoothed the front with the flat of her hand.

She stayed kneeling. Her finger slid down the cleft of Chloe's ass and adjusted the cord where it sat, pressing it into the seam and smoothing it level.

Chloe's breath caught and came back faster.

The assistant did not look up. She picked up the first stocking and pulled Chloe's foot to her own knee.

"Foot up, please ma'am."

Chloe lifted her right foot and set it on the assistant's knee. Her hand came out for balance, found nothing, settled lightly on the crown of the assistant's chignon. The hair was thicker than it looked. The chignon was held by something she could not see. The assistant did not flinch.

The stocking unrolled up Chloe's calf, up her knee, up her thigh, the assistant's thumbs working the silk ahead of itself in a smooth ascending press. The lace top arrived at the upper thigh and the assistant settled it, adjusted the elastic, pinched it into a flat horizontal line. The assistant tapped the other knee. Chloe set the second foot. The hand on her head stayed.

The second stocking went up the same way.

Chloe's head was somewhere strange.

She was eighteen and from Ohio, and the most expensive thing she had ever bought herself was the previous set of lingerie Mr. Williams had paid for, and a woman with a chignon and a black dress and lipstick the color of a peach was kneeling at her feet, threading silk up her calves, smoothing it flat against her thigh, taking direction from her without looking up. Her hand was on this woman's hair. The woman was striking and contained and beautiful. Chloe was not. The assistant moved around Chloe's feet the way a shoe-shop attendant moved around a heel. She was being attended to.

Her hand moved on the assistant's head. A small movement. Not enough to register as anything but a balance shift. Just enough that two of the strands the assistant had spent her morning smoothing into place came loose at the temple. The lacquer held. Two strands fell against the assistant's cheek and stayed there.

The assistant did not lift her head.

Something low in Chloe's body warmed. Not at her cheeks. Lower. A small slick at her smooth lips. Damp where there had not been dampness a minute ago. She did not understand it. She did not pull away from it.

The assistant clipped the front garter straps to the stocking-tops. Two clasps each. Then the rear straps, two each. Eight clicks in all. She rose to her feet.

Plum bra. Plum thong. Plum garter belt. Plum stockings to mid-thigh, the lace stencil printing into her pale skin. Her nipples stood above the cup-line, framed in dark lace. The pink of them was bright against the plum.

"Beautiful. Would you like to show him?"

She stepped out of the change room.

She stood in front of his chair. Her body placed itself, the same way it had placed itself in the green dress, the stance arriving without her involvement. The stance said what it always said. Legs apart. Spine straight. Chest forward. Hands at her sides. An inspection stance she had not been asked for, a stance he had built into her over three weeks and that her muscles reached for now the way her hand reached for the kettle at six in the morning.

The assistant moved to his elbow.

"The color suits her. With her skin tone the plum - "

"Turn."

Chloe turned.

The two of them looked at her back together. The assistant pointed out the construction of the garter straps. The way the stockings had the self-stay. The hand-finish on the lace edge. She was warm and professional and she did not flirt but she stood close enough to his chair that her perfume drifted and she spoke with the intonation of a woman who had just made a sale.