Office Subjugation

Chapter 14 - The New Normal

Days bled into each other.

She had stopped counting them. There was no point. A day was a lock clicking open and a lock clicking shut, and the things she did between them.

Wake. The leather under her shoulder. The negligee twisted at her waist. The small mechanical sounds of a building running through the night without her. The vanilla and white floral he had pressed onto the inside of her wrist on the Saturday in the department store, still on the pillow, in her hair, on the silk where she had pressed in.

The lock on the other side of the door.

His footsteps in the corridor, then the key. The corridor light cutting across the couch.

"Up."

She stood. Smoothed the negligee down her thighs. Walked past him into the corridor on her bare feet.

He followed her in this morning. He had followed her in every morning this week. The first time he had stood in the corridor with the door open. The second time he had stood in the doorway with one shoulder against the frame. The third time he had walked through the door and stopped three feet from the toilet, his back against the line of the sink, his arms folded.

He did that this morning too.

She lifted the negligee and sat. The seat was cold against the bare backs of her thighs. She kept her eyes on the tile between her feet and let her body do what it did, the strain on her bladder lessening.

He did not speak. She did not speak. The fluorescent hummed. He breathed. She finished. She wiped. She flushed. She washed her hands at the sink. She had to walk past him to reach it and he did not move to make room.

Her own white towel hung on the rail beside his. The hand towels at the basin came clean each day from somewhere she had never seen, the cleaners' trolley in the small hours, the same trolley that emptied her kitchenette bin on Tuesdays.

She showered.

Hot water for as long as it took to warm the cold out of her shoulders. Lavender soap from the dispenser. Twice over each leg. The white towel he had bought her on the Saturday at the department store, dropped over the rail to dry. She had grown used to the weight of it. The towel she had brought from Ohio had not weighed anything by comparison.

He had gone back to his office while she washed. The inner door had opened and closed and she had heard the chair.

She crossed the side-corridor to her room in the towel and dressed standing in the small space between the couch and the side table.

Cup-less bra, settled, the underwire seated, the bare nipples above the band.

Then the new ones.

Five matched crotchless panties had sat folded in the lingerie stack on the arm of the couch since the lingerie store. She had chosen the mesh thong every morning since. The thong showed everything, but a thong was something. The crotchless was nothing.

He had told her last night, standing in the doorframe before the lock dropped, that tomorrow he wanted them on her. The plum.

She stepped into them. Lace at her hipbones. Lace running down the outsides of each cheek. Cool air on her bare mound, on the line between her cheeks, on the bare seam of her closed lips. The cleft between her cheeks held no fabric. The smooth rosebud held no fabric. The pale skin he had told her to keep waxed sat between the two lace bands.

Garter belt at the waist, the band over the lace of the panty, four clips warm where the elastic pressed her hipbones. Stockings, one leg at a time, pulled up the calf, up the thigh, clipped front and back. Other stocking. Other clips. Heels.

She tightened the elastic in her ponytail.

She lifted the burgundy dress off the rack and folded it once over her arm.

She walked the side-corridor through the outer office to his inner door. Pushed it open. Crossed the rug to the visitor chair near the entrance and laid the burgundy folded across the back. Walked to the centre of the rug. Knelt on the wool, knees together, hands in her lap, head down. The kneecaps hit the carpet before her brain checked in.

He was at his desk with the long black. He had brought one up from the cafe.

He read for a long beat. The pen moved on the page. The chair creaked once.

"Resting."

She stood. Wrists crossed behind her, left over right. Shoulders back. Chest forward. Chin up. The bare nipples sat above the underwire.

He pushed the chair back, stood, and came around the desk. The cologne arrived ahead of him, woody, warm. He stopped at her right shoulder and looked down at her chest. He did not touch.

"Bra."

Her hands cupped each breast. Thumb and forefinger at each nipple. She lifted to show the seated underwire on each side. The full weight of each breast pulled at her wrist. He looked at the bra-line on the right and the back of one knuckle traced the seated wire. Then the same on the left. He did not comment.

"Back."

She squatted. Spine arched. Hands on her knees. Head down. Her ass rose behind her. Today there was no thong to wedge between her cheeks. There was nothing but her.

His finger tapped where the mesh would have been. Bare skin. The pad of his fingertip pressed once into the small ring of her rosebud. Skin on skin. Her body registered the absence of fabric at the same moment as the presence of his fingertip. The little ring of muscle clenched under his finger and let go and clenched again.

He pressed once, more weight than he had ever used through the mesh, because there was no mesh. The waxed skin pressed back into him.

He held. Two slow circles. The small ring kept clenching beneath the pad of his finger.

His finger slid forward along the smooth perineum and found the bottom seam of her sex. Traced the edge of one outer lip, then the other. The lace bands of the crotchless ran along the outside of each cheek and his finger ran the bare line between them.

"Front."

She stood. Brought her hands behind her head, fingers laced. Pushed her hips forward.

His palm cupped her bare mound. Skin on skin. Through the mesh his palm had been warm. Through nothing at all the warmth of his palm was a different warmth, and the bare skin he was warming had nothing to put between them.

His middle finger found the seam at the base of her sex and dragged. Slow. Up the closed line of her lips. The slight callus at the base of his finger caught for a second on her smooth skin. The drag went further than it had gone any other morning, all the way up over the curve of her mound to where the line ended at the rise of her pubic bone.

He held. Drew the finger back down.

Withdrew. Wiped his hand on the front of her thigh, slow, the way he wiped his hand every morning.

"Get dressed."

She lowered her arms. Walked across the rug to the chair near the entrance where the burgundy was folded over the back. Stepped in. Pulled it up over her hips. Worked the straps over her shoulders. Reached behind for the zip and ran it up between her shoulder blades. Smoothed the hem at her thighs.

She walked to her chair. Sat down. The burgundy was between her ass and the leather but the bare skin of her sex between her lace bands pressed through the fabric in a way the mesh strip had not, and the heat of her own waxed skin sat against the heat of the leather and stayed there.

By the time she had typed the first letter of the morning she had stopped noticing the change.

---

Meals were earned.

The lunch run was at noon. Some days she walked two blocks east to Rosario's with a printed ticket. Some days the deli in the lobby of the building next door, sandwiches on the soft white rolls he liked. Some days she only walked to the cafe on the ground floor.

She knew the day's verdict from the weight of the bag in her hand on the way back. Two foil tins meant she would be eating at her desk for lunch, or kneeled next to him if she had been extra good. One tin meant she would be typing at her desk for the hour with the smell of his lunch coming across the carpet. The bag was lighter on the bad days by the difference between two tins and one, and the difference was real in her hand, and by the time the lift opened at fourteen her face had set itself for whichever it was.

A good day she set his on the leather pad to the right of his file and unwrapped hers and ate at her desk. "Thank you, Sir." Whatever it was, it was the best thing she had eaten in her life or close to it, every time, because it was not nothing and it was from him.

A bad day she set his on the leather pad and walked back to her own desk and worked through the hour, and the smell of his garlic and his oil and his cheese came across the open floor and sat in her nose and she answered his phone in the same voice she answered it on the good days. "Alexander Williams' office."

She had learned to read the day's weather in the first fifteen minutes of inspection.

If he saidgood girlat the morning's close, she would be eating. If he saidChloe, she would not.

Chloe.

She flinched at her own name. She could not help it. The sound landed under her sternum as a small jolt, a clenching low in her stomach, the same feeling as a door slamming on a room she had been about to walk into.

Girlmeant he was still investing.Girlmeant he was still spending his time on her, still teaching her, still willing to put his hands on someone like her.Good girlmeant her shoulders dropped a quarter of an inch, her jaw softened, the breath she had been carrying all morning came out of her in one slow exhale she did not know she had been holding.

Chloewas the name on her contract. It was the name a client heard. It was the name he reached for when she had failed.

She would rather have been called nothing for the rest of her life thanChloeat the wrong moment.

He said it on the bad days.

She had stopped counting how often the bad days came.

---

Tuesday. Three weeks since the spare room had become her room.

The phone on her desk rang. She picked it up.

"Williams Law, how may I -"

The line went dead.

She stared at the receiver in her hand. The dial tone came up. She set it back in its cradle. The blood was already moving in her face before her mind had caught up with what her mouth had done.

His voice came from his desk. Not loud.

"What did you just say?"

She knew. She knew it the way she knew the order of the morning positions, the way she knew to kneel when the inner door opened, the way she knew the precise number of paces between the kitchenette counter and his desk.

"Alexander Williams' office," she said. The greeting she had said three times an hour for a month. The greeting that lived in her muscles. The greeting that had not come out of her this once.

"What did you just say."

"Williams Law. Sir."

His pen capped. The chair pushed back.

"Come here."

She stood. Crossed the rug. Walked around to his side of the desk and stopped at his right elbow with her hands at her waist the way her hands sat at her waist in the corridor outside before inspection.

The cream dress sat mid thigh. The crotchless was still under it. The bare skin under the skirt was still bare.

"Turn around. Bend over."

She turned. Bent at the waist. Her forearms found the edge of the desk and settled flat on the warm leather pad, her elbows pressing into the leather, her hands open in front of her on the cool oak beyond. Her ponytail fell forward past her cheek. The hem of the cream rode up the back of her thighs with the bend.

"Skirt."

She lifted one elbow off the desk. Reached back. Pulled the cream up over her hips. The shimmy. The fabric bunching at her waist. The cool air finding the bare skin between the two lace bands. She brought her elbow back down and pressed the bunched fabric flat between her belly and the desk-edge, holding it there with her body weight, both forearms back on the desk.

His hand landed.

She had not been ready for the first one. The only spanking she had to compare it to was the one in this office a fortnight ago. That one had begun with him settling her, with a breath, with the slow first contact she had counted into. There was none of that now. His palm cracked across her right cheek with the full flat of his hand, no warm-up, no marking out of where he intended to land. The sting was ahead of her body. Her body lurched forward into the desk and she felt the leather pad shift beneath her elbows and stayed where she was.

A breath escaped her teeth before she could close them on it.

The second came before she had absorbed the first. Same cheek. Same place. The hot stripe of the first widened into a hot patch. Her eyes watered.

I knew the greeting. The greeting was the first thing he ever taught me. It was the simplest part of the day.

Three. Left cheek. The shock of fresh skin meeting the full of his palm. A small noise broke at the back of her throat and she clamped her teeth on it before it got the rest of the way out.

Four. Right.

Five was the centre of both cheeks and the crack of it travelled up her spine. The noise got out of her this time. A whimper she did not recognise as her own. Her bottom lip went between her teeth and the lip stayed there.

He was reading. He was working. The phone is the easiest thing I have to do all day and I missed it.

Six. Seven. Faster now. The skin she could feel was raised in a hard ridge across the centre of both cheeks. Her fingers went white open on the oak. Her face hot.

Eight was dead centre and the crack of it bounced off the bookcase and the credenza and a sound escaped her teeth that was almost a sob, and her foot slid forward an inch on the rug and her elbows slid forward an inch on the leather pad and she stayed bent, breathing through her nose, the breath thinning halfway through.

Silence.

She waited. The first time, he had paused here. He had rubbed slow circles into the welts. He had told her in a quieter voice that he had not enjoyed it, that she had forced his hand. She had sat on her welts the rest of that afternoon thinking about how lucky she was that he had taken the time to show her aftercare.

The leather of his chair creaked. The pen clicked.

"Get back to work."

She did not move at first. Her body was still folded into the bend.

Then she did. Pushed up off the desk. Pulled the cream down over the welts that screamed where the fabric brushed. Walked back across the rug to her desk on legs that did not feel like hers. Sat down. The leather seat met fresh raised skin and the heat travelled up her spine and she bit through the inside of her cheek and tasted iron.

Eight was fair. He'd have been within his rights to really punish me, instead of just teaching me a lesson. The fact that he didn't is generosity. The fact that he didn't rub afterwards means I haven't earned aftercare. I'll earn it again.

She typed a letter. Started over. Typed it again.

She did not make a sound.

---

Thursday. Two days later.

She was carrying his coffee from the kitchenette. Long black, no sugar, the small ceramic cup that lived on the second shelf. She had walked the route a hundred times. She walked it again.

She set the cup on the leather pad to the right of his file. Turned. Took a step back toward the rug.

He had not lifted the cup. He had not lifted his eyes from the page.

"Did I dismiss you."

It was not a question. The blood was in her face before her body had stopped moving.

She had not knelt beside his chair. She had not waited at his elbow with the cup in her hand for him to lift it from her. She had set it down and walked.

She came back. Stopped at his right elbow with her hands at her sides.

He looked up.

"Come here."

The slate-blue dress was over the lace today, the fourth time she had worn the crotchless now. She walked around to his side of the desk. Turned without being told. Bent without being told. Forearms on the leather pad, hands open on the oak. The shimmy was in her hips before her brain. The slate rode up. The bare skin between the lace bands met the office air. The welts from Tuesday lay yellow-green across both cheeks.

His hand landed. Right cheek. The full flat of his palm, hot, no warm-up the way Tuesday had no warm-up. Her eyes shut. A small sound escaped her teeth.

I should have knelt. I knew to kneel. I let myself forget the small piece that mattered.

Left cheek. Harder than Tuesday. The yellow-green welts beneath the fresh pink lit up. A whimper she did not quite manage to swallow.

Right. The skin already raised. The lip between her teeth.

Left. The crack bounced off the bookcase. Her fingers white open on the oak. Her face hot.

Four. Faster than Tuesday and harder. Fewer.

"Stay."

She stayed. Forearms flat on the desk. The yellow-green welts and the fresh pink ones layered. She breathed in through her nose and the breath went thin halfway through.

-

The little teenager was bent over his desk in the slate dress with the bunched skirt at her waist and her welts up under his hand and the crotchless lace bands curving along the outside of each thigh, and the bare seam of her waxed cunt was visible between her thighs from where he stood. The fat plump outer lips were no longer pressed quite shut. The seam between them had separated by a small wet line.

And there was a slick gathering at the bottom of it that the office light caught.

Weeks of training, four cracks across the cheeks for setting a coffee down without kneeling. Her body had decided, on its own, in the middle of the correction, to put on a show.

He laid two fingers along the inside of her right thigh. Slid them up. Found the seam between her plump outer lips and ran the pads up the length of it. They came away wet to the second knuckle. He brought the slick to his thumb and rolled it for the texture of the thing. Honest. Sticky. Hers.

He laid the wet hand flat on the leather pad an inch from her cheek, fingers angled so she could see the slick on the pads.

"Are you getting off on this?"

Flat. Cold. The voice of a man already angry, now crossing into disappointment.

Her face went red from her chest up to her hairline. She did not answer. She did not move. Her eyes had been on the side wall. Now they were on his slick fingertips on the leather pad an inch from her cheek.

He wiped the slick on the back of her bare thigh, slow, the way he wiped his hand after Front every morning.

"On the desk. On your back."

-

She lifted off the desk. Climbed up onto the oak.

She had been on the desk once before. Two months ago. He had taken a photo of her then, sitting up, knees in her hands, legs held open for the lens.

She lay back. The wood was cold through the slate. Her hair fanned across the leather pad. The pad was cool against the back of her neck. The desk took her shoulders and her hips and the points of her ass, the welts pressed flat into the wood, hot against the cool oak.

"Hands behind your knees."

She knew the position. Two months ago in the same office she had pulled her own knees to her chest and gripped behind each one for a photograph. She did it now. The slate rode up her thighs to her hips with the lift. The crotchless framed her bare sex. Her thighs were spread wide. Her hips were tilted up. The fluorescent ran a line of light down the middle of her body.

She stared at the ceiling. The hum of the tube above her was the loudest sound in the room.

His footsteps moved.

Not toward the chair he had been about to sit in.

Behind her head.

His hand closed around her ponytail at the base of her skull.

He pulled.

A single sharp drag of her whole body up the desk by the head, two inches, three, the slate catching on the wood and dragging down with the friction of the slide, the neckline pulling sideways, the strap of the dress running off her left shoulder, and the lace edge of the cup-less bra rolling down with the bodice as the slate slid the rest of the way, and her left breast slipping free into the open air of the office above the line of what was left of the bra band, the fat pink nipple already hard from the cool of the room.