Author’s note: this story started out as a commission years ago, but further chapters after chapter 5 were never greenlit. I would like to finish it some day, but can’t really fit it in with my current busy writing schedule, so the story should be considered as on hiatus until further notice.

Having said that, there is hopefully plenty in these five chapters for you all to enjoy!

Now for the usual note: given the delicate nature of the subject matter (misogyny kink), this story warrants a special disclaimer. This is a fantasy, not a manifesto. My kinks are not my politics. Do not use this story to promote a political worldview. Practice your relational life consensually, or not at all.

As always, all characters are over the age of 18.

Now, without further ado… enjoy the read!

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Chapter One: Courting Danger

People are the source of their own unhappiness.

Oh, we’re very good at denying that. Deflecting blame is a talent innate to all humans. We can turn anything into an excuse, a rationalisation. But in truth, we are – more often than not – the originators of our own misery.

“Anyone wants coffee?”

Such an innocent question to ask, in most cases. My voice doesn’t even tremble, even though my fingers do, twined as they are under the table. My heart is pumping, my pupils are dilated, and I’m uncomfortably aware of the sweat, pearling under my forehead.

But my voice is steady, because like a true damaged kinkster, I am incredibly efficient at seeking out my addiction.

As always, I ask myself why I’m taking such a stupid risk, and as always, I’m incapable of stopping. The adrenaline rush is… compelling.

If we really are the source of our own misery, here’s a corollary: we’re also incredibly creative at finding new ways to bring about our destruction.

“I was just going to get some for me anyway,” I add, to cover my tracks. Like any good incognito kinkster should. Of course, it’s important to not overdo it. Few things are as conspicuous as fake sincerity. But if you act casual enough, well…

That innocence is my shield. I’m just being kind to my fellow board members. I only do it once every few meetings, too, so it doesn’t look too suspicious.

I get a murmur of acknowledgement from the room, and a few muttered thanks here and there. I give a stiff nod and walk away, hoping nobody notices my unsteady step.

I concentrate on holding my perfect, corporate composure until the thick mahogany door closes shut behind me; only then do I allow myself a sigh of relief. Relief, and exhilaration.

Because there’s nothing innocent about my question.

To the three men in the boardroom, this is a non-event, a footnote in a boring meeting they don’t really want to attend. But for me, it’s a thrill that makes my body tingle. As I make my way down the hallway, it takes a conscious effort not to swoon.

Like I said: the source of our own misery. I’m a living testament to this thesis.

You can face mental health issues with blazing defiance, and overcome your crippling anxiety.

You can get the job of your dreams, and move to the city you always wanted to live in. You can rub your victories in the face of everyone who’s ever doubted you. You can face your failures, and conquer your fears.

You can do all that, and more…

And still nurse this unfathomable longing. This wordless need. Sad, reflective, and most of all, empty. The kind of void that even all the financial security and personal affirmation on Earth couldn’t possibly fill.

It’s a hunger far nastier and more ancient than what I thought I liked about sex. A need that defies vocabulary and description. 

It whispers to you, in the dead of night. It suggests that there might be ways to fill the emptiness inside. Ways that would be most unwise…

Those are only midnight thoughts, of course, and they evaporate under the light of the warm sun… sometimes. Unfortunately, damaged adults make suboptimal choices. That only furthers the damage, and on and on it goes. Always has. Always will.

So, I feed the hunger, with the occasional crumbs here and there. I feed it because, when it starves, so do I. Crumbs like, for example, serving coffee at board meetings. But there are other ways for an office girl to surreptitiously serve…

There’s plenty you can get away with, so long as you stay in the realm of friendly banter. Oh, no problem Jason, I can wait, feel free to use the photocopier first. Oh Frank, you dropped that, here, let me pick it up – and linger one moment longer than I need to on my knees, of course…

There’s so much service-sub attitude that you can channel into pretending to be merely courteous. Holding the door open for someone. Letting someone choose the place for a working lunch, and then offering to pay for it.

Not just any someone, of course. A man. That’s the important part.

I tell myself that it’s safe enough, that I’m not really risking anything. After all, interns and low-level employees are expendable, and if things truly were to ever get out of control, I’m fairly confident I can put them in their place.

All these tiny gestures or pretend submission are tiny crumbs for my hunger. But the coffee, oh… that’s where the true vertigo comes in.

Boardrooms are a nexus of power and symbolism. Top of the food chain, and just like that word choice would suggest, they’re filled to the brim with predators. Quite frankly, I think one out of three among my peers is a psychopath, and the second is an asshole.

What does that make me? I don’t know, but I’ve worked my ass off to get a seat in that room. Which is what makes it so cathartic to pretend – even for just a few minutes at a time – that I don’t belong. I’m a simple coffee girl, and nothing more.

But that’s not the whole story.

This isn’t simply about catharsis, or giving up control, it’s not even about the men themselves, which I don’t really care for. I know what it’s truly about, I think glumly as I fish for spare change in my purse.

Over the course of many years, I have assembled all the pieces of the puzzle of my life. I have wealth, respect, comfort, security… and some degree of power, in a corporate context, at least.

Unfortunately, even if you do put your puzzle together, sometimes you will find – just as it nears completion, just when you thought you were finally going to be okay – that you don’t, in fact, have all the pieces. In fact, that you miss the one.

For me, that piece was Remy.

No – no, that’s a lie. That piece was the things that Remy ordered me to do. It was what she whispered to me, while she utterly and unapologetically dominated me. It was the ultimate taboo, the ultimate destruction…

“Need some help, ma’am?”

The question almost startles me. I gasp, take a step back, my cheeks reddening like they’re on fire. For a second, my brain is utterly convinced that I’ve been caught red-handed doing something terrible. Something unspeakable. Something unforgivable.

Then, my sense of reality returns.

It’s just my administrative assistant, Eric. He’s carrying a thick folder under his arm – budgetary reports for Smith, I remember.

No one would ever think of Eric as threatening. He’s the stereotype of a white collar junior worker: thin, diligent, impeccably shaved, unfailingly polite… and completely forgettable. I feel silly for being so jumpy that even he scared me.

Calm down, Claire. It’s fine. You’re just getting coffee.

“Don’t sweat it,” I say with a cordial smile. “I’m just getting coffee.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Well, ma’am,” he says kindly, “you have two hands, and there are four cups. I’ll help.”

I don’t want him to, obviously. He doesn’t know it, but he’s intruding in my personal fantasy. He should be a floor below, where we normally work. When I asked him to bring the reports to Smith, I should have specified that I meant after the meeting.

“No need, I’ll use a tray,” I say. There’s a few neatly stacked atop the machines, just for this purpose.

He studies me, his pale eyes seeming to narrow in my direction, and for a split second I’m curious to know what he’s thinking. Is he confused? Weirded out? Does he find it unremarkable?

How does my covert kinky behaviour look like, to a coworker (or in this case, a subordinate) who has no context for it?

Well, I can’t exactly ask him. And just like that, the moment passes. Eric gives a polite nod, before finally turning back down the hallway, and towards Smith’s office.

Crisis averted.

Coffee cups neatly arranged on the tray, I make my way back to the boardroom, grateful that the tray is stable enough in spite of my trembling hands. I belong in this room, I really do. And yet… re-entering it with a coffee tray in my hands feels like a completely different experience.

Like all my pretensions to power and importance are being washed away, leaving behind just a serving girl, some kind of waitress for these men in their suits.

These men, portly and bald, well-dressed and sweaty, still reeking of cigar smoke. These men, bored out of their skulls, disinterested in anything but their greed. These predators.

Sigh. I know it’s fucked up, but come on, what’s the harm? How bad could it possibly get to be weak willed and a pushover, once? To feel what it’s like, being bossed around by a man?

I wonder which one of them would do it. I wonder, as I savour the rush of adrenaline I felt while serving them coffee, pretending I have no responsibility, no knowledge, no pressure. No entitlement to respect.

If only they knew…

But they do not. The board meeting proceeds without incident: each man takes his own cup with muttered thanks, and I sit among them, as a well-respected equal.

In a way, I suppose it’s fitting: they’re not really the object of my private fantasy anyway. I’ve never liked men. This isn’t about them.

It’s about Remy.

As the meeting goes on, even my untethered kinky imagination can do nothing against the soul-crushing power of empty corporate speak. The thrill of kink begins to recede, as we delve into the boring mundanity of quarterly results and performance bonuses for top management.

Alas, the real world is nowhere near as interesting as the kinky, embattled mental universe I inhabit. It’s also less dangerous, though. For us women, the world is fraught enough with dangers as it is. From harassment to assault, from casual belittlement to intentional discrimination, we get this and more in spades.

So… why am I actively courting this danger?

Because Remy fucked me up in the head, that’s why.  I should be happy, god damn it! My puzzle is almost complete. Claire, well-respected businesswoman, has everything she could possibly want in life! A girl, at my age, making way in a man’s business world.

A lesbian and feminist to boot, I show up to work in my power suit, outspoken, and unafraid.

Except, of course, no businesswoman, no feminist, and especially no goddamn lesbian would feel a perverse, addictive thrill in fetching coffee for my male colleagues.

Sometimes it occurs to me, rather idly, that other lesbians out there might be upset I still call myself one of them, even as I fantasise of my will being subsumed to a man’s. But I’m jealous of this identity. I’ve kept it close to my heart, it’s warmed me in the coldest periods of my life. I don’t want to give it up.

Even if it is, admittedly, somewhat at odds with the blush I get when I think of a girl down on her knees, muzzled and tamed, sucking cock…

I lean back against the chair, trying to focus on Bearman’s droning voice. Even the straightest woman on earth would find it impossible to think naughty thoughts while listening to that monotone.

It sucks, doesn’t it? Having to actively choose boredom, because the kinks you’re addicted to are inherently self-destructive. Maybe I should just… break out of this pattern. Seek a therapist, whatever.

The adrenaline rush of my secret serving-girl moment feels impossibly distant now. That makes me very self-conscious of how wrong my behaviour is, how screwed up I am. It gives me the clarity to know that I really, really ought to stop.

The adrenaline rush feels impossibly distant, now.

That makes me ache with want. It gives me the clarity to know that no matter what I tell myself now, I am absolutely going to do this again.

Because people are the source of their own unhappiness.

***

Sometimes, I think I perpetrate this on purpose. The unhealthy, maladaptive pattern I’m locked in, that is.

I make money hand over fist. I could seek the best therapists, or go on some insane and megalomaniac trip meant for corporate overlords, or pick up some utterly insane hobby. Anything that might fix the damage Remy did to me.

Instead, I carry it with me. Like it’s been etched into my heart. It almost feels like the wounds she inflicted me are all that’s left of our relationship. My last remaining connection to her. I feed the pain, cherish it, cradle it close to my chest.

Maybe it makes me feel dramatic and noble. Maybe I just like the pain. Like the idea that, for all that I’ve achieved in life, here I am, lounging in bed at night, thinking about my ex-girlfriend. Nursing a broken heart.

It’s been three years now.

What’s truly mad is that I don’t actually miss Remy, as a person. We didn’t leave things on the best of terms, and for good reason. She was a black hole of attention, emotions, feelings. She’d suck in everything you directed at her, and you’d never get anything in return.

It was unhealthy, codependent, and destructive. Unfortunately, that’s also what made my submission to her so hopelessly, unprecedentedly… hot.

It didn’t feel like a game, because in a way, she never really took my boundaries seriously. That made me feel truly used. Quintessentially… dominated. You don’t know what that word is, until a person takes your boundaries, and crushes them in their fingers like a soda can.

And you beg for more.

Just thinking about how that felt is enough to distract me. It’s devouring my professional life, draining away my ability to concentrate on anything else. To see the world clearly, without this permanent stain distorting everything I look at.

I’d chase that feeling to the ends of the Earth, and destroy myself in the process, if it meant that I could truly have it back. And that’s  why I should really try to stop. This time I will for real, I tell myself. Enough is enough.

Except of course that, again and again, during more and more meetings, the need speaks with my voice. Again and again, just as I’m about to sit down in my chair, the words leave my lips, unbidden.

“Anyone up for coffee?”

Stupid, stupid girl. I’m a fucking addict, and I know it, but the symbolism is just so powerful. In my mind’s eye, I’m not a girlboss anymore, not with a tray in hand. I’m… a secretary. A coffee girl. An impostor whose proper place in the office is to be demure, underpaid, dismissed… and useful.

Of course it’s the woman that’s fetching coffee, what other contribution could she possibly bring to a board meeting?

Well, there is one more, maybe, her lesbianism be damned…

“Getting coffee again?”

Once again, the question startles me to the point that I nearly lose my balance. Once again, I find myself standing before my assistant, Eric.

“I get cranky without it,” I say with improvised snark, and for a second I’m actually impressed with my lightning reflexes. But then, I frown.

Yesterday, Eric had reason to be here: I’d asked him to deliver those documents to Smith’s office. But now, it doesn’t look like he’s busy with anything. He’s leaning against the wall, nonchalant, his arms crossed.

Eric looks unassuming. Unthreatening. Sandy hair, thin build, a bland expression that rarely betrays any degree of emotional investment. But his pale eyes feel almost… unsettling as he contemplates me.

“Same, boss,” he says in his usual, polite but distant voice. “Can’t wait for my next break, so I can get my caffeine fix, too.”

You look like you’re on break right now, is what I want to tell him. I have a bit of a reputation for cracking the whip at work – which is something I cultivate deliberately. The bossier I look, the better my cover for the fact that I am, in fact, a spineless submissive at heart.

I’ve never really needed to use it with Eric, though. He’s always been diligent, a typical office drone that the nine-to-five life has already ground into dust. It’s very unusual for him to just be hanging out here in the hallway, on this floor, visibly with nothing to do.

But that’s not what I tell him. Instead, in a fit of madness, I nod towards the machines. “Want some?”

I cringe internally as the words leave my mouth. God, I hope I’ve left enough ambiguity, enough plausible deniability, that it seems like I’m inviting him to join me for a coffee… not offering to fetch him one myself.

My heart is pounding in my chest, and my head is spinning. Am I insane? Have I really just asked a subordinate if… if…

Eric’s eyes seem to lock on to my own, and for a long, loud heartbeat, we say nothing. “No, thanks ma’am,” he says at last, politely but coolly.

I nod, stiffly, trying to ignore the slick heat of arousal building up between my thighs. My fingers shake even more than they usually do, as I set out to complete my task.

I notice Eric s not offering to help me carry the tray back to the boardroom, this time. In fact, I feel his gaze on my neck as I prepare, then carefully place the four coffee cups on the tray. When I walk past him again, it’s all I can do not to blush like a schoolgirl.

My male administrative assistant is watching me fetch coffee like I’m the office’s puppy girl.

That makes the thing inside me very, very happy.

***

I’ve been thinking about this all day.

I’ve absent-mindedly replied to emails, pretended to peruse quarterly reports and charts, talked with no interest to one of our lawyers about potential IP infringement from a rival firm, sat through three boring meetings that might as well have been emails.

I’ve done all of that, while thinking of just one thing. One moment.

Getting home to masturbate.

Now, here I am, in bed, in the cold silence of my empty home. I can get started, appease the desire that’s been feverishly absorbing me all day. And yet, I’m staring at the ceiling. Thinking of Remy, and what she would have said, if she’d seen me make a fool of myself in front of Eric. My own assistant.

Not because I’d care about her opinion, not really. It’s the words I’d pay literal money to hear. I’m sure she would concoct something great, the sort of sadistic, humiliating sentence that would pierce straight through all my defenses, and sear itself in my brain for years to come.

She was damn good at doing that.

I’ve always been submissive, but all the BDSM I’ve ever had before Remy feels like a mild, milquetoast game in comparison. And I’m not referring to what we physically did. This was a different sort of edge. It was about emotions.

It wasn’t Remy’s boot, grinding my face into the floor, that made me an addict.

It wasn’t feet, collar and cuffs, binds and blindfolds, chastity, or her whip, that broke me.

It was always her words.

The way she would make every interaction, every conversation, exclusively about her. My feelings never mattered. She could place boundaries, I couldn’t. It wasn’t a relationship, not really, I was being sucked into her ego, a mere accessory to her life. She used me and threw me away as she saw fit.

Eventually, she discarded me for good.

I know you like it when I gaslight you, she told me once, with an unforgettable smile, a grin that’s etched itself into my brain. I really do own you, don’t I? I could do anything to you.

She did. She could.

I’d feed you scraps from my table, and you’d lap it up and thank me for it, like the pathetic, love-starved puppy dog you really are, she told me, and I hated every word, and I loved it so much that I begged her to say it again and again…

I replay every word she’s ever said to me in my head. It’s my prayer to the dark when I rub myself at night. I’ve even stopped watching porn, and as for the erotic stories that help me get off, they seem to get darker with every passing month.

That feels so dumb to verbalise, doesn’t it? How emotionally stunted do you have to be, to be so attached to one fantasy? To dream about reliving it, over and over? But I can’t stop.

Out of all the things she told me, there was one in particular that… It was this kink…

I give out a tiny gasp as I realise my hand has finally snaked its way between my legs. Just reciting her words in my mind has been sufficient to prime me for this, which is honestly fucking pathetic, and that only makes me want to play with myself even more.

I should yank my hand away, I really should. I’m merely reinforcing my obsession by behaving like this. I’m flooding my brain with happy chemicals every time it tortures me with memories of Remy. That’s just gonna make me fall deeper, become even less inhibited, more impulsive, more self-destructive. I should totally stop.

Unfortunately, my hand isn’t listening.

I bite my lower lip and squirm under the sheets, my muscles beginning to contract. I almost feel like a passenger, as my brain walks down familiar, disturbing, mentally harmful memories.

She would drive me to my knees, and tell me that her grip on me was so tight, that she’d make me betray my own lesbianism just for her amusement. That she’d force me to submit to men.

Eventually, it became a totalising fantasy. An adrenaline rush. It’s not about the hypothetical man in question, at all, see? It’s about the power. The power to violate me in the most personal way possible.

Over time, it became our favourite fantasy. My brain learned to associate that with the crazy adrenaline rush, the weakness in my limbs, the furious beating of my heart.

I bet you’d suck cock for me, she would say. Little lezzie would put on a show for Mistress, right?

She never did make me do it, of course… though each time she mentioned it, she sounded a bit more serious. And I felt more and more incapable of pushing back.

How could I, when she trapped my chin between her fingers, and drowned my eyes in hers, and whispered that…

You love me, right? If you truly love me, let me see your lesbian identity fade from your eyes. Let me see the moment I use a man’s cock to break you…

Men never actually feature much, when I’m touching myself, poisoning my brain, pushing myself closer to the edge. The attention is all on Remy and me, on her voice, on her words, on my shattering self-respect.

They’re just formless, faceless figures, plot devices really, tools in Remy’s hands. They have no agency, no impact on the story. They’re just there for Remy to do her magic.

But this time, as I think back of her promise to break me with a man’s cock, the faceless visage swimming before me studies my weakness with a pair of inquisitive, unsettling, pale eyes…

And that’s when the orgasm hits me. My tribute to Remy, to my damaged state, my self-conditioning that guarantees that I’ll do this again. My breathing is shallow and my muscles contract, but it doesn’t even really feel good. Almost perfunctory. I chased one because I needed it, not because I actually wanted it.

That’s a shame. It means I’ll need to go again. Because, unfortunately, I do need it.

That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s how conditioning works, the power of association. That’s how Remy domesticated me, like I was just some dumb farm animal for her to harness. I’m just… carrying on her grand tradition. And to hell with the consequences.

As I close my eyes, readying myself to go again, it occurs to me that Eric is not like the men in my fantasies. He’s not a tool in Remy’s hands, or a plot device. He’s a real person, with thoughts, feelings, and his own agency.

I’ve been making myself a fool in front of him. I’m behaving inappropriately, and even if he doesn’t know, I’ve been acting out a fantasy without his consent. Because I’m twisted, and sick, and I really should stop.

But those thoughts recede rapidly. After all, that’s what whispering Remy’s utterances does to me. And the masculine, amused eyes I’m imagining, that make my hips twitch and my fingers rub faster, well, is it my fault if they go oh so well with Remy’s voice, with her words?

What’s the harm? It’s only a coincidence, it doesn’t really mean anything that they’re so cold, and inquisitive, and pale.

Nothing at all…

Chapter Two: Carrying The Abyss

Kink guilt.

It’s a funny concept, but everyone who has a deep, self-destructive desire of this kind knows what I’m talking about. I feel dirty, impure, perhaps even vaguely nauseous with myself, and small wonder.

I’ve masturbated. Thinking about a man.

A subordinate at work, nonetheless. I did it while thinking about my ex, messing me up my mind. I did it while thinking about my entire career being destroyed by my fantasies, the workplace corrupted into a sick, sexual fantasy.

I wake up to the chime of my alarm, and reach over to silence it, my fingers fumbling in the dim morning light. Another day. I tell myself that I’m going to put boundaries in place, this time. Work is work. Kink is kink. If I need an outlet, I’ll find it online, not at work. This dangerous, inappropriate behaviour stops, now.

Another day, another attempt at being normal.

I shuffle into the bathroom, the cool tiles underfoot making me shiver. I throw the reflection in the mirror a questioning look. Who are you, and why are you lying to me?

I’m Claire, the accomplished businesswoman.

I’m Claire, maladaptive lesbian that’s never gotten over a bad break up.

I’m claire – uncapitalised – and I exist to be used and abused. Remy taught me that. Remy taught me well.

No. Remy taught me to internalise and fetishise my own abuse. I can only imagine how pathetic I’d look to her, if she could see me now. Hey Remy, I’m so not over you that I could suck my own assistant’s cock in your honour.

That should shock me out of complacency. Instead, it makes me bite my lower lip.

I make my way to the kitchen. Expensive, immaculate, impersonal, and barely used. I feel like there’s some metaphor in there, but I’m not sure what it is.

God. I’ve been alone too long. This is an empty home, empty in a way that no amount of tidiness can dispel. I’m almost eager to get out of here, and not because I like the work I do. It’s because at work, I have my own, twisted, personal playground.

But I shouldn’t do it. I need boundaries, I shouldn’t do it.

But then what else do I have left?

… I can’t believe I really just thought that. Is that all there is to my life? Am I nothing more than a collection of my own traumas, carefully nursed and refashioned into fantasies? Is the rest of my life just boring and miserable, or is this lust a black hole, devouring everything else around it?

With a resigned sigh, I place the empty mug in the sink and make my way to the closet. The power suit awaits, a uniform of authority and control. I slip into it, like putting on a costume, complete with mask. I’m pretending to be an adult, someone with their act together.

A dashing, independent woman fit for the modern times.

Right.

I collect my briefcase and head towards the door, telling myself, over and over, that today is going to be different. That I’m going to start over.

Another day… another lie.

***

My workplace is a gleaming tower of glass and steel. It looms ahead, like some kind of obelisk, a monument to corporate pride and futility. It’s a factory of bullshit jobs. I suppose it’s quite fitting that the building would look like this: soulless and impersonal, impractically tall because it needs to make a statement, but also cold and indifferent.

In my mind, I refer to it as the Mountain. It seems oddly appropriate, in a way I can’t quite explain.

When I was a kid, I used to read stories where mountains represented hardships. Heroes would travel there, in search of wisdom, isolation, or perhaps some old messianic figure to ask a boon of. That’s not really apt for this metaphor, though. If there is wisdom to be found in the office, I haven’t seen it.

Mountains are were dragons make their lairs, too, guarding over piles of gold and treasure. The part about dragons rings truer, alright. Greed is the lubricant of this great machinery, and as for me, it is the place where I built my career, rising ever higher. Higher up the Mountain, I suppose.

And yet, that’s not what I’m here for. Unlike the heroes, I’m not looking for wisdom, and I have all the material wealth I could care to acquire. It’s not enough. Now, I visit the Mountain, not in search of enlightenment or glittering gold, but in search of that thrill that feels better than normal sex ever could.

The one you experience when impropriety and suggestion takes over. When you feel the tantalising danger of being found out, of the mask falling, of safety flying out the window. When insubordination, or workplace hierarchy, are warped and twisted away from their original social context, and repurposed into weapons of destructive, addictive arousal.

For example, when you offer your male administrative assistant to make him coffee…

I blush. I shouldn’t do that. I need boundaries. I can’t believe I did that.

It was hot, though, wasn’t it?

The lobby is a flurry of activity as I arrive. Pointless activity, really, like hamsters on wheels. My colleagues are already engrossed in their tasks, the low hum of conversation filling the air. I exchange pleasantries and engage in the usual small talk, all while maintaining the air of confidence and authority that hides how broken I am inside.

But as the morning progresses, my attention starts to drift. Our lawyers want my follow-up on that potential IP infringement they were telling me about, and I really couldn’t care less. They should settle it with a sex wrestling match, I want to tell them. Let them send the hottest girl they have. It’d be far more interesting than this… revolting mundanity.

I find myself stealing glances at the clock, counting down the minutes until I allow myself the next opportunity to play out inconspicuous submission with someone. Anyone, really. Someone dropping a folder, or needing a door opened, or standing in queue behind me at the cafeteria, or…

But I shouldn’t. I need boundaries. I can already feel the rationalisations racing through my brain, though. Maybe I can have my cake and eat it. Maybe I don’t really need to change my habits, just tone them down a little? Be more subtle?

God, I’m so fucked up. I need therapy.

The problem isn’t what I need, though. It’s what I want.

I want to be lied to, humiliated, and gaslit. I want to unwisely let someone into my head – they can do lots of damage in there. I want someone to play my emotions like they’re a fiddle, because I’m so simple and lesser as a person that the confines of my intellect are a child’s toy for them.

I want it to hurt. I want it to consume me. I want to be fucked into complete submission. Even to myself, I’m describing it like it’s hell…

But it’s what my heart wants.

***

It’s a transformation so gradual, so discreet, that if I weren’t attuned to the nuances of my colleagues’ behaviour, I might have missed it entirely. But I’m not blind to it. I can’t afford to be.

Like all kinksters hiding in public, perverting ostensibly non-sexual interactions around them, I live in fear of being caught. And in hope of being caught. I am uniquely attuned to the way people react to my gestures of impropriety.

Eric’s been reacting a whole lot, recently.

Since that day in the hallways, really, when he so eagerly and closely studied me. That day when I went home, and rubbed myself – a gold star lesbian! – to the thought of his eyes, witnessing the debasement and sexual conquest that Remy always said she would eventually inflict on me.

His eyes, pale and unsettling, now linger on me far longer than mere professionalism demands. Whether I’m just doing my job, or performing a covert act of servility towards a colleague, I can feel him looking.

Sometimes, I look back.

There is something oddly electrifying, about these fleeting moments when our gazes intersect. They make me feel seen, in a way that I haven’t in a long time. Three years, probably.

The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, as our eyes meet. His gaze holds a certain analytical weight, an intensity that leaves me feeling exposed, vulnerable. Like he sees through the corporate façade, and knows that I’m an impostor. That I don’t belong at this desk.

Remy would say that I belong under it. Soiling my lesbian lips with cum and cock…

Each time, I blush, and look away first, unable to hold the gaze of my own assistant. And each time, it feels like a profoundly gendered defeat.

Sometimes, at home, or during the more work-focused moments of my days, I tell myself that I’m imagining things. Remy’s handiwork on my dissected submissive mind, the weight of emotional trauma, the way I eroticise it on a daily basis… these things warp your perception. You start seeing sex everywhere, especially where vanilla sex is completely absent.

You start seeing sex in power.

So, maybe, this is it. I do have an untethered imagination. Maybe I’m just seeing patterns that I want to see, or Eric does think there’s something odd about me, and he just can’t place it at all. Maybe.

But deep down, I know better.

He all but confirms it, one day, in what looks like a mirror image of that first, fateful interaction. Seeing me outside the board room, in the hallway, diligently taking care of my male colleagues’ needs, he dissects me with his gaze.

It feels so dangerous, and so alluring, to run such a risk, to see my subordinate act like an office gopher. I feel like he’s judging me, and I can’t deny the rush of excitement that courses through me in response to that idea, even as I chastise myself for indulging in such thoughts.

“Ma’am,” he says at last, “you seem… unusually eager to fetch coffee today.”

His tone deceptively casual, but his eyes don’t leave mine for one second. He’s looking for my reaction, and in truth he doesn’t need to look very closely, because I’m blushing like crazy. A cold shiver travels down the full length of my spine.

A comment so seemingly innocuous, yet it sends a shiver down my spine. My heart quickens, and something stirs within me, and I wish I was at home, with my vibrator, because Christ…

I offer a polite smile, feigning nonchalance, but inside, I’m a wreck of anxiety and self-deprecating arousal.

“It’s all part of the job,” I manage to reply, and cringe internally at what I’ve just said. Stupid, stupid Claire, that big mouth of mine is going to get me in huge trouble sometimes, possibly now.

It’s all part of the job? Seriously? It’s part of the job of the only female board member to fetch coffee for her male “peers”? Have I really just said that out loud?

Apparently, I have, because even Eric’s impassible face can’t resist the smallest of smirks at that. I push past him, trying to ignore the hammering of my heart, or the hunger stirring inside me.

It’ll go away, I tell myself. It’ll go away, like things always do. You make a joke here and a joke there, like when someone asks you to do something, and you jokingly respond yes, master! Or whatever. You fear getting caught, and you long for it, but it never happens, because that’s not how the real world works.

And yet, Eric’s comments keep dropping every time he sees me engage in an act of surreptitious service. He’s probing, pushing, testing my boundaries, measuring how far I’ll go.

“You have a talent for this, ma’am,” he observes once, as I restock the printer rooms with reams of paper during my lunch break, like a secretary would. “Looking after the whole office, I mean. It’s impressive how you anticipate everyone’s needs.”

The double entendre isn’t lost on me. His words hang in the air, heavy with unspoken implications, and I can feel my body responding to them. My heart races, and a warm flush creeps up my neck. The arousal is undeniable, no matter how indignant a part of me gets at the idea that a fucking man is making me wet.

But that’s what Remy would want. The epytome of humiliation.

I know this can’t continue indefinitely. The tension between us, the magnetic pull of desire, it’s building towards something. But what?

God, this thrill. It’s dangerous, but nothing in our everyday lives can compare with the intoxicating rush that courses through my veins, as I think about how wrong this is. He’s my subordinate at work, he’s a man, I’m a lesbian, Remy dumped me three years ago, and she did lasting damage to me as a person, and wow I’m panting like a fucking bitch in heat right now.

Because of the thrill. I find myself teetering on the edge of a precipice, unsure of whether I’ll eventually take the plunge, or step back from the abyss.

But here’s the thing about the abyss.

You can rationalise it any way you want, but when you carry your own personal hell, etched deep into your heart…

There is just nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide.

***

“Hey, listen, could you get me some coffee?”

And there it is.

The moment when my heart stops, when fear and adrenaline, hope and arousal, outrage and sheer panic flood my system all at once. Where I see Remy’s face swimming before me, laughing at the pathetic excuse for a human being I am, even though the words were spoken by a masculine voice.

By my assistant’s voice.

It’s the moment when the game stops being a game, or at least, when you’re no longer the only person to know about your game. Just like that. The question drops like a thunderbolt, shocking me out of my reverie, my complacency.

I’m sitting at my desk, in my office, with my nametag on the door. Eric’s gotten up from his own chair in the waiting area just outside, to come here – without knocking – and speak those words. The words.

Context is everything. I’ve offered to get him coffee once, in the past, and immediately regretted it – as much as I loved it. That was stupid, already, but this… he’s barging in to ask me to do, what, secretary work?

It takes a moment for the words to register, and when they do, I falter and I break eye contact without meaning to. I cross my legs tight under the desk, trying to suppress my body’s reaction. No, no no no. Its taken years of cultivating a strong personality to get to the point where I can just snap my fingers and know my orders will be followed.

The thought of all that effort, going down in flames because I’m horny and sad, is… is…

“I’m busy”, I say, clearing my throat halfway through to try and get rid of the slight tremor in my voice. Nervous, why am I so nervous? I can’t sound this feeble. I need to put some actual spine into this.

“I think you’ll find you can fetch your own coffee,” I manage to tack on at the end, after an entirely too long pause. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the slick heat building up between my legs, because there are parts of my mind that are imagining this confrontation spiralling in quite different directions…

But I can’t just give in as much as I want to.

Can I?

Delivering coffee to my fellow board members is one thing, but to an assistant? It’s just completely out of the question, it would raise too many eyebrows. It would reveal…

Eric merely smiles. “When you’re out there, getting coffee for someone, is the only time you look like you actually enjoy being here… Claire.”

Not ma’am. Claire. I should correct him. I should be shouting. I should not be hyperventilating.

“I’m just giving you an outlet for that,” he continues. “Making… use of your talents.”

The utter audacity of his words shocks me at first, before the shock makes way to fury. I’ve worked my ass of to get where I am, and having an intern disrespect me is completely unacceptable. I almost open my mouth to give Eric the lecture of a lifetime, but the words die in my throat.

I can’t believe it. What if I say yes, what if I… comply? Will he ask again? And what will I say then? The thought of diligently fetching coffee for my own secretary – for a MAN – is infuriating, sexist, dangerous… and exactly what Remy would want for me.

What she’d say I deserve.

I suddenly find it hard to sit still in my chair, thighs squirming and pressing together. I really should nip this in the bud, stop this now. But I really can’t help myself. “Er, fine, I suppose I can do it this once,” I manage. Even to my own ears it sounds hollow.

Eric nods, his pale eyes scrutinising me. “I knew you’d see reason. Besides…”

I squirm again, unable to help myself. Its like all my secret, shameful fantasies come to life whether I like it or not, and the space between my thighs has become embarrassingly slick. I’m just glad the amount of layers I have on means its unlikely to show on my skirt when I get up.

“And besides what?” I challenge, though my voice lacks its usual bite. I find myself watching his eyes, half of me begging for him to back down and let things go back to normal. The other half… begging to be ordered to go make a bloody coffee.

“Besides,” he continues, “there’s something alluring about a woman who knows how to serve…”

His words cut me, but they also strike something deep inside, causing my cheeks to flush in embarrassment and arousal. I’ve never been spoken to like this before, not without immediately responding with a scathing remark to put the other person in their place.

Remy being the obvious expection…

I stand abruptly, my hands clenched into tight fists. For a moment I entertain the idea of firing him on the spot and having him escorted from the building. Instead, I lower my eyes without meaning to, and hurry out of my office, down to the break room to grab a cup of coffee.

I don’t know how he likes his coffee, but I suppose that isn’t the point. I just throw together a cup as best I can, trying to keep my hands from trembling. It’s difficult to act normal when my mind is screaming at me to stop this, but by this point the abyss inside me is sucking me into its gravity well. The beast is stirring, and it hungers.

When I return to my office, carrying the coffee that symbolises my submission to his audacious request, I find Eric lounging in my chair. My very comfy, very expensive chair that I worked hard to earn. My cheeks flush again with both anger and arousal, but I say nothing as I settle the coffee cup on my desk in front of him.

He acknowledges the offering with a nod, and his demeanor remains calm, almost nonchalant. “So,” he says, amicably, “I think we should talk.”

I gulp audibly, the sound echoing in the room like a confession. There’s an undeniable glimmer in his eyes, a predatory gleam that tells me he’s not done. That he’s just getting started.

His words hang in the air like a charged promise, and my world narrows down to that moment, that sentence. I’m perched on the precipice, unsure of whether to resist or to surrender to the unknown.

“T-talk about… what?” I stammer. My heart races, and it feels like the world is upside down, like there’s no cardinal points anymore, nothing makes sense. It feels like I’m falling, faster and faster. Being tugged by the powerful pull of something new and forbidden, something that might unravel everything I’ve built.

That might unravel and destroy me completely.

“Well, Claire, for starters” he says, steepling his fingers, leaning forward, and for a second, his expressionless face morphs in what looks like a devilish grin to me… so like Remy’s. “I can’t help but wonder what other talents you might have…”

Chapter Three: Feeding The Need

This is the moment where most people would just stop.

Most people, after all, can tell the difference between reality and porn. Or if they fail to do so, it’s on some mundane, banal level, some false myth about sex they are yet to unlearn, for example.

But that’s not where I’m at.

Eric’s questions are polite, but the meaning they carry is sharper than a blade. The implication… subtle, and inappropriate, and dangerous.

Sometimes, it’s, “Could you take care of these photocopies?”

Or maybe, “Sorry, forgot to schedule your appointments this week. Guess you’ll have to do it yourself.”

And then, naturally, my very favourite: “Get me a nice cup of coffee, will you?”

“Yes,” I say every time. And “yes,” and “yes.” Heart fluttering, vision going blurry, I acquiesce, comply, yield, all words that should not be erotic at all, and yet send a shiver of pure sexual allure down my spine. 

He asks it all with that polite, always-in-control mask on his face, expressionless if not for the subtlest of grins, the faint glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he watches me – a supposedly powerful professional woman – squirm under his thumb.

“Good,” he says every time I comply with his wishes. Just that. Good. I hold the fate of his career in his hands, he is my administrative assistant, and yet he curtly comments my para-secretarial work as adequate. And the most humiliating part? He’s just curt enough that he leaves me wanting more.

More approval. More validation. More humiliation.

He hasn’t lifted a finger on me yet, despite the many allusions he made when we had our Talk with a capital T, and those he still occasionally drops when he… ugh… orders me around. He’s not stupid, my assistant. He’s not gonna rush headlong into the unknown.

He’s going to patiently test the boundaries of my screwed up mind. To him, this may well be a methodical thing, but to me, it just prolongs the allure and horror, because I know what he will find.

As I scurry around the hallways on my secret errands, doing menial tasks for my male secretary, right under the nose of my unsuspecting fellow execs, I can’t deny the truth. Most people would have stopped by now, hell, even people who share my kinks.

Even those who harbour fantasies they consider shameful or disturbing, even those who are deep into the kinky mindset, can more often than not recognise when things are getting serious.

When things are getting dangerous.

“You’re holding a presentation for the board next week,” he asks me today, his voice soft, so soft. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I say, gulping down. Noticing the glimmer in his eyes at my assent.

“I’ll take a look at it for you,” he says. “In the meantime…”

He hands over a file. “Smith’s asking for more budgetary reports,” he says, casually. “You should bring these to him.”

My heart sinks, and my hands tremble so hard that it’s a miracle I don’t drop the file he’s giving me. This is how it all started, I remember. I sent him up to the upper floor. He saw me fetch coffee for my fellow board members.

I spent the night masturbating to him finding out…

“B-b-but,” I whisper, my voice so unsteady, so uncertain, not the voice of a corporate girlboss, but that of a small, mousy, lost little girl. Does he know what this means? What risk I’m running?

“Chop chop,” he says, which I suppose answers my questions, and then some. With an embarrassing blush on my cheeks and an even more mortifying heat between my thighs, I spin around like a good little trooper, and head up to the upper floor, reports in hand.

This is crazy. Completely insane.

In the throes of fantasy and need, us kinksters talk about what we’d like other people to do to us… we imagine a totalising fantasy, one that transforms our lives, takes everything away.

Being completely enslaved and dominated, or perhaps kidnapped and sold to someone, or maybe turned into nothing more than an eager sexual pet… the specifics may vary, but the all-encompassing nature of the fantasy does not.

But those are just words… because most people can tell the difference between reality and porn.

Suddenly, the game is not so fun, when your job, or your family, or your finances might be on the line. When your self-respect could be taking a serious hit. When you stand to lose something for real.

Because most kinksters understand that, no matter what we shout at the top of our lungs, or think in the dark recesses of our twisted minds just before we cum, all this stuff is best left as a game.

Smith looks surprised to see me, when I knock on his door. He’s a pudgy man, soft and overweight, with knotty fingers and mousy eyes behind thick glasses. A living, breathing stereotype, and a fundamentally non-threatening one.

That’s why he never rose so high as I and others did. He doesn’t have what it takes. Not a throatcutter, this one, just a milquetoast administrator.

Which makes his look of confusion all the more humiliating, when I sheepishly hand him the files like I’m just an office gopher.

“Shouldn’t your secretary be doing this?” He asks me at last, accepting the file and beginning to leaf through the pages. “Is he sick?”

That’d be the only conceivable explanation, wouldn’t it? An easy lie, offered on a silver platter… but also an ineffective one, should he meet Eric in the building later today. So I shrug and mumble, “I have him doing something else at the moment.”

“I see,” Smith mutters, and before he can say or ask anything else, I make a small nod with my head and quickly head out the door; then straight down the hallway, to the elevator, and towards the safety of my own office.

Relative safety. My predator is in there, after all… which just goes to prove what, deep down, I sadly already know.

I am not most people.

I’m not most kinksters, either.

I find Eric waiting for me on my return, not in my office this time, but at his usual desk in the waiting room. He looks up from the monitor with a twisted half-smile that makes my breathing become shallower and shallower.

I can’t believe I ever thought of his face as forgettable.

I mean, of course, it makes sense on some level, I feel no attraction towards him as a man – the power play, yes, the legacy of Remy, yes, but not him, physically. And I suppose I can’t really be blamed. Places like the Mountain are endless factories of thin, lanky white collar workers with clean-shaven faces, thinning hair, and dead eyes.

Though his eyes have never looked dead. Pale, yes, but intelligent, calculating. Cold.

That’s the best adjective for him, really. He is always unfailingly polite and formal, but you’d be mistaken if you thought that’s who he is down to the core. I’m learning that now. I’m learning it as he watches me squirm like trapped prey, slowly but surely pressing his thumb down, harder and harder.

Even his smiles are cold…

“I felt your presentations needed a fair amount of work,” he says, and that just mortifies me. Is my own assistant really disparaging my work? Does he mean it, or is he just saying it to gaslight me, to undermine me, to further cement his grip over me?

And which one of the two would be worse? More humiliating?

Eric isn’t privy to the questions I ask myself, as I feel increasingly hemmed in by his game. Our game.

He just nonchalantly hands me over a USB drive, which I assume contains the updated document, and I take it sheepishly. Am I really going to sink this low? Stand before the rest of the board, and present something that my own assistant has corrected and edited?

As I take the drive, his other hand suddenly clenches around my wrist, making me yelp in surprise. I take a step back, or try to – he holds me in place, pulling and tugging me forward, like one would a recalcitrant dog on a leash.

Strong.

I should be scared, or outraged. Instead, I feel immediately and instinctually cowed. I lower my head, humbly, demurely.

“You still haven’t told me what this is,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “Or where it’s going.”

My cheeks redden. Of course I haven’t told him. How could I explain? During the Talk, I mumbled out a half-baked explanation about just liking it when I’m treated like this.

I didn’t specify that it was a gender thing, that his maleness matters. I didn’t tell him I’m a lesbian. I didn’t tell him about Remy.

But I feel his metaphorical grip on me slowly beginning to tighten – much like his literal grip on my wrist. He’s figuring me out. I’m being studied, observed, acted upon. A passenger, with no say in what the guy running the experiment will do next.

I know that some day, these flimsy responses aren’t going to be good enough. One more reason why I should have stopped this by now… while I still can.

That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? I can’t.

Eric releases my wrist, eventually, though his eyes never leave me. He gives a patient shrug. “Not to worry. I’ll get the truth out of you,” he says, and then, his eyes narrow. “One way or another…”

It’s all I can do not to blurt out yes sir. Instead, I withdraw back to my office, sink into my chair, and pretend to work for the rest of the day, the drive with the updated presentation resting on my desk, as if silently mocking me.

Of course I’m going to go with his version. Of course I’m going to acquiesce, yield, and comply. 

Because I have this… thing in me. This need. I’m not sure if Remy planted it, or if it was always there, and she merely awoke it, but it warps everything I look at, everything I touch. It’s like a wedge, deeply nestled into some primitive fold of my mind that I have no direct access to, or control over.

I really can’t stop.

Every time impropriety takes over, every time Eric and I play our little game, right under the noses of all our colleagues, every time he tests the boundaries of my waning power over him, my entire body goes haywire.

It’s devastating, like a sudden illness, and yet it makes me feel alive in a way that I’ve only ever experienced with Remy. I get this sudden sense of vertigo, this rush… adrenaline floods my system, my heart starts racing, my limbs go weak.

This is not arousal, not really. It’s something that goes much beyond normal, physical arousal. It’s this mad cascade of chemicals, this lightheadedness, this sudden sensation that feels like I’m spiking a fever.

That’s it. That’s the word: fever. Like reality starts to fade away, and I’m barely in control of my own actions. The sheer banality of Eric’s insubordination, the subtle and gradual testing of boundaries… it feels like a fucking drug.

I sound like an addict, and I mean, isn’t that kind of accurate? Remy made me into one. She patiently conditioned me into only finding gratification in her relentless abuse, in her complete mastery over my increasingly fragile mind. This is just another iteration of getting that fix.

How do you stop something like this?

Perhaps more pertinently: why would you stop something like this? Most people, most kinksters, would, of course. They would be able to, for example, remember that hey, I’m supposed to be a lesbian, and lesbians don’t want guys to touch them, let alone humiliate them.

I’m supposed to be a professional, not let my own subordinate take control of me at work.

I’m supposed to have moved on from my crazy girlfriend.

And yet, I haven’t. I imagine Remy watching every interaction, just like she watched with glee as she impaled my face on a dildo, whispering about the end of my sexual orientation, telling me…

Unravel for me.

I imagine telling her what’s happening to me at work. I imagine her laughing so hard that she brings herself to tears, because I’m pathetic beyond her wildest dreams and aspirations.

Why would I ever choose work, over this? Why should I sacrifice this thrilling, addictive, head-spinning little game? To do what, protect this boring, soul-grinding executive job? I’m a glorified email writer and powerpoint presenter.

Nothing we talk about, or decide, or do in that board room, has any positive impact on the world around us. I’ve climbed the Mountain, and found out that there is no meaning to be found up here. Just loneliness.

Is that really more valuable than whatever I feel, when I fetch coffee for my assistant?

As for being a lesbian, well… that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? If I were not a lesbian, this would still be extremely misogynistic and humiliating, but… it wouldn’t be as dehumanising. It wouldn’t be as destructive to who I am.

Where’s the pain, the emotional sadism, the identity death, if my very orientation isn’t being subverted?

Unravel for me.

I wish you could see this, Remy. How good a girl I still am, always have been, always will be, for you. I wish you could see this, see me, and say something new, something incredibly mean and cruel, but insightful… and thus, all the crueler for it. Something else that would be seared into my brain forever, poisoning every future opportunity to think like a normal person again.

Every further opportunity to tell the difference between reality, and porn.

Every further opportunity to stop…

***

Solemn nods, grunts of approval, and muttered congratulations greet the end of my presentation.

That’s about as much as you can expect, when your audience is the rest of the board, and your presentation is on how we can limit further IP infringement incidents in the future – a timely topic, given the recent scandal, but not exactly a thrilling one.

And yet, they don’t know, these men, these dragons who sit atop the Mountain, hoarding their treasures. They don’t know that the woman they have begrudgingly welcomed into their ranks is being subtly controlled by her own male assistant. They don’t know he’s thoroughly edited and expanded my presentation.

That it’s a man, they’re applauding. And a mere secretary, no less.

The meeting comes to a close, and I’m just about to rush out the door, when I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder. I turn around to see Bearman, the oldest among us, his voice a droning monotone that induces drowsiness in everyone who has the misfortune to be in a meeting with him.

“Well done,” he says, and this might be the first time in my life that his voice has made me feel something. “There was a noticeable improvement in structure, layout, and depth. Keep up the good work, Claire.”

I stand there, too stunned for words, as he slides past me and out the room, into the hallway. I can hear the furious beating of my heart… and distantly, in my own memory, the echoes of Remy, laughing at me.

That’s really what he said. A noticeable improvement.

Fuck.

I wait in the board room, giving everyone time to clear out, and not just because I need to catch my breath, or hide my blush. I know that I’ll want to be alone, when I get out into the hallway. Because I know that my predator will be there, waiting…

And that’s where I find him. Leaning against the wall, the picture of composed relaxation, completely in control of the situation… while his female boss spirals more and more into this crazy game, this fantasy.

This addiction.

He contemplates me for a long, silent moment, and I feel like I’m being examined by a higher power. Like he’s looking into my soul, seeing if he can find fault with me, or if I’m deserving of his approval.

Fuck, he’s sunk his claws deep into me in so little time, how could it happen?

But I know why. He’s simply placing his claws into the wounds Remy has carved before him. They never healed, after all…

“So, how did it go?” he asks, politely, though there is no mistaking the steel beneath. “Any comments?”

My fingers entwine as I place my hands behind my back, trying to stand a little taller, to meet his gaze. To not sound, and look, like the frightened girl in a man’s world that Remy always said I should turn into; deserved to become.

“They said…” I hesitate, my mouth dry, my heart racing. I’m shaking with adrenaline, arousal and fear, and I can’t even string a coherent sentence together. “… noticeable improvement…”

Where I’m a whimpering wreck, Eric is perfectly unfazed by it all, as if things are proceeding exactly as he foresaw. He merely nods, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“That’s what I thought.”

Then, he draws closer to me, stepping right into my personal space, and my breath catches in my throat.

He’s tall, taller than me, and confident, and our postures invert as I’m the one now taking one step backwards after another, until my shoulders hit the wall behind me. He’s looming over me, looking down at me, literally and metaphorically.

He places one hand on my left shoulder, thumb and index finger gently rubbing my hair. It’s the softest of touches, but it’s not gentle, an apparent contradiction that is difficult to explain, it’s just something I feel.

A predator’s tenderness.

“So,” he says pointedly, “I guess you should ask me to edit more of your work in the future. Shouldn’t you?”

A spasm of pure arousal travels straight down between my legs. Remy always loved to make me ask… to make me beg for the humiliations she imposed upon me.

I can smell him. His hands look so big and powerful… not in a sexual sense, an intimidating one. Here I am, a lesbian, acknowleding a man’s purview over my professional life, and perhaps more, so much more, giving him power over me, the same way Remy had power over me.

He could do more than just rub my hair. He could pull it. He could wrap one hand around my throat, and start to squeeze, while his other hand slides between my legs to discover how embarrassingly wet my sex is, right now.

For a man.

He could lean in, and kiss me. He could press against my shoulders, and push me down to my knees…

“Please,” I ask in a soft voice, a supplicant’s voice, the voice of someone who knows she’s at the mercy of a higher power, and can only find hope in begging and prostration. “Please, edit my presentations for me. You’re b-b-better at this than I am…”

He’s so close now, so close that we could start kissing any moment, that I can feel his breath on my lips…. And suddenly, he withdraws from me.

It’s sudden, and yet at the same time, so obviously calculated. He smiles mischievously at me, which mortifies me. I am being teased, by a man. I am as flushed with shame as I am with arousal and self-deprecation. I want his approval. His validation.

I want him to…

“Since you ask so nicely,” he says, clearly enjoying himself, “I’ll accommodate your request. I guess we’ll be working a lot more… closely, in the future.”

And with that, he turns his back on me without a word, and walks back towards the elevators, leaving me feeling flustered, humiliated, and denied.

Of course he needed to do that. He’s breaking me, my resolve. The next time he moves in on me, I won’t be able to resist.

Then again, that’s the problem when you’re an addict. You can’t win a fight you want to lose.

“I look forward to it,” I say, in a half-whisper, as he recedes farther and farther down the hallway, probably well out of earshot.

“… Sir.”

Chapter Four: Eroding The Self

“Gratitude is an important quality in a colleague,” Eric says, in that usual silky tone he has, the one that makes him sound at once unfailingly polite, and completely devoid of a soul. “Or so I have been told, at any rate.”

He stops there, but I’m starting to know him well enough that I can complete his statement in my thoughts. So I’ve been told by people with far more scruples than I. By people who don’t play the game.

I’ve recently learned that Eric has little patience for platitudes. The fact that he’s using one now is significant. He’s sitting in my chair, at my desk, sipping the coffee I myself fetched for him, whimpering and biting my lip on the way back.

He swivels in place, expectantly studying my reaction.

I truly, fundamentally, catastrophically, completely misread him. I thought he had no ambition, no drive, but none of that was true. Eric has both of those in spades… and also has good camouflage.

He stuck with me, perfect and unassuming, because he saw me as a rising prodigy in the corporate world. He could hitch his wagon to my star, benefitting symbiotically from my own success. When he seemed polite, he was just being uncaring. When he seemed dutiful, he was just looking out for number one.

And I, in my addiction, my desperation, and my depravity, have single-handedly ended that symbiotic relationship with one swift stroke… and offered him so much more in the process.

I’m sure he still sees me as instrumental to his goals, of course. In fact, I suspect Eric sees everything and everyone as potentially instrumental to his goals.

But the how has changed.

I gulp, knowing what it is that he’s truly asking of me, when speaking about gratitude.

“T-t-thank you for improving my presentations,” I say feebly, “Sir.”

His eyes glimmer. “That’s a good colleague,” he says, and that’s so inappropriate, I’m his boss, I sit atop the Mountain and he’s just a glorified male secretary, and yet that’s exactly what makes it hot. What makes it feel like Remy is watching over it all, giggling in my ear.

Ever since Eric first told me that we would start working closely together – a phrasing that still makes me shiver with treasonous arousal – he has been doing more than just editing my presentations. He’s seized control of a good chunk of my own work.

He’s familiarising himself with the quarterly sales reports, with IP development processes and ongoing legal proceedings against our competitors – in short, with my professional domain. All the while, I busy myself with secretarial errands for him.

Like a good little lesbian servant of the patriarchy, scurrying and fetching and complying, busy with low-level work while he masters my core responsibilities.

Masters…

He reduces me to little more than his own, hyperventilating assistant, whenever we think we can get away with it… and sometimes, even when we can’t. The risk of discovery should terrify me into sobriety, make me see things clearly again. Instead, it only adds to the addictive allure of danger.

To the adrenaline.

Every puzzled look or half-muttered question from others in the company, and especially from my fellow board members, makes me shiver with forbidden desire. What if we got caught? I’d lose my job. All my friends would know that I’m letting a man walk all over me. I would end up eking out a living by cleaning Eric’s apartment…

They may not know this, my colleagues, but they add fuel to the fire of my arousal every time we work together. Each nod of approval, each compliment for the increased quality of “my” work, is one more nail in the coffin of my self esteem, of my sense of self.

They like Eric’s work, better than they ever did mine, and why wouldn’t they? He’s so competent, so in control, so… manly.

And I clearly feel so at home, fetching his coffee and his photocopies, standing here looking silly and desirable, barely managing to string a coherent sentence where I thank him… where I humbly thank him for relegating me.

In truth, if not in name.

Remy used the same tactic, I realise with a shiver of horror that trickles down my spine, and turns into a spasm of arousal as it reaches my sex. Whenever she would conquer my throat with a dildo, or fuck me into submission while whispering about sacrificing my lesbianism on the altar of my devotion to her, she would build up to the most humiliating and sadistic statement she could think of.

And then, she would add four simple words: say thank you, Claire.

And so, I say it again, for her as well as Eric.

“Thank you,” I repeat, more steadily this time. There is a brief flash in Eric’s eyes, which could mean that he’s pleased, or… something else. Yes, I’m getting to know my… assistant… much better than I ever thought possible. But my inability to read what goes on behind his mask is still unsettling.

It gives him an edge.

He leans back against the chair – my chair -, contemplating me in silence, as if evaluating whether my display of gratitude is adequate, or whether I should do it again… perhaps in a humbler, more penitent way…

If he asks me to sink to my knees, what will I do?

What if he doesn’t ask, but just says it?

“Words are nice,” Eric says at last, with a tone of such solemn deliberation that it feels like an impossible amount of thought has gone into it.

It also suggests that when he says that words are nice, he doesn’t mean that altogether as praise.

“But in the modern, competitive labour market,” he says, inclining his head, “I think deeds hold far more weight. Don’t you, Claire?”

I cringe every time he calls me that. I hate how much it makes my limbs shake with adrenaline. “Yes, Sir,” I say, feebly.

“Very good,” Eric says, in a tone of such polite condescension that it makes me feel like an idiot. “After all, that’s why you’re thanking me, isn’t it? Not because I’ve said something nice, but because I’ve done your job for you.”

Oh God. I can see the linguistic trap he’s weaving for me, where this is going; what he’ll say, if I accept his logic and his premise. This is the last opportunity to stand firm, enforce boundaries, to say that no, it isn’t the same.

But every time I try to think about how to form the words, all I see is Remy, laughing at me, belittling me, toying with my feelings for fun. I see Remy’s grin, and Eric’s eyes.

They hold the same mockery.

“Yes…” I say at last, deflating, willingly stepping into his trap. Letting him ensnare me.

“If you must thank me for something I did,” Eric continues, as if he’s explaining basic math to a child, “it only makes sense that you would do so through deeds yourself. Don’t you think, Claire?”

And there it is. The trap, closing around me, delivering Eric his lesbian toy, his female boss brought low and humbled, maneuvered and manipulated into debasing her own professional standing; into eroding herself.

“I see,” I say, quietly, so quietly. “How c-c-can I…”

“Oh, you already do so much,” Eric says, and again, the condescension, so thick that it’s oozing from every word. “Coffee, errands, papers… even just looking at you brightens my day.”

Yes, he’s right, I do so much, as if it’s all that can be asked of a woman, really, to serve coffee and smile and fetch folders and be pretty.

Oh.

That last point strikes me with unholy arousal, as his final statement hits me. Even just looking at me. Be pretty. A decoration in his office, to make sure that I’m of some use to him even when I’m not actively being his secretary.

A dainty little ornament in a man’s working space.

“I see from your expression that you’ve figured out how to thank me,” Eric says, his smile cold and distant, his eyes alight with the prospect of possibility and opportunity.

“Yes, Sir,” I say. “What are your…. Specifications?”

Eric leans forward, his elbows on my desk, thoughtfully inspecting me from head to toe. My clothing, I’m sure. He’s not undressing me with his eyes, the way an ogling man normally would, no. This is something… more. It makes me feel seen down to the most vulnerable corner of my soul.

Exposed. Revealed. Eroded.

Then, Eric flattens a sheet of paper against the desk, grabs a pen…

And begins to write.

***

Are you watching now, Remy?

What would you say, if you saw me say goodbye to my beloved business suits, for you? For a man?

I once confided in Remy that suits like that were my armour, my defence against the world. The hard shell to my personality. A bad bitch you don’t want to cross. A successful lesbian in a man’s world. An unapologetic feminist on her way to the top.

But that’s only half the story. My designer blazers, my straight pants with hard-edge creases, they did more than just define me. They did more than just project an image of power and confidence.

They made me feel like I belonged. Like I wasn’t an impostor. Like I didn’t need to constantly prove myself to all the men I was competing with, and sometimes beating.

Remy, ever the predator, made ample use of that. So many of our sessions included a ritual of my undressing… and redressing in garments more befitting my station beneath her. Frilly skirts and white aprons, black nylons and chokers to match.

How many times, she joked about making me show up at work dressed like that. Yet again, Eric is unknowingly realising Remy’s vision for me.

The vision I’ve made my own.

The overlap is truly striking. I often tell myself that I’m not most people, but the same is true for Eric – he has the same instincts as Remy, the same sixth sense for weakness, and how best to exploit it… amplify it.

The proof of that is in my new wardrobe. I’m sure most men in office spaces around the world dream of the ability to control how we dress at work, but Eric isn’t making me switch my outfits just to please his male gaze, no.

This is a direct assault on my identity, a deconstruction of the image I project, a symbolic statement of power – for him – and disempowerment – for me.

He’s given me some leeway, which says everything about his thought process. He wants me to be an accomplice in this. If it was just compulsion, it would be one thing, but he wants me engaged instead.

He wants my lesbian brain to grapple with the question of how to dress in a way that will please a man I’m supposed to supervise.

It leaves me awed.

The expensive lingerie once reserved for Remy is now, for the first time, joining my selection of clothes for the work day. For a man.

I put on a nice dress, not unprofessional, but also not exactly formal either.

I pick glossy black nylons – they’ll accentuate my legs to his eyes, without completely destroying my workplace decorum, I hope – and heels a tad higher and more comfortable than what I would normally be okay with. For a man.

I head out to work, to the Mountain, to this lair of dragons and crushed hopes, teetering unsteady on my heels.

For Remy, and for a man.

I feel exposed in my dress, and most importantly, I anticipate Eric’s metaphorical surgery, slowly beginning to dissect my identity, as his eyes take in the extent of my depravity… and my compliance.

I anticipate that with equal parts dread, and arousal.

I feel so diminished, such a small and girly creature, completely obscured by the looming shadow of the Mountain…

And by the powerful man who awaits me in its depths.

***

I’m not dressed all that different than usual, really.

Flashier, of course. I look striking, and more feminine than I usually do. People notice, and I notice that they notice, even if I pretend not to. Men especially, though not just them by any means.

Changes like this, they always make people do a double take, but it’s a minor thing in the end, because my attire is still okay for the office. Less intimidating, but broadly appropriate.

The point is not the extent of this change, though. The point is the reason. Everyone else dwelling in the bowels of the Mountain sees this dress and the nylons, but has no knowledge of the context that gives them meaning.

I’m in a dress, because my male employee told me to… and I obeyed him.

There is such power in that sentence, that admission. It’s thrilling, addictive, dangerous. There are so many layers of wrong in what I’m doing, exquisitely blended into one another, and it takes my breath away just to think about it.

I’m subverting the workplace hierarchy, undermining my own sexual orientation and my political ideology, in pursuit of a fantasy drilled deep into my brain by an emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend who’s completely cut me out of her life a long time ago.

I’m giving Eric so many tools to potentially destroy me, if he wants to. I could end up blackmailed, or fired, or raped, or a combination of any of these things. The dangers are real.

That means the submission is real.

… And how could I ever say no to that?

When I find myself standing in my office, before my own desk, I feel like a secretary down to my core. Not a secretary in the mundane, corporate sense of the word, but in the truer meaning, the older one, buried into so many archetypes, into our collective subconscious.

I’m the silly, flaky girl in need of male guidance and approval. I’m the helper, the secondary support figure, meant to speak softly and look pretty and be useful. He’s the patriarch, the overlord, the man of the house… or the office, in this case.

It doesn’t matter how much I earn, how padded my CV is, how fervent my feminism is, or even the fact that I’m a lesbian. All that matters is that I’m a girl, in a dress, and he’s a man, in a suit.

That I’m damaged, and he’s willing to exploit that.

That he’s a predator, and I’m his prey.

“Very, very nice,” he says evenly, and this time, I sense he absolutely does mean that as praise…

It makes my knees tremble. It makes me think of Remy, so vividly that I can almost smell her perfume again. There is something in the praise of a dominant that just defies words, descriptions… especially when it’s praise for something like this.

For self debasement, with no boundaries, no safe word, no negotiations. Self erosion, even.

Self destruction.

I await, gulping, my stomach in knots and my fingernails digging into my palms, for him to say anything else. Because I know, this is an event horizon. A quantitative step. It’s one thing to be a gopher for him, but I’ve let him dress me.

I know that whatever he says next, may well seal how things will proceed from here. How they will change between us. How I fear, and secretly hope, that they will.

They may seal my own fate.

I nearly swoon in place as he stands up, still saying nothing. I wasn’t expecting that. He circles around the desk, drawing closer to me, looming over me, so tall, so confident. How could I ever think of this man as my subordinate?

His right hand brushes against my chin, gently pulling it upward, thumb and index finger rubbing back and forth. It’s tender, and delicate… and yet forceful, uncompromising, invasive, in a way, even derogatory. But most of all…

Commanding.

“Well done,” he says, flooding me with an addictive, dangerous warmth I haven’t felt in years. “Words and deeds. It’s so very considerate of you, to show gratitude this way.”

It’s all I can do not to gasp with arousal, not to shut my eyes and visualise Remy, sitting above me, one leg crossed over the other, watching me emit disgusting, defeated noises as I take a dildo down my throat.

Say thank you, she would tell me. And now, here’s Eric, and I’m showing him gratitude.

“To consider my wishes and needs so attentively…” he continues, leaning forward, his voice dropping lower and lower, like a predatory purr. “And so early in the morning, too… the first thought on your mind, as you begin your day. My needs.”

I shiver at that, because he’s right. It hadn’t even occurred to me. Is there anything more… servile than that? Than to wake up, thinking about how you can make someone else’s life easier at your own expense?

Decorate their surroundings with your body?

“Thank you, Sir,” I say softly, not even pretending that the professional polarity between us hasn’t inverted completely and irreversibly. “Please, keep editing my presentations for me. You’re soooo much b-b-better at this…”

I’m trying to sound dumber than I am, a simple girl out of her league in a man’s world. What terrifies me is just how convincing I sound. Was this Remy?

Or has it always been the real me?

“I will,” he says, allowing himself the slightest smile of self-satisfaction. “It’s a good thing you’ve asked me, too, because the week ahead is going to be quite busy with things to take care of, is it not?”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak, looking up at him with watery, tremulous eyes. Wondering where this is leading. Wondering what he has in store for me.

“It’s quite possible you and I,” he continues, slowly, deliberately, looking me deep in the eyes, “may well need to stay here and work late… after hours, that is. Just to make sure that I get your work done in time. And then…”

I take in a deep breath, and suddenly, it’s like all tension flees my body, because the uncertainty is over. This is it, then. It’s really happening. It’s really going to take place, here, in this building. So many years after Remy first planted this poisonous seed, here it is, blooming. Deadly, and beautiful.

I know what Eric wants me to say. Because whenever he does something for me, I need to be grateful.

And so I look up at him, twisting the knife in the wound of my own self-respect, of my lesbian and feminist identity – and for the first time today, my voice doesn’t waver.

“And then, Sir, I will say thank you,” I tell him, my hand softly brushing against his.

“… And not through words.”

Chapter Five: Crossing The Threshold

Today is the day that trauma triumphs.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Trauma’s triumph. Like something out of a poem, or perhaps a song.

Except my life is hardly romantic like that. It’s messed up, and twisted, and wrecked… and I’m on the cusp of making sure that this damage is well and truly irreparable. Words spoken to others cannot be recalled, easily, of course, but people change. Things said can be disavowed.

Even horrible, perverted things whispered in the grip of an erotic fever, an erotic madness.

Both during our relationship and after our breakup, I’ve allowed Remy to destroy my personality. And in her honour, I’ve thought and said all manner of things that were extremely unwise, and even dangerous.

But deeds are something else entirely. Once I do this, once I cross this threshold, there is no going back. Trauma wins for real, and I accept that it rules my life, governs my actions.

Because words can be disavowed… but you can never un-suck a man’s cock.

The clothes are laid out on the bed, waiting for me to select what’s appropriate. That’s a funny question to consider. What’s the correct dress code for the day you surrender your lesbianism to a man?

Your career to your subordinate?

Your mental health, to the ex girlfriend that stalks your nightmares?

I’ve been dressing to Eric’s preferences for some days, now, so that part isn’t new… but it still feels different, today, momentous. No matter what I choose, it’s coming off me when we stay afterhours, surely. Why else would he want me there, working late?

One reason only. The joke goes that men only think about one thing, but somehow, it’s different with Eric, because it’s not just about getting laid. He is going to demote, demean, enslave, and fuck my lesbian self into utter submission to male power.

He’s going to tick me off, because that’s what I am to him, a box on his to-do list. He once thought that, as my assistant, he could hitch his wagon to my star… but now he’s seen my weakness, and he knows he can do, and have, so much more than just that.

And that’s why, in his case, the single clarity of his purpose doesn’t make him look like just any man, thinking with his cock. It makes him terrifying.

The mere thought makes me shiver. This fantasy is spinning out of control, but I can’t help myself. I’m an addict, and Eric knows it, and he’s going to tighten his grip around me until… until…

I wonder what Remy would make of him, this predator who camouflages so well against the monotonous droning of corporate life. Just another white collar guy, off an assembly line of white collar guys… except this one has unsettling eyes that shine and pierce and cut, revealing how worthless and broken you really are inside.

When Eric looks at you, you know.

I deliberately consider his wishes, preferences, and likes for every step getting ready this morning. Hair. Makeup. Jewelery. Clothing. Everything.

Eric has a penchant for loose, flowing garments that suggest rather than reveal. Fit for the office, while still being demeaning enough to devastate my self-confidence. He’s expressed his preferences for colours as well – cool shades of blue, subtle hues of lavender, and occasionally, intense bursts of red.

I remember my surprise when he told me that he liked red—it seemed so aggressive, so contrary to his measured demeanor. But perhaps that’s part of it. Any aggression, any excitement in our arrangement will happen on his terms.

For hair, he prefers it down, hanging loose around my shoulders – feminine, is the word he used, which makes me blush with gendered humiliation.To some extent, this is merciful. At least I don’t have to wrestle with elaborate updos or intricate braids—my hairstyle can remain natural and simple.

But I also know it makes me look less stuck-up. Less formidable. More like the secretary he intends to turn me into, than the executive I technically am.

As for the makeup, he prefers it light—a barely-there foundation and a hint of blush to complement my natural skin tone. A whisper of mascara to accentuate my eyes and a touch of colour on my lips, nothing more. Modest. Unassuming. Secretarial.

Eventually, I select a crimson undergarment set, tucked underneath the feminine secretarial look that Eric seems to find so hot. Black nylons of course, followed by an elegant pencil skirt in a calming shade of blue. It shows just enough leg to be tantalising while still staying professional.

I hope.

The blouse I choose is a softer lavender, a buttoned-up silk number that hints at the shapes beneath without fully revealing them—a nod to Eric’s preference for the subtle allure of implication. A pair of four inch black leather pumps complete the look—high enough to add some height, but not authority, not this time, because I’m wearing them for him. For my subordinate.

For a man.

Looking at myself in the mirror as I put the finishing touches on my makeup, I hardly recognise myself. The confident lesbian girlboss has been replaced by an alluring secretary, ready to submit to her male assistant’s demands. My breath hitches as I see my reflection. The woman staring back is beautiful, and… lesser.

I am as Remy saw me.

The thought makes me wince in emotional pain, and needy arousal as well – the unholy combination that’s been poisoning the well of my mind for years now. Poison, I like that. Remy started pouring poison into my ears, into my heart. And now… it’s everywhere.

I can’t focus at work, but thankfully, I don’t really need to. I just pretend at productivity, sitting behind my desk, fidgeting like a nervous schoolgirl. Eric makes a point of ignoring me all day, and it’s hard to tell if that’s a deliberate tactic to prepare me for what’s coming, or if I really am that inconsequential to him.

Worth noticing only when I’m being useful to him… or being fucked.

As the day dwindles down, the office – the Mountain – begins to empty out. By the time the sunset has burned down to its last embers, it’s just Eric and I here. For the first time today, he seems to take conscious notice of how I’m dressed. He flashes me an approving smile from across the room. His gaze lingers on my outfit, assessing every detail and lingering on my legs, before finally settling on my eyes.

“You will thank me, and not through words,” he says, his voice so low it’s almost a whisper. Yet it sounds firm all the same, and he didn’t frame it as a question.

I can feel my heart pounding in my chest but I muster up enough courage to answer him confidently. “Yes.”

“Yes…” he repeats with a devilish smirk painted across his face, “…yes what?”

“Yes… Sir,” I say, blushing as I avert my gaze, my fingers twining together. I’ve been saying that word freely enough, he didn’t really need to pull it out of me, I just… wanted to feel compelled. I wonder if that displeases him, if that will make him angry.

But he’s just his usual, unreadable self.

“Good,” he says at last. “I’ll see you in the file room.”

He doesn’t say the words, not out loud, but I can read them in his eyes anyway. The file room… where a secretary rightfully belongs.

He doesn’t keep me waiting long. By the time he joins me in the file room, I’ve undone the first button of my blouse with trembling fingers, revealing a sliver of crimson lace. For no other reason than because I crave his approval.

Like any drug addict, I seek the reward. The prospect of a fix is what’s making me walk down this insane road, a road that started years ago, with a different dominator. Was it always going to end up here?

Eric steps close, and his presence is so intensely manly that I find myself gulping as he slowly undoes the second button of my blouse. Then he moves to the back of my skirt, his fingers sliding down the zipper with agonising slowness.

He takes a step back, simply drinking in the sight of me. His eyes flit from my face to my exposed midriff to my legs clad in black nylons and then back up to my face again.

It feels like forever before Eric’s hands find their way back to me. He starts at the third button on my blouse where he left off earlier, but only after teasingly circling it with his fingertips for what feels like an eternity. The more he exposes, the more flushed I feel.

I watch him remove my clothing piece by piece as if he’s peeling layers off an onion. Layers of my identity. He knows how weak I am. How worthless I am. How broken, twisted, fucked up, a psychiatric case if ever there was one.

And most importantly, he knows how to use it to his advantage. That makes me feel seen in a way I’ve never been before.

Once he finishes with my blouse, he turns his attention to the bra clasps. His fingers move with finesse and control, and why would I expect anything else, when that seems to apply to everything he does? A gasp escapes me when the cold air hits my skin. He lingers there for a moment longer than necessary before moving onto my skirt yet again.

The skirt slips down onto the floor, pooling at my feet, leaving me half naked before his eyes. A man’s eyes.

I can barely meet his gaze now, but Eric has other plans. He gently lifts my chin, forcing me to look into his intense, judging gaze. The slow burning fire within them makes me wonder how I ever thought of him as just an assistant.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs appreciatively, his voice laced with something that was more than lust. “And broken.”

I nod, tremulously, basking in his approval, and fearing his knowledge.

“Where’s your fight?” he asks, a slight smirk playing on his lips. “Where’s the powerful executive I’m so used to?”

I remain silent, unable to voice my feelings, to explain. My only response is the rapid rise and fall of my chest and the hot blush spreading across my face and neck. Every second feels like an eternity, the anticipation building up insurably as every moment passes.

There is no fight, and there never has been. Exposed and vulnerable under his gaze, I feel a rush of adrenaline that makes the grind of everyday life look gray, and sad, and pathetic. Why would you ever choose professional integrity, the perverse incentives of the workplace, or even money, when instead you can burn it all down… and feel this?

He steps forward, closing the space between us even further, until we share the same breath. Then, his lips meet mine, claim mine, and his tongue loses no time wrestling mine into submission, invading my mouth. It’s my first time kissing a man… though I’m not really kissing him, not as an equal, I’m being kissed. There’s a difference, an important difference, the same that runs between fucking and being fucked.

It’s the first time my lesbian lips have touched a man’s. They are different than I’m used to, more insistent, harsher… or maybe it’s just my untethered, submissive imagination.

His kiss is forceful but not unkind, laced with expectation that I will do what a woman must, that I will acquiesce and indulge and comply, that I will acknowledge his masculine sexual authority; the power to claim what he wants at will.

The expectation that I will submit.

“Tell me you want this,” he whispers against my lips when we break for air. His grip tightens, reminding me that this is no sex between a boss and her employee, or even between equals. This is a much more primal encounter, a sexual conquest.

I don’t want this, though. Not really. The truth is much worse, much darker. It’s not him I’m attracted to, I’m attracted to the fact that I’m not attracted to him. I crave the danger, the knowledge that this will destroy me.

Professionally and personally, this will destroy me. It’s his victory over me, Remy’s victory over me, my worst instincts’ victory over me. And so, I give him the truth, in all its darkness.

“I need this,” I growl, and he kisses me again at that, more urgently. His tongue is assertive, demanding as it explores my mouth. I find myself responding, tentatively at first, then with a strange fervor that catches me off guard. It’s like there’s a buried instinct, deep within me, etched into my biological being. Lesbian or no, my body knows how to be responsive to a man’s guidance.

How to let him steer me. How to fulfill my purpose.

You should know about this, Remy, I think to myself. You should see me now, a traitor to my orientation and my gender, a poor excuse for a professional, for an adult. Look at the monster I’ve become with a measure of pride in your handiwork: after all, Remy, you’re the one who made it, the one who made me….

As our lips fuse together in hungry kisses, Eric guides my hand to stroke his hardened erection through the fabric of his pants. My fingers trail over the bulge, feeling its heat and size. As I trace the shape of him, I can’t help but notice how thick and heavy he feels under my touch.

It’s the first time my lesbian fingers have touched a cock, and even through his clothing, it makes me feel… cowed. He will have his way with me. I will be accommodating and responsive and available.

I will have to worship…

But when I try to undo his belt, unzip his fly, or unbutton his shirt, he stops me with a whisper, and a gentle application of pressure to my wrist.

“No,” he says. His husky voice sends shivers down my spine as he directs my hand back down to continue stroking him through the fabric of his trousers. I understand why he wants to remain clothed while I am almost completely exposed – it amplifies his control over me.

I feel so helpless and completely turned on, because it’s like he is depriving me while still using me for his own gratification.

Much like Remy would have done. The realisation makes me gasp, and I wonder if he can read me so well that he knows what I’m reacting to. Remy would be so proud of you, Eric. You have so much in common.

You now have me in common, too… My skin tingles with anticipation and I eagerly comply with his wishes. I, his boss, comply with his orders. And whenever my hand would drift away he pointedly makes me resume my attentions to his cock.

“Don’t stop,” he orders huskily, his hand tightening over mine. The dominance in his tone sends shivers down my spine, and like a well-trained pet, I obey. I squeeze him gently through his pants, my eyes widening at his groan of pleasure.

After a moment of hesitation, his hands grip my shoulders and guide me down to the floor. I kneel before him, feeling small and vulnerable as he towers over me.

I knelt before Remy thousands of times. To worship at her boots and feet, to deepthroat her strap-ons, to lick her over and over to orgasm… and to let her poison pour better down my ears. Now, though, I’m kneeling before a man, in a gesture as old as sex, the ultimate symbol of female sexual servility.

Only now, I think to myself, only now I truly feel like I’m in the shadow of the Mountain.

“Good girl,” he praises. His voice is rougher now, filled with an urgency that reflects my own growing arousal.

Eric starts unzipping his pants slowly, never taking his eyes off mine as he slowly pulls out his cock. I feel a rush of heat pooling between my thighs as I take in the sight before me, the sight of his manhood, poking arrogantly towards my face. Waiting to be serviced.

A totem to male power.

Eric places my hand on him again, forcing me to touch him directly for the first time. There’s nothing separating us now – just skin against skin. He feels hot and hard against my touch, and when I experimentally stroke him from base to tip, he lets out a low grunt.

Oh, God, my head is spinning. I’m giving my secretary a handjob. Touching his cock feels as though I’m acknowledging Eric’s right to rule over me, to take what he wants. To take my independence away. To conquer my executive status and my feminist credentials and my lesbian identity, and claim me as his own.

And each adoring, doting, dutiful stroke is a small admission that he is succeeding. That he is completing Remy’s work of breaking me.

He forcefully takes hold of my head with both hands, then, maybe unable to hold himself back any longer. It’s the first time I see him not be measured in his control, but there’s no doubt that this is still control nonetheless. His fingers dig into my scalp, and he pushes his hips forward to plunge his hardened shaft into my open mouth.

There. The threshold is crossed. For the first time, I’m wrapping my lesbian lips around a man’s cock, and no matter what else I do in life, I’ll never be able to take this back. To undo it.

Eric, conversely, is more than capable of undoing me. His grip on my head tightens as he starts thrusting into my mouth, setting a rhythm that I quickly try to match. His hips move with a sense of purpose and control, and I can feel his hard length sliding against my tongue, the taste of him coating my taste buds.

He groans and curses under his breath, urging me on with each thrust. I try to be an active participant in the act, to worship his masculine superiority with submissive motions of my subdued lesbian lips and tongue, but I’ve only ever sucked my girlfriends’ dildos before, where tongue technique was less impactful, and besides – Eric is fucking my mouth with such vigor that I doubt I could keep up for long.

Not kissing. Being kissed. Not fucking. Being fucked. Not sucking… being used like a fleshlight. He’s showing me my place – beneath him, submitting to his masculine dominance. Where Remy always said I would end up, for no better reason than because the thought amused her.

My body betrays me as I start to squeal and moan around his cock, my own arousal building with each passing second. Eric’s hands tighten further in my hair as he picks up the pace, fucking my mouth faster and faster.

The feeling of his cock pressing against the back of my throat is intoxicating, primal, older than thought, older than words. His moans of pleasure echo in my ears, making me dizzy with desire. Remy was always right. I would be a great cocksucker.

“You were born to service cock,” Eric growls, as if reading my mind, and his breathless words go straight to my clit and make me moan gutturally like a desperate slut, gluk-glukking with renewed enthusiasm around his cock.

“Look at me,” he commands, his tone so absolute that without thinking I lift my eyes, locking onto his with a kind of fearful obedience. His eyes cut so deep. They see me as I truly am, past the pretentions and social custom, as they bore into mine. I can see the approval there – and the predatory hunger. An insatiable hunger that makes my pulse quicken.

With one final thrust, Eric buries himself deep within my mouth. His eyes are on mine as he reaches his climax, watching my every reaction, and that overawes me. Even now, at the very brink of pleasure, his analytical mind will not stop studying me, dissecting me, looking for new weaknesses he can turn against me.

For new ways to more thoroughly destroy me.

I swirl my tongue around the head of his dick as I feel it shudder. His body convulses with pleasure, setting off a series of spasms that wrack his entire frame. And then, his cum fills me at last.

Rope after rope hits the back of my throat, coating my mouth, marking me as part of his territory, forever defiling my lesbianism. There is nothing sapphic about me right now. I am but a warm receptacle for his cum. He throws his head back, a guttural cry tearing from his lips as he revels in my vanquishment.

“Suck it up, all of it,” he breathes raggedly, his eyes closed tightly in ecstasy. I obey without hesitation, sucking him gently until he grunts in satisfaction and pulls away. I obey, for my addiction, and for Remy. And for him.

I look up at him from my submissive position on the floor. His cock, still semi-hard, glistens with my saliva and his own release. He looks down at me with a smirk on his lips and a satisfied twinkle in his eyes.

When our eyes meet again, there’s not just lust reflected back at me now, but something more profound – a sense of triumph, a sense of achievement that I’ve become something he’s conquered.

Something. Another item on his to-do list. A step on his way to the top.

“Now clean me up,” he orders, his voice hoarse but firm.

With shaking hands I reach up to take him between my fingers again, stroking him gently as I lean forward to engulf his cock into my mouth once more. It comes so natural to me. So inherently womanly. My tongue works over him diligently, cleaning up every last drop of his release.

“You did well,” Eric says in a low rumble that sends tremors through me. He cups my face with one rough hand. His thumb traces over my flushed cheekbone while his other hand runs through my hair, keeping his cock firmly planted in my mouth.

“Of course, you will not cum,” he says, in a calm and casual tone.

I gulp. I instinctively knew that this would be about his pleasure, not mine, but somehow, I get the feeling he’s not just talking about right now. He means that I won’t be able to cum without his permission… indefinitely. That is how he intends to utterly break me.

And he will succeed.

I can see it in the wolfish gleam of his eyes, in the cruel curl of his lip. I feel a shiver course through me at the thought, but oddly, it’s not completely fear that makes my breath hitch. It’s something else… the knowledge that I’ve stepped over the threshold.

That the road Remy chose for me long ago, has finally reached a destination.

That makes me suckle a bit more actively at his softening cock.

Eric laughs softly at my visible reaction, revealing a set of straight white teeth. His laughter is deep and throaty, resonating from his chest, reverberating through the quiet room. It’s a conqueror’s laugh; full of confidence and satisfaction. He knows he has me where he wants me, and he revels in it.

“A good pet obeys her tamer,” he says, his voice laced with arrogance and an unhealthy dose of sadistic pleasure. “And you…you are a good pet. Aren’t you… Claire?”

“Yes,” I say as his cock pops free of my mouth. I breathe in, preparing to utter that one cursed word.

That word with so much power, that has been nestling in my brain for so long, and never spoken, not since Remy. The word that, when uttered out loud in weak admission, invariably changes everything. “Yes,” I say. “Master.”

TO BE CONTINUED