by Mia Madison
“Sir?”
All eyes along the table are turned up to me, waiting for my pronouncement. Meanwhile I've lapsed into a reverie. Staring into space with only Carly's gorgeous juicy ass under my huge palm, salivating over the decision of whether to lift my hand and bring it down hard in a resounding slap. Or alternatively slide my fingers into her glistening folds and plunge into her hidden depths. All I can focus on is getting Carly in here before she leaves the building, so I don't lose her ever again.
“Tell the interviewer -,” I start.
“Miss James,” Pandora says and I throw her a glare for interrupting me.
She bites her lower lip nervously and her eyes bat down in shame. Good. Learn not to speak unless I tell you to.
“Tell Miss James that I want Carly Tinder hired for a position on the executive floor at SmithTech. She'll report directly to me.”
“Yes Sir, right away.”
“But she isn't to know she'll be working for me.”
A flurry of confused looks go round the table, along with a number of smirks. That shit is soon erased when they catch my hostile stare.
“She's related to a business competitor. I want to surprise her – him,” I say, wondering why I feel the need to make excuses.
I can do what the fuck I want without answering to anyone.
Always do.
Pandora is already on the phone, in one corner of the conference room, finding the personnel involved so she can hand down my orders.
The attendees are all still gazing at me, ready to start the meeting. But I can't do a fucking thing until I know Carly is secured.
“Oh, right then,” Pandora's saying. “Let me know as soon as you hear back.”
She cuts the call and turns to face me with suitable trepidation. Trembling.
I wait, staring at her, my hands at my belt, saying nothing. I have to admit to feeling a thrill at making other people shiver with just with a look. I like the way she looks up at me, quivers and her eyes sink back to the ground, unable to tolerate the intensity. That's how I want Carly. Looking at me with her full-on challenge in the back of her gaze before quaking and surrendering to my power.
It's all I can think of, even though I'm supposed to be taking this crapshit meeting about quarterly statements and forward projections. And I'm just starting to acknowledge that's all I've had in my mind since I walked out of her mother's house five years ago. (My house but I preferred to walk away from that gold-digging bitch than fight over a million bucks of property. Plenty more where that came from).
And that's been my problem since I came into my success. I can make money like King fucking Midas, or Rumpelstiltskin spinning his gold every night. That's how easy every company I start has turned into massive profit in a very short time. But I can't make women love me. I can't make them obey me further than the obvious. They pretend submission to get dinners and bracelets and even a wedding out of me.
Not one woman has submitted to me completely and loved doing it. Sure they get wet between the legs when I tell them to bend over my desk. When I tell her I'm going to tie her wrists together so she's helpless and vulnerable while I slide her skirt up her thighs and pull her panties down to her knees. But they don't want me like that once they know me.
I'm staring at Pandora, the conference table are staring agog at me. We're all staring, waiting to find out where Carly is.
“She left already.”
“What? How?” I roar. “In the time it took me to walk to the end of the hall and tell you to get her.”
“Sharla says she, um, wasn't suitable for the position.”
“I decide who's suitable for positions around here. You get her back,” I bellow.
That's quite out of character even for me, but I don't give a shit. It's the first time I can ever remember feeling this way about a woman. And it's been way too long. I want Carly back in my life and I want her right now. I will not allow her to slip out of my grasp this time.
“Yes Sir, human resources have her details and they'll invite her in to sign an intern contract.”
“No.”
“No? Sir?” All sixteen faces around the table look confused and I can hardly blame them – I'm treading close to the edge of irrational here and I know it.
“Just. Get. Her. Back.”
I spell it out for them all, slow and clear. And I don't care if they raise internal eyebrows. If they've got something they wanna take up, they can do it direct to my face. Which of course they won't. They'll just settle in together at lunch or the water cooler and chew over every last detail of my personal life. I don't give a shit. People have always gossiped about my exploits. They've always gasped at the outrageous stuff I've done in my pursuit of real living. I just wanna experience every last thrill this bleak world can give me.
Let them talk.
All I care about is capturing my next thrill – the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, back in my life at last.
Chapter FOUR
Carly
“You can come in now, Miss....”
The assistant doesn't even know my name. I'm just one of about a hundred girls sitting outside the boss's office, waiting to be given the once over by the human resources department. All this, just for a lousy intern job with no promise of full employment at the end of the three month term.
But like I said, I'm determined.
I'm not a sponger or a brat. I want a job but it's damn hard to find one in this economy. Maybe my dad has fallen on harder times that he's so anxious to get me out of the house and set up independently. Or maybe it's just Amanda's influence. Either way, I'm ready to savor sweet independence.
“Thank you, we'll be in touch.”
That's how fast it was until I was kicked back out to the street.
The human resources woman looked completely unimpressed by my work history, as well she should be. Barista, grocery store clerk, hmmm. Hello, shame.
“So have you ever worked in shipping sales before?”
“No,” I replied. Maybe too honest for my own good.
Doesn't everyone enhance their resume now? As in, lie big time.
“No office experience at all?”
“Um, no. Not really.” At all.
Looming up ahead I could see the only other job I'd been offered a trial at. Working the stripper pole was my future. Maybe they wouldn't be so picky. It was my father that had pointed out a wet tee shirt contest advertised outside a bar he parked in front of. I'm not completely convinced he was joking either.
But at the bottom of the poster there was a 'staff wanted' line. I'd thought that interview was for a club bartender so finding out it was for a dancer on a seedy stage came as a shock. But at least that interview only consisted of some guy in a tight suit ogling my tits (definitely not wet tee-shirted). That was the only prospect on my horizon. Maybe I didn't deserve any better.
“Well, thank you for your time,” the HR person said, not even looking up from her notes.
So much for determination. If I had any money I'd have gone to a bar to drown my miseries with a few cosmos. But cocktails are a luxury for working girls. Not drop outs.
So what now? I'll have to go home and face a disbelieving look from Daddy who'll assume I'm trying to wriggle out of getting a job, so as to sit around the house and attend to my pedi. People just don't understand that if you aren't a computer nerd or a banking dynamo, there aren't so many jobs to choose from.
I go into a 'Bucks and have to face the rolling eyes of the cashier as I count out enough change to pay for a latte. She knows nothing's going in the tip jar and I give her an apologetic shrug that doesn't go down favorably.
Ugh, I hate being in this situation. No one should be forced to count out pennies. The third time my table gets brusquely wiped down, I know my welcome in the cafe has expired. Nothing else to do but go home and wait for my father's disdain.
I'm half out onto the sidewalk when my phone rings. After digging around frantically in my purse, I pick u
p.
“Hello,” I say breathlessly, anyone would think I've been jogging instead of suffering missed call anxiety.
“Miss Tinder?”
“Yes, this is Carly Tinder, who's this?”
Are we always so suspicious of people we don't know on the line? It's not like she's calling to announce the end of the world. I'm still nervous about getting a call from strip club guy.
“Sharla James at Stack Industries,” the officious voice says. “We'd like you to start tomorrow if you're still available.”
“Oh. Yes, I am. Available.”
Like I'd have been offered another job in the last hour.
“Should I come in to sign-?”
“The job isn't at Stack,” she cuts me off. “It's at one of our subsidiaries.”
She reels off an address that I struggle to post to memory as I hunt through my purse for a pen.
“Report to Rachel on the thirty ninth floor tomorrow at nine. She'll fill you in on what's required.”
“But I -”
“Rachel, thirty ninth floor,” Sharla James repeats with an impatient twang.
Obviously I'm not going to get any further than that with her. The question of employment contracts and salary and everything else will have to wait until tomorrow. Or maybe Stack Industries doesn't bother with any niceties for the minion interns hired to do all the crappiest jobs even the lowest paid regular staff won't do.
“Don't be late.”
“No.”
Miss James cuts the call, leaving me standing on the street in shock. She definitely hadn't seemed like she intended to even consider me for a position. The way she jettisoned me from the office after two disdainful questions told me I wasn't in the running. And here she was calling me back for a job an hour later. I guess you never can tell what's coming at you next in life.
I get home to find Amanda moving boxes into the house. The downstairs family rooms are already rearranged and almost unrecognizable. Certainly no longer comfortable. I can't move out soon enough. I scoot up to my room before Amanda notices me. I don't feel like getting into any dumb conversation. I've got a life to plan.
Now that I've got a job, I can rent an apartment and then, finally, I can get to work on my sex life. Which is non-existent and has never been in existence. I know that's bizarre for a woman in her twenties but I have my dreams of what a sex life should be and so far they haven't come close to being fulfilled.
Maybe I'm fantasizing about what love should be like, but I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be the groping tumble that every guy I've met so far has put me through. I want to feel something more than the urgency of getting some stupid V card stamped – and I bet it was a guy that came up with that terminology.
I throw a few things into a box, ready for when I move out, even though I haven't started at the job or found an apartment. Way too much advance planning, I know, but I'm so ready. Then I lay back on my bed and imagine the man who'll come over with a bottle of wine and some flowers at my new place. I'll be throwing together some pasta sauce for him, anticipating how the evening will go after we've made it through my lousy cooking.
How he'll push me up against the wall in the kitchen and pin my wrists above my head. Holding me restrained like that, so I'm vulnerable to whatever he wants to do to me, I want it to be hard and fast and out of control passion.
My hands travel down between my thighs and I'm already wet. My clit is swollen and needy for my imaginings to become reality. I close my eyes again, I need to get off. Without my permission, the same face swims up before me, making my clit throb. He's so gorgeous, all rough stubbled jaw and dangerous dark eyes.
It's wrong, but I cant help it. I stroke the length of my agonized slit and whisper Smith's name.
Chapter FIVE
Carly
I step onto the elevator – a private elevator to the thirty ninth floor – and I've already entered a different world.
On auto-pilot, I reach to the right hand panel to press the button. But there is no panel. Funny how disorienting that is, something you take for granted not being in place. I turn to the left thinking the designer of the elevator, if there is such a thing, I never imagined that as a job, has it backwards. There isn't a panel that side either. The door slides shut and for a moment I panic. I'm shut inside a box unable to make it move and with no doors open button.
“Thirty Nine, Miss Tinder?”
Oh my god, my heart goes flying out of my skin.
The elevator is not only talking to me, it knows my name.
“Yes,” I squeak. “Please.”
Are you supposed to be polite to a machine? It's not even a machine really, just a metal box on pulleys. A moving jail cell.
Then I realize we're already riding up, so smoothly I couldn't tell we'd lifted off. Still my hand reaches for the side wall, to steady myself. Smooth glass. At my touch it changes color from neutral to a soft lilac. I'm bathed in an exotic glow of light from the elevator that makes me crave a cocktail and some music by Drake. Then we leave the darkness of the shaft and the city appears, spread out at my feet.
“Oh, wow,” both my hands splay against the glass wall. I've got a tiny hint of vertigo, never expecting to be rising up above the city with only a pane of funky glass separating me and the ground.
Once I get my balance, it's beautiful. The buildings and streets are all laid out before me. This plastic-manufacturing corporation must be doing exceptionally well. Maybe it won't be as bad as I'd anticipated, to be working here.
“Here we are, Miss Tinder,” the elevator informs me, in a sweet feminine voice.
“Um, thank you,” I murmur, again embarrassed to be speaking to an elevator and looking all around in case someone saw me and thinks a crazy woman has joined the firm.
But there's no one around at all. Just a broad corridor, lined with soft lighting and some very expensive gigantic art pieces, suspended from the ceiling not nailed to the walls.
“Have a nice day, Miss Tinder.” the slinky elevator tells me. Her voice is actually rather seductive, if I was into elevators that is.
“Thank you,” I whisper again.
I look down the hall, wondering whether there might be a reception, or a secretary. Nothing. So I steel my nerve and walk toward the end of the hallway, at least I can check out the paintings.
I notice that the walls are all glass. It's one long glass corridor and at the end, another glass wall. As I come close to running out of passage, the wall slides back and a glass door opens, seamlessly integrated within the wall. A woman with an impossibly hour glass figure and red hair pulled back in a tight bun steps out.
“Oh, Miss Tinder,” she calls. “Sorry, I was on the phone with the Far East and couldn't hold. Please come this way.”
“I'm supposed to see Rachel,” I say, picturing some head honcho dragon lady.
“That's me.”
She sashays toward the end of the luxurious hallway, not like that of any office I've ever seen. Not even like any luxury hotel, not that I've been in many of those.
I get that I'm supposed to follow her so I do. All of a sudden I'm feeling very dowdy in comparison to her stylish outfit and screaming high heels, with those red soles that shout expensive. And sexy. And everything I'm not. Not yet.
As she approaches the end of the hallway, a panel in the opposite wall glides back and she steps through. I follow her and almost gape at the view through the office window. The sleek glass desk and white mesh executive chair are like something off a space station. There's nothing else in the office but those two pieces of furniture. And no one else. I expect Rachel to sit and tell me what I'll be doing, while I stand across from her.
She stretches out her hand and indicates the furniture.
What?
What does she want me to do? I look at her dumbly. Is she playing a prank?
She expects me to take the seat.
“This will be your office,” she says.
“Mine?”
“Yes. I ho
pe it's okay.”
Her features look momentarily confused, like she's considering how she'll handle my displeasure if it isn't.
“It's fine, its great.”
It's absolutely fucking unbelievable.
I take a few tentative steps, my fingers trailing the length of the glass, then I sit down. Perching on the edge of the seat that seems to give just enough to cup my ass like a lover.
“Okay, have a great day,” she says and turns rather awkwardly to leave.
“Wait.”
She halts and turns back, swiveling, again slightly clumsy. I'm thinking she must have a backache or something. She couldn't be drunk at this hour.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Do?” she repeats like it's the weirdest question in the world.
“Yeah. I'm hired for a job but I don't know what it is.”
“Oh. Of course. Just sit at your desk and everything will be made clear soon,” she nods, satisfied with the answer.
“Have a great day,” she repeats and before I can form my lips into another plea to stay, she disappears through the opening and the door slides shut.
“What the-?” I breathe.
This is the weirdest job I've ever heard of. I stroke my fingers along the smooth desk and lean back in the ergonomic chair. I gaze out at the view of the city spread before me. My view.
This is the life.
For about an hour.
Then I'm bored.
I have nothing to do but look out the window. I want coffee but I didn't see a lunch room or anything so banal as a coffee station. I do hear voices and see shadowy figures pass along the other side of the glass. But no one comes in to tell me what I should be doing.
Finally I need to pee so badly, I can't hold it any longer. I step outside the door. It slides back the instant I approach, like it knew I was coming. Now, I wonder where on earth the washrooms might be located.
Another glass panel slides back and Rachel appears.
“Can I get you anything, Miss Tinder?”
It's not Rachel, but another assistant that looks very like her. Uncannily so. And she's dressed in the exact same outfit. The boss must issue a dress code for designer sexy secretary that makes me feel even more drab in my cheap outfit.
