by Perry Symon Fowler
Renata Lee sat at her computer, patiently reviewing the client database in preparation for the half-yearly audit. She was working through her morning break; Pierce wanted a preliminary analysis on his desk by four this afternoon, and she had no desire to keep him waiting. Much as she adored him, Pierce Ashdowne had never been a man to trifle with, particularly in matters of business. Pausing to stroke the hair back from her shoulders, Renata stretched languidly back in her chair, straightening out the kinks in her spine with a series of satisfyingly loud clicks. It was going to be a long day. Well, that was OK; it gave her something to look forward to, particularly since Pierce had promised to take her out to dinner this evening.
She turned back to the keyboard, scanning the accounts with an easy, practiced eye. She wore a neon-pink spandex top with a pleated black mini-skirt, the cool, kinky kind which young women love to wear on breezy days. Her ears glittered with rings and studs, her ankles with circlets and chains. The other girls often ragged her on her sartorial eccentricities, which were considered a little too girlpower, even for an up-beat advertising firm like C&A.
The telephone buzzed by her right hand. Glancing down, Renata saw it was coming through the inter-office line. A chill premonition wavered at the back of her mind: there'd been problems with the Milson brochure; she'd been trying to sort it out all morning.
Had Pierce found out? Probably - errors of this stature rarely went unnoticed. A cold finger stroked her heart as she lifted the handset.
"Pierce?" she asked uncertainly.
"We need to talk."
Renata's breath froze in her chest. She knew the words, knew the tone. Pierce was angry with her; she could almost taste the cool, brooding menace hidden beneath his voice. Her knuckles whitened around the receiver as a tremendous wave of panic threatened to surge over her. He was summoning her to his presence for one of his private 'discussions', and she knew precisely what that involved.
Renata lowered her glossy red lips to the phone, struggling to control the treacherous undercurrents flowing through her belly.
"I'm on my way," she whispered, looking surreptitiously around the work space. Color monitors stared back indifferently. In the timeless grey limbo of the mid-morning coffee-break, most of the staff had gravitated to the Teasmade, where the latest nightclub gossip was being exchanged around the urn. No one was watching her; with any luck, she could slip away without raising too many eyebrows.
Renata's pulse slammed into overdrive as she replaced the phone and rose from her work station, modestly adjusting her hemline. Warm flushes began swirling through her throat and arms and thighs; she felt suddenly small and weak and helpless. She'd been Pierce's personal assistant for close on seven months, and she was flinchingly aware of what lay ahead for her. She'd learnt to dread these increasingly frequent visits to her supervisor's office - the experience of her most recent visit was marked on her memory like the touch of a searing, white-hot brand.
She started up the stairs feeling a faint pink blush spreading across her features. Renata's relationship with Pierce Ashdowne was common knowledge around the firm: they'd been lovers since the first week of her contract, and Pierce had made no attempt to conceal their liaisons from the scandal pool - had, in fact, been instrumental in perpetuating the rumor cycle amongst the personnel. Renata had withstood months of slurs, sarcasm and tea-break innuendos; lewd remarks and sniping backtalk had become a part of her daily routine. Truth be told, most of it was good-natured teasing between girlfriends, but she was grateful that none of her work mates knew the real secret behind her frequent excursions, the reason why she was almost melting in her pants as she made her way upstairs.
Renata touched her lip in childish apprehension. Pierce was going to spank her. On the bare bottom. And it was going to hurt.
Renata's breath caught in short, hitching pants as she looked up towards the second level. Knowledge of her impending fate always triggered a spasm of breathless excitement in her belly. Once she found herself standing in her employer's sumptuously furnished office, there would be no respite, no escape, no reprieve. A good, hard spanking would be inevitable.
Drawing a deep breath to steady her nerves, she continued her ascent. The staircase was an expensive postmodern folly, a minimalist spiral of industrial grids apparently suspended in midair, rectangle floating above rectangle in exacting mathematical proportions. Anyone standing below would have had a spectacular view of her long, shapely legs vanishing up past her brief cotton skirt.
Fortunately, most of her co-workers were female, so a sudden flash of elusive French lace generally went unremarked. Still, Renata was shy enough to feel that her flimsy pink panties were being placed on open exhibition every time she mounted the stairs (which was undoubtedly the reason why Pierce had her running errands to his office all day long).
Reaching the office landing, she wavered in an agony of indecision. The consequences of even a minute's delay were too severe to consider, but she found herself hesitating before the doorway, her shoulders buzzing with gooseflesh.
She knew that her punishment would be both excruciatingly painful and humiliating in the extreme. In a few brief seconds, she would be required to raise her skirt and drop her scanty pink knickers right in front of him. She'd have to present her smooth, naked buttocks for his approval; an act of pathetic, feminine submission which invariably reduced her to tears of shame.
She was in no hurry to subject herself to this trial by ordeal; Pierce would thrash her nude, trembling bottom-cheeks red-raw, his wide, flat palm whipping down on her sweet young girl flesh like a runaway windmill. Why in God's name did she always accede to his arrogant, masculine authority? What right had he to take her pants down and smack her pert, young derriere?
She was a woman - twenty years old, a college graduate, with as much claim to simple human dignity as any one else. Pierce had no cause to treat her like a naughty little girl, senior partner or not. Office hierarchies aside, there was no place for such blatant sexual manipulation in any working environment. She'd read enough articles in Cosmo to know that.
She had to make a stand, mark off some boundaries, take her life firmly in hand. Turn around, walk down the stairs, join the hen's party at the other end of the work space; ignore the summons, return to her station and get on with her job. Pierce couldn't force her to bare her bottom, and he'd never dismiss her for refusing a spanking; he'd made that clear from the very start. It was time to earn his respect, rather than defer to his judgment like a frightened slave.
Down-casting her face in passive humility, she walked meekly to his door, rapping quietly on the glossy ebony surface with a small white fist. All her defenses disappeared in tenuous puff of self-esteem; when the moment of truth finally arrived, all of her liberal feminist rationales counted for absolutely nothing.
"Pierce?" she asked softly, feeling her eyes filling up with a gentle, salty rain. She'd promised herself that she wouldn't cry this time, no matter how much it hurt. And now here she was, poised at the verge of tears, and he hadn't even touched her yet. In the final analysis, her age was completely irrelevant. Pierce was her man, her lover and her boss. He had every right to spank her errant little bottom.
Regardless of what Cosmo might have to say on the matter.
Reaching out to turn the doorknob, Renata felt a familiar, mocking flutter in the base of her tummy; the wings of a million teasing butterflies urging her onwards. A vast, dizzying sense of exaltation swept through her system, overshadowing the fear and guilt and dread she'd known since the call first came. Once she stepped through the doorway, she'd be divested of all humanity, all individuality, all agency. She'd be his pet, his object, his vessel of delight... a living, breathing container for his dark, merciless sexuality.
What had drawn her to him so irrevocably?
The lure of wealth, the unmistakable scent of power surrounding him like a European cologne? His lean, wolfish physique, the smoldering intensity of his depthless black eyes? His jutting, squarish jaw line; the casually stunning good looks behind a third-day hangover?
No. None of those things had attracted her.
Renata was an extraordinarily beautiful girl; she'd had a string of rich, handsome boyfriends stretching back to early high school. Italian suits and Visa cards held little appeal for her; most of her lovers had been rampant misogynists with drop-dead gorgeous smiles and inexhaustible bank accounts. She knew the course far too well to be taken in by their pretentious, condescending pantomimes these days.
Pierce Ashdowne had been different.
Yes, he'd been as disdainful, cavalier and contemptuous as every other man she'd known, but he'd possessed some hidden quality which had immediately set him apart from the legions of shallow, self-possessed parasites she'd encountered during her adolescence.
She'd seen something in Pierce at their very first meeting, something she'd only half-recognized, something which left her gaping and speechless and utterly dazed with longing. The intensity of her emotions had frightened her; she'd never felt such complete infatuation, such an undeniable, irresistible need for any man.
The interview had been a joke, a farce, a humiliation unto itself. She'd stumbled through the interrogation in a daze, unable to answer his questions or even meet his gaze. She'd come to the brink of despair, believing she'd lost all hope of securing the position.
The thought had been devastating. A rejection would have shattered her like a fragile crystal figurine. She would never see him again, never have the opportunity to look into his glittering midnight eyes or feel his hands on her warm, yielding form. She'd come dangerously close to begging him for the job; offering him all the pleasures of her magnificent female body in exchange for even a temporary posting.
It wouldn't have mattered if he'd reneged on the deal, because all she wanted was to surrender herself to his rampant, carnal desires. It was crazy, it was ludicrous, but the logical part of her mind had closed down for the afternoon. She had fallen in love with him in the space of six minutes. Desperate and forlorn, she had abandoned herself to him with all the innocent, defenseless passion of a lonely child.
And Pierce had known. Somehow, impossibly, he'd seen through her nervous silences and aimless replies, reading the signs with a supernatural ease. He'd seen the feverish, helpless yearning in the fathomless pools of her eyes. It was irrational, incomprehensible; but she had wanted him; wanted to drown in his merciless, polar stare and give herself to his voracious sexual hunger.
Masking his indifference with a surprisingly compassionate smile, Pierce had leaned forward, quietly folding his arms on the oaken desk top. The room seemed abnormally silent. Renata could actually hear the pulse ticking in her throat.
"What would you be willing to do for this job?" he asked.
"Anything," she murmured, her vision blurring as the first tears glistened the length of her cheeks.
Settled deep in the leather-bound chair normally reserved for the firm's wealthier clients, Renata found herself considering the extremes to which love could drive a woman. In the seven months she'd been with Pierce, she'd survived innumerable sojourns over his desk, her undies clinging to her ankles and her pale, round bottom shunting to and fro in sheer, blue-fire agony. It was embarrassing, it was painful, and she hated being treated like a naughty school girl, but she would have endured literally anything to sustain their relationship.
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