Submitting to Her (5 page)

Jesus, was this how girls felt after I
ditched them after a one night stand?

After seeming so into my dates during the
course of an evening, I'd normally be out the door before the sun
so much as showed its face. Did they feel this awful after I was
gone? I hoped not, but felt curiously, horribly enlightened.

Zoey was my ghost of Christmas past, present
and future all rolled into one.

"You just back now?" Robin asked as he
stumbled out about 8am.

"No - I was home. Got back last night," I
said. "And how did you get on?"

Robin cocked his head, ignored my question.
"But you did go off with Taylor?"

"Gave her the slip on the way out," I
shrugged.

"Thought she was one of your go-tos."

A sigh. "Used to be."

"And now you're giving her the slip?" Robin
chuckled, shook his head.

"When we're together... she just lies there…"
I found myself blushing, something I don't think I'd ever done in
front of another guy.

"You all right, Aide?" Robin seemed to take a
second look at me, noticing something about me. "You're shaking
like a dope fiend in a police cell."

I stared down at my empty plate, mumbled:
"Drank more than I thought last night, huh."

Robin just stood there, looking at me. Then
finally he said: "You're an enigma, Aide."

"Thanks."

"A riddle wrapped in a mystery - "

"You calling me a Twinkie?"

The rest of the weekend I was feeling
progressively worse and worse. Time dragged - insanely - and yet
with every snail-pace second, I somehow felt I was getting further
and further away from any chance of being with Zoey again, in any
other capacity than work.

I kept myself to myself as much as possible -
I couldn't talk to anyone about any of this, even Robin, and I
could talk to Robin about most things. If there was a lump on my
balls, I could probably talk to Robin about it. After that Saturday
morning, the cover story about a continuing hangover was not going
to cut the mustard. I just kept to myself.

Sunday morning, I was still shaking. What if
she'd done all that just to hurt me back? Sure, she'd succeeded,
and sure, I deserved it. Had she even enjoyed our time together
that afternoon? Had she now lost all respect for me as a human
being? Was she going to use what happened to undermine my
relationship with the rest of the team, to bond with them
herself?

I went to the gym, kept my focus on the
exercise for once, didn't even look at any of the girls on the
running machines or the ellipticals or the yoga mats, let alone hit
on them.

"Hey, Aide, you trying to get into the
military or something?"

It was Kimberli-with-two-'i's, a curly-haired
blonde I usually felt safe checking out whenever she was here.
She'd been engaged to some rich dentist down in Guilford for a year
or so, and that had always been solid enough that our shameless
flirting always came across as vaguely platonic.

"Hey, Kim. How's it going?"

"Why the long face, Daddy-o?"

She was wearing the usual teeny little
skin-tight top that showed off her cleavage to masterful effect,
and the kind of painted-on lycra boy shorts that could provide a
full commentary on the state of her pubic grooming. For my benefit,
she was doing a post-exercise stretch that just happened to arch
her back and jut out her breasts as she stood there.

"Oh, you know. Heavy night last night," I
said, the hangover story still carrying weight with her, since she
hadn't been around the day before.

She nodded, the glint in her eye seemingly
glad I hadn't lost my party-hound reputation.

"So, Jerry and I… well, we called time on it
all," she said, all a little casual for a life-changing decision
like ending marriage plans.

"That so? Sorry to hear it," I said, trying
to sound concerned but not interested, and judging by the response
from Kim, failing with the latter. "How you bearing up?"

"Oh, you know," she said, a note of
faux-melancholy turning to instant cheer as she added: "So you want
to grab a coffee some time? Maybe a drink?"

I smiled, thinking that after all this time
of her teasing me, showing me the goods with the firm knowledge
that only Jerry-the-dentist could ever have them, now they were
available, I wasn't.

"Sounds good," I said, not wanting to
completely shoot her down, considering her sad, sad situation. "Why
don't I give you a call sometime?"

"Great, you do that!"

She slipped me a little piece of paper, which
presumably had her phone number on it, though I didn't bother to
open it up. Where had she been keeping that while she'd been
working out?

A final little: "See ya," and she was
wiggling her hips as she returned to the locker room, giving me one
last shop-window on what my promised phone call could get me.

Oh, I knew that phone call was not going to
happen, but it felt funny I couldn't just come out and say I was
with someone. Was I with someone? I wasn't sure how true that was,
what I actually had with Zoey. And was I stupid to have this little
pang inside me that thought somehow if I told anyone I was in a
relationship right then, I'd jinx it?

Kim was sweet enough. Perhaps I would have
given her a call in normal circumstances, though that might have
risked subsequent awkward moments in the gym after I skipped out
after our date.

The rest of the Sunday, my thoughts kept
turning back to my afternoon run-in with Ms Zoey Schoenberg. I kept
battling with my thoughts, wavering between the doubt that any of
it had happened at all to the horror that Zoey now thought me a
fool, someone to scorn and deride and, worst of all, ignore.

I had her stolen underwear as proof that it
had happened - but every time I came back to them, pulling them out
from under my mattress, it just made me throb between the thighs,
and made it difficult to keep my promise about avoiding any fooling
around down there.

Even an afternoon in the company of a
widescreen TV and the Ravens getting the better of the Steelers
failed to keep my attention away from how unbelievably thrilling it
had been to submit to her will, to serve her and be used by
her.

God how much I'd give for a repeat
performance with my sizzling hot boss.

Monday morning, I was up early and into the
office an hour before normal, even before Zoey arrived for
work.

I was already nervous when pulling up in the
parking lot of our building in downtown Baltimore, heading up to
our floor in the elevator, walking out there among all those empty
desks - so familiar, and yet after Friday, somehow so completely
different to me.

Was I really going to be able to turn things
around? And perhaps more importantly, would it be enough to keep
Zoey Schoenberg interested in me?

As I waited, the door to her office loomed
large in my consciousness. Had all that really happened in there
before the weekend? Did she really threaten me with the sack, and
then relent when I went down on her? Had I not imagined it all?

My insides were fluttering like a hundred
butterflies in a thunderstorm, conflicted feelings swirling around
and around in there, tearing me up. I longed to see Zoey again, and
yet I was terrified that she'd appear and ignore me, overlook what
had happened, her declaration that I was now hers turning out to be
meaningless. What if she arrived, and I was still fired, and her
farewell oral sex turned out to be simply her way of rubbing my
face in it?

There was nothing in my email to suggest I
was fired.

Still, I was breathless, my heart pounding as
I waited for things to get moving, spending the time drafting a
memo for my whole sales team to the affect that our protest, such
as it was, was now over. The way the economy was, we had to set
aside personal feelings and pull together, yada, yada, yada. It
wasn't a long message, it wasn't the kind of legendary missive that
would go down in the annals of company history - I basically called
a meeting.

When it actually happened, at half past the
hour we were all supposed to be in work, I was surprised to find
that Zoey had still not arrived.

What was that about? She was never late - in
fact, she was always seriously early.

As my team gathered noisily in the meeting
room in the opposite corner of the building to Zoey's office, my
heart suddenly seemed to lurch into my stomach and then proceed to
free fall into my legs. What if she'd been fired on Friday
afternoon? The CEO had come in, worked out the terms of her
severance, and then that had been that. Her final run-in with yours
truly had been a last moment of revenge, forcing her worst enemy -
the man who had caused her downfall - to humiliate himself.

The only logic I could use to alleviate my
fears was that if she'd wanted full revenge, she probably would
have walked out with my clothes when she'd left the office.

"All right, all right, simmer down," I said,
closing the door on us, wishing it had been made of glass like
those modern offices you see on TV, so I could keep an eye out for
the boss while the meeting was going on. It wasn't, it was a crappy
seventies building, could have almost been federal.

"So," I said, once a little hush had been
established. "Here's the thing, guys. Much as I appreciate your
support these last six months or so, we've got to start getting
back in the game."

There were a few slow nods from some
old-timers I had always suspected never cared who headed up the
department, so long as they were still in jobs. There was also a
little laughter from the end of the table.

"What happened, Jonesy? She put your balls in
a vice?" It was Russell, one of my top salesmen, leaning back in
his chair over there, cackling at his wise-crack.

"Yeah, something like that," I said, but I
wasn't going to look for a clever comeback. Not now. "The why's not
important. The thing is, if we don't start firing on all cylinders
again, we'll start finding ourselves replaced by people who
can."

"What, like Sweet Little Miss College Girl?
Give me a break." And that was Tommy - Tweedle Dum to Russell's
Tweedle Dee.

"If you mean someone straight out of college,
that's a possibility," I nodded. "Straight away they'll come with
qualifications you don't have - and they'll be cheaper. Might not
have the sales patter down yet, but nobody in the board room's
going to care about that. They'll bring something else to the
company - and even if they don't, we'll be long gone by then."

You get the picture. I had to win them over,
but I had certain economic realities in my favor. We all knew
people who'd lost their jobs in the recession. It wasn't pretty. No
one around that table wanted it to happen to them.

I laid out the motivational stuff, and I set
the new standards - arrive at work on time, dress in tidy suits,
and above all meet and surpass our weekly sales targets. They got
the message. I could deal with the snide remarks, the whispers
suggesting I was being pussy-whipped.

Quietly, deep-down inside, I wanted to be
pussy-whipped by Zoey Schoenberg.

I should be so lucky.

As the sales team got back down to it, I
began crafting an email to Zoey, hoping desperately that my
paranoid thoughts were just that, and that she was still my
boss.

It took a fair while to get anything down on
screen - each time I put something together, it seemed trite or
overly cautious, or desperate, or cold, or a hundred other
flaws.

I finally wrote:

Zoey,

I hope you had a pleasant weekend.

We've had a constructive sales meeting this
morning, the team is resolved to improve and start really pushing
to smash targets and meet your full expectations.

Happy to give you a run-down of where we
are, at your convenience. And if there is absolutely anything else
I can do for you, you need only ask.

Yours,

Aiden.

Well, it was fairly neutral. She could read
it any way she wanted. Of course, I wanted her to read into it the
offer of serving her at any time she wanted. But she could also see
it as a strictly business-level message.

Dipping my hand into my pocket, I found
Zoey's panties lodged there, where I'd stashed them before leaving
my apartment. It had all been real, then.

It was midday before Zoey finally arrived. I
found my pulse quickening suddenly, perspiration breaking out on my
forehead as my breathing deepened - merely to see her stride
through to her office. God, she was beautiful. Had she really been
grinding her pussy on my face on Friday night? Oh, what heaven.

As she went into her office, she didn't even
glance my way. I felt crushed, but I guessed she was acknowledging
that she couldn't suddenly appear in public to have any feelings
for me, one way or the other. Or else she was portraying herself as
someone who did not need me, thereby forcing me to earn her
attention, keeping me on my toes.

I tried not to think about it, focusing on my
own tasks that day. There was no reply to my email for a cool half
hour, and then only:

Aiden,

Thanks, keep me updated,

Zoey.

I felt a little snubbed - but what had I been
expecting? Some kind of gushing praise for what had happened on
Friday? Some sweet words of adoration for her willing servant, and
promises of more to come? It was never going to happen in the
middle of the office - and from her new-found strong-woman
attitude, I suspected it would never happen at all. If she had been
telling the truth about our arrangement, I was supposed to
compensate her, serve her. It wasn't for her to praise me or
encourage me. I should need no encouragement other than to serve
her.