Power Play

What a strange creature he is – though I confess, I’m grateful to him. For a long moment I’m so transfixed by his utter awkwardness and his ever-hovering grin that I can’t focus on the true matter at hand.

Woods is gone.

And I am his replacement.

* * *

I have three contact numbers for Gregory Woods. One is for his office, which would now mean I’m ringing myself. The other is his mobile phone, which always goes directly to his curt little voicemail message: Woods. Speak. And the last is his home number, which I have never on pain of extreme torture rung.

I will never ring it, not now. He’s done this thing, and that’s all there is to it. It’s the sort of person he is; it’s the way he operates. He makes a decision as brisk as a knife coming down, and if you get one of your limbs chopped off in the process, well.

So be it.

Though I swear I don’t feel that way. I feel calm and composed, all the way through the rest of the Monday morning break-down. I am like a summer breeze as I field questions from the head of the sales division about targets Woods has decidedly not set. I’m the very soul of inner peace, when I discover the other seventeen thousand problems no one ever thought to ask a man like Woods about, because Woods always looked like someone in control.

He treated me like someone in control.

But as I learn at one-thirty-five on Monday afternoon, his legend was definitely somewhat exaggerated. In fact, by the time Benjamin asks me if I’d like my midday Scotch, I’m convinced Gregory Woods was some sort of magician.

I knew him in so many appallingly intimate ways, but I didn’t realise his level of incompetence. And judging by what Benjamin is now telling me – in all innocence – it wasn’t sober incompetence.

I think I actually say to him: ‘Are you serious?’ though I swear I don’t mean to.

It’s Woods I’m angry at, of course it is – and yet I snap at Benjamin so hard his teeth practically rattle. His mouth comes open again, though this time it at least has the wherewithal to seem voluntary. He almost catches it before it’s reached the halfway mark, but I still glimpse those odd teeth he has – so perfectly straight and white and gleaming, apart from the hint of point on the incisors. It’s not a hint really. It’s strong and obvious and like he should have a lisp, though I’m not sure how I come to that conclusion.

And I can still feel the words he wants to get out, pushing at the back of his throat.

‘Uhhh … well …’ he starts, and that urge to correct him beats on me so hard I’ll be feeling it tomorrow. Don’t start your sentences like that. Don’t, don’t, don’t oh God don’t please I hardly know what’s happening to me. ‘Mr Woods tended to like his Scotch with –’

‘Benjamin, sit down,’ I say to him, while my insides scream at me: do not ask him to sit down.

I should never have sat down when Woods asked me to, that first time.

‘O – K,’ he says.

I’m grateful that he looks so bemused, I really am. Though I’m less grateful when he seems to have the most appallingly difficult time picking a chair. At first, he actually seems to think I want him to sit next to the antique sideboard, on a leather wingback that has no real purpose being there. I mean, he does realise that thing is about twenty paces away from my desk, right?

‘Sit here, Benjamin,’ I say, but when I do I realise something even more horrifying than all of the rest of the weird urges bubbling up inside of me. His name … the way it sounds …

It’s better than the way Woods used to say Ms Harding. The whole thing just rolls right off my tongue, with emphasis I don’t intend on syllables that shouldn’t have it. And when he takes the chair opposite my desk – all of his big body folding down into it as though he’s half the size he actually is – I’m almost certain he knows it.

He knows how I’m saying it. Those guileless blue eyes and that almost-smile on the faint imprint of his mouth … they tell me what I need to know.

‘Are you OK, Ms Harding?’ he asks, as I sit behind the vast safety of the desk that once belonged to him. Unfortunately, doing so just makes me wonder if he ever needed to hang on to it the way I’m doing right now.

I’m like the survivor of a shipwreck. Barrett and Bates is going down in flames, and I’m thinking about some awkward creature’s secret face signals.

‘I’m perfectly fine, Benja–’ I catch myself this time, though I’m sure he notices. Something flickers across his otherwise completely innocent gaze, something I recognise without even trying to. And then I get control of myself and start again. ‘I’m fine, Ben. I just want to get across a few things to you, before we go any further.’

He nods, eagerly. I wish to God I didn’t have to add that ‘eagerly’ onto that description.

‘Of course, Ms Harding. I mean – I guess I’m your assistant now. And to be honest, that suits me a lot better. You’re so direct, you know? So –’

‘Stop!’

I don’t mean to shout it, I swear. It just happens. A lot of things seem to be just happening, and I don’t know if I can cope with them all.

‘Sorry. You go ahead, Ms Harding. I’m listening. I’m really doing my best to be all ears.’

Lord, he punches the air a little, after that last statement, the way a cartoon character from the fifties might have done. Gee willikers, Ms Harding! I sure am glad I’m working for you, gosh yes!

‘You’re doing fine, Ben. But what I really wanted to stress to you is this: you’re not my assistant. You weren’t really Mr Woods’ assistant. You –’

‘Oh my God, am I fired? Oh man, I –’

‘Benjamin,’ I say, and am deeply disheartened to find that his full name has the exact effect on him I expect. It freezes him in place, big hands clutching the chair arms. Those soft eyes caught somewhere between wounded and a promise that he can do better. I wish he wouldn’t want to do better for me quite so badly.

‘You’re not fired. I’m simply trying to tell you that you’re a clerical assistant. That’s what you were hired for – to help with general office paperwork, mail and filing. You’re not here to bring me a Scotch.’

He isn’t really anything of the sort – he was always Woods’ PA. It’s just that I can’t have him being something like that right now. I need him to be away, writing letters for other people who don’t need a letter writer at all.

‘Oh,’ he says, but he doesn’t look as embarrassed as I’d feared he would. There’s a hint of sheepishness there, true, but then I imagine that’s his default state. Whereas the other emotion on his face – disappointment – probably isn’t.

He looks like the kind of guy who takes most things in his stride. Unless it’s his brand-new boss telling him she can’t possibly spend her time ordering him to do humiliating menial tasks on her behalf. Then he just seems as though his entire world is falling apart, right before his eyes.

And oh, I don’t like what that completely naked expression on his face is making me want to do.

‘I don’t need you to caddy for me at the golf course.’

I really, really don’t like what it’s making me want to do.

‘I don’t require you to dry my hands for me after I’ve been to the ladies’ room.’

God, I know it’s going to make me do it.

‘But if you want, you can … compose letters for me. And compile some reports.’

Damn it.

‘Really?’ he says, and oh Jesus he just looks so hopeful. No one should ever look that hopeful over the prospect of writing to the head of the board to ask what the fuck is going on. I mean, a phone call might have been nice, you know? Promotion would have gone down a lot easier if it hadn’t been phrased thusly, in a letter:

You’re now the managing director of Barrett and Bates, effective immediately. If you have any concerns, contact several people who don’t give a shit.

‘I hardly see why not,’ I say, though I know it’s a mistake. And I know it more strongly when I ask Benjamin to leave, and on his way out of the door he says:

‘Thank you, sir.’

Of course, he realises his error almost immediately. He’s that sort of person, I think – the kind that makes many goofy blunders, but is intelligent enough to know he’s made them only a second later.

Though it doesn’t make it any easier, I know. It still makes his mouth open and close, that sweetly curving upper lip of his compressing as he searches for a way to rectify what he’s done. He called me sir, even though I’m a woman. He called me sir, and for reasons we won’t go into it’s making him all flustered.

‘Sorry – I meant –’ he starts off, but I cut him down dead.

‘Sir is fine,’ I say, as I wave him out the door.

* * *

Of course, sir is not fine. And after he’s gone I sit at my new desk and consider all the ways in which it isn’t fine at all. It’s what I used to call Woods, for a start. It’s meant for a man, for afters. And then there’s the fact that it makes my body flush from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair.

Yeah, there’s that.

I close my eyes and try to think of something else. There are a million things for me to think about, after all. Woods had apparently allowed a whole department to keep operating unnecessarily, for reasons left unclear in the paperwork he never actually did. Tomorrow I’m going to have to fire every one of them, while he most likely suns himself in Barbados.

And yet my mind returns to that one word over and over, so casually said. Sir, I think. I am somebody’s sir, and then I have to count all the things about him that aren’t right, just to keep myself on an even keel.

His mouth is strange. It’s like it has no corners or definition around it, no real shape to keep it in place. Of course, occasionally when he talks it’s given a proper outline, but then, it’s not really the outline I want it to have. Movement just makes those lips plumper, more obviously sensuous, and then when he stops talking all I can see is how smooth and soft that mouth is. If he didn’t have that heavy jaw and all of that overflowing size, he’d look like a cute cartoon character, and nobody wants that. They want men with intense, cold, manly gazes. Not that warm, soft-focus eagerness. Not those sooty lashes that probably look beautiful spread over his cheeks – when he closes his eyes in ecstasy, maybe.

God. God. How did the word ‘beautiful’ get into that sentence? How did ‘ecstasy’? I have absolutely no clue, and yet for a long moment it’s all I can think about. All of the things that are exactly right about him crowd out the things that probably aren’t wrong at all, and I’m left helpless on the burning ship again.

Though I don’t clutch at my desk this time. I turn to my computer – the ridiculous wood-backed thing my former paramour ordered from Japan, and that I’ve already searched for any evidence of his impenetrable motivations – and do what I’d wanted to the moment I knew he was gone.

Hell, I wanted to do it the moment I knew he was different, on Friday afternoon.

I go online, and start looking for someone who can give me the things he no longer knew how to. The things I’m no longer getting, and apparently need so desperately that I’m willing to actually venture onto Craigslist and read insane ads like:

I want to piss on your head. Call 1-800-asshole, if you’re into that.

No, 1-800-asshole. I’m not into that. But of course the problem is I don’t know what I am into. It was just easy to do the things Woods wanted me to do. It was calming and pleasurable and a distraction, from Anderson in sales being a doucheknuckle. From Patterson in marketing smacking my ass as I pass by his department – then acting like I’m the sourpuss when I tell him he’ll lose a finger the next time he pulls that shit with me.

It meant I didn’t have to go home and stare at the walls of my pathetic apartment, with my pathetically neat little dinner for one in front of me, and know that this is my life. I am the managing director of a mid-sized but well thought of publishing house, operating out of the tiny city of York.

And that is the most of it.

Even if it’s not, exactly. After all, I am here in this plush little office, in my prim little suit with the perfect cuffs, looking at images of women who’ve been doing some very dirty things. And though that’s not quite on the level of what my predecessor was getting up to between these classy-painting covered walls, there’s a certain frisson to it, I have to say.

I can understand its allure exactly, and not just because I want something to replace whatever Woods was providing. It’s the look of things, I think. It’s the smell in here, of varnish and too-thick carpets, as I bring up a picture of a woman facing away from camera.

Though I confess: it’s not her face I’m interested in. It’s her back, her naked back, and the pattern of stripes working its way down over that flesh. Red on white, red on white, from the slim span of her shoulders to the curve of her ass, everything so perfectly uniform that it’s almost not a line of cane marks at all. It’s like a dress she’s wearing, made of a million crimson stripes. And if I could just find the right person, if I could meet someone who understood the insides of me, he could give me a garment just like it.

Or I could give the garment to him.

Of course I try to shake it off the moment the idea occurs to me, but the trouble is, it doesn’t want to go. It’s there right behind my eyes, along with the image of Benjamin’s ever-shifting gaze, and his strange mouth, and his big hands. What would hands such as those look like dressed in red? Do people even do that – do they crack something down on their palms, in the same way someone has done it to her back?

I’ve got to imagine they do, because the thought holds a sweetness for me that the idea of being caned across my back doesn’t. When I think of the palms of my hands, I think about holding a pen and suddenly getting an echo of that sting. I think about sitting in a meeting, and just squeezing my hands into fists until the pain blazes out and reminds me of who I really am.

I am a person who thinks about being bent over a desk, so that someone faceless and nameless can cover my ass with a million red lines. In fact I’m thinking about it right now, while I’m supposed to be composing an email to one of the senior editors about a promotion he’s suddenly going to have.

And it feels like a long, cool relief after everything that’s happened today. I can see it so clearly in my head – knickers around my ankles, legs just ever so slightly spread. The glistening slickness of my cunt in between, so like the girl I’m looking at right now. The one called Veronica, who likes to expose herself in public.

I know how Veronica feels. I’m in that same mind-set currently, as I almost but don’t quite press the heel of my palm over my suddenly tender mound. It’s close enough to my clit that I get a little jolt of pleasure, but not so close that anyone could stroll in and know what I was doing, and that’s the line I want to walk right now.

I want to be on the edge again, so close to being caught doing something very bad indeed. I’m not the prim and proper correct choice for this job. I’m a dirty girl who likes looking at filthy websites during office hours, nipples stiff beneath my immaculate shirt and jacket. Clit suddenly swollen, and just begging to be stroked.

Though of course I don’t do it. I just flick through the images on the screen, restlessly, stopping when I find something that sparks my interest. A woman with a cock in her mouth and another in her pussy, struggling against intricate bonds that I follow eagerly with my gaze. More red stripes on flesh, some so bright and brilliant they hurt my eyes.

But I go in close just the same. In fact, I’m leaning so close to the screen that it’s almost like I’ve got my nose pressed to the glass – like I’m a child craving sweets that I’m not allowed to have – and that’s how I’m poised when someone knocks on the door. Hunched over my desk as though I’ve turned into some sort of lust-crazed animal, hand almost over the sensitive swell of my pussy through my skirt. My arousal so sharp and keen, suddenly, it’s like slicing myself open on a knife’s edge when said someone doesn’t wait for me to invite them in. They just barge right on through as I jerk back in my chair, hand fumbling for the mouse, everything about me so red and raw. I know it must look obvious. Woods would have seen it immediately, and demanded I pay the price. Show me how wet you’ve gotten yourself, Ms Harding, he would have said, whereas Benjamin just seems trapped somehow in my doorway. It’s that thing again, I think, of blundering and yet knowing he’s made the blunder a moment later.

He shouldn’t have come in, and he understands that perfectly. I can see it on his face, but he still doesn’t move away. He doesn’t leave and close the door behind him, then knock again a moment later.

And there’s something about that fact that I can’t shake. I want to, I desperately want to, but I can’t. He’s saying something to me without words and, though I don’t want to hear, I’m listening anyway. Like I did with Woods.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he says, and my entire body melts and slides right off my chair. Whatever I was feeling before – a kind of weak and watery horniness over some paltry little pictures – folds in and doubles back on itself until I’m left like this. Stunned by arousal for something I barely understand.

‘You should probably go back to your cubicle, Benjamin,’ I say, and though it holds a hint of whatever frisson I’m feeling, it’s not what I want to say. Instead, once he’s left me to my own devices, I imagine telling him something very different.

I think you’d better come inside, I near-murmur, and in my head he does. He comes inside and sits down on the chair across from my desk, hands clutching the arms in exactly the way they had before. That little pink tongue of his peeking out, to wet his plump lower lip.

And then I tell him, just as Woods told me.

We’re going to have to do something about you, Benjamin.

Of course he asks what, in reply. He looks at me all wide-eyed and half-unsure, as I stand up and cross to where he’s sitting. I remember Woods leaning against the edge of his desk, one leg over the other, everything about his pose suggesting casual, but not quite reaching it.

And in my head I mimic that stance almost perfectly, the whole scene a carbon copy of the one that came before. Only instead of saying cunt I say cock, obviously. I tell him clear: I think I’d like to see your cock now, Benjamin, and though I know in reality he’d probably refuse, in my head he barely puts up a fight.

In my head he laughs at first, but then lets said laugh trail down to nothing. Realisation dawning all over his face, so bright and clear and sweet somehow, and when it happens something happens to me, too. I stop thinking about Woods, or the computer screen, or the stripes on her back.

And I think about making that expression happen all over his face instead.

I can’t do that, Ms Harding, he tells me, but that one word – can’t – just sizzles straight through me. It punches down hard on a button I didn’t know I had, and I give the person I am in my head permission to run with it. To say to him: Really? I would have thought a little slut like you couldn’t wait to get their clothes off, while my heart pounds hard and heavy in my chest. It’s the little slut, I think, that does it. Even though none of this is real and I’m sure I’d never say it to him, those two things together get to me. He’s a slut, I think, a greedy, lustful little trollop, and then I watch as my mind provides the visual for this.

He puts a sudden and shocking hand between his legs, and rubs at the stiff shape he finds there.

Of course I know why I’m doing this. It’s so I can be like Woods, and tell him off for being so inescapably horny. But the thing is, it’s different this way around. It’s crazier somehow, more perverse, and when the head-me gets a hold of him by the hair and slaps his too smooth, too perfect face, I actually have to dig my nails into my thighs.

The urge to masturbate is so strong it’s more a physical pain than that sensation is, but it’s still only five-fifteen. I can’t just slip my hand under the waistband of my skirt with the door unlocked. Though if I go ahead and lock it, what then?

Then I’m just going to fuck myself in my office, while my suddenly backwards mind imagines pinning Benjamin to my desk so that I can do something Woods never did to me. The furthest he got was masturbating on my ass, and even that made me feel as though he’d lost some of his allure. That he’d given up control for one second, and left me stranded.

And yet somehow in my head I’m grinding my slippery pussy all over this fumbly, awkward guy’s face, without a hint of that strange lowness going through me. I don’t feel low at all. I feel packed tight with unspilled pleasure, clit as stiff and swollen as the cock I’m imagining. Liquid soaking through my panties already.

The heel of my palm really pressing into the curve of my sex now.

I think of his hands, blindly searching over my body to make up for the things my thighs are blocking out. I think of rewinding the tape, to see him peel out of his clothes in fits and starts. And finally I think of him shoved down over my desk, cheek pressed to the wood. My hand somewhere very bad, like the back of his head. Fingers tight in all of that thick, messy hair, exerting just enough pressure to keep him there.

And then the thin metal ruler I have on my desk in my other hand, to make him wear the garment I only half-heartedly wanted to. Because that’s the thing, you see. All of these replacements I think of, for Woods … they’re half-hearted.

But the thought of striping Benjamin …

The thought …

It’s enough to make me come harder than I ever have in my life, with just a hand in my lap, over clothes. It’s enough to make me say those three over-emphasised syllables into my fist, as pleasure gushes direct to my clenching sex.

I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know why. But it’s there now, inside me, no matter how hard I try to deny it.

Chapter Three

I decide it, before I’ve walked into the building and said hello to Kelly on reception. Today, I am going to be normal. Perfectly, respectably normal. I’m not going to practically masturbate at my desk to fill the void Woods has left. I’m not going to think mad thoughts about the people under me in an illegal and inappropriate way.

No. Today, I’m going to do ordinary things. Like speak to Aidan Harcroft about his promotion, for example. And then maybe speak to Anderson the doucheknuckle about his lack of one.

All of which will go something like this, I believe:

Anderson, I know it’s a terrible tragedy that I got the managing director position ahead of you. But if you just remember what an absolute toilet of a person you are, I’m sure you’ll understand why.

And as for my conversation with Aidan Harcroft … well. That can’t possibly be predicted. Nothing about Aidan can be predicted, because he’s the human equivalent of quicksilver. Fantastic eye, of course, but the problem comes when you’re trying to imagine what’s behind said eye.

Mercurial thoughts, I believe. Mercurial thoughts about not taking the bullshit job I had. I mean, in all fairness, no one wants to babysit people like Derek Hannerty. He’s tried to get that book about the guy who likes enemas past me so many times … and he’s going to ride Aidan just as hard.

‘You’ve got to be kidding, Harding.’

Or maybe he’s not going to get the chance to ride him at all.

‘You think there’s someone better for the job?’ I ask, as he presses the phone to his chest. He’s talking to some author, I believe – though the author isn’t going to mind in the slightest that he or she has been put on hold. I’ve known newbies faint during a conversation with Aidan.