When I turn back around to face Vanacore, she’s looking pleased. Satisfied that she seems to have finally molded me into someone obedient and happy to watch her. She’s also succeeded in cleaning herself up, packing away her pussy, and pulling down her skirt. If you looked at her now you wouldn’t even know she’s just gotten off. She says to me, “Did you like that, boy?”
I did, but not for the reasons she thinks, but reasons I’m going to be happy to let her hold onto. “Yes, ma’am,” I answer, making myself sound drunk and blissed out.
She leans forward in her chair, bringing himself back up to her desk. Where her pussy was once so stably arranged, she now has her hands neatly folded there. “Would you like to do this tomorrow, Tommy?”
I know this isn’t an offer. It’s in order, phrased like one. And I already know the answer I’m going to give her. I don’t even have to think about it.
As I move back to my desk and pause before the little privacy screen I say, “yes, ma’am.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Melissa
Just after 3:30 PM on Friday, I see Tommy jog by my desk. He looks as happy as I feel the moment I see him. I’m fluttery, excited. I really want to wave to him, to tell him I’m looking forward to our date tomorrow, but I don’t. I can’t. Isabella’s right nearby. While I don’t think she would mind the fact that Tommy and I are officially an unofficial item — this company has practically become known for encouraging and fostering relationships between subordinates and their superiors — but our situation is a little different.
Different because, as of this week, Tommy is secretly “involved” with his boss, but not with the same love and care. It’s to expose Ms. Vanacore as the predator she is. And that’s all the more reason I can’t let anything slip. I can’t show any bit of affection, even if Isabella and the rest of the company were ones to judge. A connection between Tommy and me would greatly jeopardize his mission to neutralize Vanacore — to move her out of the company and end her decades-long reign of secret terror in various law firms.
Even so, Tommy’s joy is infectious. It fills me with warmth and happiness, even if I can’t show or speak to it the way I’d like to. I can see it in the way he moves. The way he practically runs out of the office with his head held high.
I let my eyes follow him as far as they can out to the doors of the elevators. Once he is inside, I turn back only to notice Isabella. She’s followed me following him. She raises an eyebrow at me. “That boy’s gone from nearly negligible, not worth much attention at all, to being almost everywhere I look.” She scrunches her eyebrows together, studying me. “He seems to be everywhere you look, too, Melissa.”
I chuckle, already ready to answer her question. “Well, how could I not look after him?” I sigh a little too wistfully for my liking, but I can’t take it back. “After I helped him out with that interview a few weeks prior, it’s been really amazing to watch him step into his own. He’s getting out of the shadows and into his own limelight, though I don’t think he realizes how good he looks in it.” After murmuring this, I shake myself out of my rather poetic and romantic mood.
Almost subconsciously/unconsciously, I move my picture of Dennis further back on my desk, but I still don’t unseat him completely. Some part of me still can’t quite let go.
Isabella simply sighs and says, “To each their own, my friend.” After she says this, she switches off her computer, grabs her ginormous purse with stars and moons engraved on it — it looks like the back of a wearable tarot card to me — and scoots her chair underneath the desk. “I agreed to help a friend get home a little early today,” she adds, noticing my unspoken question to her. “She’s been feeling a little icky, so I volunteered to be her ride home.”
I nod. Things have been slow, and Isabella can take off as much time as she likes.
As Isabella leaves, I hear my phone ping with an incoming text. I dig out my phone, move to turn on the screen and get a glance at the text. It’s from Tommy, and it immediately settles my stomach and my nerves.
Stopping by the bank to get money out for our date, Melissa! Getting out enough to have some fun with! I hope you’re ready!
I giggle, pulling up the keyboard. Oh, I’m so ready, my love! At the same time, I type it out, I say it aloud. As I send this text, I immediately start on another. But remember: I don’t expect you to spend all your money. You can spend some of mine, too. I send this one as well.