Your choice, starshine. Not mine.
*** *** ***
Her trip to Tiffany’s design lab took place exactly one month after her internship started. She went on her own, leaving my office quiet and empty of her presence, her little shifts and sighs. After the first day she was invited back, and then invited back again, until her one-day visit stretched to a week. She called me every evening, breathless, inspired, telling me everything she’d seen and asking for more time. What was I supposed to do? I gave it to her.
She returned to the office the following Monday with stars in her eyes, and a thousand ideas to put on paper. I told her to go where her inspiration took her. She was full of excitement about diamonds and fittings, and the shape of the body.
Oh, the shape of her body…
I had plans to work on, a bridge to envision. We sat across from each other, designing our wildly disparate products. She’d been gone for a week. Now that she was back, her nearness taunted me almost more than I could bear.
“Chere,” I said abruptly, in the midst of our industrious silence. “I missed you.”
Those three words, I missed you, sounded so much more weighted than I meant them to. She looked up at me, alarmed.
Shit. One hundred percent professional. I thought I should add more words, words to take the edge off the ones I’d just spoken, but I didn’t.
“I…” She swallowed, thinking what to say. “I appreciate you giving me the time to spend at Tiffany’s. I know I’m supposed to be helping you here in the office.”
I gave a short, bitter laugh. “Helping me what? Lose my mind?”
A blush rose on her cheeks. She was wearing a necklace she’d made, so delicate, so intricate, gold and silver against her chest. She tugged at it, perhaps regretting that she’d worn such a low-cut blouse. “Don’t do this,” she said. “Don’t wreck everything.”
I wouldn’t have said anything if I hadn’t missed her so badly, if I wasn’t straining so hard to subdue the fantasies that preoccupied my mind. I turned back to my blueprints, trying to concentrate on lines and equations. Instead I imagined tying her up and fucking her, and hurting her. The memories were always there between us, palpable in the room. I glanced back at her, gave her one of the old stares.
“Please don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?” I pretended innocence, while I gazed at her with all the fire of my lust.
“Internships aren’t supposed to be like this,” she said, putting her face down against her desk.
“Your internship is like this because that’s what you chose,” I replied. “One hundred percent professional.” I brushed a hand over the front of my pants. She couldn’t see my raging erection from where she sat, but I wanted her to understand it was there. “I’m one hundred percent ready to fuck you right now. My cock is one hundred percent at full boil.”
She put her hands over her ears. “You promised.”
“I know I promised. I just think it’s stupid. There’s no reason we can’t work together and still assuage our hunger for each other.”
“Our hunger for each other?” She glared up at me, frowning. “Speak for yourself.”
I held her gaze with a warning look. Don’t make me show you. Because I’d do it. I’d strip off her clothes and show her how hungry she was, show her just how much she’d give up to me if I demanded it. After a moment of quivering mutiny, she looked away.
If I could have, I would have spanked the shit out of her for lying, for pretending. For denying. I would have bent her over her desk and punished her for putting both of us through this hell. I wished I had a strap, a paddle, a leather-wrapped cane, but even if I did, the blows and her cries would have been too loud in the office. Frosted glass walls only muffled so much.
Later. I’d punish my little mutineer later, at some future time when things weren’t so fucked up between us. For now, I could only punish her with her own ridiculous, blushing shame.
“Stand up,” I said. “Come here.”
“No.”
“Come the fuck over here. I’m your boss, you fucking listen to me.”
She finally stood and obeyed, cringing like she’d already been punished. Maybe I sounded uncontrolled. Frightening. I was only so tired of the divide between us, the artificial chasm of her making. Chere, you’re my fighter. Why won’t you be brave?
“Look at me, damn you,” I insisted, taking her by the arms.
She raised her eyes to mine with a look of such conflicted desire and loathing that I almost went off in my fucking pants.
“I want you to admit it. You want me. You want this.” I took her hand and made her trace the length of my cock. I was rock hard beneath the gabardine twill. She curled her fingers around the shape of me, then tried to pull away.