by T. Evans
The marking. He’d offered it initially as a reward for good service, then withdrawn the offer after she’d stepped out of line. Then he actually did it after she’d spent a day working herself back into his good graces. He’d set up the marking with the knife as a lasting reward for exceptional service to him. He’d even called her a “good girl” at one point.
As she thought those two words, “good girl”, she went weak in the knees and her breath went all out of her. She knew he’d seen the effect those words had on her.
He had scored his initials into her back.
Anita thought back to those last moments in The Retreat. She had seen clearly that he wanted to ask her something more. She needed to know what those questions were. Anita realized that she was no longer wearing his collar, she had no obligation anymore to be completely obedient and compliant to him. She was free to go there and demand to know what he’d wanted to ask her before she’d left.
‘Maybe we’ll get lucky and Sir will punish us for being so forward…’
“Quiet!” she told the little voice. She couldn’t deny the effect that little thought had on her, though. Her thighs clenched involuntarily. Anita finished her meager meal and sat in the bath until dinner time, which was as unremarkable as lunch had been. She crawled into bed way too sore to try and masturbate, going straight to crying herself to sleep instead.
At seven the next morning, she was back on the bus heading toward the building that housed Marshall Capital. She walked in, took the elevator up to the top floor and went for the stairway that was always unlocked.
It was locked. She circled the top floor, trying all of the stairwells, but only the one locked door had steps up to the rooftop. Marshall must have figured out how she had gotten up there and had them start locking the door.
“Think… Think…” Anita repeated to herself. She needed to find a way to the roof. After a few minutes of consideration, she rode the elevator down to the first floor and found an out of the way nook off the main lobby. Twenty minutes of waiting, and she saw her opportunity, when a senior executive in Marshall Capital’s Communications Division approached the elevators. She followed him on, and as the doors closed said, “Good morning, Mr. Worthington.”
He gave her a perplexed look. “I’m sorry. Phoebe Talbot,” Anita said, offering her hand. “Decorator with the building’s Facility Services. I’ve consulted with your staff a few times over the years on interior shots of the building for your brochures.” Anita started patting her pockets and opened her coat, frowning.
“Right,” Worthington said. “How are you?”
“Good…except. We’ve just started doing some work up on the garden, planning the décor for the winter parties. And I forgot my purse up there with my ID when I had to run downstairs to sign for a delivery. Would you be able to?” she asked, flashing puppy dog eyes at him.
“Sure,” he said, waving his key card in front of the reader, and punching the button for the rooftop.
“Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I swear, when I’m thinking design, I lose track of everything else.”
“No problem.”
Anita wished Worthington a good day when he got off on 39, and rode the elevator up to the rooftop. She set herself up somewhere she was out of sight of the security cameras, but could also see the spot where Sir would take his daily smoke break. Eight thirty came and went, as did nine. That was the window when she’d always caught him having his morning cigarette, and he hadn’t come. Anita stayed up there until ten, eleven, noon.
She realized he wasn’t coming, but also couldn’t bear to walk away. She’d managed to bluff her way up onto the rooftop once. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to do it again. Her stomach was growling at her. The simple breakfast she’d had that morning wasn’t up to the task of standing for hours in the cold wind, but she didn’t dare leave the rooftop.
At one, she had to move from her little hiding spot to duck into the ladies’ room. She spent enough time in there to warm up before going back out to the rooftop. A security guard was making rounds, and she managed to get around a corner just before he caught sight of her.
Another hour passed, two, three. When her watch hit five o’clock, she could no longer pretend he was just holding off until afternoon for his cigarette break. She’d missed him and didn’t know how she was going to get another chance to get up onto the rooftop the next day to see him.
Instead of walking toward the elevator, though, her feet took her to the nondescript door that led to The Retreat. She couldn’t stand the idea of going back down without at least passing by the door that led to the place where she’d felt joy and ecstasy and contentment like she’d never felt at any other time in her life.
Anita knocked. “Sir?” she said. “Sir? Are you in there?”
She wanted to knock again, harder, call for him louder, but she didn’t know if the security guard she’d seen earlier was still up there. She didn’t want to attract his attention. She glanced up, and saw a security camera aimed at the door. She knew she was busted, standing there right under it knocking on the door.
“Sir?” Anita said again. She could swear she heard the nearly silent click of the lock. Anita tried the doorknob. It turned. The door opened. Anita almost shouted with joy. She ducked inside and pulled the door shut behind her. She hit the light switch, happy beyond belief to have lights actually turn on when she did so. It was warm in The Retreat, as Sir had kept it all weekend so they would be comfortable naked. She looked up where the corner of two walls met the ceiling, at the black glass half-globe of another security camera. A little red light blinked below it. There was no doubt that somebody knew she was there. Anita had no idea what the consequences would be, but she was willing to face them.
In the middle of the kitchen table, where Sir had placed the key, was a cell phone. Anita walked tentatively toward it. It started ringing. She picked it up.
“Miss Rhodes.”
“Ma’am,” Anita said, recognizing Paragould’s voice immediately.
“You may take your coat off and get comfortable. Mr. Marshall will be arriving shortly.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
Anita looked around the room. The red light on the security camera abruptly blinked off. The only chair in the living room was Sir’s so she sat down at the kitchen table. From her seat, she was looking right at the refrigerator and cabinets. She was positively starving, but had not been given permission to eat anything. She was still trespassing. For all she knew, Sir was going to be in a fury when he got there. That gave her such a case of nerves that she couldn’t even think of eating anything. But the door seemed to have unlocked for her. Had somebody identified her and remotely let her in? Would Paragould have been notified of her presence at the door? Anita had no idea what to think. All she could do was wait and hope.
Fifteen minutes later, the door opened.
Anita got out of her chair and dropped to her knees, eyes to the floor. “Sir,” she said.
“Miss Rhodes. Please, stand. Look at me.”
As soon as her eyes met his, Anita knew that she never should have left on Sunday without asking the questions that had been in her mind, without opening the door for him to ask the ones that had been on his.
“I am so sorry, Sir.”
“No. No apology is necessary. Would you like to come kneel beside me so we can talk?”
“Yes, Sir.” Anita stood still until he had hung up his coat and then followed him to the living room. He sat, and she knelt beside him.
“First, the one thing I should have told you. I fired you.”
“Sir?”
“I’d seen you the day of your team’s presentation. You had definitely caught my eye in the cafeteria. I was in a mindset where I was craving…something. You had it. The way you moved around the room, you broadcast it. And then the presentation. Everybody but your manager spoke your name, talked about your work, so I looked you up afterwards. Your employee file, of course, has your pi
cture in it. I recognized you, and couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t seen you at the presentation. You were obviously at work that day. So I did some digging, looked your reviews, and at the work you’d done. You were ten times the employee Woolever was treating you as.”
“If I may, Kenneth,” she said, spitting out his name. “Why did you fire me, then?”
“Because I quickly determined that she had wasted years of your life. Well, I had wasted those years, by not having a system in place to identify it. But she was good at hiding how truly loathsome a person she is. Her peer reviews showed her to be tremendously popular. If I’d fired her, I would have been honest that it was for managerial incompetence and stealing work and credit from others. She would have known it was about you, and she would have still had too many people here that she would have told, and you would have never gotten out from under her. So the severance, the resume work, the contact with the placement firm. Those were already all in place. I wanted to set you up somewhere else with a better job, a better life and future than you ever would have been able to build here. Give you a clean slate somewhere else.”
“Is this true?” Anita asked.
“Yes,” he said, looking her in the eye. “It is.”
“And Woolever?”
“When you tried to access the offices, it flagged security to deal with her. They were to give you thirty minutes to get off premises, and then they arrived with her papers, read out the reason for her termination in front of your team, and frog-marched her out of the building. Your coworker Peter Ross has been promoted to take her place.”
Anita thought back to the day she’d been fired. Getting the news, getting the box of things that had been on her desk from Woolever, coming up to the rooftop instead of leaving right away... “And then I came up to the roof and happened to catch you sneaking a cigarette…”
“That. I can only say that was fate.”
“I don’t know why I did it,” Anita said.
“I am so happy that you did.”
“May I be bold, Sir?”
“Yes.” Anita didn’t realize she’d called him Sir again until she saw a hint of a smile crack his face.
“Will I ever be able to wear that collar again?”
“No, Miss Rhodes,” he said.
“I see, Sir.”
“No. I don’t think you do.”
“Sir?” Anita asked.
“That collar. It belongs to this space. It was something I put on you for the weekend to cue you to certain behaviors that I wanted from you while you were here. I won’t put that collar back on you.”
“What does that mean, Sir?”
“Remember telling me, the first time I wanted to kiss you, that after too many bad experiences, the next man you kissed needed to be pretty spectacular?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I must have come to the same conclusion myself, without knowing I’d done so. I bought a collar for The Retreat, for the space and what I expected to happen here. It’s been a long time since I’d gone out to get a collar specifically for a person. I must have decided somewhere along the way that the next person I bought a collar for would need to prove herself to be somebody very special.”
Anita’s knees almost gave out under her. She had to put an arm on Sir’s seat to keep from falling over. “Have I done that, Sir?”
“More than, Miss Rhodes.”
“I see, Sir.”
“You realize that I still expect you to go to whatever interviews are set up, and find some sort of meaningful work. I need you to be a complete person, whole within yourself, to take you on as my dedicated Submissive.”
“Or course, Sir. It would do neither of us any good if I were to spend my days waiting for you to summon me.”
“Especially if I made you kneel in silence whenever I was at work.”
“I would not serve under those conditions, Sir,” Anita said.
“I would not be happy with anyone that would. Perhaps we will go collar shopping this weekend. In the meantime, would you like to take your clothes off, and bend over with your face up against that window?” he asked.
“It would make me deliriously happy to please you that way, Sir.”
###The End###
About T. Evans
T. Evans is my dark billionaire romances pen name. You can find more of my contemporary pen name books under,Ted Evans.
I’m from London and seeing as London is far from sunny. I spend most of my time in Costa, the British equivalent of the Starbucks writing dirty books.
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