by Mia Madison
If Aura Johanssen had a good lawyer, they’d probably get me right there for sexual harassment. But she doesn’t. And I intend to keep it that way.
“And no one offers them the trap door through the glass ceiling,” she snaps.
“You had one your mother couldn’t even have imagined.”
It goes on like that, with me baiting her, watching her squirm on her toes and squeeze her thighs together, until I can’t keep her standing there a second longer without the lust scoring across my skin overwhelming me.
3
Aura
“Christ, I hate him so much,” I tell Tai as we’re washing the wineglasses, tidying up before going to bed. “Just because he’s gorgeous and hot, doesn’t mean he isn’t the most cocky, arrogant ass in all of Silicon Valley, which is saying something. Damn I wish we had space for a dishwasher.”
“You know what they say about protesting too much,” Tai smirks. “If I were you I’d take the chance to jump his bones at that swanky party he’s putting on for you all.”
“We don’t know for sure it’s swanky, just because he hired some over-priced planning service,” I snip. “He did that because he’s too stuck up to go with the ideas from his staff.”
“Well it can’t be any less swanky than my office party today.”
“Oh god, I forgot all about that. It seems so weird to have a Christmas party in the middle of the day.”
“The word is Scroogey. And it’s even worse that they wouldn’t even pay for the food, we had to bring pot luck.”
“How could I forget? I won’t ever look at a shrimp again after helping you peel all three pounds.”
“My shrimp were the only edible dish there. It was a line up of disgusting leftovers covered over in Velveeta or Campbells soup sauce topped with marshmallows.”
“I can guarantee you there won’t be any soup at Milo’s party. I’ve seen how he turns his nose up at anything less than gourmet. Even his donuts are farm-to-table.”
“Can you smuggle me into your party pretty please?” Tai begs.
“Ohmigod, I forgot to tell you that too. My boss told me to invite you.”
“He said you could plus one?” Tai screeches, grabbing me and salsa-ing me across the floor then dipping me over the sofa, still clutching the dish towel.
“He did, but only you so don’t get too Glee about it. I don’t want my co-workers despising me any more than they already do.”
Tai goes twerking around the cramped living room until I collapse laughing.
“The party starts early tomorrow with movie afternoon while the Elite Bitches decorate the office, then kicks off for real at five.”
“I have to work,” Tai groans.
“They made you come in the day after your office Christmas party?” I’m stunned.
“Well it’s not as though any of us managed hangovers. Not with the whole; ‘We’ve added a two hundred dollar tab behind the open bar.””
“For seventy staff?” I laugh.
“Exactly. That barely covered my personal requirements for working in that dump all year.”
“So come right after. But don’t get drunk and tell my co-workers any secrets.”
“Like how you secretly wanna hump your boss?”
“Exactly like that – I’ll never hear the end of it. And It isn’t remotely true. Also, they’re really sneaky nerds, so don’t get beguiled by a mountain man beard and spill.”
“Scout’s honor.” Tai stands at military attention.
“Like you were ever in the scouts.”
“Do you think your boss secretly has the hots for me?” Tai looks off dreamily. “Imagine being swept off my feet and taken care of by a hunk that powerful.”
“Eww. Promise me you won’t flirt with him,” I call as Tai heads toward his room, hugging himself gleefully.
“You need this?” I shout, waggling my Santa gift after him.
“Night, Boo.” Tai waves back over his shoulder.
I’m left in the cramped kitchen area still frustrated at my day and without my pal to download to. Why had Milo insisted I bring Tai to the office party when it was strictly staff only, no SOs? Was he worried I’d have no one to talk to, being the only girl and seeing as my department all hate me?
Maybe he’s also some kind of misogynist, a woman hater. Far from being all altruistic, giving me a job in the male-dominated department, he’s really just loving how he gets to watch me squirm under their alpha attitude. From the way Milo tries to bait me every time he calls me into his office, I could more easily imagine him reveling in me standing alone in the corner being ignored even when under the mistletoe.
Milo Locksley (known as Lox in the Valley) is only thirty five according to his Wiki page and the many articles writtten about him online and in print. But the guys in the office talk about him like he’s their Dad, just because he recalls a time pre-internet, pre-Apps. When you had to dial a number and arrange a date rather than swipe through them online.
And boy does he do a lot of swiping. Okay, I admit I looked him up on Google but only because he’s my boss, holding my livelihood in his huge palm. If the dropdown offered ‘Milo Lox girlfriend’ as I typed his name into the box, I can’t be blamed for stalking just because I happened to click on it.
I fully expected to see him holding up the usual East European cat-eyed model type. And I wasn’t disappointed. What I wasn’t expecting was to see a different model in every shot. Not just European, there were Indonesian models, African models, Brazilian. My boss truly is an equal opportunity employer. Just seemed that he was the one indulging in the opportunities because no girl ever appeared in more than one shot – I checked. No wonder he makes me so mad.
I toss around, unable to sleep without the sexy face of my boss swarming into my mind. Every time I see that smug grin, I reach for the Ipad on my nightstand and imagine ramming it down on his skull. I check my mail and take another look at the app I’m working on for LoxTek, driven to work in the middle of the night. Many of the geeks I work with stay at the office through the night, intent on getting it right.
In the morning, Tai’s already left for work so I don’t get his advice on what to wear for the office party. It’s a Winter Wonderland theme so I’m tempted to pull on some leggings and a chunky sweater but I don’t think that’ll fly with my boss, who’d mentioned at some point that we should make an effort. That was a pointed remark to the guys, not to come to the party in their usual plaid shirts or Grateful Dead vintage tees. I choose a velvety tight stretch dress that definitely covers every hint of cleavage but does at least plunge low in the back.
I can’t quite force myself to forgo every hint of sexy and be the uptight covered-up prude at a Christmas party. Some part of me wants to prove to the guys I work with that yes, I do have a feminine side. I’d like to see them give me the side eye of surprise, discovering that I am indeed desirable even if they don’t stand a chance. Carrying my dress in a separate bag, I throw on something less formal and head out to the office.
The lobby entrance to the Lox building is a massive cement indoor playground with trees everywhere. Swings and a skateboard ramp in one area, a food truck set up in another. I clack across the arena in my boots but when I reach the door to the inner sanctum of offices, I’m prevented from entering the development area. A girl dressed like the pixie presiding over the playboy mansion bars my way.
“This area is closed until 5pm,” she squeaks, adding, “Refurb,” with a wink.
She hands me a silvery package, it’s a drawstring bag made from real silk. Inside I find a mask, like the kind for a masquerade ball. Or a night in bondage.
“Very fifty shades, huh?” she winks again.
“If you’re into that kind of thing,” I snip.
I can tell she’s the newest recruit on the job. Very young and on door security, she lacks the snotty sophistication of the other Elite Bitches I’ve seen coming and going in the last couple of weeks. Especially Tania Elite, the girl boss and
snottiest of all. She always looks down her nose whenever she sees me.
“Here let me tie it on,” the pixie insists. She yanks it from my hand before I can snatch it away.
“Allow me,” a voice like sandpaper over plaster cuts in.
“Oh,” the girl squeaks, taking the word right out of my mouth.
I remind myself to keep my jaw hinged tight and not flop open from how virile and stunning Milo Locksley is. My boss turns me around to face away from him. Just the weight of his hands on my shoulders makes my tummy tumble over, then leap up toward my throat like one of those old toys where an evil clown leaps out from a box when you lift the lid.
“You aren’t into a masked ball?” He leans in to the ear furthest away from the pixie girl and whispers like we’re engaging in corporate conspiracy.
His breath is hot and I startle, every cell pricking at my skin lining. Did his lips brush at the shell or was it the weight of his voice? Or my rampant imagination?
“Good morning Aura,” Cutter pulls up beside us standing erect as a kid in his new school uniform. “Sir.”
His barely concealed smirk says he thinks he’s stumbled on something.
“I can do it,” I mumble.
I grab the mask back from my boss then excuse myself with some stuttering about needing the washroom. I start running like I’ve got a bad case of the Mexican Revenge.
4
Milo
Aura takes off like a marathon newbie as soon as Cutter Dale appears beside us. Annoyed by the interruption, I round on him with a snarled greeting which makes him fear for his position. As I’m striding away, it occurs to me that there’s something going on between him and Aura despite the strict company policy.
Why else would she have taken fright like that as soon as he appeared? I almost lost my calm and fired him on the spot. The idea that anyone else was enjoying her was like a multiple stab wound.
Why does she have to fight with me about every single thing? She even accused me of being a macho when I suggested that the Women’s March after the inauguration was sexist. Why did women need to segregate to protest something that related to all of us? She started a barbed showdown with me on that when I was merely saying we’re all human.
“Men and women should revolt together not separately,” I said and merely received a harrumph for my joke.
Aura flatly refuses to relax around me, no matter what I try. She even goes so far as to question every new initiative I deliver to the team, simply for the pleasure of making me look less masterful. Like I should leave the new tech ideas to the youngsters. It has occurred to me that she’s in accord with some of the kids in the office who think I’m ancient. They forget that there wouldn’t be a Facebook if my generation hadn’t been early adopters.
Whatever. Ageism is for the young.
Maybe that’s her problem. She thinks I’m some skeezy old dude trying to get her panties off. I can’t deny there have been times when she’s standing across from me and her cheeks flush with barely repressed anger at our different positions on a subject. Her sense of being inferior to the boss makes her fire up. Then I’d love nothing more than to tell her to come to me, to turn around while I bend her across the desk.
Aura is a girl just asking for a spanking every time she comes into my office. And I have dreams most nights about how flushed I’d make her hidden cheeks if I ever got the chance.
Her favorite boss-bait is why don’t I have more women working in the office.
“Women are a distraction,” I tell her and am rewarded with an eyeroll I’d have loved to punish her for. “I mean it. Why do you think you don’t see any female Buddhist monks at the temple?”
“Are you going to suggest that tech is like religion?”
“It is to me. Or was.”
I couldn’t tell her that I’d been subjected to no end of abuse from women. But only once I’d made a fortune, earning eleven billion dollars for two Apps I developed and sold before I was thirty. Then they all came buzzing out like an irate hive. The women that I’d dallied with or had dallied with me, or had dallied with other guys in the company and suddenly wished it had been me instead, saw their payout.
There were rumblings of inappropriate this and that. A couple of kids that never showed for DNA tests. But all that stuff hits the Internet and sticks like sick on the carpet. I may be saddled with my rep because I’m too focused on work to want to devote my attention to a woman’s needs, but does that make me a playboy?
Aside from my own emotional trials, I’ve also seen too many guys driven to distraction by office romances.
“After I spent a little time on Mt Koya, a sojourn after a manic business deal in Tokyo, I still like to maintain a little zen in my life,” I tell Aura, thinking she was mature enough to get it. Instead she got riled up with her liberation thing.
“And that means eradicating women?” she snipped. “When if men could only keep it in their pants and not look at every skirt as a potential fuck buddy, I mean hook-up, then...”
“You can say fuck buddy, Aura, I’m not your father.”
I got another harrumph and saw her board herself up like she was preparing for a hurricane. The line drawn between boss and employee was set in stone not sand. I could never get her to move across it. The second I see her standing at the door to the office inner sanctum, a pixie in fishnets beside her, I know why I went to all this trouble. It’s partly the way she’s holding the eyemask like it’s ticking down to detonate in thirty seconds. Why the mere mention of a roommate had me sweating bullets. Why I want to sock her co-worker’s smug jaw.
If I went all out on this Christmas party it’s all for her. That may sound hypocritical, seeing as I did seduce the woman running this event but even if it sounds crazy, my intention was to give Aura a good enough time that she’d loosen up. And come to see me as a man not a monster.
As she waggles her perfect ass across the playground I built for the staff, I can’t help but think this is going to be more of a challenge than one office Christmas party can take care of.
“Are you remembering to tell everyone that the masquerade lasts all day?” I ask the pixie who’s looking up at me like she’s seen God and is literally young enough to be my daughter.
“Yes,” she squeaks, nervous as a mouse.
“Including Aura?” I demand. She looks confused about the identity of Aura so I add; “The girl that just left.”
“Oh yes, I was about to put it on her myself, then you, um...”
“Okay,” I bark, not needing any reminder that she blew me off good and hard.
Any other woman would have undulated softly under my touch, maybe leaned back into my chest and allowed her butt to graze the slightest amount across my bulge. Not Aura. She stiffens and takes the first excuse to dash off without so much as a coquettish glance back over her shoulder.
Shit.
I walk into the office, now a construction zone covered in fake snow, ice and glittery fake flakes and wonder why I bothered. I should have constructed some fake convention in Hawaii to spirit her away to, instead of this winter wonderland themed masque.
“Yoo-oo, Milo.”
Shit. Tania’s here already.
She comes tripping over the snowflakes in her towering streetwalker shoes and I brace myself for her to fall into my arms. She makes the journey without tumbling but still she clasps my arm in both hands.
“Would you like to test out the photo booth?” she purrs, stroking her fingers up and down my bicep and licking her lips as though it’s my cock she’s caressing.
Again. Never again.
“Maybe later,” I grunt. “I’ve got work to take care of.”
I don’t. At least nothing that can’t wait until I can get the roiling thoughts of Aura out of my head.
What do I have to do to interest her? To show her I’m not who and what she thinks I am.
“Promise?” Tania pouts a little. “I’ve set it up so that everyone can get a shot sitting on a mountain
man, but I want mine sitting on you. That’s all I want for Christmas, Daddy.”
I mutter something that alludes to a promise, in order to extract myself. What the fuck was I thinking, fucking Tania in the parking lot when I knew she’d be here running the party? I wasn’t thinking. All my available thought is consumed by Aura.
The staff are working until noon, then heading into the screening room we usually use for training and demos. Today there’s a popcorn cart and hot dogs and Scrooged. Aura doesn’t leave her laptop at the same time as the rest of the staff. She’s the only one still working at the hotdesk outside my office, the only area available, that isn’t being decorated. I put in a call to the pixie’s WhatsApp and tell her there’s a missing person.
She comes running in moments later and virtually throws Aura off of her high stool. She cajole-bullies her into the mask before leading her away. Seeing Aura masked like that has my cock twitching hungrily. It’s kind of insane what she does to me and I ought to do something responsible like move her to the New York office. Instead, I wait a few moments until the heat scarring my insides lowers and I’m sufficiently composed to follow her.
5
Aura
Argh, this Christmas elf is the most annoying kid on the face of the planet.
“Is this your first job?” I snap, as she literally drags me off my stool at the hot desk toward the cinema.
“Oh, is it that obvious?” she giggles. “I’m eager to please the boss. Aren’t you?”
“Not really,” I come back, maybe a little too fast. “We have different bosses though.”
“Yours is hotter than a well-stoked fireplace,” she says. “If I was Tania I’d never let him out of my sight.”
What does that mean? A rip goes through my chest that could send the buttons from my shirt splattering around the room. I shouldn’t even care if her boss is hooking up with mine. Why am I suddenly palpitating?