The Deep End

by AM Hartnett

  Stepping off the elevator onto the thirteenth floor, Grace held her head high. She strode between the rows of cubicles and through the glass partition separating Caroway’s office from the rest of the floor. His door was closed and she could hear his voice as she booted up her computer.

  Her insides were ice as she sank down. She imagined him talking to Taureau, shaking his head as he watched scene after scene of Grace’s hook-ups.

  Ten minutes passed and stretched into twenty. She couldn’t concentrate beyond the murmur coming from behind that heavy door. She scrolled through every email and, when it became clear she hadn’t retained a damn word, marked them all as unread. Then she just sat there with her hands folded in front of her and waited.

  At Caroway’s sudden bark of laughter she jumped, then sat back. The tension in her limbs eased a little. He wasn’t talking to Taureau. Caroway didn’t joke with Taureau. No one joked with Taureau, she’d been told.

  And so what? Now you have to just keep sweating.

  She dug into her bottom drawer and pulled out her Dictaphone. There was nothing on her plate now that the Breton-Craig deal was done, but she couldn’t stand not having something to concentrate on. Transcribing minutes was as mundane as you could get, but she could put all of her attention into following the conversation that flowed into her ear.

  Caroway eventually emerged from his office and chirped his morning greeting. Grace tried her best to return it, but the words came out deflated. Once his back was to her, as he made his jolly morning jaunt to his scheduled meeting, she sagged in her seat and decided that she was doing sweet fuck all that day unless he dropped something urgent on her desk.

  Resigned to playing the waiting game, she opened her browser and clicked in the search bar. Her fingers paused over the keyboard as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  As she pressed down on the ‘J’ and a list of suggestions popped up, a spark of rebellion went through her. She swept her gaze around the office.

  Was he watching? If she typed in the name, would he see it? Was he monitoring her computer? Was her work area important enough to monitor? Caroway’s office, obviously, but her little nook? Was there a camera hidden in the smoke detector above her office? Was her webcam wired to secretly feed back to some command central Taureau had set up for himself?

  It wasn’t a crazy notion. Big Brother had nothing on Taureau’s set-up.

  ‘JACQUES ALAIN TAUREAU,’ she typed, and peered at the rows and rows of results that appeared in her browser.

  She clicked on the first web encyclopedia page. Nothing too salacious here, but she still read through the section of his early life with interest:

  Jacques Alain Taureau was born in Ottawa, Ontario.

  His father, Dominic, was the son of a lobster fisherman and a schoolteacher from Mont Carmel, New Brunswick, near Shediac. Dominic worked on the lobster boats from the time he was twelve to fifteen, at which time he left home for Moncton and then Montreal. He returned a decade later with an education and began work in Saint John for a politician, and eventually won his seat as a Liberal MP. During his time in Montreal, Dominic married socialite Theresa Werner. Dominic and Theresa had one child, Jacques.

  Jacques grew up in Montreal and spent his summers in Mont Carmel, spoiled by his mother and groomed by his grandfather to take over the family airline, but when he was a teen his partying ways led him to drugs and alcohol. He barely made it through university and dropped out of grad school. Famously described by his father as a ‘disappointment’ during the 1997 Federal election, Taureau frequently made headlines due to his multiple arrests, outbursts of violence, and trips to rehab. In April 1997, Taureau was arrested in in Simcoe County, north of the Greater Toronto Area, when his vehicle was pulled over for speeding. Marijuana and heroin were discovered on his person. He was sentenced to probation and required to undergo compulsory drug testing.

  There was a small photo inlaid with the text: Taureau’s mugshot.

  Even wrecked, he wore a panty-creaming smirk and blue bedroom eyes. Grace conjured up what little of him she had seen the previous night, but couldn’t see that arrogant smirk on the man who had ordered her to come for him.

  Throughout most of the strife, Taureau was involved with Bette (Elizabeth) Laurin, whom he met his last year of high school. She and Taureau had a toxic relationship, and her drug use reportedly eclipsed even Taureau’s. Those who knew Laurin described her as volatile when she was high, and during one of Taureau’s stays in rehab she was arrested for domestic assault on Jeffrey Brown, with whom she was having a sexual relationship in Taureau’s absence. These charges were later dropped at Brown’s request.

  The next section dealt exclusively with what Taureau was most famous for: the night almost sixteen years ago when Taureau woke up to Bette Laurin sitting on his chest with a knife in her hand.

  Another mug shot, this one of Bette Laurin. Grace had been a teenager when the attack happened, and she had seen photos on news shows of Laurin and Taureau together. They were Barbie and Ken on cocaine. In this picture, Bette was the aftermath of a horror movie. Mascara ran down her face and her lipstick was smeared. Her blonde hair was mussed and caked with something black that Grace guessed was dried blood. The woman wore such a look of anguish that Grace felt a pang of sympathy for her.

  What would she have been if she had lived a different life? During the trial, accusations of sexual abuse as a child had been used to explain the bad turns she’d taken in her life. No one had believed her, until her mother came forward and confirmed that Bette’s father had brutalised her. It wasn’t enough to garner sympathy among the jury.

  As the article confirmed, Elizabeth Laurin had been sentenced to ten years. She probably would have gotten less if it wasn’t for the furore Dominic Taureau and Shane Werner had created in the media.

  With the death of Shane Werner in 2004, he inherited his grandfather’s multinational aerospace and transportation company, Werner Transport, and renamed it Taureau-Werner Inc., He operates as Chief Executive Officer from his rumored home outside of Saguenay, Quebec. In 2005, he named Hugh Caroway as Executive Vice President of Taureau-Werner. Caroway acts in Taureau’s absence when necessary.

  Since the attack, Taureau has lived his life out of the public eye. It is rumored that he suffers from depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and extreme paranoia. Upon Laurin’s death in 2005 of breast cancer, Taureau refused comment (although Dominic Taureau claimed to speak for the entire family when he told a reporter, ‘good riddance’).

  She next tried an image search. There weren’t even any photos of Taureau during the trial: apparently he had been let into the courtroom via a private entrance. The only thing she found was a sketch artist’s drawing, blurry and indistinct with only slashes of pink to represent his scars. Nothing after the trial, nothing in the last fifteen years. Nothing until he had showed himself to her the previous night.

  Grace sat back and processed what she had read. Did this story really tell her anything about Taureau? That he’d been damaged by the attack? That he had preferred, and obviously still did prefer, his lovers with a streak of adventure?

  She pulled open her top drawer and dug deep. She kept her emergency pack of cigarettes taped to the back panel, and for seven months she’d kept her hands off it, but what she wrapped her hand around wasn’t her cigarettes. It wasn’t a stapler or half a box of ballpoint pens.

  She closed her fingers and electricity shot through her. She didn’t need to look to know her hand was wrapped around the smooth shaft of a vibrator.

  Her temperature rising, she crooked her head and took a second sweep of the office.

  An unfamiliar sound drew her attention to her computer screen where a small notification flashed before her eyes. No one in the office used the IM function of their email program any more. There had been too much abuse, and so it had been disabled.

  She closed her drawer and moved her mouse to open the message from JAT.

  OTHER DRAWER
.

  There it was, sitting in her tray on top of a mound of paper clips. It looked like a perfume roll-on, but the engraved writing on the cylinder read ‘Breathless Sensations Clitoral Gel.’ She’d read reviews of this stuff but had never taken it off her wish list.

  Another line of text joined the first.

  OFFICE.

  She moved the cursor to the text area, but discovered that she couldn’t add her own message. It was symbolic of this whole thing: he could push her buttons from afar, but she was powerless to reciprocate.

  Turning her screen off as she rose, Grace looked through the partition at the rest of the staff. Some bounced from cubicle to cubicle. Others typed furiously, earbuds drowning out the noise around them. No one paid her any attention as she took the vibrator and lube from her desk and slipped into Caroway’s office.

  As soon as she had closed the door behind her, she heard the muffled ring of a telephone. She knew right where to look. There in the credenza, next to her emergency supplies, was an iPhone, face lit up with an incoming call from JAT.

  She cradled the phone against her ear.

  ‘It’s not like you were going to do anything today, anyway,’ he murmured in that sinfully raspy voice.

  Grace suppressed the shiver that danced along her spine. ‘You move fast. How did you get them into my desk so quickly? And this phone? You didn’t do it yourself.’

  ‘I have people who do that sort of thing for me. There’s a headset in with your stash. Put it on. I want your hands free.’

  Digging into the credenza, she tingled as she thought of him the previous night, laid back in his chair looking at her like she was dinner. Her fingers trembled as she worked the earpiece in. She loathed wearing a headset, ever since her first job working at a call centre selling newspaper subscriptions, and preferred a crick in the neck over mobility, but, as soon as static crackled in her hear and she heard Taureau breathing, her heart beat faster at the thought of him giving those orders practically in her brain.

  ‘There, that’s better,’ he went on with laughter on his voice. ‘Now take your clothes off.’

  She thought back to that mugshot she’d seen only moments ago, and couldn’t put that tweaked-out young man together with the voice in her head.

  ‘The morning meeting isn’t going to go on for ever,’ she reminded him, turning in a circle as she shimmied out of her cardigan. ‘Where do you want me to look?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I can see you, and the meeting will go on as long as I want it to.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I have someone in that room that makes sure it does.’

  The authority in his voice was like a drug shot into her veins. She tossed the sweater onto the floor and went to work on the belt bisecting her dress. She let it fall and reached behind for her zipper. ‘Do you have a hard-on?’

  ‘Shush …’

  There was only the sound of his breathing as she completed her disrobing. No garters and thong today. She had dressed in anticipation of getting canned. Navy bikinis and a bra to match were as wild as it got.

  ‘Everything,’ he said when she was down to her wedge sandals.

  ‘You know, I’ve never been completely stripped down in here,’ she said, and kicked her shoes under the desk.

  ‘I know. You seem to like getting fucked while you’re half-dressed. Go over to the conference table, and take your gifts with you.’

  ‘Is that what these are?’ She held up the vibrator as she strode towards the table. She tossed the lube onto the surface and placed her palm flat on the edge. ‘Do you want me like last night?’

  ‘No, I want you on your back to start.’

  She stood on her toes and lifted her knee to the edge of the table, then stopped and looked around. ‘Why do I still have a job?’

  He chuckled, so low and lovely. ‘Because you were a very good girl last night and you did exactly what I told you to.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ she said, out of breath.

  She felt as though she was moving underwater as she climbed onto the table. Glancing around, she rolled onto her ass. The surface had never felt cooler, or perhaps it was because she was so hot.

  ‘I still don’t know where to look.’

  ‘Don’t look, just listen.’

  As his words simmered in her blood, Grace leaned back on one elbow. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Show me how wet you are.’

  Her thighs trembled as she drew her knees apart, escalating to a hot shiver as she exposed herself to him. She slowly danced her fingers over her belly and into the waiting wet heat. As she stroked herself, the pulse of his breath picked up. She held hers, hoping to hear the sounds of clothes rustling or even a zipper, but there was only that sharp in-and-out.

  ‘Wet, but not wet enough,’ he murmured. ‘I think it’s about time you tried out that lube.’

  Her fingers shook as she drew the lube closer. ‘I’ve always wanted to try this.’

  ‘Just use a little on the tip of your finger.’

  She squeezed a dollop onto her finger and brought it up to her nose. ‘Minty. Must be like an Altoids kiss.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘It’s when a man sucks a mint before going down on you. I read about it in Cosmo when I was in university and I wanted to give it a try, but my roommate beat me to the punch. She had a reaction and ended up in the hospital.’ She grinned and swept the tip of her finger around her clit. ‘I trust you spent a little more than the cost of an Altoids on this.’

  ‘If you could see yourself when you come, you’d agree there’s no price too high. Open up a little more for me.’

  Grace drew her feet closer to her ass until there was nothing left to show. She didn’t feel any difference with the lube, not yet, but having him pull her strings once more had her dripping.

  ‘What would you do to me if you had me?’ she whispered. She needed to keep him talking as she rolled her finger around and around her clit.

  And there in her ear, she heard it: the rustling of his clothes and the creak of his chair as he undressed, and the quick intake of his breath as he began to touch himself. She closed her eyes and summoned forth the image of his glorious, glistening cock.

  ‘Just like you are,’ he said, his voice shaky now, ‘spread out like that and squirming while I play with your clit.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  She dropped back again, all the way down, and closed her eyes. She imagined herself from above, sprawled out like she was at that moment, but with a shadowy figure kneeling between her legs. She could almost feel his thick fingers stroking through the pink, wet heat he found.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said again, rolling the hard bud under her middle finger. ‘Yes, tell me more.’

  ‘You tell me,’ he murmured. ‘Tell me what you would do to please me.’

  The crackle of static gave his voice an unearthly quality, once more the sorcerer prying into her thoughts. She pushed the balls of her feet against the hard surface of the table and rocked her ass in tune with her finger. She lived and breathed the fantasy behind her eyes of being slowly undone by her faceless lover.

  Grace slid two fingers lower and pushed into the wetness. She didn’t go any further than the first joints. She needed to tease herself, to prolong this sweet torture as long as it suited him.

  ‘You want to watch me squirm. I can tell, and so you’ll make me squirm.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I want your tongue on my clit. You know how badly I want you to lick me, to suck me, but you need me ready for you. A wet hole isn’t good enough, not for you.’ She squeezed her lids shut and quaked as she flexed her fingers at the mouth of her cunt. ‘You want me hungry.’

  ‘Back up to your clit,’ he said, breathless in her ear, and sucked in a quick breath as she delved a little deeper. ‘Grace, do as I say.’

  His command was just as powerful as the sensation of being stretched, and she bit her lip and complied. She wondered if he had the perfect view of what he
had done to her.

  ‘I’ll beg for something more, but you’ll just tease me.’ Two fingers on either side of her clit, she moaned as such a teasing touch sent a hot spasm though her. ‘Oh, wow, I think that stuff is really starting to work.’

  ‘Keep talking. You’ll beg for something.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll beg you, all right, but it won’t be enough. You’ll play with me, just like this, maybe using your fingers in my pussy like I just did to make me crazy.’

  She shook her head, pushing up faster as the slight pinch evoked another throb. The shuffling sounds on the other end of the line became more pronounced. Though faint, she caught the squelch of flesh against flesh, his cock in his palm.

  She opened her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. ‘You’ll tease me while you’re doing it. You’ll have your cock in hand, using my juices as lube, and you’ll make me watch you jerk off while you finger me.’

  ‘It’ll make you want it more.’

  Nodding, Grace cranked her wrist and let the pleasure build and build. ‘You won’t let me have it, though. You let me know it, too. You might kneel up here by my head and let me suck your cock, but you won’t fuck me, and then you won’t even touch me any more.’

  Her fingers stilled. She felt around her for the vibrator.

  ‘You’ll stand over me, knowing how bad I want you to do whatever you want at this point. Fuck my pussy, my mouth, my ass, but you get off on keeping me from coming. You know –’

  ‘How hungry you’ll be for my cock if I keep it from you a little longer.’

  ‘Yes, exactly, and so you show me what I can’t have.’ The vibrator in hand, she touched the button on the base of the shaft. ‘All you leave me with is this, knowing it will never be good enough.’

  Engrossed completely in her fantasy, she pressed the tip of the vibe to her clit. It took only seconds for her sex to adjust to the sudden vibration, and then she turned it up almost all the way.

  ‘Close your eyes and keep talking. Tell me.’

  He was puffing now, his authority cracking as desperation took over.

  ‘So close. God, you’re so close, kneeling with your cock just above my pussy.’ Pushing the vibe in, she ground down and moaned through clenched teeth. ‘You’re going to come anywhere but my pussy. Aren’t you?’