by Jamie Knight
Don’t let them get to you, Tommy. Don’t let them hurt you anymore. I took care of them, just for you. I imagine her saying this, smiling, and gesturing at me with a flourish. And I’ll take care of any more people who try to harm you. My thoughts wander to Ms. Vanacore, and her short way of dealing with me when I shut down her office for help, and for getting me lunch. The Melissa, in my head, laughs and says. Don’t let her get to you either, honey. She’s just jealous that you’ve got someone like me already helping you. She’s just upset that she missed out on the opportunity to be the dashing gentlewoman who swoops in and saves you. The Melissa in my head chuckles. She comes close to me. She’s just mad because now she feels like the southern relic who fed you to the crocodiles and alligators. The Melissa, in my head, turns around. She lets me look at her clean, crisp slacks and her tight, firm ass in the slacks. She shakes it at me, saying something I know she probably wouldn’t say in real life, but she does here. I’ll feed you my cock-a-dile any time. Or my ass-i-gator! She chuckles and waves bye-bye at me.
After that weird and wonderful fantasy of mine with the Melissa in my head, I finish out the rest of the workday. I get through a huge chunk of Vanacore’s case files and adding notes to them. I also make some good headway in noting down her dictation and collecting the next batch of recordings, ones she’s just loaded to our filesharing client.
Chapter Eighteen
Tommy
After loading all of my completed work in file folders for Vanacore to examine and I clock out for the day. But before I can get out of the office completely, Ms. Vanacore stops me. “Wait a moment, Tommy.”
I stop short, feeling terrified by the gruff tone in her voice. My knees and stomach go weak, feeling like I’m about to get scolded. I turn around, not knowing why I’ve just thought I might turn around to see her with her cane out, asking me to bend over her desk, or over her knee.
I don’t turn around to see either of those things. But what I do see is tense light flickering in her eyes. “Yes, ma’am?”
Ms. Vanacore doesn’t answer for a moment. Instead, she rocks back and forth a bit in her chair as if she’s thinking or weighing out something.
When she does speak, she says, “I’ve been around a long time, Tommy. I’ve heard it all. Seen it all. I lived through a great amount of it myself. People can be stupid, mean creatures. To the point, I don’t believe they should even be called human. As an old southern woman, I lived in a quiet world. Stifled. In my day, we didn’t have things like HR, and pleasing the boss was just the way you moved up in the world.” She looks at me more closely, searching my face. Her gaze runs over parts of my body. “I know you like me. I know this without asking, and without you telling me, son.”
She clears her throat, and at that moment, her eyes spark was something like yearning. Like she yearns to be more than a mother figure presence to me. At that moment, I see that she doesn’t just want to be the quintessential boss —she wants to be more than that to me, for me. She wants to be my lover or something, though that thought makes me uncomfortable.
Not because I’m not at all attracted to her. I am. She’s good-looking enough, but my career plans did not and do not have anything to do with getting involved with my boss. Particularly not when a whole floor of my ex-coworkers already insinuated such, and use that to smear me and diminish my success.
“Ma’am, I don’t know what to say, I—”
Ms. Vanacore gets up from her desk. She walks over to me and puts one of her hands on my cheek gently, almost as if she is not touching me at all. She strokes the skin there, under my eyes and by my mouth. “You don’t need to say anything, Tommy,” she answers huskily. “I just want you to say that you trust me. That you’ll tell me if something’s happened, and you need me to take care of it.” On these words, she leans closer. Her perfume and hand lotion — there are two different, floral smells coming from her — fill my head. It makes it almost impossible for me to think or breathe. “I’ll take care of you, Tommy. I know how to handle things…” Her voice trails off as her hand trails down from my cheek to my neck, to the front of my shirt. “Things…specific things that a young...”—her hands drift down toward my slacks, toward the zipper and the button— “driven, incredibly-handsome man like yourself need from time to time. You need guidance and support around from your older, wiser, and much more experienced boss.”
Just as her fingers go to the tab of the zipper and pull, I step away. As much out of fear as confusion and excitement. Excitement is the part I hate the most. The part I fear the most. My heart is beating its way out of my chest, and I’m beginning to sweat more than I usually do. “Ms. Vanacore, I don’t think I’m…”
“Ready?” asks Ms. Vanacore, and I can tell she is. Her voice is deep and breathy enough.
At that moment, I completely lose track of what I was going to say. All I can do is stare at her.
“I could make you ready,” offers Ms. Vanacore softly, noticing that I’ve noticed her excitement.
Somehow, though part of my mind is traitorously into the idea of seeing just how ready she could make me, I shake my head. “No,” I say softly, “I’m sorry, Ms. Vanacore, ma’am, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t want people thinking that I got this far just because I’m…”
“Fucking your boss?” Ms. Vanacore supplies bluntly. I nod, surprised to see that she is not surprised by that insinuation, or by the idea itself. “Oh, Tommy,” she says, “anyone who’s anyone who’s ever made it anywhere worthwhile, they’ve slept with people all the way up and down the chain. Even in this office. All those office women turned wives of the bigwigs? They didn’t get promoted just because of their brains, I’ll bet you.”
Part of me doesn’t like her talking about women like Mrs. McKenzie and Mrs. Smith that way. “Even if that is the case, Ms. Vanacore,” I say quietly, very aware that I could make her angry and short-tempered with me again, just like she was when I refused lunch, “even if other people do that, I don’t want to. I want to get and keep where I am because of the good job I do.”
“So, you don’t find me sexy?” The question is so blunt, so pained, it makes me suck in my breath. “So, you don’t find me appealing at all?” She frowns, looking legitimately cut down. “I thought for sure by the way you were looking at me during our interview that you…” Her voice quivers here, and as it does, I feel terrible. I feel lower than dirt.
Against the part of my brain that’s telling me not to fall for this little charade of hers, I rush in and say, “No, that’s not it, Ms. Vanacore. I do find you…attractive…” As this word pops out of my mouth, I feel like I’m about to be shot straight through the head, or placed on the guillotine or in a gas chamber. I feel like I’ve just admitted the unspeakable. The un-admittable.
Some part of my soul screams at me, you fucking fool! You shouldn’t have said anything like that! Now, look what you’ve done! But it’s too late. I’ve already said it, and a change has already come over Ms. Vanacore. One that’s as magical as it is unnerving. She instantly looks brighter. Fuller of life, as if she’s a vampire who lives off people’s confessions of love rather than blood.
“You just don’t want to jump into anything too quickly, is that it?”
I nod. The gesture is against my will, it feels like. I didn’t really want to jump into this at all, let alone quickly. But it’s too late now. I’ve already affirmed the words she put in my mouth.
Ms. Vanacore pulls me closer to her again and puts a hand back on my face. Except, this time, it’s to trace my lips with her slim fingers.
“Well, that’s okay, Tommy. We can move slowly.” She chuckles warmly. But it’s not tender to my ears. It’s suffocating and hypnotizing, and in a way where I might lose myself completely. “You did just start working for me yesterday. So, we can go slowly. We don’t have to be like all these other ‘office romances’—we don’t have to get right to it.” She pauses, looking at me from half-lidded eyes. “But I’d like to show you s
omething either way. I want to show you what you do to me, Tommy, since you look like a young man who doesn’t expect people to find him attractive.”
As she speaks, she unzips her fly, unbuttons her pants, and pulls away the fabric of her underwear down her hips. She sits back on her desk and opens her legs, displaying her pussy for me. It’s wet and red, looking like it’s ready for a good fucking. Something I don’t want to give it.
Ms. Vanacore touches her labia with her fingers and begins to stroke it. “What do you think of her, Tommy? Pretty, isn’t she?” She looks over at me, at the crotch area of my pants, and nods. And that’s when I realize, she’s looking to see if I have an erection. She’s shown her goods, and now she wants me to do the same. “It’s perfect for your big cock,” she murmurs, stroking himself a bit more. Not fast, but thoughtfully.
I flush, moving to push my cock down and hide it her from view.
Ms. Vanacore moans at me as if I’m her cute little boy. “Oh, no need to be shy, son,” she whispers. “It’s only natural for our bodies to react this way. Why not show it to me?”
“I can’t,” I mutter. “It’s not right.”
Ms. Vanacore strokes herself a little faster, less thoughtfully. She does so, getting an eyeful of me. Roaming her eyes up and down my body. “You’re so handsome, son,” she says. She moans, stroking herself more quickly with each passing second. “Delicious looking and big. I’d really like to have a taste of you. But I promised to take it slowly, so for now, this evening, I’ll refrain. I’ll satisfy myself with looking, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go on a diet.”
Having Ms. Vanacore’s eyes on me while she touches her pussy, I’m not sure how I feel inside. My cock knows how she feels. She is excited and relishing the attention, but she doesn’t have any need or concept for morals or for emotions or any of those complicated things. She just likes getting attention, and the same can be said for my heart. While I appreciate Ms. Vanacore’s appreciation, I feel a bit awkward now. I feel dirty standing here and letting her look at me this way. If I were any good lawyer-in-training, I wouldn’t be standing here, letting her use me like porn.
Across from me, I hear and see Ms. Vanacore riling herself up. She’s panting and gasping with each new stroke, each bit of pressure she puts on her clit. Already, her face and eyes are bright. Full of pleasure and lust, something I’m beginning to worry about and fill my head with images of what she might want next. But I’m not going to do that kind of thing at work. Not if my reputation is going to be everything that I want: Free of reproach.
“She’s begging for you to fill her,” says Vanacore, nodding toward my dick. “Why not give me a little love? I won’t hurry you,” she adds quickly, and I can tell she’s holding off her orgasm, riding each little note of it, hoping I might join in her Symphony, but I’m not willing to feel this any more than I have already.
I shake my head, licking my lips. “No,” I say, through a defiant throb, my cock gives me, “This is too fast.”
Ms. Vanacore grunts, sighs. It seems she’s getting off to that idea. Literally. “When you go home tonight,” she murmurs, stroking herself as fast as I would if I were her, and I wanted to cum before my muse left me, “think about me. Get really naughty with it, Tommy. Stroke yourself off. Maybe even fuck a little toy if you have one.” She’s breathing heavily now. Sweating from behind her long locks of white hair. “Oooh, oooh, my heavens, Tommy, if only I could see your cock…”
Ms. Vanacore goes, right then, letting out a strangled, reedy grown. She punches out a breath of air, panting with what I imagine is each throb of her clit.
As she comes down off her orgasm and I hear her pull something out of a box (probably tissue to wipe herself up), she says, “You are truly beautiful, Tommy. That body of yours. It’s bigger and more beautiful than any I have seen before. I hope you don’t make me wait until our one-year anniversary to fuck you.” The attitude and mockery she’s got on “the first anniversary” sounds like she’s making fun of every bride-to-be dream in Cosmopolitan.
I don’t know what to say to any of this, so I don’t say anything. I just walk out of her office, telling her I’ll see her tomorrow morning, bright and early, as usual.
But, as I jog to the elevator, I know it’s going to be anything but “usual.” How can something like that be, after you’ve watched your boss get herself off? And with you as the muse? You can’t. This is why I’m going to go home, take care of myself, and make sure she gets off on something other than my body for the foreseeable future.
Like the good work ethic, she hired me for.
Chapter Nineteen
Melissa
God, I thought this day would never end, but finally, it has. And it’s done so with some good news. While I did have to go drop my phone off for Charlotte at lunch so that she could retrieve that God-awful file from it for Reese to show to the higher-ups — and get those sons of bitches fired — I do get some confirmation at the end of the day, when I go out to my car, that the effort was worth it.
I see a mass exodus of people with sad cardboard boxes filled with their things: office supplies and personal ones. It takes every bit of control on my part not to laugh at them all and tell them all they got exactly what they deserved for such foolish, brutish behavior, but I manage it. I get into my car, with the widest, most devilish grin I think I’ve ever had on my face.
I know it’s not good to smile on other people’s misfortune, but it’s hard not to do in this case. Not when Tommy is such a good guy, and not when I’ve been going through my own trouble with mean people as well, mainly my boyfriend-not-boyfriend, Dennis.
I see that a message has been left from him on my phone, the moment I’m thinking about him. Which makes me feel both good and bad. I listen to it on my way out of the parking lot, though I know I shouldn’t have my cell phone in hand while driving. I know it’s technically against the law, but I figure if I’m just listening to a voicemail, and not planning to have a long, drawn-out conversation, that it should be okay.
The voicemail plays, just as I’ve managed around my way out of the main driveway, and head for my favorite less-traveled route home. It takes a little longer to get there, but it’s better than spending the same amount of time stuck in traffic.
“Hello, my love,” begins the message, “It’s Dennis. I’m calling to apologize for earlier. For the way I left things with you a few days ago. If you’re not totally and completely angry with me, I’d like to make it up to you. I’d like to visit with you at the end of the week for an extended amount of time. I’ll make sure to be there on time this time, Melissa, so don’t worry.”
I stop at a stoplight, gripping my phone a little more tightly, so it doesn’t fall out of my hand or fly through the windshield.
“Again, I’m sorry I was such a jackass. Work and everything got to me, but that’s no excuse. Be well, my love, and I hope to hear from you soon.” The message is ended with a kiss or two over the receiver — exaggerated, so I can hear and feel them as if he were right there.
I press the button to end the call and toss the phone on the passenger seat. Listening to that message, my heart feels strange. On the one hand it feels warm and happy to receive Dennis’s apology. Any apology from him, really, since he usually doesn’t apologize. But, on the other hand, I did have to apologize first. I did call him, leave him a message and apologize to him for being so far away. I did this on the last bit of my lunch break after getting my phone back. So I feel sour or used by him. That he can’t legitimately apologize or make amends to anything he broke himself; he always relies on me to do it first, even if I didn’t do anything wrong. Even if I’m not the person who should be apologizing, he always waits for me to do everything.
I sigh, thinking about this. I wonder if he would even be leaving a message for me right now if I hadn’t called him and left him my apology?
Bitterness rises in me, and I think better of actually answering that question in my head, or out loud. I alr
eady know the truth, though. He wouldn’t have left me a message. He would’ve just gone on with the rest of his week, and then expected me to plan for our next date.
It’s been like that a lot, lately. Way too much actually, for someone who says he’s in a relationship with me.
But for my health, as well as the safety of other people on the road, I let those thoughts go. As I pull up to my condo, my private little part of the parking lot/driveway, I turn my thoughts toward Tommy and the good deed I did for him today. The way I came to his rescue. How thankful he looked when he finally realized that someone was there to help him, not hurt him.
My heart swells with warmth and tenderness as I think about the way his eyes shifted from dark to light as he registered that it was me who came to help him and stand up for him. That I was the one to pull him out of that situation.
As I get out of my car and head up to my front door, I think, I wish I could’ve told him the good news. I wish I could’ve let him know how many of those little slugs I saw running out of the building, and taking all of their crap with them. I sigh and smile, imagining the look he might have on his face: the gratitude, the love, the relief all present there, all because of me. In my head, I imagine Tommy saying, “Thank you so much, Melissa. Thank you so much for taking those risks. For being so brave and strong for me. Without you, I might have been beaten up in there!”
I imagine his cute face flushing with heat. His eyes moistening with emotions, both good and not so good. Which only succeeds in making him appear more adorable and more in need of my care. “Without you,” I imagine him continuing, “without you, I’d still be in danger. I’d still be suffering, if you hadn’t been the big, bad woman, and dealt with it all like that!”
With these thoughts, I hate to admit it, but I’m feeling aroused, happy, strong, and giddy. With Dennis, I was never able to be the one coming to the rescue. I was never able to be the strong, confident one. That would’ve emasculated and embarrassed Dennis too much. He wanted to be the man in that way. He wanted to be the strong type, and me — he wanted me to come running to him, submitting to him — always.