by Jamie Knight
I hadn’t had any official training for this job yet, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to get any. Clearly the firm who hired me had just merged with a new one, and nothing seemed very organized. It appeared that the reason they had hired me was to help them out with that.
So, I began randomly clicking on folders and familiarizing myself with how their documents were organized. There was one called “Training Resources” and I spent a good while looking over it, paying particular attention to parts that had to do with file organization.
There was only a little bit about that in there, and there were a lot of phrases such as “please use discretion,” “use your best judgement,” and “be innovative to solve problems,” which I took to mean, “we have no idea what the fuck we’re doing so please feel free to step in and help us out.”
It had been like that at my old job, too. And I had turned things around for them, no problem. It was time to roll up my sleeves and do that at this new job— assuming I still had it, now that I’d told Douchey Boss where to shove it.
Chapter Five
Maria
After a few hours of returning to my work, I looked up and realized it was time for lunch. I had spent the morning making my own database in Evernote and adding projects and files to it. I had also started tracking the projects using Asana.
I felt I was doing a pretty good job at my new job, especially considering I had no idea what it was actually supposed to entail. But if I had just sat here all day waiting for someone who wasn’t a lecherous imbecile to knock on my door and show me what I was supposed to do, I would have been sorely disappointed.
As if on cue, I heard a sudden knock at the door.
“Who is it?” I called out, hoping it wasn’t Alcohol Breath again.
“It’s me,” a voice replied- the kindest-sounding one I’d heard in this place so far, “Ashton.”
Ashton.
Ashton? Hot Boss Ashton Smith?
The subject of my naughty fantasies, Ashton?
The one I was half hoping would never come to my office, because I wasn’t quite sure I’d know how to control myself, and the one I was half hoping would, because he drove me absolutely crazy with desire?
“One second.”
“No problem, take your time,” he called out.
Yep, it was definitely that Ashton.
The smooth, caring, yet devilishly sexy one.
I hurried to the door, despite his instruction not to rush, and willed myself to act cool, calm and collected as I opened it.
“Ashton,” I said.
I thought you’d never come.
“Hi there,” he said, smiling a mysterious, mischievous smile. “I thought I’d check in on you and see how your first day is going.”
“Thanks,” I replied, thinking to myself how that’s a nicer gesture than anyone else around here has thought to do.
I was glad I had spent the morning being proactive and coming up with a system. I went over to the computer and showed him what I’d come up with.
“This is where the clients can track and store their billable hours,” I explained. “And this is where they can keep their files.”
As I went through all of the different methods I’d come up with, his smile grew bigger and bigger. He seemed genuinely impressed.
“You know what, Maria?” he said. “You not only helped organize the files, but you came up with a good system we can show the clients, so you basically improved the whole program. You did more in one morning than the developers have done in a year.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” I said, blushing.
“It certainly he is,” he insisted.
His nose was just inches from mine. It seemed we were going to kiss. And I was not about to argue.
“Have a little more faith in yourself,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I told him, as if instinctively.
He drew my mouth close to him and took my tongue in his own mouth. It felt warm, exciting yet comfortable- just like the rest of him. He sucked on it lightly, and made me want to melt into his body and let him suck every part of me.
When we broke apart, he said, “I think I’ll set up an appointment with the clients so you can teach them how to use your handiwork. You’re the one who came up with it, so you’re the one who should show it off.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure which made me happier: that he had just kissed me, or that he had liked my work so much that he was going to allow me, a brand new employee, access to important clients. I supposed I was grateful that both things were true.
Chapter Six
Ashton
The next day found me on the golf course with one of my business partners and closest friends, Kane McKenzie, and his new wife, Reese. Playing golf was usually my way to relax and destress after lots of long hours at the office.
And today was a particularly good day for it- it wasn’t even St. Patrick’s Day yet but the weather was warming up and it was bright and sunny out. Still, though, I couldn’t get thoughts of Maria off my mind.
When I saw her in the office yesterday, all I wanted to do was grab her, bend her over her desk, and fuck her. But I also valued her as an employee- I meant what I said about the great work she had already done for the legal project management clients- and I didn’t want to mess anything up, work-wise.
Not to mention, of course, that the people in Human Resources were always breathing down everyone’s neck to avoid sexual harassment lawsuits. It was clear to me that Maria was into me, too, but I would just hate to do anything that could hurt the company I’d helped build and grow.
As I returned to reality out there on the greens, I saw that Kane was showing Reese how to use a 9-iron, while she giggled sweetly and looked up at him while batting her eyelashes. Those two were still like a pair of newly-in-love lovebirds. I had to wonder how they did it, seeing as how they worked together in our McKenzie Technologies offices and that he was her boss back when they got together- and still is, to this day. Clearly it could sometimes, somehow, work out for the best.
I understood the importance of the #metoo movement and the campaign to stop unwanted sexual harassment and help facilitate the reporting and punishment of it when it happened. I knew that HR was only doing its job by being so hypervigilant. It was trying to protect innocent victims as well as protect the company from liability.
But what if the feelings were mutual? Were people not allowed to fall in love at work anymore? To marry their bosses? Were we supposed to pretend we weren’t human beings with natural emotions and connections, when we were at work, where we spent most of the day?
Woah, did I just thinking ‘marry their bosses’?
I couldn’t believe I would even think about that possibility. I didn’t normally do any kind of committed relationship, let alone think about marriage.
The extent of what I wanted in a woman was someone who would feel pleasure with me, and allow me to tie her up and pin her down. It was all about the physical, usually.
But with Maria, there was something else there, under the surface although it came crashing up into the real world whenever we were together, that I just couldn’t shake. And that I had no idea what to do with.
“Ash, you’re particularly quiet today,” Reese remarked, and I noticed that she and Kane were standing still, looking at me.
She had always been the observant, compassionate type, but right now I didn’t really appreciate her drawing my friend and partner’s scrutiny into my discombobulated state of mind. The last thing I needed was a Grand Inquisition into thoughts and feelings I wasn’t sure I understood or knew how to articulate.
“Yeah, my friend, what’s up?” Kane asked.
“How did you know that being together was worth risking everything for?” I asked them.
Woah.
What the fuck.
Where the fuck had that come from now, on top of everything else?
I was doing all kinds of things that were out of character
today. Thinking about fucking marrying my new employee, whom I had only just recently met? Asking my business partner straight up whether it would be worth it?
It was like an alien had traded places with the normal me.
“Ooooh, does Ashy have a crush?” Reese asked.
We were finishing up the game and her taunting was enough for me to shoot a birdie into the eighteenth hole. Asher got a par and the Reese got a boogie, so I won the hole. In fact, I won the whole game, but my heart wasn’t in it enough to celebrate, since my head was still so wrapped up in Maria.
“Let’s go to the clubhouse so you can talk to us about this new development over a drink,” Ashton suggested.
I shrugged my shoulders and followed them, since, apparently, I couldn’t manage to keep my mouth shut so I might as well enjoy a beer while I blabbed away like a schoolboy with a crush.
“Let me guess what this is about,” said Reese, as we sidled up to the nearly empty bar- it was pretty early to be having a drink, but I figured one wouldn’t hurt- and placed our orders. “You’re in looooooove with the new girl you hired. Maria.”
“What the fuck?” I said out loud. “How did you know?”
“Because we ladies have a sixth sense for these things, when it comes to matters of the heart,” she said back, matter-of-factly. “Sloane and Eileen and Mandy and I were already discussing it.”
“It figures you’d hire that curvy bombshell and then torture yourself by having to be near her every day without laying a finger on her,” Kane joined in.
“That is not why I hired her,” I told them, as the server placed our beers in front of us.
They served them in a glass with lime here, even though I preferred the less stuck-up way of drinking them straight out of a bottle.
“And why can’t I lay a finger on her?” I protested. “And how do you guys know all my problems? I’ve been sitting here thinking that she’s such a good employee and I would hate to lose her or cause any harm to the firm, but also that I just want to…”
“Kiss her?” Reese guessed, at the same time that Kane suggested, “Fuck her?”
“Too late, I already did that,” I confessed.
“Which one?” Reese gasped, her eyes wide with horror. Kane just chuckled. “This is only her second day working there and you already…”
“Kissed her,” I confirmed. “Just kissed her.”
“Wow, that is still moving pretty fast there, Ash,” Kane said. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“No. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing, and that’s why I’m asking you guys.”
“Kane honey, leave the poor boy be,” Reese admonished him, before kissing him on the cheek. “And we obviously know all your problems, Ashton, because they were our problems, too, at one time. But don’t worry. Love will find a way.”
“This isn’t love,” I protest. “It can’t be. It’s too soon. And I… I don’t do ‘love.’”
“Heard that before,” Reese said.
“Said that before,” Kane agreed.
“Look this has to be something pretty serious for you to even be considering it, right?” Reese asked. “You’re not like Kane, who used to go around choosing pets before losing someone important to him and then being a recluse.”
“Hey!” Kane objected, but it was true. Reese had just summed up his whole life before she came along, in one sentence.
“No, I mean…” I struggled to answer without delving too deeply into my personal life, even though they already pretty much knew all of it. “I’ve had my share of dalliances… I have my… distinct preferences. But I don’t fall in love. I don’t do relationships or commitment. And I never mix work and business. I have no idea why I’m starting to now.”
“There you go,” Reese said, as if she just solved world peace with the snap of a finger. “That’s how you know it’s The Real Thing. You’re in looooove.”
“Well, it’s much too early for that,” Kane interjected, and I nod my head in agreement. “And you just want to be careful about how you proceed with these things. I know that it’s easy to rush into, but it can be very messy to get out of.”
“Hey, who wants to get out of anything?” Reese protested.
“Not me, but you know what I mean, darling,” Kane said, and nuzzled her nose in a sickeningly sweet way.
Usually antics like this made me nauseous. But now they just made me want to be with Maria even more.
What the fuck has happened to me?
“There are strict HR rules now, so be careful, but we’re living proof that work relationships can, well, work,” Reese said.
That was what I had thought, but they weren’t telling me how to make it work.
I noticed that our glasses of beers were almost empty, and I was no closer to figuring out a solution to my workplace affair dilemma. I didn’t know why I thought Kane and Reese could help me come up with an answer, when apparently, they dove in head first even though Kane didn’t advise it now.
I supposed there was no magical answer to my question of how to make it work in a way that wasn’t messy or risky. I was sure it involved both mess and risk, and bearing the bad along with the good and all of that other eternally conflicting stuff that anything worth working for in life involved.
“So, basically, try to take it slow until I’m sure it feels right, and then just go for it with a wing and a prayer and hope it all works out?” I asked them, as I downed the remainder of my drink.
“Something like that,” they both agreed, and half frowned, half smiled at the pathetically love-torn soul that I had somehow turned into.
Chapter Seven
Ashton
All throughout the next day at work, I had purposefully avoided going to Maria’s office. She messaged me on the office chat system, Watercooler, to let me know she had finished the assignment that Ben Winters had given her earlier, but that she felt more comfortable going over it with me.
I wasn’t sure if that was just an excuse to see me, or if Ben gave her the heebie-jeebies like he seemed to do for a lot of women around the office. If the rumors circulating Watercooler about all the employees he tried to get with were true, then he was the one HR should be worried about.
I wasn’t sure if the rumors held any weight, though, because I hadn’t heard of any complaints against him and he seemed to be able to pull tail when he wanted to, without having to force anyone into it. That didn’t matter, though. I was sure that if HR found out I’d kissed Maria, it would be just my luck that they’d be all over me like flies on the biggest burger at a barbeque.
And that was why I had been putting off seeing her. I didn’t trust myself around her. Last time, I had kissed her. This time, I knew it would be more. Every pore of my body seemed to want her, need her. And I wasn’t used to denying myself what I wanted or needed.
But it was after five o’clock now and most of the assistants had gone home. Maria’s light on Watercooler- which let me know if employees were available to message- was still green. I didn’t want to be rude and leave her hanging about that project she wanted to go over with me.
Or at least that was what I told myself as I walked down the hall to her office. Really, I knew exactly why I was going there: it was time to launch that wing and a prayer and take what I’ve been wanting: my new employee, Maria, on my lap or over it.
After I knocked on her door, her voice sounded breathless as she said, “Come in,” without even asking who was there. I pushed open the door and was delighted to see the subject of my carnal desires for the past week or so since I had met her, but whom I had been trying to avoid because I knew it could get me in Very Big Trouble.
I think I had even gone golfing yesterday to avoid being at the office and seeing her. I had thought about going home and leaving all of this- all of her voluptuous, stunning body- alone. But I couldn’t. It was impossible.
I was drawn to her as if I was a magnet in a magnetic field. I needed her touch, her warmth, her sexiness. But I
also needed to not let her know how much I needed it. I wasn’t used to being so vulnerable and I didn’t want to let my guard down around her that much.
“Hello, boss,” she said, as soon as I walked into her office.
It smelled— she smelled— like a delicious combination of chamomile tea and some kind of flowery deodorant. I wished I could bottle up that smell and take it home with me. Fuck, I wished I could bottle her up and take her home with me.
“Hello, Maria,” I said. “I heard there was something you wanted to show me.”
“Yes. There’s something I’d like you to see.”
She stared at me, raising her eyebrows slightly, as if challenging me to read a double entendre into our conversation. My cock was growing harder by the second and I didn’t know how much longer I could stand here without giving into my strong desire to pick her up and throw her on her desk.
“Okay then,” I told her, at the same time I told myself to keep everything under control and not fall apart at the seams for her.
I walked over to the computer and listened as she described a hypothetical client situation to me that sounded as if she was one of the clients herself, or had talked to them. Maria knew her stuff. I was so glad I had hired her.
And yet, all I wanted to do was fuck her, even though I knew that could mess everything up. I urged myself to resist touching her, kissing her again, as I watched her plump lips move while she told me about her issues with the software she was using.
“In short,” she said, “I think you’re going to have to change this part of the software to best utilize the time tracking feature.”
“This is really more Ben’s area than mine,” I confessed – mainly because my head was spinning with fantasies of her and I couldn’t possibly focus. “But I like what you suggest. I agree it should be done, but I don’t know that we can allocate the resources or…”