It was quiet, in the lull between the junior staff clearing out and the night cleaners coming through. In fact, it had been an unusually quiet Friday, so it was no surprise that only my personal assistant and I were staying late. My generous corner office felt intimate, with its warm mid-century furnishings, the two of us puttering quietly, and the low hum of unattended computers outside on the open office floor. I had finished my actual work for the day several hours before, but I was staring blankly at my laptop and shuffling aimlessly through a few papers loose on my desk, illegible in the setting sun that blared through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind my desk. I suspect Molly was also pretending to be working, too, fiddling with something over at the coffee bar at the far end of the room. I heard her yawn quietly over my pounding heart. I was about to try the most reckless thing I'd ever done. I couldn't stall much longer.
"Molly?" She turned towards me expectantly, all warm, bright colour in the flashing sunlight: golden flecks in her wide hazel eyes, her pink cheeks and pinker lips, her mustard yellow linen shift, and her hair--too bright to call auburn, too brown to call red, a just-so mess of soft, loose, chin-length curls that framed her round face and shone in the sun. My mouth was dry. When I hesitated, her face wrinkled with a little apprehension. I tried to keep my voice steady. "Thank you for staying late."
"Oh, of course," Molly said. Her voice was dreamy and girlish, edged with the faintest vocal fry, and her dress was cut just short enough to show the full length of her milk-white leg with each step as she came across to stand in front of my desk.
I shifted through the papers again and flashed her the document we were there to discuss, Molly's post-probation contract, just waiting for my signature. "Three months already."
"Yes, sir?" Molly was shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot. She held her arms straight down at her sides, worrying the hem of her dress with thumb and forefinger of each hand.
"I need to ask you a personal question," I said after another pause.
"Yes?"
"Why do you keep wearing that same perfume?"
"Ohhh..." Molly was avoiding my gaze. In the orange sunlight, it was clear that her pink cheeks were glowing pinker, darker. "Do you not like it, sir?"
"I like it very much," I said, trying to sound authoritative. "I think I told you that I liked it."
"On my first day..." she responded in a low voice.
"Yes," I confirmed simply, my heart still pounding. So she remembered too... "Is that why you've worn it every day since?" Molly looked at her shoes. The growing flush in her cheeks was all the confirmation I needed. "And," I continued, building my momentum. "I don't think I told you to call me 'sir.'"
"Oh... Oh, no," she stammered, then a flood of words. "But I can stop if you want? I just thought it was the right thing to call you. I really like working for you, sir, or... or Mr. Andres... Or I don't know what to call you, sir, but I really hope I passed my probation and I will stop wearing the perfume too, if you don't like it, and..." I held up my hand for her to stop.
"You passed your probation, Molly," I said, trying to measure reassurance and authority in my voice. I patted the stack of paperwork on the desk in front of me. "HR has passed me everything. I just need to sign it, and I don't see any reason not to. You're a pleasure to have around the office, you pay attention to detail, and you're wonderful with the clients." I meant it, too. Despite her youthful demeanour, Molly was smart and perceptive, a quick learner and an even quicker study of character. There had been a number of important meetings where her well-timed offer of coffee or small, perceptive comment had diffused a difficult situation. "Friendly," I continued. "And... Discreet." I paused to see her reaction, but there was none except for the steady, burning blush. "You know how important discretion is with our clientele."
"Yes, sir." She looked up at me through her eyelashes. "May I sit down, sir? I don't feel so good."
"Oh, of course," I said, standing up in a hurry. "The couch..."
"Thank you..." She turned her head up and smiled weakly as I led her over to sit down, with one hand between her shoulder blades and one under her elbow. It was the first time I had touched her, and the warm, soft yield of her back under the palm of my hand fulfilled all the promises of her perfume. I wanted to throw myself down like a teenager on the couch with her, but I resisted. Things were in motion now. The psychological force kept me moving, like I would explode if I sat still, but I needed to hold back a little, not trip up by moving too fast.
"Discretion..." I mused aloud again, turning towards the cupboard above the coffee bar. "You've been discreet with me too. You must have found this." I turned back towards her, brandishing the bottle of whiskey that I had pulled from the highest shelf.
Molly had kicked off her shoes and wrapped her bare feet up underneath herself. From this angle, the sun hit her face in profile. Sitting down seemed to have done her good, and she laughed unselfconsciously when she saw the bottle. "Oh, yes."
"And when I commented on your perfume..." I pulled down two water glasses from the same cupboard and opened the bottle. "You could have told HR about that, but you didn't, did you?"
"No." She turned away again, still blushing.
I handed a half-full glass over her shoulder as I passed behind the couch to retrieve my laptop from my desk. "In fact, you have been remarkably professional for a woman your age... I have had other assistants before, you know."
Molly didn't respond, but took an exploratory sip of whiskey, then coughed softly and scowled into the glass when the alcohol hit the back of her throat. Right before I turned back, I heard the soft clunk of the glass being abandoned on the coffee table.
"But there was just one thing I wanted to discuss," I said as I sat down in the chair opposite her. Molly sat up a little straighter in her seat as I said it, one hand pulling her foot tight and protective underneath her. "Just one thing before I sign off."
"Of course." What was that tremor in her voice? Just nerves?
I took a deep drink before I opened my laptop. "You might remember that we asked for a headshot when you applied..." I looked down at the photo she had submitted, clearly by accident. It was not a headshot. The opposite--her head was the only part it didn't show. In the picture, Molly was visible from the chin down, standing coquettishly with one foot rubbing up the other calf, entirely nude. Even without showing her face, it was clearly her. Her hair had been longer when the photo was taken and the distinctive copper cascade, wavy more than curly under the extra weight, kissed the top of each round, perfect breast. Molly had also been ten or maybe twenty pounds lighter when the photo had been taken, but even slightly lighter--and I couldn't see any problem with the shape of her body, now or in the old photo--her belly, as soft and round as her breasts, seemed to make her self-conscious. She held a sheet of plain notebook paper over the middle part of her body like a shield. The paper was emblazoned with the username 'your_perfect_girl' and a date from a little over two years earlier.
I hesitated, half enraptured by the photo and half undecided on how exactly to word the nature of Molly's mistake. Blood was still pounding in my veins, primal arousal fighting with trepidation. The erection I had been nursing all afternoon, that I had often satisfied over the previous weeks while looking at this same photo, twitched threateningly. Wordlessly in the end, with my pulse pounding, I placed the laptop on the coffee table in front of me and turned it around to face Molly.
She reacted like she had been whipped. One hand flew up to cover he mouth, which formed a perfect 'O' of shock, and the other slapped the laptop lid down as soon as the picture had registered in her brain. She remained motionless for a moment, both hands fixed in place and staring into the middle distance. "Oh no," Molly squeaked through her fingers, as if to no one.
"I was monitoring the applications and intercepted this right as it came in. I don't think HR saw it, or you wouldn't have gotten an interview. They saw the photo I pulled from your social media, I think."
"So for the past three months..." Molly's eyes flicked up to me, letting the unfinished question hang in the air.
"I was doing my research on you." I held her gaze, trying not to focus on the heavy rise and fall of her chest. "Or maybe I should say, on 'your_perfect_girl'..." Molly gaze a sharp intake of breath and held it. The rise and fall stopped. She held my gaze too, rapt, with her hand still over her mouth. I took a sip and stood up, too full of energy to sit still. "I learned so much... Your posts... The photos, of course--you're a very pretty girl, you know." I addressed this last comment to her as I turned on my heel.
"Thank you," she gasped.
"But other things, too..." I had reached the coffee bar and placed my empty glass down. "Here, let me show you." I paced back over to the couch, slid in beside her, and pulled the laptop from her unresisting fingers. I had expected her to pull away as I sat down, but instead I felt her body soften and lean gently against me. I could feel her heart beating hard, hard just like mine, as I flicked to a post I had saved from 'your_perfect_girl's profile. "Here... Can you read this for me?"
In a small, soft voice, Molly did as she was told. "'My new boss is old enough to be my dad...' And then there's, like, an embarrassed monkey emoji..." She hesitated.
"Go on," I said sternly.
"'But he's so hot.'" Molly's voice had sunk to a whisper.
"And then two water emojis," I observed as nonchalantly as I could. "And 'so' has 6 'O's."
"Uh-huh," she agreed. Her voice was soft but her breathing was hard.
