1. Janna.
The time display on Janna's computer screen hit 10:30 a.m. Janna finished scanning the paper file in front of her and lay it down. It was time for a break. She pushed away from her cubicle desk, and swung the chair around to rise.
As she did so she realized, too late, that she should have stood up before turning around. Dale, in the cubicle across from hers, was sneaking a quick peak at her, obviously hoping to catch a flash of something between the gap in her thighs. The unusually short skirt Janna had chosen to wear that day left a lot of thigh uncovered, and it promised more of a flash than usual. But Janna, accustomed to her neighbor's frequent ogling, held her legs closed, and she rose from her chair without giving anything away.
Janna's ogler was known in the office as Dateless Dale. He had a soft, shapeless sort of body, and a skin tone that suggested he did not get out much. He often complained about not getting dates, but his hygiene and clothing choices showed he was not trying very hard.
Moving away from her cubicle, Janna strode quickly to the exit of her firm's office and opened the door. It closed behind her with a heavy clunk. She had waited too long, and the need to pee was growing uncomfortable. Given the choice, she would have gone to the bathroom half an hour earlier. But her boss, Roger, had insisted that she finish looking over the accounts receivable for the Winchester Realty report, so she had sat at her desk dutifully for the past half hour, her legs crossing and recrossing with increasing urgency as the minutes ticked along and the pages of the report flipped by.
Janna worked as an accountant at Bowlevin & Associates, a prosperous accounting firm of about 30 employees. The firm's offices occupied the south end of a sprawling, nondescript two-story office building of the kind that littered this part of the city. Janna had arrived at the firm five years ago, just out of college, skilled with numbers and brimming with enthusiasm and ambition. As a new employee at the firm she had been tasked promptly with the job of managing and auditing the books of mostly small- to medium-sized businesses of different kinds.
Janna had earned good reviews for her work, but the chief reward for her success had been an ever-growing pile of files on her desk. The small increase in her bonus pay had been offset by the decrease in time to spend it.
Janna valued her success at her job, but the long hours had taken a toll on her personal life, and, especially, on her sex life.
How long had it been since she had had sex? Janna wondered as she walked down the carpeted hallway. Six months? Did Bill count? She did not think so. She had only dated him four times, and the last time she vaguely remembered removing her skirt and bra in a stupor brought on by an excess of very strong drinks at a local dive bar. She had blurry memories after that of being sprawled over a black sofa at Bill's apartment, her mouth half-heartedly working its way up and down the shaft of his semi-hard and unimpressive penis. She was reasonably certain his cock had not gotten anywhere close to between her legs. Whatever had happened, it had not been memorable. That was the last date with Bill.
Since then, her love life had been like a vast desert - dry, featureless, and with no relief in sight. She had had three initial dates through an online dating service, but they hadn't gone anywhere. The last date had been kind of cute, and had even asked at the end of their dinner at a trendy Thai restaurant if she wanted to come back to his place for a drink, but she had said no. And that was the last she had seen of that cute date.
She had said no. That was her problem: she was always saying no.
Janna had no obvious physical defects. She was five feet, five inches tall, with brown straight hair that she was careful to maintain just past shoulder length. She looked young for her 27 years. She had a trim but shapely figure, a pretty face, and medium brown eyes that spent most of their time behind a pair of steel rim glasses.
The glasses, unfortunately, reinforced an image that Janna guessed presented itself to the world as prim. She did not look like the type to cut loose. She dressed stylishly but conservatively.
Her conservative style, she had to admit, mirrored a conservative manner. Janna was not a prude; she liked sex, and she thought, from the little feedback she had gotten, that she was good at it. But Janna tended to put men through a gauntlet of questions and delays before they could get her into the bedroom and out of her panties. She was always wondering what might go wrong, how the process of shedding clothes and offering up her body might compromise her. She silently subjected her dates to excessive critiques over minor flaws. This one had eyes too close together. That one took too long to calculate the tip for a bar tab. The result of her dates' fumbling overtures and Janna's severe scrutiny was too often the same: it amounted to telling them no. Sensing that life was short and that getting into Janna's panties would take up too much of it, they moved on.
Her habit of saying no extended beyond just turning men down. Over the past few years she had turned down opportunities and avoided situations that she worried would in some way or another risked compromising her position and her reputation. Six months earlier she had said no to three girlfriends that wanted to take he to a male strip club. She had passed up a few recent invitations to have drinks after work with co-workers or friends, where the agenda would have been talking about men or meeting men. During the previous summer, she had avoided the firm's pool party because she did not want to expose her body in a swimsuit to the men in the office. She had developed an aversion to putting herself in situations where she might feel that men had her at a disadvantage. In lots of little ways that added up over time, Janna had taken herself out of the game of meeting, much less having sex with, men.
So, despite her longing for sex, she had not had any in a while.
Janna found a little solace in erotic fiction. In the last few months she had plowed through half a dozen novels she had downloaded to her Kindle. All of them were variations on the same theme: young, inexperienced women surrendering their bodies to powerful, dangerous, dominant men. Janna found herself drawn to this type of story but also found herself wondering why. She supposed it was because the heroines' experiences were so unlike her own. They appealed to her for opening her to a forbidden and unfamiliar world.
After a while, though, so much reading about sex did not satisfy her as much as frustrate her.
Just the night before, she had curled up under the covers of her bed, and she had begun reading her latest novel under the yellow glow of the lamp on the night stand. The book was about a young, innocent school librarian named Serena who traveled to an exotic island and became the sex slave of a rich, powerful man named Max. One of Max's rules for Serena was that she must always say yes to whatever he asked of her, or their relationship must end. Over the course of the story he pushed her willingness to say yes to him further and further. Last night Janna reached the point in the story where Max insisted that Serena accompany him to a small dinner party - completely naked. For reasons Janna could not completely understand, this part of the story aroused her intensely, and as she read about Max showing off the timid but excited Serena to his friends Janna found her hand sneaking its way under the pink cotton boy shorts she had worn to bed. Her finger began touching the folds of skin between her legs and then circling her clit as she scrolled through the words.
Finally, she had to put the Kindle down, and with her free hand she reached under her tee shirt and began pinching her left breast while continuing to touch herself below. She went on in this way for only a few minutes when her body lightly shuddered with a small but pleasant orgasm. It was satisfying, but only for a moment. Janna wanted more than just book sex and masturbation. She wanted the real thing. What to do?
