This short story is my contribution to the
On The Job Challenge 2023
.
A Brief History of Em
Literotica is a bad place, populated by bad people. A few of them are my good friends. It's also played a central role in driving some major life events for me. Take my fiancΓ©. Well actually, no, you can't have him. He's all mine. Hands off, OK! What was I saying? Oh yes, Literotica was a big factor in us hooking up. Yes really!
We are colleagues, have been for a few years. He was one of the people who gave me my induction when I joined the organization. People like him. People enjoy working for him. He'd always seemed to be a nice guy to me, but never more than that. Until Literotica that is.
It was last Fall that Literotica started to meddle in my life. I've written before about my situation at the time (hey! interminably is unfair, well maybe a little). My sex life had been a wasteland for way too long. I'd even got used to it. I'd found ways to get by. Then Lit, fucking Lit. So I'm PMing, I do that a lot. Some guy asks me when I last got laid. I'm kinda open, guileless you might say. So I talk about my best friend, Amy, visiting recently. I talk about another person I had an on and off thing with for a few weeks. I talk about a couple of hook-ups that were just that.
"No, Em. I mean laid. Like with a guy, you know."
That had my head spinning. All of the above had been girls. There had been few enough of them, to be sure. But when was I last with a guy? It was when I visited Amy many months ago. After a brief spell in San Francisco, she's back in the town where we both attended college. Still also living there is my Dad's buddy, the guy who had provided my accommodation and been rather more than a friend to me during college. We'd fucked for old times' sake, it had been good. That was the last time. I knew all this of course, but there was something about another person pointing it out to me that got under my skin.
What about dating? Even longer. I'd had some reasons to avoid dating new guys back then, but there had always been enough of my fuck-buddy's friends to more than make up for that. That resource had dried up when I left college and moved here, nearly two years ago. Call me an old-fashioned, cisnormative girl but I suddenly knew I wanted cock. Now how to get some?
I was at work, I'm not a very good girl and sometimes I spend time on Lit at work. It was kinda late. My floor was never busy, not with hybrid working, but there were still people around, a few of my team, a handful of others. And him. For the purposes of this story, let's call him Alex. It's not his name, but I'm already confessional enough without dragging others into it.
Alex was leaning on the table of one of my guys, looking at his screen, pointing at something. It seemed to be a particularly riveting Excel sheet. He has a nice ass. Alex was older than me. He'd had a birthday last month, his thirty-third, if I recalled right, so eight years. I'd been accustomed to a much bigger age gap than that. It didn't worry me.
Age wasn't the only difference. As Alex straightened up, I was reminded he was well over six foot, more than a foot taller. He was a runner like me, we'd been partnered up in a work charity event. But he was heavier set than many runners. Athletic, but not overly skinny. He had a face that was almost, but not quite, handsome; possessing slightly larger features than would normally attract that sobriquet. Turning and catching my eye, he broke into a broad smile, one that he seemed to use more in a work context than any of the other senior managers. But was it slightly broader than usual? Was it specially for me?
I guess my mind was running on rails. Guys get called out for letting their dicks rule their brains. Sometimes my clit takes control. I motioned for him to come over to my desk.
"Hi, Alex. I had some details of this claim that I need some advice on. It's not my area of expertise and I believe you used to work for a similar organization. Did I hear right?"
"Tell me about it, Emily, and we'll see."
I explain what is going on and what I need help with. It's entirely true that I could do with some guidance. It seems that he does indeed have relevant experience. I may have known that already of course; LinkedIn can be so informative. Suddenly I worry that I'd left his profile page open and hurriedly flick my eyes to the screen, but all is good.
"Listen, Alex. It's getting late, but I really want to wrap this case up. How about I pick your brains over a drink? That way I can say thank you as well. Or do you have to be home. Is there someone...?"
I leave it hanging. Am I being too direct? I do that a lot. But he still smiles.
"Sure, you can buy me a drink. Is the place off of 287 OK?"
Apparently it is OK for me and we agree to meet there. Now this is meant to be a workplace story and I'm sure that you have some idea where things are heading. We do indeed fuck that evening, twice as it happens. But it's back at my place. To get to the real "on the job" story, we need to wind the clock forward a couple of months.
β
Confessional
So it seems that it was more than a random hook-up. I had a "no sex with colleagues" rule that I had happily ripped up. Now the "no dating colleagues" rule had gone the same way. We'd told our respective managers. We'd told HR. Luckily our roles don't overlap that much or one of us might have had to leave.
We'd spent a lot of time together. Most evenings, when he wasn't traveling, every weekend. There was the long weekend in NYC at a very nice hotel. There was the all-expenses paid trip to stay at a company apartment in Bermuda for four days. He'd been awarded that for being a good boy at work. We even got to have the corporate jet to ourselves, there and back. That might be another story.
It seemed like things were getting serious. While in Bermuda, the subject of living together came up. I knew what I had to do. I had even been planning to tell him on this trip. Now I had no real option. Heart in mouth, I started at the beginning, charting my checkered and extensive sexual history. I told him the lot. Things I wouldn't even consider writing about here. I knew the risk, but also that we were already finished as a couple if I started out by keeping secrets. Particularly my secrets.
Even here, Lit had had a part to play. I'd agonized with on-line friends about telling him. Talked about timing. Discussed approaches. Agreed the pressing need. Got people to bolster my resolve.
It took a while for me to get through it all. There was a lot to tell. I might have cried a little at some points. He listened calmly. Much too calmly for my mental well-being. The last secret was the biggest. I was all but certain it would be a dealbreaker. I finally stopped, part of me not fully believing all that I had confided. I waited for the inevitable. And waited...