Jesse moaned as someone kissed her neck, trying hard to ignore the knocking on her office door. But the sound was insistent, and reluctantly she was pulled from her dream. She found herself laying on her couch, sleeping under her leather jacket. The details of the dream were fading already, leaving only impressions. Blonde hair. A nipple stiffening in her mouth. The satisfying weight of someone on top of her, moving between her thighs... She sighed as the knocking got louder.
"Alright, I'm up, I'm up!" She stood and stretched, cracking her neck. If the Hiss didn't kill her, sleeping on this couch might. She blinked and rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she walked to the door and opened it.
"Good morning, Director!" Emily Pope stood on the other side, with her clipboard. She seemed annoyingly perky. Her hair was immaculate, and her shirt looked crisply ironed, which made Jesse wonder if there was a laundry service. She should probably ask about that. Any annoyance evaporated when she noticed the steaming mug of coffee Emily was offering her.
"Come on in, Emily. And if I have to tell you again to call me Jesse, I'm going to fire you." Emily smiled as Jesse took the coffee, and followed her into the office, closing the door behind her. "What brings you knocking on my door? I just laid down."
"Oh, that was nine hours ago, Di... Jesse."
"Are you kidding?" Jesse sighed as she took a sip of the coffee. "Hard to tell time in this place. I guess I was more tired than I thought."
"Well, it's been a rough few days. I would have let you sleep, but I've got a new theory that I need your help with."
"Okay, but you'll have to tell me about it while I pee." Jesse set the mug down on her desk, walked into her private bathroom and shut the door. One of the few perks of being Director, she thought.
"Go on, I'm listening," she called out as she undid her jeans and sat down. There was a noticeable wet spot on the gusset of her underwear, and she still felt slightly aroused. She bit her lip as she realized that the person in her dream reminded her of Emily.
"Well, um, it's like this." Emily's voice got louder as she approached the door. "You remember your first day, when we tried to use your abilities to cleanse the Hiss from one of the infected office workers?"
"I remember it didn't work." Jesse sighed as she emptied her bladder.
"I was thinking about something Dylan said. He mentioned that reciting the words felt good, right?"
"Sure. He made it sound like a compulsion." Jesse pulled up her pants and washed her hands. "Or maybe an addiction?" She frowned at her reflection in the mirror, tucking some loose strands of hair behind her ear and trying to clear the fog of arousal from her head. "Like, it's rewarding, but once you start, it's impossible to stop."
"Exactly!" Emily was beaming when Jesse opened the door, almost vibrating with excitement to share her theory. "Reciting the words is *pleasurable*, so they don't want to stop."
"Okay..." Jesse reached for the coffee so Emily wouldn't see her reaction to the way she'd purred the word "pleasurable."
"I think we need to try again. But this time, you first need to overwhelm the subject with pleasure. Then, at the moment of climax, you can purge the Hiss."
Jesse choked on her coffee.
—
"I'm not sure how you talked me into this," Jesse complained as she shut the door to the glass-walled meeting room. It wasn't far from Central Executive, in the cubicle farm. The air was filled with chanting from the dozens of possessed office workers, all floating in midair.
"It's a simple theory, easily tested, and if it works, we could save a lot of people." Emily was closing all the blinds. There was no real need for privacy since the only people who could see into the meeting room were busy chanting, but Jesse appreciated the gesture.