It was only just after midnight that Erin Ryan O'Neill found herself on the floor of an empty cubicle, on her back and grinding her clit in complete and total surrender. The roar of the party down the hall carried on in the distance. So, too, did the vocalizations of Sophie Scott from the next cubicle over. As well as the vocalizations from another, unknown girl in another cubicle somewhere else out there in the darkness.
It was dark. Erin had that going for her, at least. If she had succumbed to her baser instincts back in the locker room, it would have been under bright, fluorescent lights, with dozens of other girls playing witness to her capitulation. The same could have been said of the employee lounge here in Human Resources, though that hadn't stopped Visitor H from doing so while Mailgirl Number Eleven and her other friend, Visitor I, laughed and cheered her on. Visitor D wasn't yet so bold or abandoned.
But that wasn't to say that the dimly-lit cubicle farm a hundred feet down the hall was private, exactly. For one thing, Erin wasn't going to be able to explain away her prolonged absence as a simple bathroom break - especially if she returned to the party covered in a sheen of sweat and stinking of sex. For another, Sophie Scott was in on what she was doing. In fact, it was her stepsister who had recognized the look in Erin's eye, and who had suggested she might be able to find somewhere marginally more private for her to - in Sophie's words - provide herself with a little "relief."
Erin was on her back, with her knees up and her legs spread, halfway under some stranger's desk. The faint, orange glow of the power strip beside her illuminated the underside of the desk, and Erin focused, absently, on a dry and aging wad of gum directly above her. Her hair was in a puddle around her, intertwined with power cords, and when she wiggled and wriggled just so, the top of her head bumped gently against the fabric of cubicle's wall. The carpet beneath her was both scratchy and thin, the floor hard. She wanted to give in and surrender completely, to close her eyes and imagine that she was back in LA, in her bed, but she wasn't quite there. For one, she kept glancing nervously in the direction of the cubicle's opening, fearful of being discovered in such a compromised state. But also, it was her environment, and the utter depravity of fucking herself in such in an environment, that made her hotter and hornier than any session of self-pleasure had ever delivered her at home.
She'd been drinking, of course. Drinking, in fact, more than could remember drinking in the last couple of years. Save for maybe her sorority sister Ashley's wedding in Glendale the prior summer? Or maybe Ashley's bachelorette party in Scottsdale a few weeks before that? Either way, Erin had had more than her fair share holiday-themed candy cane cocktails that night - equal parts vanilla rum, white chocolate liqueur, and peppermint schnapps. And while she wasn't yet drunk, she was on her way, and the fact that she'd lost count of how many times she'd re-upped could well have explained why her inhibitions had been lowered enough to take Sophie up on her offer.
She wasn't exactly sure what she'd been expecting of that night's holiday party, exactly. Sarah's depictions of the "Bitch Sessions" that the Plaza girls engaged in on Friday nights had always carried with them an air of "classiness" - cocktail dresses, fancy hotel bar, Wall Street types. She understood that things could get rowdy and randy pretty quickly, but her imaginings of Mailgirl Thirteen and her friends out for an evening drink stood in stark contrast with what she assumed those same "Bitch Sessions" might be like for the 24/7 girls in Jersey City. Still naked and collared, beaten down and imprisoned, she'd half-expected the "party" here at Park Place to be nothing more than a bunch of miserable cunts slugging back vodka from water cooler cups and whining to one another under harsh lighting in a break room that smelled faintly of burnt microwave popcorn.
And maybe that's what these "Bitch Sessions" were to the Park Place girls more regularly. But the 2nd Floor employee lounge was nicer than Erin had imagined it was going to be - not as nice as the executive lounge that they'd been allowed to use every once in a blue moon, Sophie apologized - but better than the rundown break room of Erin's expectations. Half the room was carpeted, the other half tiled, with a breakfast-bar-of-sorts (turned actual bar, tonight) breaking up the two zones. To one end of the room, there was a "living room" setting, complete with a flat-screen television, a pair of expensive-looking sofas, and handful of matching, upholstered chairs. Modern-looking tables and chairs were scattered about, and a Christmas tree had been erected in one corner. A big, industrial sterling silver refrigerator presided over the kitchenette area, and the coffee makers, water filtration systems, microwaves, and toasters were all top-of-the-line. It was still very much an office setting, but a high-end one. And, if a girl were to squint, she might have been able to imagine herself in an expensive downtown loft, instead of on the second floor of USF's back office in Jersey City.
The girls weren't allowed to sit on the furniture, of course, so the presence of the comfortable sofas and chairs were their own torment. The veteran mailgirls seemed to pay them no mind, pushing them up against the wall and arranging a few dozen of the USF-branded pink "mailgirl mats" (no thicker and not much more different than a standard yoga mat) around in a circle in their place. But though none of the girls was bold enough to risk being caught sitting in a chair, more than a few took up spots sitting on the bar with their legs dangling beneath them, or perching up atop one of the various tables. Erin couldn't imagine that the more regular users of this room would have been crazy about exposed pussy and bare asses on top of their eating surfaces, but there seemed to be enough grey area in the policy that the Park Place girls didn't think twice about it.
Holiday music blared in the background, and a Yule-tide log flickered on the flat-screen in a loop. Mailgirls Six and Eleven, as well as Visitors H and I, were tending bar and mixing cocktails when Erin, Catherine, and the Scott girls first arrived. But it was casual, and mostly self-service. Sarah and Sophie explained that Mistress Rei and her masters in Human Capital usually provided them with a good assortment of drinks, mixers, wines, and beers, but admitted that tonight's selection was on another level. In fact, they all seemed surprised by the platters of hors d'oeuvres, cookies, and desserts that had been laid out for them - for most of the Park Place girls, it was one of just a few times they'd been allowed to eat something other than mailgirl chow since they'd first inked their contracts.
Girls milled about, talking and laughing with another, and making introductions to visitors from the Plaza and from the outside world. But for the lack of clothes, and maybe the aggressive drinking, this could have been a holiday party or networking event anywhere in the world. Only when she slipped up and introduced herself as "Erin," and was rewarded with a slap across the face from Sophie - a hard one, at that - did the world the mailgirls now lived in intrude upon the mirth. As Visitor A had promised, any awkwardness or embarrassment about Erin's nudity faded away quickly, and she soon found herself almost forgetting about it entirely.
Almost. The mailgirls of Park Place and the Plaza were all decidedly more comfortable in their skins than Erin or the other visitors, and thought little of a hug, a caress, or holding hands. At one point, Erin had Mailgirl Number Six's hand upon her naked hip as the two chatted Catherine, Mailgirl Number Fourteen, and Mailgirl Number Fourteen's mother Angela. There was little to read into it, Erin told herself - all over the room, there was skin-to-skin contact and a casual attitude towards "handsy-ness" without there being something necessarily sexual or predatory about it. A nipple pinch here or there. A slap on the ass. A kiss on the cheek or the neck. It was all innocent enough in the early hours of the evening.
Allowances had been made that let the girls use one of the nearby restrooms on the 2nd Floor without a non-mailgirl chaperone - common enough for their weekly "Bitch Sessions," as Erin understood it. Only the men's room, of course, and stall doors were still required to be left open, but the girls could come and go as they pleased. For the visitors - the Plaza girls included - this allowance was moot; said restroom was on the far side of a locked door, and required a smartphone-equipped mailgirl to lead the way. But the back-and-forth inevitably led to the party spilling out of the employee lounge and into the hallway beyond. And though none of the girls would have dared to violate Mistress Rei's restrictions of letting themselves into anyone's office, the darkened cubicle farm beyond seemed to be fair game.
Conversations were wide-ranging, but often led back to life as a mailgirl, as girls swapped war stories and horror stories, and did their best to one-up each other with confessions and admissions of an increasingly naughty nature. The mailgirls told stories that left Erin's mouth agape, but also just gave the brunette a fuller picture of even the less sexual aspects of their servitude here at Park Place.
"Exercise ball," Sarah answered at one point, laughing, in response to a question from her mother. She was the rare mailgirl who was actually allowed some "down time" on Sundays to work on her research - a special dispensation awarded to her due to the nature of USF's arrangement with her graduate program back in New Haven. Sarah was given the opportunity to work in one of the cubicles here in Human Resources, detailing and documenting her life among the mailgirls for her former academic advisor and head of Human Capital both. As she was restricted from sitting in a honest-to-goodness chair, however, Human Capital had opted to provide her with a giant, inflatable exercise ball for those hours in front of a keyboard.
"Most of us aren't even allowed to read," Mailgirl Six added, in a lighter tone that sounded as if she found humor in the restriction.
"Seriously?!!" Plaza Eighteen shrieked, aghast. She, apparently, didn't get the joke. "That's some straight-up 'Handmaiden's Tale' style bullshit!"
"We're allowed to read," Sophie said, partly contradicting Six and partly coming to her defense. "We just don't have much of an opportunity. And when we do..."
"Porn," Six explained. She directed Erin's attention to the magazine rack. "It was Three's turn this week to replace the usual reading materials in here with Mistress Rei's selections." Gone were the Wall Street Journals and New York Times and Fortunes that Erin assumed usually occupied the rack. Only now did Erin see that, in their stead, were issues of Playboy and Hustler, as well as such lesser-known titles as "Bait" and "Booty" and "Big & Bouncy."
Sophie elaborated. "We're on the clock for twelve hours a day, every day. And usually in the locker room for the other twelve. We don't really have a chance to read, other than Saturday nights."
"And when you do...?" Plaza Eighteen asked.
Six shrugged. "'Reading for pleasure' has taken on different connotations." This elicited an uncomfortable laugh from Plaza Eighteen.
"I read them for the articles," Sophie added sarcastically.
