Hell Is In The Heart Ch 03

This is the moment where most people would just stop.

Most people, after all, can tell the difference between reality and porn. Or if they fail to do so, it's on some mundane, banal level, some false myth about sex they are yet to unlearn, for example.

But that's not where I'm at.

Eric's questions are polite, but the meaning they carry is sharper than a blade. The implication... subtle, and inappropriate, and dangerous.

Sometimes, it's, "Could you take care of these photocopies?"

Or maybe, "Sorry, forgot to schedule your appointments this week. Guess you'll have to do it yourself."

And then, naturally, my very favourite: "Get me a nice cup of coffee, will you?"

"Yes," I say every time. And "yes," and "yes." Heart fluttering, vision going blurry, I acquiesce, comply, yield, all words that should not be erotic at all, and yet send a shiver of pure sexual allure down my spine.

He asks it all with that polite, always-in-control mask on his face, expressionless if not for the subtlest of grins, the faint glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he watches me -- a supposedly powerful professional woman -- squirm under his thumb.

"Good," he says every time I comply with his wishes. Just that. Good. I hold the fate of his career in his hands, he is my administrative assistant, and yet he curtly comments my para-secretarial work as adequate. And the most humiliating part? He's just curt enough that he leaves me wanting more.

More approval. More validation. More humiliation.

He hasn't lifted a finger on me yet, despite the many allusions he made when we had our Talk with a capital T, and those he still occasionally drops when he... ugh... orders me around. He's not stupid, my assistant. He's not gonna rush headlong into the unknown.

He's going to patiently test the boundaries of my screwed up mind. To him, this may well be a methodical thing, but to me, it just prolongs the allure and horror, because I know what he will find.

As I scurry around the hallways on my secret errands, doing menial tasks for my male secretary, right under the nose of my unsuspecting fellow execs, I can't deny the truth. Most people would have stopped by now, hell, even people who share my kinks.

Even those who harbour fantasies they consider shameful or disturbing, even those who are deep into the kinky mindset, can more often than not recognise when things are getting serious.

When things are getting dangerous.

"You're holding a presentation for the board next week," he asks me today, his voice soft, so soft. "Aren't you?"

"Yes," I say, gulping down. Noticing the glimmer in his eyes at my assent.

"I'll take a look at it for you," he says. "In the meantime..."

He hands over a file. "Smith's asking for more budgetary reports," he says, casually. "You should bring these to him."

My heart sinks, and my hands tremble so hard that it's a miracle I don't drop the file he's giving me. This is how it all started, I remember. I sent him up to the upper floor. He saw me fetch coffee for my fellow board members.

I spent the night masturbating to him finding out...

"B-b-but," I whisper, my voice so unsteady, so uncertain, not the voice of a corporate girlboss, but that of a small, mousy, lost little girl. Does he know what this means? What risk I'm running?

"Chop chop," he says, which I suppose answers my questions, and then some. With an embarrassing blush on my cheeks and an even more mortifying heat between my thighs, I spin around like a good little trooper, and head up to the upper floor, reports in hand.

This is crazy. Completely insane.

In the throes of fantasy and need, us kinksters talk about what we'd like other people to do to us... we imagine a totalising fantasy, one that transforms our lives, takes everything away.

Being completely enslaved and dominated, or perhaps kidnapped and sold to someone, or maybe turned into nothing more than an eager sexual pet... the specifics may vary, but the all-encompassing nature of the fantasy does not.

But those are just words... because most people can tell the difference between reality and porn.

Suddenly, the game is not so fun, when your job, or your family, or your finances might be on the line. When your self-respect could be taking a serious hit. When you stand to lose something for real.

Because most kinksters understand that, no matter what we shout at the top of our lungs, or think in the dark recesses of our twisted minds just before we cum, all this stuff is best left as a game.

Smith looks surprised to see me, when I knock on his door. He's a pudgy man, soft and overweight, with knotty fingers and mousy eyes behind thick glasses. A living, breathing stereotype, and a fundamentally non-threatening one.

That's why he never rose so high as I and others did. He doesn't have what it takes. Not a throatcutter, this one, just a milquetoast administrator.

Which makes his look of confusion all the more humiliating, when I sheepishly hand him the files like I'm just an office gopher.

"Shouldn't your secretary be doing this?" He asks me at last, accepting the file and beginning to leaf through the pages. "Is he sick?"

That'd be the only conceivable explanation, wouldn't it? An easy lie, offered on a silver platter... but also an ineffective one, should he meet Eric in the building later today. So I shrug and mumble, "I have him doing something else at the moment."

"I see," Smith mutters, and before he can say or ask anything else, I make a small nod with my head and quickly head out the door; then straight down the hallway, to the elevator, and towards the safety of my own office.

Relative safety. My predator is in there, after all... which just goes to prove what, deep down, I sadly already know.

I am not most people.

I'm not most kinksters, either.

I find Eric waiting for me on my return, not in my office this time, but at his usual desk in the waiting room. He looks up from the monitor with a twisted half-smile that makes my breathing become shallower and shallower.

I can't believe I ever thought of his face as forgettable.

I mean, of course, it makes sense on some level, I feel no attraction towards him as a man -- the power play, yes, the legacy of Remy, yes, but not him, physically. And I suppose I can't really be blamed. Places like the Mountain are endless factories of thin, lanky white collar workers with clean-shaven faces, thinning hair, and dead eyes.

Though his eyes have never looked dead. Pale, yes, but intelligent, calculating. Cold.

That's the best adjective for him, really. He is always unfailingly polite and formal, but you'd be mistaken if you thought that's who he is down to the core. I'm learning that now. I'm learning it as he watches me squirm like trapped prey, slowly but surely pressing his thumb down, harder and harder.

Even his smiles are cold...

"I felt your presentations needed a fair amount of work," he says, and that just mortifies me. Is my own assistant really disparaging my work? Does he mean it, or is he just saying it to gaslight me, to undermine me, to further cement his grip over me?

And which one of the two would be worse? More humiliating?

Eric isn't privy to the questions I ask myself, as I feel increasingly hemmed in by his game. Our game.

He just nonchalantly hands me over a USB drive, which I assume contains the updated document, and I take it sheepishly. Am I really going to sink this low? Stand before the rest of the board, and present something that my own assistant has corrected and edited?

As I take the drive, his other hand suddenly clenches around my wrist, making me yelp in surprise. I take a step back, or try to -- he holds me in place, pulling and tugging me forward, like one would a recalcitrant dog on a leash.

Strong.

I should be scared, or outraged. Instead, I feel immediately and instinctually cowed. I lower my head, humbly, demurely.

"You still haven't told me what this is," he says, his voice barely above a whisper. "Or where it's going."

My cheeks redden. Of course I haven't told him. How could I explain? During the Talk, I mumbled out a half-baked explanation about just liking it when I'm treated like this.

I didn't specify that it was a gender thing, that his maleness matters. I didn't tell him I'm a lesbian. I didn't tell him about Remy.

But I feel his metaphorical grip on me slowly beginning to tighten -- much like his literal grip on my wrist. He's figuring me out. I'm being studied, observed, acted upon. A passenger, with no say in what the guy running the experiment will do next.

I know that some day, these flimsy responses aren't going to be good enough. One more reason why I should have stopped this by now... while I still can.

That's the thing, though, isn't it? I can't.

Eric releases my wrist, eventually, though his eyes never leave me. He gives a patient shrug. "Not to worry. I'll get the truth out of you," he says, and then, his eyes narrow. "One way or another..."

It's all I can do not to blurt out yes sir. Instead, I withdraw back to my office, sink into my chair, and pretend to work for the rest of the day, the drive with the updated presentation resting on my desk, as if silently mocking me.

Of course I'm going to go with his version. Of course I'm going to acquiesce, yield, and comply.

Because I have this... thing in me. This need. I'm not sure if Remy planted it, or if it was always there, and she merely awoke it, but it warps everything I look at, everything I touch. It's like a wedge, deeply nestled into some primitive fold of my mind that I have no direct access to, or control over.

I really can't stop.

Every time impropriety takes over, every time Eric and I play our little game, right under the noses of all our colleagues, every time he tests the boundaries of my waning power over him, my entire body goes haywire.

It's devastating, like a sudden illness, and yet it makes me feel alive in a way that I've only ever experienced with Remy. I get this sudden sense of vertigo, this rush... adrenaline floods my system, my heart starts racing, my limbs go weak.

This is not arousal, not really. It's something that goes much beyond normal, physical arousal. It's this mad cascade of chemicals, this lightheadedness, this sudden sensation that feels like I'm spiking a fever.

That's it. That's the word: fever. Like reality starts to fade away, and I'm barely in control of my own actions. The sheer banality of Eric's insubordination, the subtle and gradual testing of boundaries... it feels like a fucking drug.

I sound like an addict, and I mean, isn't that kind of accurate? Remy made me into one. She patiently conditioned me into only finding gratification in her relentless abuse, in her complete mastery over my increasingly fragile mind. This is just another iteration of getting that fix.

How do you stop something like this?

Perhaps more pertinently: why would you stop something like this? Most people, most kinksters, would, of course. They would be able to, for example, remember that hey, I'm supposed to be a lesbian, and lesbians don't want guys to touch them, let alone humiliate them.

I'm supposed to be a professional, not let my own subordinate take control of me at work.

I'm supposed to have moved on from my crazy girlfriend.

And yet, I haven't. I imagine Remy watching every interaction, just like she watched with glee as she impaled my face on a dildo, whispering about the end of my sexual orientation, telling me...

Unravel for me.

I imagine telling her what's happening to me at work. I imagine her laughing so hard that she brings herself to tears, because I'm pathetic beyond her wildest dreams and aspirations.

Why would I ever choose work, over this? Why should I sacrifice this thrilling, addictive, head-spinning little game? To do what, protect this boring, soul-grinding executive job? I'm a glorified email writer and powerpoint presenter.

Nothing we talk about, or decide, or do in that board room, has any positive impact on the world around us. I've climbed the Mountain, and found out that there is no meaning to be found up here. Just loneliness.

Is that really more valuable than whatever I feel, when I fetch coffee for my assistant?

As for being a lesbian, well... that's sort of the point, isn't it? If I were not a lesbian, this would still be extremely misogynistic and humiliating, but... it wouldn't be as dehumanising. It wouldn't be as destructive to who I am.

Where's the pain, the emotional sadism, the identity death, if my very orientation isn't being subverted?

Unravel for me.

I wish you could see this, Remy. How good a girl I still am, always have been, always will be, for you. I wish you could see this, see me, and say something new, something incredibly mean and cruel, but insightful... and thus, all the crueler for it. Something else that would be seared into my brain forever, poisoning every future opportunity to think like a normal person again.

Every further opportunity to tell the difference between reality, and porn.

Every further opportunity to stop...

***

Solemn nods, grunts of approval, and muttered congratulations greet the end of my presentation.

That's about as much as you can expect, when your audience is the rest of the board, and your presentation is on how we can limit further IP infringement incidents in the future -- a timely topic, given the recent scandal, but not exactly a thrilling one.

And yet, they don't know, these men, these dragons who sit atop the Mountain, hoarding their treasures. They don't know that the woman they have begrudgingly welcomed into their ranks is being subtly controlled by her own male assistant. They don't know he's thoroughly edited and expanded my presentation.

That it's a man, they're applauding. And a mere secretary, no less.

The meeting comes to a close, and I'm just about to rush out the door, when I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder. I turn around to see Bearman, the oldest among us, his voice a droning monotone that induces drowsiness in everyone who has the misfortune to be in a meeting with him.

"Well done," he says, and this might be the first time in my life that his voice has made me feel something. "There was a noticeable improvement in structure, layout, and depth. Keep up the good work, Claire."

I stand there, too stunned for words, as he slides past me and out the room, into the hallway. I can hear the furious beating of my heart... and distantly, in my own memory, the echoes of Remy, laughing at me.

That's really what he said. A noticeable improvement.

Fuck.

I wait in the board room, giving everyone time to clear out, and not just because I need to catch my breath, or hide my blush. I know that I'll want to be alone, when I get out into the hallway. Because I know that my predator will be there, waiting...

And that's where I find him. Leaning against the wall, the picture of composed relaxation, completely in control of the situation... while his female boss spirals more and more into this crazy game, this fantasy.

This addiction.

He contemplates me for a long, silent moment, and I feel like I'm being examined by a higher power. Like he's looking into my soul, seeing if he can find fault with me, or if I'm deserving of his approval.

Fuck, he's sunk his claws deep into me in so little time, how could it happen?

But I know why. He's simply placing his claws into the wounds Remy has carved before him. They never healed, after all...

"So, how did it go?" he asks, politely, though there is no mistaking the steel beneath. "Any comments?"

My fingers entwine as I place my hands behind my back, trying to stand a little taller, to meet his gaze. To not sound, and look, like the frightened girl in a man's world that Remy always said I should turn into; deserved to become.

"They said..." I hesitate, my mouth dry, my heart racing. I'm shaking with adrenaline, arousal and fear, and I can't even string a coherent sentence together. "... noticeable improvement..."

Where I'm a whimpering wreck, Eric is perfectly unfazed by it all, as if things are proceeding exactly as he foresaw. He merely nods, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

"That's what I thought."

Then, he draws closer to me, stepping right into my personal space, and my breath catches in my throat.

He's tall, taller than me, and confident, and our postures invert as I'm the one now taking one step backwards after another, until my shoulders hit the wall behind me. He's looming over me, looking down at me, literally and metaphorically.

He places one hand on my left shoulder, thumb and index finger gently rubbing my hair. It's the softest of touches, but it's not gentle, an apparent contradiction that is difficult to explain, it's just something I feel.

A predator's tenderness.

"So," he says pointedly, "I guess you should ask me to edit more of your work in the future. Shouldn't you?"

A spasm of pure arousal travels straight down between my legs. Remy always loved to make me ask... to make me beg for the humiliations she imposed upon me.

I can smell him. His hands look so big and powerful... not in a sexual sense, an intimidating one. Here I am, a lesbian, acknowleding a man's purview over my professional life, and perhaps more, so much more, giving him power over me, the same way Remy had power over me.

He could do more than just rub my hair. He could pull it. He could wrap one hand around my throat, and start to squeeze, while his other hand slides between my legs to discover how embarrassingly wet my sex is, right now.

For a man.

He could lean in, and kiss me. He could press against my shoulders, and push me down to my knees...

"Please," I ask in a soft voice, a supplicant's voice, the voice of someone who knows she's at the mercy of a higher power, and can only find hope in begging and prostration. "Please, edit my presentations for me. You're b-b-better at this than I am..."

He's so close now, so close that we could start kissing any moment, that I can feel his breath on my lips.... And suddenly, he withdraws from me.

It's sudden, and yet at the same time, so obviously calculated. He smiles mischievously at me, which mortifies me. I am being teased, by a man. I am as flushed with shame as I am with arousal and self-deprecation. I want his approval. His validation.

I want him to...

"Since you ask so nicely," he says, clearly enjoying himself, "I'll accommodate your request. I guess we'll be working a lot more... closely, in the future."

And with that, he turns his back on me without a word, and walks back towards the elevators, leaving me feeling flustered, humiliated, and denied.

Of course he needed to do that. He's breaking me, my resolve. The next time he moves in on me, I won't be able to resist.

Then again, that's the problem when you're an addict. You can't win a fight you want to lose.

"I look forward to it," I say, in a half-whisper, as he recedes farther and farther down the hallway, probably well out of earshot.

"... Sir."