Catalyst 4

This story contains themes of dominance and submission in a lesbian setting. If you think you might be offended by such material please try a different story.

The Catalyst

Chapter One

It had been at least fifteen years since I last interviewed a candidate in person, certainly not since I had taken the company public, and I was twenty-four then. Those fifteen years had seen the company grow from a single office to world-wide representation and a current staff of more than three hundred.

I checked myself in the mirror and decided that, whilst those years had brought a fair measure of stress, time had been kind to me. Unless they actually knew very few people could guess my real age.

My mother still had people thinking she was in her fifties when she had, in fact, turned seventy and I shared those same genes and much else besides. Most women do not get to see their mothers naked body that often but mine had been a life model of some renown during her twenties and she had been the subject of a couple of moderately famous portraits.

It was obvious that we were both slim and long legged with the large breasts that seemed to be a family hallmark but I also knew that we shared the same prominent nipples and, courtesy of the immodest Clarke portrait, very noticeable labia.

She and I were facially similar and she, in turn, had often been mistaken for the silent film star Louise Brooks hence the scandal that had attached to the Clark portrait when it was first hung at The National.

Melanie, my p.a., looked in at the door and announced the candidate's arrival and I noticed that she seemed a little flustered which was at odds with her normally cool demeanour.

I stood up to greet Jade and was immediately struck by the fact that she was not intimidated by my office. Even I am prepared to admit that it is a little ostentatious but then, nowadays, I am called upon to entertain captains of industry and others amongst the great and good.

Jade looked at me fixedly as she crossed the room and I reinforced the impression I had gained from her photographs that she might scrub up nicely. Her make-up was cheap and not well applied but she had ice blue eyes over high cheek bones and a nicely shaped mouth. She also had lovely blonde hair but it was uncaringly styled.

I instinctively locked eyes with her and so I only noticed the way she was dressed in a peripheral way. She slouched a little as she walked but that did little to disguise the fact that she was nicely proportioned and the unkind thought flitted through my mind that, if all else failed, she could make a nice living with the aid of a pole.

She wore a mismatched jacket over a very short skirt with a blouse that struggled to contain her ample charms. I had to remind myself that she was barely nineteen and her experience of interviews was extremely limited.

I was going to try and keep things informal by inviting her to sit on the sofa but she immediately opted for the visitors chair on the opposite side of my desk. She did not attempt to shake hands and I was struck by the way that she moved the chair away from the desk to establish a personal space for herself.

As I went through her spartan résumé she gave terse one word answers and I had to remind myself that she was only attending the interview in order to tick the box and retain her entitlement to a job seekers allowance.

Unbeknownst to her I had accessed some of her more personal records and had established that she had been raised by a series of foster parents and had a very patchy school attendance. A word that came up more than once was 'manipulative' but she had a very high intelligence quotient; indeed, so high that she was suspected of cheating and had been retested.

She looked bored and unbuttoned her jacket as if to suggest that the office was too warm and that she was anxious to leave. As she did so my eyes flitted to her chest. Beneath her blouse she wore a cheap uplift bra so thin as to suggest the darker shading of her nipples.

It happened in the space of a split second but there was the tiniest glint in her eye letting me know that she had caught my glance. I felt awkward for an instant but I collected myself and carried on with my questions.

"Do you have any hobbies or personal interests?"

"I like to go out... but I have to find someone willing to pay for me."

It was the longest sentence she had strung together and I wondered just exactly what she meant but then, as if to illustrate her point, she sat up a little straighter and crossed one leg over the other. Her skirt rode up revealing an expanse of pale thigh and I could see her almost daring me to look.

It was hard not to but my mind was racing. On paper, she seemed a prime candidate but if she was prostituting herself in order to live it was a complete non-starter. I was in two minds as to whether or not I should carry on the interview process or simply bring things quickly to a close.

"That sounds a little dangerous. There are some very strange men out there."

She paused and half smiled before she replied.

"Oh believe me, I am very choosey when it comes to men and, besides, women are far easier prey."

If she was attempting to shock me she succeeded but years of negotiations had enabled me to perfect a poker face. Even now there was no confirmation that she was referring to sexual favours but then, very slowly, she recrossed her legs.

It was all I could do to hold her steady gaze but the flash at the edge of my vision suggested that she was either wearing the sheerest of panties or was not wearing any at all.

Had she come to the interview looking for an opportunity to pimp herself?

She had chosen the wrong woman. After two failed long term relationships I had been ready to give up on the male of the species and focus fully on my business. I still had a lot of men coming on to me but I tended to choose the younger, more virile, specimens when the fancy took me and simply kicked them out of the door the morning after.

I stood up and gave a neutral smile.

"I would like to thank you for coming in today and we will be in touch. My assistant will look after your travel expenses."

She rose from her chair without a word and walked out of the room leaving me to make a final note on her file. I gave it a further ten minutes and decided that I needed some fresh air. Melanie was not at her desk in the outer office and so I scribbled a post it note and stuck it on her screen.

My office occupied the top floor of five and I decided to take the stairs but I caught my heel on the very first flight and felt it go. I cursed, took off my now useless shoes, and headed back upstairs to the ladies room where I kept a pair of trainers in my locker.

As I walked in I heard a distinct groan coming from the single cubicle. It could only have been Melanie as we were the only two situate on the fifth floor. I wondered if it was her time of the month and I was about to creep back out again, to save her embarrassment, when it came again.

On second hearing I knew that it was not the sound of someone in discomfort, rather, it was something from the opposite end of the spectrum. I froze to the spot and I felt my heart beating faster.

There could be no doubt. Straining my ears I now heard the wet sound of frantic fingers and an accompanying muffled sob. A vivid, unbidden, picture formed in my mind of what was happening on the other side of the locked door.

Melanie was a graduate destined for great things with the company. She was as good a personal assistant as I could have ever have hoped for and, from a company image point of view, it helped that she was stunningly attractive.

In the eighteen months she had worked for me she had never been anything less than totally professional and I could not quite square it away with what I was now hearing.

Excluding the theatrics of the occasional porn film I had never witnessed another woman reaching an orgasm and I was embarrassed to find that it was acting on me in a very unsettling manner.

She was clearly reaching a crisis point and I reasoned with myself that it would be easier to slip away when the moment came. It was obvious that she was trying to stifle the urge to cry out and then I jumped as something banged against the door.

At that point she must have lost control. I could see the heel of her shoe beneath the door as her foot tremored rattling it in its hinges. I now knew that she was seated, reinforcing the image I had formed, and a low, plaintive, wail heralded her climax.

I quickly gathered myself and padded from the room stealthily closing the door behind me.

I found the sanctuary of my own office and, for the first time that I could remember, I locked the door behind me. It took a moment for my breathing to settle and then I began to think things through. Had Melanie's earlier discomfort had anything to do with Jade?

To the best of my knowledge Melanie was much like me. She could have her choice of men and none of them seemed to last too long. It had never occurred to me that she might have an interest in women as well.

Surprisingly, that thought set up an immediate tingling between my legs. I suppose that every red blooded woman has wondered, at some time, what it would be like but for all but a very few it remains a fantasy.

There have been a few occasions, over the years, when I have looked at a particularly attractive woman and, just for a few seconds, the thought has crossed my mind but that simply spurred me on to get laid by some anonymous stud.

The plain truth was that I could have done with some love and attention at that very minute and then another outrageous idea entered my head. I still had my overnight bag in the office, following my trip to Dijon, and I now retrieved it.

I travel with two toothbrushes. One, a top of the range rechargeable model, and the other cheap and battery operated. The cheap one has a particularly vigorous motor and, when mated with the plastic cap from my hair mousse dispenser, it becomes a very effective vibrator thus saving any potentially embarrassing encounters with customs officials.

I had never done anything like this in the office before and my hands were trembling with nervous excitement as I put my little toy together. In a spirit of devilment I was tempted to strip off altogether but my skirt would help to muffle the sound.

I slipped out of my panties noticing, with embarrassment, just how damp they were. I dropped them into my handbag and then, like a guilty schoolchild, I relaxed more deeply into my chair and put my hand between my legs.

As soon as I flicked the switch the sound from beneath my desk sounded hideously loud but I was confident that it could not be heard from beyond the door. I began to trace the rounded head along the fringes of my labia and gasped with the pleasure of it.

I closed my eyes and thought about the bank's new loan officer. He was probably around twenty-five and was positively drooling by the time our meeting was over. I had him noted down as an easy catch.

The possibility made me wet and, as I started to press more firmly, I felt my sex opening in welcome.

It was at that precise moment that my head was invaded by another image altogether. With frightening clarity I imagined Jade sitting before me with her legs lewdly parted and this time she was definitely not wearing panties.

I wanted to dispel the mental picture but it brought with it a surge of arousal that shivered my whole body. It seemed almost real as I stared at her sex and she encouraged me to use my toy more forcefully. Matching the thought to the deed I pressed it deep inside and then I began to work it in and out with almost brutish ferocity.

All the time I could see her face and hear her voice as she taunted me to work harder and then she simply told me to come.

I usually have to work towards a climax but that simple phantom command had my body shaking as the most powerful orgasm I had experienced in quite some time rocked me to the foundations.

I was left breathless as it finally ebbed away but then I heard the phone ring in the outer office. It was answered almost immediately, confirming that Melanie was back on station, but that only prompted further wantonness.

The room reeked of arousal, and I was going to have to open a window, but I imagined ringing through and telling Melanie to come in and take care of something for me.

"Oh my God!"

I actually said the words out loud as I pictured her coming through the door and seeing me like this and I unconsciously turned my toy back on and started to stimulate my clitoris.

Chapter 2

At home that same evening I tried to make sense of it all but to little avail. I decided to chalk it up to experience, something I could laugh at when I looked back on it.

The problem was that my sleep was troubled. I could not shake the feeling that Jade had, somehow, got one over on me. Given our respective stations in life it was a dumb thing to fret about. She would go back to her shabby little existence and I need never see her again.

By the time I slept on it I had had a change of heart. In her own way Jade had simply manifested the basic traits that I had actually been looking for and I was convinced that, with a little subtle moulding, my scheme could be made to work.

Melanie raised an eyebrow when I asked her to invite Jade onto the company's induction scheme, on the usual generous remuneration terms, but she did not openly question my decision.

After work I wandered down to the local wine bar where Melanie was holding court for a few friends and colleagues to celebrate her twenty-fifth birthday. In light of what had transpired the day before I found myself scrutinizing her interactions and particularly those with other women.

I laughed to myself, decided that I was reading far too much into things, and drained my glass. As I set it down someone directly behind me spoke soto voce.

"She's very beautiful don't you think?"

I turned to be confronted by a tall woman dressed entirely in black. She was about my height and, at a guess, she must have been around thirty years old. She had dark, piercing, eyes over a slightly upturned nose and a very full mouth which was precisely defined with lip liner.

I would not have said that she was beautiful, perhaps strikingly good looking, but she had a poise that suggested that it did not matter what I, or anybody else, thought. She smiled and held out her hand.

"Audris, I'm here with Melanie's cousin"

She indicated a slender, blonde, girl who had been laughing with Melanie minutes earlier. Ironically, I had read their apparent intimacy as flirtatiousness and now had to admit to myself just how stupid I had been.

I introduced myself as Melanie's boss and discovered that Audris was acting as London correspondent for the Die Zeit newspaper. We made small talk but, rather salaciously, I gently probed for more details of her relationship with Melanie's cousin who barely looked old enough to drink legally.

She, for her part, enigmatically steered around my questions and brought the conversation back to more mundane topics. At some point I even asked her where she had her hair done. She favoured a heavy bob cut which brought out the best in her dark, lustrous, tresses and the style looked very high maintenance.

I excused myself to go and use the ladies room but when I got there it was to find a gaggle of young women monopolising the mirrors as they chatted and adjusted their make-up.

Fortunately, I knew that there were alternative facilities on the first floor. The upstairs function room was not being used and so there was only minimal lighting on the staircase but I was familiar with the layout.

It was nice to enjoy a quiet moment but as I finished up and pressed the flush I could hear that someone else had also found their way upstairs. I came out and was surprised to find Audris checking herself in the mirror.

"Sorry, you seemed to know where you were going and so I followed you."

My immediate, unsettling, thought was that she had trailed me in the belief that I needed somewhere to 'powder my nose'. I felt sure that she was going to ask me an awkward question but I did not realize just how awkward.

"I saw the way that you were looking at Melanie. You don't have any experience with women do you?"

I was so shocked that I did not even consider the sheer impertinence of the remark. My instincts immediately called for a riposte.

"Nor you with men I think."

She smiled condescendingly.

"I enjoy a pretty boy from time to time."

"So where does Melanie's cousin fit into the scheme of things?"

"Are you asking if we are lovers? I suppose we are in a manner of speaking."

Now I was intrigued and it must have shown. She paused for a moment before continuing as if letting me in on a secret.

"She has certain needs...and I am happy to accommodate her."

I feared that she was alluding to some tawdry drugs issue and that my initial guess on encountering her may have been close to the mark. I was going to check my make up but decided to leave it and get back downstairs as expeditiously as possible.

She shifted very slightly, not enough to bar my passage but enough to make me pause.

"I want to make you an offer"

I looked at her more uncertain than ever but she had piqued my curiosity. I said nothing and allowed her to continue.

"I enjoy sex, particularly oral sex, but I am not one of life's natural givers. Melanie's cousin, on the other hand, is...how should I put it...keen to serve."

Inside my mind was reeling but I hoped that I managed to keep my features neutral. I was fully aware of the concept of a dominant partner in a lesbian relationship but I had never heard it put in quite these terms. It took a second or two to realize that she was still speaking.

"She will happily spend hours going down on me. She just never seems to tire."

The image that she conjured caused an inappropriate tingling between my legs. My experience with men, even those who professed to enjoy it, was a series of disappointing, perfunctory, performances. The idea of someone prepared to carry on for however long I wanted was arousing in the extreme and the fact of it being another woman fully attuned and sensitive to my needs only added an extra frisson.

Caught up in this reverie her words became imbued with an unsettling intimacy

"The truth is that I've taken all that she's got to give and it's time for me to move on. I am going to tell her later this evening."

I looked at her wondering where this was leading and then, with a shock, it dawned on me. Was she putting Melanie's cousin on offer?

It says everything that I actually gave it a seconds thought before my scruples took control and I trod it down but then she confounded me altogether.

"So, after tonight, you and I are never likely to run into one another again. It will remain strictly between us. Do you want to know what it's like to taste another woman?"

Her words hit me like a cosh but the shock was compounded as she provocatively lifted her skirt. Somewhere along the way she had taken off her panties and her sex was blatantly displayed.

For a fleeting instant my mind was drawn to my interview with Jade and my inappropriate behaviour in the office. It was almost as if I could feel a physical presence between my legs.

Audris looked at me with a mixture of invitation and challenge and I briefly wondered what it was that had made her single me out. She had already made clear her own preference which suggested that she saw me in a submissive role.

As anyone who really knew me could attest I lived my life by being assertive and so what had she seen that marked me out as something different? I had a sudden, irrational, fear that she knew exactly what I was thinking as she proceeded to make her invitation even more blatant.