Chapter 2: Toe Fucking at Lunch
(This story continues directly after the events of Letting Go I)
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She had to run to catch her bus. Her skirt was short and she was wearing no knickers, her knees were weak after the morning love games, her loins tenderized from the breakfast spanking, and, to make her vulnerability even worse, her heels were threatening to scatter beneath her, betray her and send her splaying arse backward on the sidewalk.
She tried not to meet the bus driver's eye. There was still the rest of the crowd. This was the late bus, the full bus, all around her faces and hands sitting at the level of her skirt, and standing arms and hands holding on at the level of her breasts, fingers tap-tap tapping at their mobiles, warm and dextrous, manipulating.
She had to take her mind off the moisture at her thighs. No one is looking, she told herself. After all, she asked herself, was it something she herself would have been looking for? And no one was sniffing, she told herself. She tried not to breathe so hard, tried to keep her breasts from heaving in their pretty pink T, the lovely lace of her bra, tried to keep her skirt from fluttering.
Her workmates were already there, moving in and out of the bathroom, attending to their make up, chatting about the coffee urn, officially here, but not willing to start work a moment before they had to. Their eyes glittered at her as she hurried in. She slowed herself. Be nonchalant, she told herself. Be like you're walking out onto a dance floor.
She gave them a dance floor smile, a performer's smile, and their bodies relaxed. The spiteful glitter went from their eyes, and they lost interest in her, so gracefully, sexily, she moved past them to her chair. She had, at least, arrived ahead of the boss, and there wasn't really any gossip in the matter.
They would have loved knowing that she was wearing no undies, that she had arrived at work flushed and almost late with no knickers. That would have given them something to talk about. They had so little to talk about, TV and celebrities, office gossip, things they chewed over and over again.
She made it to her chair. She sat down. Her skirt was short, not really long enough to sit on. Like her lover at home, sitting on his wheelie chair, fibers prickling his buttocks while he worked. He would never really have put the C on her, laying her on the edge of the bed, lifting her this way, turning her that way, hands busy, methodically, about her private parts, cleaning, rubbing lotion in, fingers solicitously inspecting, patiently probing despite her sudden wild thrusting, his hand pressing down on her pube, then pressing the leather down about her, pulling it up tight along her slit, so that at every heaving breath it pushed against her and she was so weak at the knees she could barely crawl. He liked to watch her like that some Sundays, when they played their games. But he would never really have done it this morning. He could not have borne the ugliness it would have made of the lines of her skirt.
Her boss arrived, sweeping into the bathroom. She had been thinking of her boss when she had bought the underwear, simple and girly, the way her boss made her feel. Her breasts and her bra were made for each other, and that morning, she had admired herself in the mirror, thinking of her boss. Her panties had sat across her like a fine tattoo. She had looked at herself, the beauty she had made of herself, and thought of her boss.
The lace, the silk, the excitement of the idea of it, the idea of her boss's eyes and boss's fingers finding these fine things alive in the boring world of the office, had betrayed her. When her lover had made her laugh, she had started a game, and it had all unraveled against the clock, and so here she was with no knickers at all, yet her loins were alive and her breasts were warm, and she tried not to stare as she watched her boss go through that door.
Rising, she followed her boss into the bathroom.
"Only me," she sang out, so her boss would hear her voice.
She took her brush from her handbag and began brushing her hair, watching her hair in the mirror flow about her face and become charged with electricity so she had to run her fingers over it. There was a sound of flushing. She turned as a cubicle door opened and her boss came out, sleek skirt running below the knees and a dark office jacket to match, structured and business like. She felt so floral and feminine in comparison. Yet under the jacket her boss wore a shiny, satiny, loose-flowing blouse, the soft smoothness a temptation to the fingers.
Her boss smiled. Her boss had an honest, straightforward, smile, white teeth and a mobile mouth.
"You look nice today," her boss said.
When her work mates said that, they usually meant the opposite or, at best, that the receiver of the compliment had looked far from nice on other days. When her boss said it, it was like she was glad to see someone happy.
"Help yourself," she answered, then smiled at her boss's sudden look of confusion, and so she indicated the wash basin behind her. Her boss came forward. There were three wash basins in the room, but her boss came to the one she was standing in front of, choosing hers. She had to move aside, but she stayed close, watching the water run over her boss's hands, over her fingers, and all the rings glinting and glimmering there. The rings caught her eyes. Even when her boss moved to the dryer and raised her hands to the breeze, she watched them.
"Are you married?" she asked, casually, like an ice-breaker, just starting a normal, meaningless conversation.
"Divorced," her boss answered, looking back at her. Her boss was the sort of person who studied the faces of the people she spoke to.
Oh." She thought of a wedding night, falling lace, and a bed.
"I have two kids," her boss added, as if deciding to answer the question that always came next, perhaps answering because she had not asked. "Teenagers." She stopped smiling, and looked tired.
"Oh." She wanted her boss to smile again. "But you're here now. And you have all those beautiful rings." She wanted her boss to feel beautiful again.
"Yes. Well. Some days I like to be armed."
"Armed?"
The dryer stopped. Her boss looked at her for a moment.
"You know. Some days, when you are expecting things to be difficult, you put on your best make up and your best jewelry, and get ready to face the world. It's like a mask, or an armor."
Her boss wasn't wearing make-up, though. Glancing in the mirror, checking herself before she went to face the world, her boss added, "I don't have time to put on make-up, though," she added ruefully, letting a small smile come back to her face. She straightened her jacket so that it was snug across the shoulders.
"Are you expecting a difficult day?"
Her boss looked at her straight, not expecting sympathy.
"Meetings. And middle management isn't so easy," she admitted at last, and turned to the door.
"Hey." She couldn't let this chance go, this moment alone, whatever her boss's mood. "Would you like to go out to lunch?"