The New Boss

It's fantasy of the sort like will has magic and dragons and stuff, so DOES fit the SF/F category.

This part has no things that need warnings for except that it is part one of more than one part and no genitals of one person touches the genitals of another ... yet.

Constructive criticism would be appreciated.

--- Lissa

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"Take your shoes off." The man behind the desk, Mister Basnin, had only recently taken over the small company from his father. She'd only seem him at a distance until a few days ago. Brick had been surprised at how young he was - she'd been expecting a man around half his father's age, not a man barely older than herself.

"Why?" she asked as she stepped out of her shoes, blushing lightly as she curled her toes against the hardwood floor, enjoying the way her sock slipped on it. "It's hard to walk on this floor in just socks. It's slippery."

Mister Basnin looked over his desk at her feet. "Your shoes make too much noise. I have no idea how father tolerated it, but it is driving me batty." He leaned forward to look at her toes again. "You can take off your socks as well if you're worried about falling."

Blushing even brighter, Brick lifted her skirt high enough to reach the top of the socks, very close to revealing she didn't wear underdrawers. If she'd been wearing them they'd be getting very wet. The thought of exposing herself, even something as little as her toes, excited her. As tempting as the idea of pulling her skirt up higher was, she resisted and just pulled the socks down and left them bunched up on the floor. Watching the way Mister Basnin looked at her feet and toes, she tugged at the waist of her skirt as if adjusting it, pulling the bottom up about an inch. "Is that better, Sir?"

"Yes, thank you." Mr. Basnin looked at her skirt. "You wear your skirts a bit shorter than most women."

"Yes, Sir. It's a habit from when I was a child." She shrugged. "When I got older my Mother always made them fit the same way the children wear them out of habit, I guess. It's more comfortable this way. Do you want me to change it? No one seems to think it matters except the fancy women, and they always have a complaint."

"No, no. Not at all!" He looked her up and down. "If anything, I'd say shorter would look better." He looked at her chest for a moment, then down at her legs. "I've seen women wearing them shorter, some don't even go down past the knee." He looked back at her chest.

Standing up a little straighter, Brick let him look at the points on her chest where her hard nipples seemed to have grown an inch. Her breasts were small but big enough to make conical mounds in her shirt, and jiggle when she moved. She moved a tiny amount as Mister Basnin watched. Most of the men she was aware of always looked away if she looked at them, but Mister Basnin didn't. "Those are teenagers, Sir. Or prostitutes, but they usually wear clothes that the teenagers wouldn't dare." Bending down to reach for her shoes, she noticed him watching her feet and ankles. The idea that he might have a foot fetish excited her. "Should I come to the office barefoot, then, Sir?"

"What you wear or don't wear outside the office is up to you. You can either keep the shoes under your desk or leave them at home." He waved toward the door. "Since your job doesn't involve talking to, or even seeing, the public, feel free to dress as casual as you want. Just no loud shoes."

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir." Brick started to crouch again to pick up her shoes and noticed Mister Basnin looking at her socks. Pretending to forget about them, she stood up with just her shoes in her hands. "Is there anything else, Sir? I still have a bit more paperwork before I leave for the day."

"No, that will be all for now." She was sure she could feel his eyes on her bum as she left his office. Sitting at her desk, she pulled her skirt up as high as she dared, leaving her legs bare from just below her knees. Turning to pull a paper out of a tray, she glanced back to see her boss looking at her feet. She pushed them further under her chair and tipped them so he was looking at the bottoms while she started working on the contract she'd picked up.

By the time she was done with the contract she'd forgotten to be embarrassed about her feet - until she stood up. She shivered, enjoying the feeling. Keeping her back to her boss's door, she tugged and adjusted her skirt, pulling it a few inches higher and trapping the excess in the waistband. Looking down, she stifled a giggle to see she'd bared her legs halfway to her knees. Keeping her head down a little so he wouldn't notice her arousal, she took the paper into Mister Basnin's office and went around the side of his desk to place it in his 'in' tray. She froze as he placed his hand on her bum and caressed her. It was the first time since she was a small child that anyone had touched her there, and those times had been to spank her. Slowing her breathing, she forced herself to concentrate on the contract.

Turning to face Mister Basnin, she bit her lip as his hand slipped around to rest on her hip. "Will that be all for today, Sir?"

"Yes, I think the rest can wait until tomorrow." Mister Basnin's hand lingered on her hip as she turned toward the door, his hand slipping over her body. As she turned further and the hand ran over her vulva she paused and closed her eyes as he caressed her little mound. She wondered if he could tell she wasn't wearing anything underneath, or that she didn't have any pubic hair. When he started to push his hand between her legs, she finished turning and walked to the door, noticing her socks were missing from the floor.

Leaving her shoes under her desk, she waved at her boss and walked out to the street before remembering her skirt was hiked up indecently high. Blushing at the stares she got, she walked down the dirt road out of town and to her house half a mile away. The dirt and rocks hurt but kept her excited and wet. Dropping her shirt and skirt in the entryway she walked through the house nude. Since her parents had moved away and given her the house she'd stopped wearing clothes at home, keeping an oversize bathrobe by the door in case of visitors, which were very, very rare.

Lighting the lamp on the kitchen table, she knelt in front of the oven and set up a fire. She didn't really feel like cooking anything but she'd used up most of her food and only had some ham and potatoes left. Tossing them into a pot with some water, she left them to simmer for a bit while she sat at the table and read a little from the book her father had given her before he left. It wasn't really proper for a girl to read, but she liked the scenes he'd highlighted for her and read them often. She was pretty sure he wanted to do those things with her but he'd never tried.

In the morning Brick hunted through her old clothes looking for clothes that Mister Basnin might want to see. A pair of underdrawers that weren't much more than a thin strip of cloth between her legs and a string around her waist to hold it in place caught her eye, and she was pretty sure it would rip easily so she could easily 'accidentally' leave it somewhere. Finding a dress that was much too short and a little snug, she grinned. It didn't quite cover her knees and the top part held her little breasts tightly to her chest, making it look like she didn't have any. The button at the collar was too snug on her throat, so she cut it off, then cut off two more, exposing a little bit of her chest. The threads holding the buttons were pretty flimsy and she bit her lip as she imagined them breaking in public. She considered bringing another dress just in case, then decided to take the chance. As long as she didn't wear any makeup people would see her as a teen - they might sigh and shake their heads a little, but most wouldn't say anything.

Mister Basnin was waiting at the door when she arrived, and smiled pleasantly as he looked her over. "You're looking very nice today. And thank you for not wearing shoes." Brick bit her lip as he put his arm around her back and cupped her bum before the entry door was closed. Her underdrawers were growing wet as he caressed her.

"You're welcome, Sir. I figured you would prefer it if you didn't have to hear them at all." She fiddled at the buttons of her dress that were low enough to keep the skirt of the dress snug around her hips. Looking at him watching her fidget, she stopped, then slowly moved her hand up, unbuttoning the a couple of the top buttons to leave the dress open enough for him to see the small cones of her breasts. "Does this look good, Sir?"

"Hm? Oh, yes. Very nice.." Mister Basnin put a hand up to the shoulder of her dress, pushing it aside to expose her breast, then did the same on the other side. She blushed as she looked down and let him cup her breasts and squeeze them gently before tugging at her nipples then letting go. "Very lovely body, Brick."

"Thank you, Sir." Breathing heavily, she shrugged, the action moving the top of the dress back into place. She'd been afraid the shrug would make it fall off, and had been half hoping it would. She'd been aroused for too long, she told herself, and needed to get a grip. Stepping toward her desk, she turned to look back at him. "I've still got a few papers to work on this morning, Sir. Should I take care of them before we start the new contracts?" She felt her dress shift as she turned, exposing one breast to him.

"Yes, old business first. I know my father would let things get into a backlog in his rush to get more work, but that is starting to hurt us. People want their work done, not just signed for." Mister Basnin put a hand on her shoulder, under her dress, and caressed her soft skin. "Let me know if anything is more than a week old, and consider anything two weeks or more to be an emergency."

Brick looked away as he pushed the top part of her dress off her shoulders and let it hang from the waist. "In that case, Sir, we have some emergencies." Walking to the file cabinets while half naked and thinking of business at the same time was a strange flavor of erotic. Putting a hand on one of the huge wooden cabinets, she pointed at a red mark in top corner of one of the drawers. "These all have complaints that are over two weeks old." She pointed to the drawer under it. "Those are all projects that were due to begin already and are now at least two weeks old. And then," she huffed and stepped back, using her toes to open the bottom drawer that was nearly empty. "These are the new contracts. I think there were five in the two weeks before you came in."

"Just five?" Mister Basnin stopped looking at Brick's chest to look in the drawer. "What was he doing those last few weeks?"

"Honestly? Trying to hide the state of the business from you. It's why he kept taking you to large meetings that didn't mean anything, fancy lunches and dinners, surveying jobs that were half done and abandoned, although I'm sure he didn't say they were abandoned." Brick pushed the drawer closed with her heel, then pulled her dress back up, buttoning just enough buttons to keep it from falling down on its own.

"And how do you know all this, or at least, what makes you think that was his motive?" Mister Basnin sat on the corner of her desk watching her move around the office.

"He said so, Sir." Brick reached into the top drawer and pulled out a file. "He trusted me. Now that you are the boss there are no secrets. I work for the company and you are now the company. I hope you will come to trust me as well." She handed the file to Mister Basnin and smirked as he ignored her body to look at the papers.

Standing up slowly, Mister Basnin glanced at her body then smiled at her. It was a weak smile. "Okay, looks like we've got a lot of work ahead of us. You'll need something a little more professional, since it seems I'm going to need to take you with me to help me fix it." He waved the papers in exasperation. "And he'd made a big point about how easy this business was to run." Putting the file on Brick's desk, he buttoned her dress up. "Shoes ... no, you don't need them. We'll worry about that tomorrow. The lumber mill. Do we have to go out there to fix this?"

"Yes, Sir. Mister Joknee won't do business anywhere outside his mill. He's getting a bit on in years and the bustle of the town annoys him. He serves a very fine whiskey and a wonderful wine, as well as expansive feasts he calls lunch. Plan for three hours and make room for a fourth just in case it turns into a shouting match." Brick winced as she thought of the last one.

"Shouting match?" Mister Basnin straightened Brick's dress then cupped her cheek. "I don't shout." He reached for her hand.

"You'll have to if you want Mister Joknee to deal with you. He's nearly deaf. I'd do it for you, but, well, I'm not the kind of people that Mister Joknee will deal with."

"He won't deal with women?" Mister Basnin picked up a clipboard and pencil that Brick was reaching for.

"The lower classes, Sir. I was born poor. I'm called Brick because my father was a bricklayer."

Shaking his head, Mister Basnin took Brick by the hand and led her to the main door of their offices. "I forget about that. Meeting people that are, um, were - damn, it's going to sound offensive no matter how I say it, isn't it?"

"Yes, Sir. It's okay, Sir. I'm almost twenty one and I've been one of 'those' my entire life - I know how the world works."

"I'm almost twenty five and I don't." Mister Basnin stopped halfway out the door and looked down at Brick's bare feet. "I suppose you should wear shoes. And probably have one of those ugly masses of fabric the ladies wear. Maybe stop and have a hairdresser put all your curls into a bun."

Brick giggled. "Sir, everyone who matters knows everyone else who matters. They're going to look down on me if you wrap me in gold gowns and soak me in perfume. No matter how you try to make me fancy, Mister Joknee will pretend I'm not there until the meeting is over, then ask you for my notes on it. He's one of the older generation that doesn't insult people over money, he ignores them over it." Wincing as she stepped down from the doorway onto the dirt road, she looked back at him as he watched her. "And if you try to elevate me they will look down on you, as well."

"Shoes?" Mister Basnin followed her down to the road and reached for her hand.

"No, Sir, unless you insist. I prefer barefoot even if it is naughty. I'll get used to the pebbles and rocks." Backing away very slightly, Brick shook her head, looking around. "You can't do that in public, Sir. That would damage your reputation, and the company rides on reputation. Well, it did. It's going to take a lot of fast work to keep it afloat." Walking a half-step behind and to the side as he started walking toward the edge of time, Brick looked up at him. "It should be easy to fix, Sir. I believe the company still has enough work on order that, if we do it fast, can keep everyone thinking the company is thriving. Fill in some of the older things at the same time and it will make the people that are getting annoyed calm down a little."

"How do we do all that? Now that we're out here trying to actually do the job, I find I don't even know what it is we do, other than 'build things'."

Glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes, Brick looked back down to avoid the worst of the pebbles on the road. "Um, Sir? We don't build things. We get people who want something built together with the people that can build it and the suppliers, like Mister Joknee. They each pay us a fee for setting up the deal. Once it's started we only get involved again if one of the parties tries to cheat."

Stopping, Mister Basnin looked down at Brick. "So all of the backlog is on things that haven't even been started yet?"

"Well, technically they're started. The paperwork has been agreed to, some of it is signed off. Mister Basnin, erm, senior, always considered getting the process started the most important part. Most contracts have terms that keep people from looking at other options for a time once we've started." Brick continued walking, ignoring the fact that she'd walked ahead of him. "It's one of the reasons Mister Joknee is angry. He has the lumber for most of these projects, there are laborers ready to do the work, and there are people waiting for it to be done. Mister Basnin, uh, senior, simply didn't sign the final papers."

"That's stupid!" Mister Basnin stopped in the road, his face an angry red. "We're traipsing out into the forest simply because my father was too lazy to sign some papers?"

"I don't know his motives, Sir. He just said they could wait." Brick reached out to tug at his hand then let it go quickly before anyone noticed. It had the right effect - he started walking again. "He taught me all about the contracts, how to make them profitable, what to watch out for. He didn't tell me why he wouldn't finish them the last few months and it wasn't my place to ask." Glancing at Mister Basnin, she murmured, "although I think he was getting a bit into the drink. Many nights he'd leave before me and not arrive the next morning until much later."

"Doesn't sound like him. His idea of a strong drink was to sniff the wine cork. He could always tell what it was and if it was still good, but his glass was always at least half full at the end of the meal." Mister Basnin stopped again and looked at the file in his hand. "Back to the office. We need to know what was going on before we break something." Grabbing at Brick's hand, he started tugging her back to office.

Blushing, Brick allowed him to tow her along. With luck people would see an angry boss yanking an employee around and his reputation wouldn't suffer.