Power Play. Charlotte Stein

really hope I don’t have to tell you these letters are unacceptable,’ I start. It comes out much better than I thought it would. More like a boss and less like a sex maniac.

      ‘Really?’ he asks, and it’s then that I start to hate him. It’s not even a start, in truth. I loathe him already. I despise his fake innocence and his stupid handsome face and these letters, covered in stuff that most likely fell out of his gorgeous mouth. And unfortunately, all of these things make me ball them up and throw them at him before I speak.

      ‘I’m not sure how you could fail to realise. You’ve misspelled the word and.’

      He blurts out a little oops, which seems to send me into some sort of tailspin of indecision. On the one hand, the word sounds genuine. The breath he puffs out sounds real, and his big eyes go bigger. In fact, by this point they’re so big that they’re starting to swallow me whole.

      But on the other hand … he misspelled the word and. Twice. I’m not sure how that’s possible.

      ‘Do you have some sort of issue I’m not aware of, Benjamin?’

      He shrugs. He actually shrugs.

      ‘Nope,’ he says, and I don’t know what I despise most. His sloppy, ridiculous approach to things, or his utter American-ness. Both just sing out of that nope, so blatant and too much for me to handle. ‘I guess I just made a mess of things, huh?’

      ‘You made a mess of things?’

      ‘Yeah. I probably wasn’t thinking.’

      ‘You weren’t thinking?’

      I have no idea why I keep repeating what he’s saying back to him. But I at least know this: if I don’t get a handle on myself soon, I’m going to do worse than getting a fistful of his hair. I’m going to put the heel of my shoe into his back, and dig in hard enough to make him scream.

      ‘But I swear to God, I’ll do better next time.’

      ‘You keep swearing to God. Is he likely to make you better at your job?’

      ‘Oh, well –’

      ‘The job that you failed to do on Monday morning, when you gave me a vital letter of great importance about four days too late. The job that a chimpanzee could do, if you gave him enough paper and his own desk.’

      His face actually flushes red at that. It’s satisfying, in a way I don’t want to acknowledge.

      ‘I’m so –’ he starts again, but I cut him off. I’m on some sort of roll now, and the longer I let it go on the worse it gets.

      ‘Perhaps the responsibility of a desk is a little too much for you. If so I could hire this theoretical primate to take your place, and you could come and work in my office. I have an absolutely wonderful spot on my floor somewhere for you to play with some coloured blocks.’

      I notice, absently, that his mouth is hanging open. It looks like the expression someone would make if they’d just recently been stabbed in the gut. Sound seems to want to come out of him, but all he can manage is a strangled gasp.

      ‘Are those words you’re trying to form, Benjamin? Because if they are, allow me to fill in the only ones you should be using: yes and sir.’

      I pretend I don’t see his eyes drift closed, briefly.

      ‘Rewrite these letters, without a mistake in them. Do so, and I might let you keep your job. Fail, and … well. I don’t think you want to know what will happen if you fail.’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ he says, and my mind immediately goes back to the last time I heard two words spoken like that. When Tim Lockley was underneath me, body almost completely out of control. Hips jerking upwards, cock fucking into me hard.

      Voice breathless, as he told me yes, now.

      That’s how Benjamin sounds, I think. Like he’s shaky with lust and ready to come at any moment – though naturally I try to evade the obvious. I turn around and stride right out of his cubicle, the second the thought occurs to me. And if my legs feel like water as I do so, well, what am I supposed to do about it?

      I can’t keep reprimanding him like that, I can’t. I went harder than I’d ever intended to, but it hadn’t seemed to put him off. He’d still looked heavy-eyed and weird once I’d done it and even now, as I stand shaking in the sanctity of my office, I can recall the softness of his parted lips. His breathlessness.

      The way he’d seemed to tremble minutely the second I left that little suggestion in the air. If you fail, I think, and then can’t ignore the pulse of pleasure that goes through my sex. I’m aroused because I told someone beneath me off. I’m aroused because I abused my power, and probably upset someone who only maybe sort of deserved it.

      And for a moment I’m so ashamed of that fact I can’t speak. I can’t do anything. I just stand there, thinking about that incredulous look on his face as I suggested a monkey would do a better job than him.

      It’s just unforgivable. Woods might have done more to me and worse, but that doesn’t give me the right to do the same to someone else. I liked what Woods did to me. How do I know for sure that Benjamin does – because he sounded aroused?

      That’s crazy. It’s insane. I have to go back and apologise, I have to.

      Though by God I wish I hadn’t, the minute I get to that partition around his little non-office and take in the long, lovely slope of his body.

      Of course, there are many, many things he could be doing. He could be crying. He’s leaning against the wall of his cubicle, back to the entrance. Shoulders shaking as though with emotion, everything about his gait somehow sloppy and like he’s lost control of himself.

      And yet I know without a shadow of a doubt that he isn’t upset. It’s like the strange understanding I have of his facial expressions. I can tell just from looking at his hunched shoulders and the way his arm is twisted around his body …

      He’s masturbating. He is absolutely, one-hundred-per-cent masturbating.

      I can see his hips rocking forward into what is almost certainly the press of his hand, and when I make myself as quiet as I can, the sounds he’s making become obvious. Little breathless sighs and moans that would probably escape anyone else – they’d just think he was distressed in some way, and get his attention, at which he could turn and straighten himself and pretend to have been blubbering into a hanky.

      Or in this case: the piece of paper he’s got crumpled in his hand.

      I can see it the second he lets himself get completely out of control – the letter I balled up and threw at him. But he hasn’t just got it crushed in his fist, as he pushes all of those sounds against the back of his hand. No no no.

      He’s got the paper pressed against his mouth. He’s got the paper in his mouth practically, as he shudders and bucks into his own grip. And now I can hear it too – the slick slide of a hand over a very slippery cock. All of it just a little muted, because of course he’s doing this under the cover of his trousers. He’s just kind of slipped one hand inside, to work himself all quick and frantic like this.

      And though I wouldn’t admit it before, I’ll admit it now: the idea is thrilling. The whole of it – him purposefully making a mess of those letters, the things I said and his reaction, and now this – it’s just horrendously exciting. My cunt clenches around nothing, in some kind of bizarre sympathy for his predicament. My clit swells, ready to be touched or rubbed or … God …, if he would only lick it the way he’d licked that scrap of paper. If I could just make my legs move and go to him right now, he’d do it, I know he would.

      But knowing is somehow worse than not. Now it’s real. Now it’s true. Being belittled and told off excites him, in the same way it excited me – more so, in fact. I never masturbated at my desk, thinking of Mr Woods telling me to be better, do more, stop making