Chapter One

 

It's hard being a girl, at times. There are a lot of expectations of you and they often conflict. Be modest but not shy. Dress appropriately - like what does that even mean? Don't show off, but hey, you have to be hot and sexy. But not too hot and sexy! Look at all these sexy things you can wear, and this makeup and these hairstyles, and the dye and the sexy lingerie and the high heels. Wear it all! But hey, don't look like you're trying, because that's just sad.

As far as I've been able to tell you're supposed to be delicately beautiful at all times and dress sexy but not slutty, and you're supposed to act like this is all just absolutely natural. You know, like I woke up this morning looking like this and just threw on any old thing.

And if you got lucky in the looks department due to DNA you have to act like you hardly even realize it. Show no pride. Don't flex. Don't take advantage of it. Don't brag about it. Pretend you don't even realize what you look like or that all those boys panting after you are driven by how hot you are.

For that matter, pretend not to even realize all those boys are panting after you. Which involves lying to yourself, of course. You need to especially avert your mind's eye to why they all pant after you and what they want to do to you. Because that can be awfully awkward and embarrassing.

Because they want to fuck you. Okay? Even the old guys two and three times your age. Even the ones happily married who wouldn't dream of cheating still look at you and have this instinctive/hormonal response that makes them flirt and smile and be nice to you.

Because at heart, the male animal in them wants to tear your clothes off and fuck your brains out right then and there. That's right. You are prey and they are hunters. And only the law keeps a lot of them at bay. I laugh at those idiot girls out marching in the streets demanding the police be abolished.

Can anyone really be that dumb in this day and age? Do they not have any understanding of just how driven men are to copulate with any attractive female within eyesight? They'd all be naked and chained to someone's bed without law and order.

Maybe they don't realize that because they're better at lying to themselves than I am. I've always flattered myself on being realistic. I know what guys want from me. I know what their instincts are telling them to do. I realized from the way men were looking at me as far back as Twelve years old.

And it's only gotten worse since then.

Of course, there are benefits to being an attractive girl. Guys are always eager to help me with whatever it is I need help with. Even if I don't actually need it. I get attention when I go into a store without wandering around trying to find some salesperson who's free. Of course, I also get patronized on any subject they figure a 'pretty little thing' like me wouldn't know much about. Which covers a lot of subjects.

I got hired for my present job mostly because I'm good-looking. Oh, yes, I passed the government tests. Sure. So did a lot of people. I got interviewed like a lot of people. Everyone wants a government job, after all. What's not to like about a permanent, guaranteed salary, almost no chance of being laid off, escalating vacation and sick leave the longer you're there, and yearly salary increases?

Okay, the bureaucracy is stifling. But that mostly affects the higher-ups. I'm a clerk. I order office supplies and stuff and pay bills.

But anyway, there were people with college, people with experience. I had three months of doing data entry and three months as a server. Not exactly something to make managers do cartwheels. But, I'm cute. That counts for stuff. Especially with male managers.

I'm cute and I have a nice body. I'm eye candy, as my friend Sara pointed out. Thanks, Sara. Like I didn't know that.

Evan is the manager of the administration group. I learned not long after being hired that they called his section 'Evan's Angels'. Guess why? Almost everyone on the three floors where we work is middle-aged. They're mid-level bureaucrats. But we're just clerks, and mostly a lot younger. And under Evan, the manager for the last three years, the unit has apparently gotten a lot better looking.

Megan is short, not much over five feet, with glasses, but she's cute and quirky and has a thirty-eight-inch chest. Cassidy is taller, blonde (fake), and has kind of a Swedish milkmaid look to her, including the big boobs. Amy is slender, and athletic, with short black hair. She's Asian and awfully cute. Teagan is a brunette, very efficient, and good-looking. Tammy is a brunette too, and also buxom and cute.

Then there's Tiffany, Lilly, and Brooke. All of them are tall, blonde, and very attractive. When they walk down one of the aisles every head turns to watch. Well, every male head anyway. There are two guys in the group: Derek and Andrew. Derek takes care of installations, repairs, and changes to things like cubicles, carpets, office furniture, lighting, etc. The job comes with a toolbox. Andrew does accounting.

And then there's me. I'm a bit of a tomboy, and proud of my fit, athletic body, especially my midriff. I work hard at it because it's the one part of my body I'm allowed to take pride in. My boobs are nice, though not as big as some of the others. My hair is dark brown with hints of red and falls halfway down my back.

I'd like to cut it. It's kind of a pain in the ass. But I keep it for two reasons. First, I have a bit of a deep voice for a girl and am into sports. People were always thinking I might be gay when I had shorter hair, which I find terribly stupid. And the other reason is, to be honest, I like it when guys pull on it.

Doggy style is my favorite position.

Back to my job. Most of us are in our late teens and early twenties, which is well under half the average age of the area where we work. Not just on our floors, either. You can go up and down this twenty-story building and you'll find mostly middle-aged people. Only the clerks are younger.

We're located at the far corner of one of the floors. And we get a lot of foot traffic, for some reason. All sorts of men find a reason to wander past. I found this particularly distracting when I started because I'm on the inside corner of an aisle and the open doorway looked right over at the director's office. And he had a lot of visitors who passed their waiting time trying to discretely look in at me.

The right side of my desk is right up against the cubicle wall next to the opening. Derek was nice enough to put a panel along the right side of my desk, blocking the view of anyone out in the aisle. Now people had to come in to gawk at me. And they'd need an excuse.

Derek is a very nice boy, just out of college, and we all find him very helpful. He got the unpleasant overhead fluorescent lights turned off over my cubicle. I then ordered table lamps. I can do that, you know. I'm the person who orders office supplies, after all.

I ordered a better office chair for myself too, the high-backed kind mostly only managers had. Evan didn't say no. Evan seldom says no to us. He's not a pushover. Don't get me wrong. If we aren't doing our work he'll still be the boss and get bossy. But as long as we get stuff done and keep our bickering down - and with this many girls in a group there are always fights - he's happy.

About that director. His name is Blake Sanderson. He's tall, broad-shouldered, and obviously used to play football. He's smart, though, and tough. I can often hear his growly voice when he has someone in there who hasn't done what Blake wants them to do. He's a bit scary but has always been nice to me.

Nice to all of us, in fact. It took me a few months to figure out that one of, if not the main reason Evan hires pretty girls is that Blake likes eye candy. And Blake, of course, controls Evan's budget.

And that might also be one of the reasons why Evan has never said a word about any sort of dress code. All the middle-aged men and women around us dress in business outfits, the men mostly in suits, and the women in dresses. Dress to impress, I guess. But our administration group is all young people who don't give a shit about stuff like that. At least not at work.

We wear jeans all the time, sometimes with T-shirts or sweatshirts, though more commonly with regular old tops. Tiffany and Brooke tend to prefer short skirts. Megan is an emo girl and often wears things like dark vests and short kilts. Cassidy wears tight tops with cleavage and pants low enough that when she bends forward at her desk you can see her thong. I think she's pushing for a promotion.

I like cargo pants. I've always liked putting shit in my pockets instead of carrying around a bag. I don't want to sit on my phone, though, so it's cool I can put it in a thigh pocket. I have other stuff in those pockets as well as hip pockets, with my cards and comb in my back pocket.

The building is old. It doesn't even have central air! Instead, they have these big air exchange things they put in the windows. In summer they're air conditioners. In winter they're heaters. That makes the temperature unpredictable. Sometimes you're sweating, sometimes freezing.

It's against the rules to have a portable electric heater in your cubicle because the wiring in the building isn't up to being able to handle a hundred heaters. But I can order whatever the fuck I want so I ordered myself a heater and keep it locked in my desk. I take it out and put it under the desk on cold days. I also keep a sweater on my coat rack.

The cold days can be in summer, by the way, not just winter. Like I said, the temperature is unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on what direction the wind is coming from. Complaints about temperature often keep Derek busy. Though I don't bother except when it's hot.

I dress for hot, though. If I'm wrong, I throw on a sweater or plug in the heater.

It had been quite hot the morning when I found myself in Blake's office for the first time. I was wearing khaki cargo pants that were kind of low-slung and a white crop top, showing a lot of midriff. But it was summer and the dress code was relaxed in summer even for the bureaucrats, never mind the clerks. Most of us clerks came by bus and subway, after all, so we dressed lightly.

It had started to cool off, maybe because Derek was going around adjusting window boxes, and I had thrown on a short, green cardigan. It was open, though, when I came out of my office to go down the aisle and see Cassidy and literally ran into Blake who was coming out of his office and heading up the aisle.

I'm not short but he's awfully tall, and I bounced off his chest, though I caught myself before falling. He reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders as if to steady me, though. Boy, he had big hands!

"Hey there!" he exclaimed. "Are you all right, Cori?"

"I'm fine!" I said. "

"Sorry about that. I was angry and heading for Dan's to steal his admin for something."

"Stealing is against the rules," I said, almost automatically.

I have a smart-ass mouth and those are the sorts of things I say without really even thinking of them.

"Well, Sloan is away and I need someone to unpack a pile of fake social security applications and divide them by sectors."

"Uh, fake social security applications?"

"I'm looking over a report on how to implement a software system to pick out fakes from all the real ones. I wanted to look at some fakes so I have a better idea of commonalities. And now that I think of it, maybe I can just steal one of Evan's girls for this."

"Uh..."

I was on the verge of protesting about how insanely busy I was. Though that would be bullshit because in summer a big chunk of people are on vacation and so I get fewer requests. But to be honest I was kind of bored for that very reason.

"Well, I'm not as busy as I usually am," I said. "I order for three hundred people but a hundred and fifty of them seem to be on vacation. Lucky people."

He smiled at me. "The longer you're here the longer your vacations can be."

"Yeah, well, I've only been here a few months."

"Want to trade being, what are you, nineteen, for being forty for a few weeks more vacation?"

"Twenty. And no thank you."

"It'll come. In the meantime, ask Evan if you can help me with this for a couple of hours."

"Sure."

I didn't need to ask Evan. Whatever Blake asked for, Blake got. But it was polite to pretend it was a request. It was the same way Evan asked me to order things even though it really wasn't a request. Like "Cori, would you please order a new chair for one of Michael's people?"

What do you think would happen if I said "No"?

Blake's eyes skimmed down my body but quickly, politely, you know, too fast to be certain. He'd worked in the government for years so he knew how not to get in trouble.

Or so I thought.

I mentioned his 'request' to Evan and wandered back to Blake's office. He showed me the boxes and pulled out a thick pile of applications, then dumped them on the table and demonstrated how to sort them the way he wanted. I didn't mind. Doing anything physical was better than sitting at my desk.

Of course, I wasn't really dressed for being in a director's office, under his eyes and those of all the managers who kept dropping by to have a quick word with him. My crop top covered everything without any cleavage or anything but it wasn't exactly loose, you know. And it ended just below my breasts. My cargo pants seemed loose enough from the front but not in the back.

Especially if I bent over a table to sort papers.

I was only a little self-conscious, though. A girl my age who was 'just a clerk' could get away with a lot around 'adults' like Blake and the other managers. That included how we dressed. They wouldn't judge me or anything, even if they did appreciate the view.

And I didn't really mind people appreciating how I looked. I didn't dress just for me, after all. Everyone likes to be seen as looking good. 'Casually attractive' was what I usually went for. Like I had no idea anyone would be looking appreciatively at my midriff or my boobs or my butt. Perish the thought! Most of these people had kids my age, anyway.

That didn't keep them from looking, of course.

Women looked too, especially when I was in one of my midriff tops, but it wasn't so much appreciative as jealous. I was used to that even from girls my age. Even the 'angels' could get a bit snarky about my belly. Tough luck, bitches. Work out more.

So I was not unaware that Blake was probably eyeing my butt as I bent over the table from time to time. I was even a bit smug about it. I like being attractive and being appreciated for my looks by big, strong guys, even though I'm not supposed to. I'm supposed to pretend otherwise. You know, like why on earth would anyone look at my bubble butt with these light-colored cotton pants stretched tight across it?

It was a round table, and I could actually stretch way forward to put stuff at the other end but I didn't want to push things. So when I had stuff to put on those piles I circled around to that side. Of course, that let Blake appreciate my midriff, which I didn't mind either.

Teasing guys is something I've always liked doing, but only if they can't tell I'm teasing them. Again, I play the game, pretending to be oblivious to guys looking at me. I know I'm hot, though. I know guys are going to look. It's not in their nature to ignore me. That's okay, as long as they play their game, which is that they pretend not to notice.

Blake was playing the game fine. He worked in our corner of the floor, after all. Some of the people who dropped by weren't doing as well. Especially the ones from different floors. They all seemed startled to see me there. And their eyes always dropped right down off my face before jerking frantically back up.

There weren't an awful lot of attractive young women in this building, you see.

I soon had a dozen piles of papers around the circular table as Blake dealt with various people dropping in or calling.

And then I caught the tail end of some conversation he had with someone on the phone and he said in a solemn voice "I have spoken."

I turned and looked at him as he hung up.

"What?" he asked.

"You watch the Mandalorian?"

He grinned broadly. "This is the way."

I laughed in surprise.

"I'm surprised you would watch it," he said.

"Why? Lots of girls watch."

"Oh, right, because of The Child."

"Naw, he's cute but I've always liked Star Wars stuff. I even cosplayed as Leia once."

"The slave girl outfit?" he asked with interest.

"Yeah. I didn't want to wear the long, white dress with the buns on the sides of my head. That'd be goofy. At least she wore her hair normal in the slave girl outfit."

He laughed and shook his head. And I knew he was thinking that was a very 'girl' thing to say. But that was okay. I am a girl, after all. I was willing to bet Carrie Fisher had ridiculed those stupid buns when they'd first made her wear them.

"It's hot enough around here I wouldn't mind wearing it to work," I said.

Admittedly, I was teasing him a bit.

"Yeah, I don't think you could get away with that here. Maybe on Halloween, but even there you'd get complaints. We get enough complaints about you girls already."

"You do?"

"Mostly from women in other units who think you should be dressing in business outfits. I just tell them you're clerks and you don't need to be wearing dresses and suits for that."

"Well, thanks!" I said. "I'd have to pay a ton to buy stuff like that. And mostly it doesn't look very good. I think those women are just jealous."

"Me too," he said with a grin. "The men don't complain."

I sniffed in amusement. "If the men had their way we'd all be wearing slave girl outfits every day!"

"Well... yes, probably. They wouldn't be bothered by it anyway. I'm not sure what HR would think of it. Or the other girls."

"Leia's outfit covered up more than if she wore a bikini," I said. "A lot of people went crazy over it, though."

"Maybe men had fantasies about having a beautiful young slave girl at their beck and call," he said with a grin.

"I don't think I'd make a very good slave girl," I said. "I'd probably strangle my master the way Leia did."

"But they'd die happy," he replied.

I snorted. "Most of the men around here wouldn't know what to do with a slave girl. They'd probably have them vacuuming their rugs and doing the laundry."