Chapter One

Caught in the Act

 

I should have known by the crisp click of her heels against the bamboo corridor that it was LuAnn on the warpath-so imprinted in my memory, the solid sound of her approach would haunt me for months. But while that tap tap tapping noise still has the power to evoke every angered refrain that spewed from the woman's red smudged mouth, it seems strange that on that day that tapping sound didn't register in my brain cells until it was too late. I'd averted her wrath once before, just two months prior to my fateful reckoning, when she dropped into Tate's office unannounced, wearing running shoes this time, so we had no advance warning at all. That day we were lucky. She breezed in so fast that she barely noticed that I was crawling on the floor, presumably to pick up a pile of scattered paperclips that Tate hastily threw against the carpet to cover up our crime. In truth I'd been half under his desk with my mouth covering his naked and very erect cock. I came up with a handful of paperclips in my closed fist and a sincere apology. After casting me a suspicious glare, she brushed me off, announcing that she needed to speak with Tate in private. I was more than happy to oblige. Dodged a bullet, I thought then. But I wasn't so lucky on the second occasion.

LuAnn threw open her husband's heavy office door as if she knew what she'd see. There was no hiding the fact of our misbehavior. I was naked and Tate might as well have been. As I recall his pants were at his ankles as he stood behind me, leaning into my naked derriere with one hand squeezing the right ass cheek he'd so meticulously caned just minutes before. Damn, that hurt! But what a sweet hurt it was at the time, the kind that sets off sparks inside the brain, that flusters the senses, that suddenly shoots a spark cuntward, setting off another spectacular series of orgasmic highs. I'd grabbed the edges of the desk on either side, my knuckles white as I tried to handle the horrific tension. I loved every second of that last fuck. But suddenly the sound around me magnified in volume-the tapping heels, the shrieking voice, a door banging back against its hinges. Tate's wife LuAnn is only five feet two, but she packs more bitch per pound than any woman on earth.

"And you thought I didn't know!" This didn't sound like the typical opening salvo in a war that had been in the strategic planning stages for months. The two parties had been staking their territories for as long as I could remember. I tried to stay above their game, wisely keeping my kinky affair with my boss carefully scripted to 'safe' days only. Okay, so we'd been getting a little lax in recent weeks. As for me, I got the feeling that I'd been set up; Tate was hoping to get caught, at least on a subjective level. Of course he wouldn't easily give up a fine 'piece of ass' like mine. He loved me for my body: the slender thighs, and perky breasts and toned ass-key physical features in Tate's book of female assets, although I certainly wasn't the only female in Chicago with Tate's ideal form.

Bailing out of the inevitable disaster would have been as simple as ending the affair the day before we were caught-just as we planned to do. We had to 'lay low', Tate had told me, while we sat huddled over greasy cheeseburgers in a grimy diner just south of town. Being in public with my boss meant dining in the dirtiest greasy spoons in the city. I agreed we'd cool it for awhile. But the next day, lured by a renewed sense of the verboten, we were back in his office playing risky sex games. He said he couldn't give me up. And why would he, when sex was defined by him, according to him, on his turf, on his whim, in whatever way his imagination would allow. He had the perfect set-up for the sex he craved, and it would be a big hassle to start over with a new female when he already had me trained.

On the surface, he had a rich trophy wife, the picture perfect family, and a successful advertising company. Underneath the happy façade of marriage and family, his life was in shambles. I knew it. His wife knew it. Even he knew it. It was only a matter of time before one of the three of us in this desperate trio called a halt to the affair. As one would predict, the scene was ugly, from its shocking inception, all the way through the horrid reckoning I was to face, and on to the bitterest of endings, it was ugly.

"What the fuck are you doing here, LuAnn?" Tate's voice was laced with malice. The sudden shift left me breathless and in the mood to shrink to a few meager inches and crawl into the nearest hole.

Soon as Tate's dick slipped from my wet cunt, I split, snatching up strewn articles of clothing and exiting the room through the door on the far side. Once inside Gaines Bradley's adjoining office, I leaned against the door listening to my life go down the drain as the quarrel between husband and wife escalated to Biblical proportions-I presume. I'm not completely sure how far they went; by the time LuAnn started cataloging my faults, I knew I was history. I had no need to hear the entire debacle go down. Her every word joined the toxic lump inside my belly. Humiliation, anger, total despair...

A lousy night of self-recrimination lay ahead.

 

Tate called me the following morning. "The best I can give you is two weeks, official." His voice lowered, as if he feared he was being overheard. "But I'll add in another couple weeks on my own. It'll have to be cash. Just one small thing, Claire."

"What's that?"

"LuAnn wants you to sign an exit agreement."

"Exit agreement?"

"No big deal. But you need to come in. This afternoon, about three okay?"

Why did I think I was being railroaded?

Because I knew Tate, and I knew LuAnn.

"Sure." What else was I going to say? Still in the process of picking my dropped jaw off my kitchen floor, I failed to come up with a suitable wisecrack. The blood drained from my face; in fact, at the time I thought it was completely draining from my body. As soon as the blood was gone, I'd slip to the floor like a broken marionette. I don't think the reality hit until the moment my limp body hit the seat of the kitchen chair and folded forward, my sobbing eyes wetting the sleeves of my new chartreuse sweater.

I arrived at Larimer & Brittan wearing crisp black and white; strutting through the office in four inch 'brandname' shoes that clicked against the eco-friendly bamboo every bit as nastily as LuAnn's size five stilettos had the day before. Despite the similarities, there was one huge difference between LuAnn and me. She had the power to hire, fire, move heaven and earth, and do whatever she damn well pleased in her husband's place of work. My bold red 'fuck me shoes' could only carry me sexily into my inevitable fate. They had no power on the other side of Tate's office door where the queen stood waiting for me to appear.

"Imagine, she actually came," LuAnn remarked with snide disdain as she turned to see me enter in response to Tate's terse 'come in.'

He sat obediently behind his desk while she had the rest of the room to display her talents for mockery, artful putdowns and Nazi-style persecution-yes, the woman is really that mean-spirited. Then of course, she was the woman-scorned in this situation. I should have expected as much.

"You have two options, Ms. Lawrence." I wondered how long she rehearsed the speech. "The document on the right..." she said, referring to the front of Tate's desk where two crisply printed documents lay side by side, waiting for me. "...establishes your guilt in a scheme to defraud the company..."

"Guilt? Guilt! What the fuck are you talking about!" I snapped. I turned to Tate aghast.

The only thing he could offer me was a defeated shrug. Get a pair of balls, asshole! I would have blurted out, but I was too stunned to make my mouth fall in line with my brain.

He looked at me overtop the reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Below him a stack of opened files. A ploy to look busy...too busy to fool with a matter as silly as the vendetta currently being played out, while I stood helplessly watching my life go down the drain. He did bother to answer, finally, his voice lowered, each word carefully chosen. "Let's just say LuAnn's a master at manipulating data to cast suspicion on you. I don't know how she came up with her figures, but if you study them carefully, she'll convince even you of your guilt."

I stood back, mouth agape. "Suspicion of what? What are you talking about?"

Her smile was sly, while her eyes darted excitedly from me to Tate then back to me.

"That document will be shown to the board. After reviewing the evidence, they'll unanimously decide to press charges, and you'll be sent to jail. How sad for you, Claire." She wasn't sad at all. "But you do have a choice," she arched one brow, her smirk so shrewd it seemed a bit cliché. She was proud of her revenge. "The document on the left is your resignation. It comes with a severance package of two weeks pay, half your vacation time, a month on the company medical policy, and," this was the kicker, "a promise not to blackball you with future employers. Very generous. You sign that, the document on the right will disappear."

As if I believed that.

My mind began shifting into gear after the long stall. "What's the catch?"

She sneered at me, lifting her brows and breathing deep as she savored the moment of my demise with haughty triumph. "And what would make you think there's a catch?" she uttered in a singsong that set my teeth on edge.

I didn't answer. I knew she'd tell me and she did.

"There is a codicil in the document which gives me permission to seek punitive restitution. It's quite straightforward, and certainly nothing you haven't been through before," her tone darkened and she cast a brief but pointed glance at her husband. "Before you leave this office today, you'll give yourself over to me for appropriate corporal punishment. Your duplicity, underhanded manipulation and disloyalty will not go unpunished." She paused, noting my look of horror. "You blanch in horror at what I'm saying, but your arguments have no merit when you willingly relinquish yourself to Tate on his whim. He's told me plenty about the sadomasochistic trysts you've enjoyed this past year. I'm only asking for a little action for myself. And, you're quite right to assume this is not innocent experimentation. You're going to walk away from here marked and bruised. You'll live with the evidence of my power over you until those bruises finally fade and the marks disappear. Too bad your memory of this day will not fade as easily as the physical wounds. You'll live with your disgrace for a long while. Just imagine...I'll be on your brain, in your memory banks with my face burned onto your psyche. You'll never escape me."

She looked as if she might spit in my face, then she sighed deeply, "So, what will it be, Claire? Sign the document, take your punishment and get on with your life-such as it will be, or see if you can wiggle your way out of the accusations that are documented in my report?"

I felt as if I'd just landed in reality TV, its newest star in the game of pain and humiliation. "You don't miss a trick, do you?" I wanted to be a million miles from that room, light years into the next millennium, or whatever dimension was waiting beyond our five tangible senses.

"You underestimated my influence in this situation," she was proud to announce. She wanted to bury me in shame, but at least for one brief moment, I refused to allow her barbs to pile on. Maybe I was too numb to feel at all.

"And maybe you've underestimated me," I came back in an attempt to sound indignant. "I suppose I was a fool to think I could get away from this place without looking this moment, and you, in the face. But now that we're here, why don't you just get it over with."

"You'd like it to be that easy, wouldn't you?" The sing-song voice was setting my nerves on edge. She shrugged and strolled toward the window with a dramatic flair, then turned back with her eyes moving from my feet to my face, greeting my perplexed expression with a single word. "Strip."