Human Resources
(or, How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Office Politics)
Part 1 of 3
DISCLAIMER: This work is intended solely for an adult audience. If you’re under 18, or not into explicit erotica, stop reading now.
Copyright © 2011 Joe Mama
Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
Synopsis: Modern technology transforms the Human Resources department from a sleepy corporate backwater to the cutting edge.
“Mr. Hawkins? They’re ready for you now,” said a smiling, perky young secretary as she popped her head into the boardroom waiting area.
A lot of executives dreaded these annual evaluations but, ever the rising superstar, I relished them.
“Thank you,” I replied coolly, as I stood up and set the copy of Forbes I was leafing through back on the coffee table. After smoothing my tie, I picked up my leather portfolio, stepped confidently past the pretty young thing holding the door for me and entered the boardroom.
Richard “Dick” Wallace, my boss and the Chairman and CEO of Megacorp, sat at the head of the conference table. “Hawkins,” he said brusquely, as I approached. “Good afternoon.” Wallace would be the Head Rich-White-Guy In Charge in just about any room—he knew it, and he wasn’t afraid to show it, either.
With a perfunctory wave of his hand, he introduced his two colleagues: “You know Stan Grossman, from Sales. And Bill Diehl, my COO.”
With a polite but curt smile, I nodded and replied “Sure, hello again Stan. Bill.” I shook hands quickly with these “beta dog” Rich White Guys – whose ranks I was
working like hell to join – before taking the last unoccupied chair.
“So, Hawkins,” said Wallace tersely, leaning back in his chair. “Tell me about your year.” Megacorp was one of the largest, most successful, and most secretive of the “beltway bandits” in the D.C. area, raking in several billion dollars a year in government, military, and intelligence community contracts. An annual review at Megacorp was not the place for small talk.
I got right to the point. “In short, very successful, sir. Revenues steady, and costs down, significantly. Introduced two new product lines and—”
“Terminated four others,” interrupted Grossman, the fat salesman.
I paused a moment for effect and then crisply replied, “Yes, Stan, that’s correct,” staring daggers back at him. “As you and I have beaten to death during countless discussions in this very boardroom, I made an affirmative decision to exit some maturing markets earlier than originally planned in order to focus on newer opportunities that offer better growth potential. I believe the results speak for
themselves.”
“They do indeed speak for themselves, Johnnie,” he said, using the diminutive for effect, since last names were customary at Megacorp. “I was doing a nice, brisk business in those markets, and now we’ve let our competition—”
“Start directing way too much of their time and attention towards a handful of waning, legacy market segments that provide next-to-no profit margins and extremely rigid cost structures,” I said, interrupting back. Grossman and I had been going at each other hammer and tong over strategy all year, and he had grown increasingly hostile as my approach, while not yet inarguably successful, had also failed to crater the way Grossman loudly and frequently “guaranteed” it would.
“Yes, I see,” continued Wallace, immediately cutting off debate before Grossman could respond. This was good. I was winning, and I knew it. Better yet, Grossman knew it, too.
Wallace’s next question wasn’t what I was prepared for, though. “Speaking of maturing, Hawkins... You’re what, now? Thirty nine?”
“Thirty eight,” I replied out loud. And what the fuck does that have to do with anything, I thought, but didn’t ask.
“Your marriage ended this year, did it not?”
I couldn’t help but pause for a moment at this one – not really to register my irritation at this new line of questioning but because I really was stunned to be asked these questions. I’d been through more than a dozen of these annual reviews and had never been asked about anything so personal.
“Well, yes, sir, that’s correct,” I said in response, pausing again afterwards to try to end the point.
When Wallace just stared back at me, I realized I needed to push back a bit. “Sir, I think it’s
clear that any issues in my personal life have had no impact on my performance here, and that—”
“No, Hawkins, I know – look, the point I’m making is that you’re actually still quite a young man. And don’t tell me you don’t enjoy being single again!!” he said with a conspiratorial frat-boy laugh and a quick glance over to Grossman and Diehl, who dutifully laughed along.
And yeah, I admit I never had trouble attracting women – either before, during, or after my marriage – but the truth was I really wasn’t enjoying being single. My dick had gotten me into too much trouble over the years, especially recently. Given the role it had played in costing me what could and should have been a very happy marriage, I made a firm resolution to keep it in my pants for a while, and so far I was actually doing so.
“Well, I appreciate that sir,” I replied, hoping this tangent into my personal life had ended, “but the real issue here is—”
“The real issue, Hawkins,” said Wallace, interrupting again, “is whether you’re really sure you want to be an executive
here.”
Still a little shocked at the direction of the discussion, I paused for a second to regain my poise enough to start punching back in earnest. “Sir, I assure you, I take a back seat to no one in my dedication to excellence and willingness to sacrifice for the team. There’s not another executive here who has contributed more to the success of—”
“Yes, yes, yes, Johnnie, I know all that...” Wallace’s tone was growing a little exasperated, and the way that nickname popped in there was not a good sign. “But I don’t think you follow me. I didn’t ask whether you’re capable of being an executive here, I asked whether that’s what you really want.”
“And the reason I ask,” he continued, preempting my next attempt to respond, “is that it doesn’t seem to be making you very happy.”
The hard kernel of truth behind that one stopped me cold.
“You’ve certainly not been unsuccessful here, Hawkins, and I’ve never doubted that you’ve got potential, but here’s the bottom line: You’re not getting promoted to Executive Vice President this year.” This time, my shock lasted only seconds before being replaced by white-hot indignation.
“Now don’t misunderstand,” continued Wallace, “you did have a reasonably good year, but not a great year—and as you know we set the bar for EVPs very high here at Megacorp.”
“Sir,” I replied, doing my damnedest not to shake with fury, “I took over the Bio-Electronics division at a literally critical juncture. On the path it was headed, its debt burden and failure to leverage its R&D could’ve dragged down the entire company. Barely over a year later it’s poised to be the finest
turnaround story in Megacorp’s history. There’s not another VP in the business who could have accomplished what I did with that group, and over the next five years I’m projecting revenue and market share to rise by—”
Still unimpressed, Wallace cut me off again. “Hawkins, Hawkins, please... You keep reciting all that B-school mumbojumbo to me as if that should be the basis for my personnel decisions. Obviously I know about all the history and the figures, but it’s all beside the point. Your results aren’t
unacceptable, but think about this: if over the next five years our Bio-E business grows by leaps and bounds while dependent on a top executive who has a substance abuse problem and clinical depression, Megacorp on the whole really isn’t much better off, is it?”
Again, I just sat in silence.
“Look, Hawkins, let me make a suggestion.”
Ever the helpful boss, Dick Wallace liked to make these “suggestions” to his colleagues and employees. And when he did, he merely expected them to hear him out, and consider his “suggestion” honestly and candidly.
And then follow it, right down to every jot and stroke, as they would the word of God.
“You know Vivian de Beers, right? She’s got our HR department doing some very interesting work aimed at helping people identify their core strengths and weaknesses, and helping them use that information to guide their career paths.”
I just stared back for a moment, still ricocheting between shock and rage at the news that I would not be promoted. “Sir, with all due respect, if you’re suggesting I’m being passed over so that I can go ‘find myself’ through
some horseshit HR program—”
“What I’m suggesting,” replied Wallace, leaning in and lowering his voice the way he did when he wanted to terrify an underling, “is that you take advantage of the means at your disposal to make sure that you’re being put to your highest and best use here at Megacorp. Do I make myself clear?”
After just enough silence to go right to the edge of insolence, I replied, “Yes sir. Quite clear.”
Wallace nodded and smirked just quick enough to twist the knife. “Good,” he said. “There it is, I think. Stan? Bill, anything? No?
Very well then, thanks, Hawkins, I think we’re done.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the look of smug satisfaction on Grossman’s fat face even as I bee-lined it from my chair to the door – I managed to avoid direct eye contact with him, but if I hadn’t I very likely might have torn out his throat on the spot.
Despite the shock I’d just endured in the boardroom, I managed to smile pleasantly and avoid throwing up or punching anyone as I left the executive suite. Instead of returning straight back to my office, however, I took the internal stairs
down a level to go see an old girlfriend.
Vivian de Beers was the head of Human Resources for Megacorp, and she and I had known each other for a little more than ten years. We even dated for about a year or so.
Well, that’s not exactly right. We probably “dated” for about a month or two, tops, then kept “seeing each other” one weekend at a time, and eventually got into a nice routine of fucking each other five or six times a month, one booty-call at a time.
Nice routine for me, at least. To be honest, I knew Viv was a little disappointed that we didn’t
have more of a real relationship, but I also knew that the sex was so good – for both of us – that she was happy enough to take what she could get.
Vivian was an animal in bed, and she was all woman: ripe and fleshy and curvy. And horny. She wasn’t one to quietly “make love” in the dark under the covers; she loved to fuck, plain and simple.
She stayed in shape, to be sure, it’s just that she had serious tits, and hips, and a beautiful, firm, wide ass. I never really went for the over-aerobicized, ninety pound “hardbodies;” they made for nice enough nice arm candy but women like Vivian tended to be a hell of lot more fun. In other words, I guess I prefer Bridget Jones to Renee Zellweger, if you know what I mean—so for me, Vivian was simply a knockout.
Out of bed, Vivian had followed a fairly traditional path for businesswomen, taking over Human Resources when the matronly woman who founded the department finally retired after more than thirty years in the job. It wasn’t glamorous, nor did it offer any realistic chance of further promotion up the corporate food chain, but it paid well enough and certainly seemed to suit Vivian’s personality. She liked helping people find jobs that suited them, and she was good at it, which meant she enjoyed working in HR very much.
I, on the other hand, had set my sights on the CEO’s office from day one. I was determined to run my own company one day, and although it wasn’t technically the same thing, I always expected that running a division like Bio-Electronics for a cutting edge company like MegaCorp at thirty eight would feel like a resounding success.
And it did, to a point, but I soon found that this professional success came at quite a personal cost. A cost which was made particularly clear to me when I came home early from a business trip one night to find my gorgeous young wife bent over the backrest of our living room couch, getting energetically fucked from behind by a nineteen-year-old barista she had met the week before.
The days that followed were filled with lots of
shouting, and tears, and recriminations, and harsh words, but remarkably quickly I managed to face one core fact about my marriage: it had ended practically before it began. Between my regular 18 hour days and my damn-near monthly two- or three-week business trips (and the dozen or so condoms I took with me on each of those trips, compared with the two or three I brought back...) Lindsey and I had become more like roommates than lovers probably back when we were still planning the wedding. Once the tears and the shouting stopped, Linds and I cooperated on what turned out to be a quick, relatively painless divorce.
Relatively painless, in large part because Viv was really great. She had insisted that she and I stop the booty calls when I got married, and while we still hadn’t rekindled any of the old passions (in fact, the rumor was she had “changed teams” since she ended our fling) she was hugely supportive and great about letting me vent.
Which was exactly what I needed right now – even if we
couldn’t be fuck-buddies anymore it was great to have her as a regular buddy.
“Hey kiddo,” said Vivian sympathetically when I appeared at her door.
“Those fuckers,” I replied, as I entered Vivian’s office and shut the door behind me. “Let me guess, you already knew?”
“Well, I am the HR director, John. If you were going to get moved up to EVP I would have known about it a week ago.”
“Well, fair enough – and look, I don’t mean to direct any of this at you, but it’s all just such bullshit, you know? It was like Kafka or something, it just kept getting worse and worse. First he tells me I’m not getting promoted and next he tells me to come see you for a dose of some claptrap, New Age, psycho-babble snake oil you’re apparently selling down here. No offense, Viv, but please, just for old times sake, cut me one lousy break today. You’re not really going to make me sit through this crap, are you?”
[9:30am the next morning.]
“It’s good of you to give this a chance, John. I know you’re kind of ... skeptical about it. But think of it this way: even if it does nothing else for you, it should take your mind off things for a while. Many of the people in the test program find it quite relaxing, even refreshing.”
“Viv, look, I admit: I certainly could use some relaxation, given how stressed out I am about that damn evaluation – but that’s exactly why, quite frankly, I just don’t have time for this. It’s like I told you the other day, with Lindsey out of the picture I was counting on the extra money from the promotion to pay for the rest of the house.”
My beautiful young trophy wife and I had been right in the middle of renovating a beautiful old
Victorian rowhouse when the breakup hit – and although I was adamant about keeping the house, I was counting on the promotion to fund the rest of the work. Without her income and without the promotion, I was fucked.
“Have you thought about getting a roommate?” suggested Vivian. “Matter of fact, there’s a simply fetching young woman who just joined our trainee program who needs to find a room to rent, and that basement would be perfect as a rental, wouldn’t it? As soon as we’re done, I’ll email you her
info – who knows, it might even be fun to make a new friend and hang around with some younger people.” Her smirk left no doubt about what she meant by “hang around with.”
Given our history, Vivian knew I was a slave to my dick, but I was always kind of relieved that she was willing to joke around about it. And, as always, her expert appreciation of the female form did nothing to dispel those rumors about her switching teams.
“Yeah, great,” I answered, “that’s exactly what I need – an introduction to the next former Mrs. Hawkins... And really, Viv, seriously: what possible good could come from me getting a ‘fetching’ young, female roommate?” I knew she meant to help, but this had catastrophe written all over it.
“There’s only two ways that could end up: either I start fucking a subordinate which, given how that last evaluation just went, is absolutely the last goddamn thing I need right now, or I start sharing my house with some random girl—one I’m not even fucking—who’ll just play ... Justin Timberlake albums until all hours of the night and fill up my house with drunken 20-somethings every other weekend.”
“OK, Johnnie? First of all, sure: points for knowing who Justin Timberlake is. But I’m afraid they’re not called ‘albums’ anymore, OK? And second of all,” Vivian said, doing her best to interrupt my stewing, “Candi is really not the mp3s-all-night and party-all-weekend kind of girl. In fact, I’ve never seen a harder worker in my life. She’s sweet and cute and all, but considering how much time she spends in my lab, you’ll probably never even see her around the house. And renting out that basement apartment to her sure could help with those renovation bills.”
No zippy comeback after that one, because in simple point of fact Viv was absolutely right.
“Anyway,” she said, “since you’re in such a great big rush, let’s go ahead and get you hooked up.” Vivian helped me sit back on the reclining couch and finished attaching a multitude of electrodes to my wrists, chest, and forehead.
Once the wires were all in place she reached up for a large, elaborately wired dome which looked like a half-assed amateur Star Trek version of an old beauty salon hair dryer. She pulled it down over my head and said, “There’s a very interesting technical background to all this, but I know you’re too important for all that so I’ll just give you the short version. The basic idea here is a lot like the polygraphs you’ve seen on tv—we present you with a bunch of varying stimuli and then we record your conscious and unconscious
responses.”
“It’s going to ask me questions?”
“Kind of,
but it’s not really like Q&A, it’s a little more like free association. You’ll get the hang of it quickly—just pay attention to the sights and sounds and you’ll find that it’s actually quite easy to tell when the system is looking for a response.”
“And when it does, I just blurt out whatever I’m thinking?”
“Not really, it’s a little more involved than that. The system doesn’t just bounce you around through random thoughts, it basically takes you through a series of opportunities to make choices and distinctions, express preferences, identify similarities. The science behind it is really quite fascinat—”
“So in other words, Viv,” I said, interrupting rather rudely, “exactly like I said, I just blurt out whatever I’m thinking?”
Vivian rolled her eyes with an amused chuckle. “Fine, asshole, have it your way. Yes, you just blurt out whatever you’re thinking. Happy now? Once you get started, though, I still think you’ll see exactly what I mean. In fact, if you weren’t so determined to be such a sourpuss about it, you might even enjoy
it.”
“All right, Vivian, whatever. Let’s get this over with...” With that, I lowered my visor and waited while Vivian went into the control room to start the program.
As the lights inside the dome started flashing before my eyes, I started responding. “Yellow. Blue. Purple. Green.”
Four items into the program, I raised the front of the dome and peeked out from underneath it. “Hey Viv? Quick question?” I asked the one-way mirror that led to the control room. “You are fucking kidding me with this, right? Please tell me that you realize this is pure
bullshit?”
“No,” replied my friend acidly over the intercom, “I certainly do not realize that, now shut up and start over.”
“How long is this gonna take?”
“About a half-hour, if you pipe down and play along, or the rest of the your soon-to-be-brief career at Megacorp if I have to go back upstairs to Dick Wallace and tell him you refused to cooperate.”
“All right, all right. But you owe me big time just for putting up with this. What a fucking crock...” I said, as I sat back in the chair with a melodramatic sigh and pulled the headpiece back down over my head. After a short pause the program started over.
I
drew a deep breath and began. “Blue. Red. Yellow. Red. Green....”
A little over a half-hour later, Vivian lifted the visor and spoke gently to me. “John? Johnnie? Hel-looo?”
I blinked myself slowly back towards consciousness.
“Hi there,” Viv added. “All done.”
“Hhm? Whnna?” I took a big stretch and continued rousing myself. “M’m done?”
“Yep. All done, for now. Not so bad, was it?”
“No,” I replied groggily, still pulling my wits back together, “wasn’t too bad. Naw, actually it was … just fine, really not bad at all...”
“Great!” Viv replied happily. “Next, we’re going to take these baselines and develop a more involved heuristic for your next session, incorporating all the biometrics and the—”
“Right, so, like I said Viv,” I repeated, finishing my stretch, “I’m done? Meaning, I can go?” Despite my previously foul mood, this time I tried to delivered this jab with a happy sparkle in my voice and a wink for my friend.
“Yes, asshole, you may go – but only after you give me an honest answer to one question: you enjoyed it, didn’t you?”
Now I sat up and smiled broadly.
“Actually Viv, I’m not sure whether ‘enjoyed’ is the right word—I don’t really remember all that much of it—but I do admit it wasn’t at all
what I thought it would be. I know I really ... got into it, I guess, the whole ‘call and response’ thing kind of got to be like playing tennis or something, like being in the zone. I felt so focused and relaxed. And now I feel ... I dunno, rested, at least, but also really jazzed or something, like I could take on the world. I’ll be honest, Vivian, bullshit or not, if it’s going to make me feel like this I’ll take as much as you can give me.”
“Well, that’s great,” she replied happily. “I’d say I
told you so, but you already know that, don’t you,” she added.
“I know, and Viv,” I continued, “I’m sorry I was so spiteful earlier, you were really kind to have let me vent like th—”
“Apology accepted, Hawkins, enough said. Same time, day after tomorrow.”
“Thanks de Beers, you’re the best. See you then.”
It was hard to hear the knock on the door over the pouring rain, but once I was sure about what I heard I ran over quickly to answer it.
“Hi...” said the young woman sheepishly standing on the porch, holding a few ratty sheets of newspaper over her head in a more or less futile attempt to keep the rain off her. It must have seemed worth a try, and I guess it could have helped keep a couple drops off her head, but all the same she was drenched.
“Hi—Candi?” Candi. Good heavens, who is ever going to take this poor girl seriously with a name like Candi...
“Yes, hi, you must be Mr. Hawkins—”
“Yes, yes, I am—but please, call me John. And here, come on in, quickly. Gosh, it’s just pouring out there isn’t it?” I asked as pleasantly as I could. Sure I felt sorry for her and all, but how sorry can you be for someone who doesn’t have the sense to take an umbrella when it’s raining?
“Yes, it sure is,” she said with a glance back outside, “and the weather was so nice just this morning, I never expected it would rain like this so soon.” Really, I thought, and all those ink-black storm clouds swirling around since noon didn’t do anything to tip you off? “And now I’m dripping all over your floor...” she added apologetically.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” I said, not meaning a word of it. Refinishing those hardwood floors cost a pretty penny and I loved them. “Here,” I
added, “wait right here for a sec and I’ll get you a towel.”
Returning as fast as I could (my floors!), I handed a fresh bath towel to the young woman, who smiled gratefully. She held the towel tightly against her body as she used a corner to dry her face, which gave my expert roving eye a chance to size her up without being too obvious about it.
She wasn’t unattractive, by any measure, but frankly she didn’t knock me out either. She was tall and lean, for one thing – nearly 5′10″, by my guess – and she was noticeably small up top. No more than a full A cup, or maybe a small B. She had enough muscle in her hips and thighs to give her body a nice enough shape, but my first impression was relief: especially with her long, straight hair all matted and stringy from the rain, I finished my quick visual review convinced that I would have no trouble keeping my hands off of her.
“So, Candi,” I said, trying to break the ice, “Vivian tells me you’re interning in her department at MegaCorp.”
“Yes, sir, I am” she replied rather meekly. Then she just
stared at me, stone silent.
“And how do you like that so far,” I replied.
“It’s ok I guess.”
And then ... nuthin’. Monks were more conversational than this chick.
We continued like that for a couple awkward minutes – mostly because I wanted her to dry off before showing her the house. The good news was, I could see exactly what Vivian was referring to earlier – Candi wasn’t hostile or dimwitted or anything, it was just that like a lot of young engineers, she had the personality of a billiard ball. Which, I figured, made her a perfect person to rent a room to.
“Well, ok then, let me show
you around,” I said, leading her back inside. “The fancy kitchen’s up here, which we can share, if you want, although there is a little cooking area down in the apartment in case you’d rather not deal with all this heavy artillery.” And by heavy artillery, of course, I meant $35,000 worth of ultra-high-end, pro-style kitchen appliances that Lindsey simply “had to have,” and that after the divorce I was sure I would simply “never use.”
“And you’re welcome to hang out up here in the common
living room, too. Hi-def TV, DVD player, wireless internet, all the standard stuff. The rental apartment is right downstairs, and it’s all brand new.” I left out the part about how none of it was paid for yet...
The nickel tour of the basement didn’t take long at all – it was really just one big room that Lindsay and I had laid out like a studio apartment.
“So like I said, we put in a little cooking area over here, wired for 220 so we could install a couple appliances. There’s a two burner induction cooktop here, with microwave above. And this down here is a small fridge. Bathroom’s here in the back, also all brand new,” I said with all the smarm of a used car salesman.
The tiny little powder room Lindsey and I added during the buildout was at best technically a bathroom. Actually, airliners had swankier facilities. The truly minuscule sink is kind of tucked back in the corner, with a handheld shower head rising up next to the faucet. The toilet was practically underneath the sink. No shower curtain—the entire space was tiled, so basically the whole, tiny little room served as the shower stall.
“Simple and really easy to keep clean,” I said brightly, just like a pro. I didn’t want to be obvious about it, but I did want to move along past the bathroom as fast as I could. It was an obvious weak spot and in business you always wanted to start real negotiations when your opponent was on his weakest turf. As meek as this kid was, I figured I might be able to squeeze a little more rent out of her once I gave her a slow, detailed tour of the sparkling, new gourmet kitchen upstairs.
Instead, however, Candi jumped in quickly before I could even get the “bathroom” door closed.
“So listen,” she said, “about the rent. I only just started the new job and I really don’t have a lot of cash right now. Is it ok if I pay you in arrears for the first few months?”
Clever girl...
So, over the next few weeks, things started to improve for me both at work and at home. Viv had me taking a training session three times a week, and I was thrilled to feel some of that old confidence and fire-in-the-belly coming back. Vivian’s program was really doing a lot for me, and more than just professionally. In fact, as the sessions went on, realized was I coming out of them, well ... aroused.
As in turned-on. Sexually. I mean, at least a little blood flow, and sometimes nearly a full hard-on.
I never mentioned it to Vivian – kind of awkward to bring that sort of thing up with an old flame – but instead I guessed this must have been what she meant about some people finding the program to be “refreshing.” And I took it
as proof that I was finally starting to get over losing Lindsey, which was nice.
The basement apartment seemed to work out fine for Candi. Turned out she wasn’t just “an engineer,” she had a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Tech. In fact, it was a multidisciplinary degree in computer science and bioengineering, with a minor in behavioral psychology. Tops in her class.
The problem was, she also turned out to be just smoking hot. When she moved in, she had originally struck me as quite ordinary – almost homely really. After a couple weeks or so, though, it seemed to me that she must have started changing her look a little. The weather was finally drying out, so part of it might have been just losing all the extra layers and overcoats and such, but for instance, one day she came home with a much shorter hairdo.
The long, stringy mop was gone and was replaced by a short, spiky do that pulled her hair well back off her face. Turned out she really wasn’t “plain” at all, she was just simple and natural and slightly flawed here and there in exactly the kind of way that made real live women infinitely more appealing than airbrushed supermodels.
In fact, especially once she started using a little lip gloss and just a touch of eye makeup, she had that simple beauty that has always just stopped my heart. Her bottom teeth were just a little crooked, for example, but especially without her hair hiding her face anymore, she could stare right through you with those striking blue eyes.
And God, what a killer body. I could finally get a good
look now that the shapeless jeans and huge sweatshirts were gone, and what I saw was just spectacular—reminded me of one of those Russian tennis players, in fact, not at all skinny but just long and lean and toned. In short, over the last couple weeks it had become increasingly obvious that this girl was just incredibly sexy.
One day I came home from work late, and found Candi upstairs in the kitchen, rooting around in the cabinets. Nothing odd about that in and of itself (she had gotten me to agree that
food staples would be included in the rent, clever girl), but it sure was odd to find her up in the common areas wearing nothing at all but a cropped t-shirt and hip-hugger panties.
And not even just a regular t-shirt, but that kind of snug t-shirt that stopped right around the middle of her tight, lean torso, and was propped out just so by her high, firm, and unmistakably bra-less breasts. Between the way those lovely little titties slipped around inside that flimsy top, and the way that nice snug pair of
pink cotton panties were shrink-wrapped around the smooth curves of her hips and ass, she couldn’t have looked hotter if she were stark naked.
[If it sounds like I will vividly remember this image until the day I die, that’s because I will.]
“Oh, hiya John,” she said, somehow oblivious to my leering, “you’re working late these days, aren’tcha? Hey, where do you keep the filters? Like, for tea?” she asked, methodically going through cabinets while I greedily drank in all that ripe asscheek and nubile belly that shined out as she stretched up to reach the high cabinets and bent over to look in the low ones. “Uhhh, John? Hello? Filters?” she asked.
God help me, I thought, what a spectacular body...
With an almost physical effort, I finally tore my eyes from the heavenly vision of her thighs and hips and walked them up the rest of her long, lean torso as she turned to face me. By the time I was looking her in the face, my dick was ready to rip through my pants. Even I realized how dangerous that line of thinking could get, so I resolved to
nip it in the bud.
“Candi,” I said, trying to make this a confrontation, “what do you think you’re doing?”
“What am I ... doing? I’m ... making some iced tea, what does it look like I’m—”
“I mean your clothes, Candi. Do you really think it’s appropriate to dress like that around the house?”
She paused for just a beat and then quickly came right back at me. “I dunno, John, do you really think it’s appropriate to leave the A/C off all day when it’s fucking 95 degrees outside?” She had me on that one, I was trying to pinch a few pennies on utilities by leaving the A/C off during the day.
“So if you
have a problem with my clo—oh, my God...” she said, with a blend of amusement and disgust as she noticed the tent pole sticking up at the front of my crotch.
Uh oh.
“Really?” she said, with a derisive chuckle. “For crying out loud, John, what are you, twelve years old? Do you really ‘pop a boner’ every time you see a woman in her underwear?”
God she got even hotter when she got angry. And each humiliation seemed to send a new jolt of sexheat right down the shaft of my cock. Desperate to ignore the throbbing in my pants, I fumbled to try and regain
the upper hand.
“N-no, I don’t, I’m … not, it’s not a bo—” Fuck me, I couldn’t even get a complete sentence out. “The point isn’t that ..., that’s not the point, Candi, okay? But, look—the point is, that, your choice of attire just isn’t appropriate.”
My dick sure thought it was appropriate.
“It simply isn’t appropriate for you to go parading around up here without clothes on,” I concluded, desperately trying to compose myself.
“Really, John, my ‘attire’ isn’t appropriate? Well, sparking up that tiny little hard-on just because you catch a glimpse of your housemate’s bod isn’t real ‘appropriate,’ either, is it?” she responded sneeringly, sending another lightning bolt into my dick when she called it “little.” Christ, why was this turning me on so much?
“No, Candi, but that’s the point—we work at the same company, and especially at Megacorp people get fired in a heartbeat for fucking around like this. Thank god I’m not your direct supervisor, but, you know, you are still an inferior employee—”
“Hold on, buster, stop right there. First of
all, from the looks of things the only one interested in ‘fucking around like this’ is you, Johnnie-boy, and second of all, did you just call me inferior?” she laughed indignantly.
“No, not as in personally, like that, I just mean legally.” God, I was bungling this. “Technically, I’m your superior—”
“You’re superior? To me?” she barked.
Well, wait a minute—actually yes, I thought but didn’t say. Even without the promotion I was still a Senior VP, and she was a damn trainee. Why couldn’t I take charge here? And why did I feel like I was
about to come in my pants every time she chastised me?
“Look, Candi, I’m not trying to be uptight about this,” I said. “When you’re downstairs in the apartment, you should feel free to wear or not wear anything you want, of course.” Yikes, the mental image of her ‘not wearing’ anything really wasn’t helping. “But when you’re up here in the common areas I expect you to have some clothes on. Is that clear?”
She paused and took another look at the obvious erection in my pants, adding another disgusted sneer when she saw the growing wet spot at the peak. “Oh, it sure is Johnnie, it sure is. Getting more and more clear by the second, too,” she said, patting me on the chest as she walked out of the kitchen. “In fact, I guess you better get out of the common areas yourself, big boy,” she added, with an overt glance down at my crotch, “looks like that thing’s about to boil over...”
I managed to keep my hands off myself until she had left the kitchen, but as soon as she turned the corner I ripped open my fly with one hand and frantically grabbed for a napkin with the other. Two hard & fast strokes later my knees started shaking and the first wad of a huge load of heavy, white cum came blasting out of the tip of my cock. I barely even had time to get the napkin in place.
Four, five, six convulsions later, my orgasm finally started receding, and my wits started returning. It was a hellacious come, easily my biggest since Lindsey, and it left me slumped over against the countertop and the side of the refrigerator. As I started to clean myself up, I slowly realized how loud I must have been. My zipper, the crumpling napkin, my heavy sighs as all that jism came rushing up out of my balls like lava from an emptying volcano...
I wondered whether Candi might have overheard, until I was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of feet walking across the hall and then down the stairs. She must have paused after leaving the kitchen, and waited just outside on the landing without going down to the basement. She was three feet away the whole time—she had to have heard everything!!
And once again, the depths of this new humiliation sent yet another series of thrills straight to the tip of my cock.
Oh, shit this was going to be a problem...