As much as I tried to shut them out, images from my shameful ‘interview’ in his opulent corner office slithered through the cracks, wrapping around my senses like the tendrils of some forbidden plant.

A shudder traveled up my spine, bent my back into an arch as involuntary as it was revealing. The heat between my thighs seemed like a living thing, a pulse that beat in sync with the racing of my heart. Joseph’s voice echoed not in my ears, but somewhere deeper—commands that dripped with authority and sent need surging through my veins.

Take off your clothes. Look at me.

No panties until I say you can wear them again.

The memories alone elicited a response from my body. I felt dampness spread between my legs, so copious that I sensed it dripping onto the fitted sheet below me. I felt my cheeks get hot as I remembered that I hadn’t even been able to put on my usual cotton panties last night, thanks to the pain from the paddle.

Joseph’s face hovered behind my closed eyelids, stern yet to my distress also seductive. His blue eyes seemed to blaze with a promise of stern discipline and tormenting pleasure.

I tried again to stop myself. I told myself I had never really masturbated, that I had never needed to, that being made to do it by Joseph yesterday didn’t count. I managed to push myself up into a sitting position, the sheets pooling in my lap. But the mere act of moving only served to stoke the fire within me. Each shift of muscle and flesh increased the tension and brought a new thrill of an aching discomfort down there, in front and in back, that had begun not to feel like pain at all.

A little moan slipped past my lips, heavy with desire but nevertheless edged with the sharp tang of my defiance, too. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want the job, or Mr. Alden for a boss. How could I? I wasn’t insane!

Joseph.

To my horror, I suddenly wished for the utterly degrading effect of his compliance wand. If Joseph used the wand on me, and told me I had to touch myself, I could pretend I didn’t want to do it on my own. Didn’t need to do it, alone in my bed, thinking about him.

Under the veil of my sheets, my resistance crumbled like a cliff face against a relentless ocean of lewd pleasure. The traitorous fingertips of my right hand whispered across the tender curves of my flesh, descending into the forbidden valley that pulsed with hot, demanding, shameful life. The heat there welcomed my touch even as a surge of warmth in my cheeks matched it, at the twinge of soreness that remained in my slippery sheath. I let out a little cry at the echo of Joseph’s pounding cock inside the place he had used so thoroughly for his pleasure.

And mine, came the hot, needy voice in my head.

The breath went in and out from my nostrils in short puffs. I closed my eyes and saw Joseph, standing over me.

More, he commanded. Show me what a naughty girl you can be.

The imagined words fell like a benediction, a longed-for command. My fingers obeyed. I whimpered softly as I rubbed a soft circle on the hood of my clit. I probed into my vagina for more of the lubrication I craved, then spread it up and forward. My other hand found my nipples under the old t-shirt I wore as pajamas.

I remembered his cock. My arousal on it, much too plain. With a little moan I took my right hand from my pussy and brought it to my mouth, suddenly eager to taste myself. Joseph had used his wand on me, I told myself. He had commanded me to do it, to taste the musky naughtiness and to supplement it with my saliva.

His image held my mind captive—the sharp cut of his jaw, the predatory grace in his movements, every line of him exuding control. I could almost feel the weight of his gaze upon me, demanding and discerning, as he stood next to the bed in my mind’s eye, watching me shame myself with my own hand.

“More,” his phantom voice commanded. “Put that hand back down between your legs and make your cunt feel good.”

Again I obeyed. I cried out at my returned touch. My body arched hard at the rough caress of my fingers, chasing the pleasure he had somehow taught me to crave with his single terrible lesson.

“Please,” I panted, answering him as if he truly were there. The word was barely audible, but I couldn’t help blushing anew anyway, sure somehow that the real Joseph, somewhere could sense how badly I needed his hardness inside me.

The crescendo of my pleasure rose higher, as if my body and its helpless need were an orchestra conducted by the memory of his unyielding hands, his stern commands, the agony of his discipline and the overwhelming pleasure of his cock in my hot, wet cunt.

“Sir,” I sobbed, “please… please…”

The submissive words seemed to send me over the precipice of my release. With a helpless scream, I started to come, sure that my neighbors could hear me through the thin walls and to my dismay feeling my desire only grow at the thought.

The room spun for the briefest of moments as I got up, suddenly desperate to leave behind the shame I had perpetrated in my bed. I felt like I had left a world of shameful pleasure and returned to the even more humiliating consequences I would find in reality, when I went back to the Selecta building.

If I go back to the Selecta building.

The cool air of the apartment against my skin seemed to scold me for the heat my imagination of Joseph’s imagined touch had stoked to life. I shook my head violently, trying to pretend my face hadn’t just gone hot once again, and the other heat hadn’t somehow, treasonously, reawakened below my tummy.

My feet carried me on autopilot, padding across the floor toward the closet. With practiced motions, I reached for the carefully chosen attire, the second of my two workplace outfits—the office clothes that had always seemed a symbol of the admin assistant persona I had felt so proud of having developed.

I dressed, hardly thinking of anything at all but coffee and blueberry yogurt, and grateful somewhere in my mind for the respite from thoughts of Selecta.

My reflection in the mirror struck me as a strange study in contrasts—outward poise and inner turmoil, a woman who desperately wanted to seem like she’d been carved from ice, but, after yesterday, hiding a core molten with longing. My creased brow and my blue eyes betrayed me, I saw with a little twist of my pursed lips to the side, the trouble there seeming to warn me that I hadn’t gotten rid of the memories, or what they meant—I’d only repressed them.

With a final glance at the reflection that held all my secrets, I turned away. I closed the bedroom door behind me with a click of finality, sealing away the shameful place of my helpless, submissive desires.