Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

I ngrid

"I'm sure you're used to your job title being administrative assistant , or maybe even project manager or office manager ," the executive vice president, a fit, fiftyish man named Mr. Alden, told me. "I don't know."

I frowned at him across his desk. He'd read my resumé, hadn't he?

"I…" I started to say, a little uncertainly. The ad I'd answered hadn't said anything about the nature of the job, beyond being secretarial, but the salary range had made my eyes go very round.

"Frankly," he continued smoothly, as if I hadn't made a sound, "I haven't read your resumé. You're here because of your pretty face and your sweet little body."

I blinked at him, heat flooding into my cheeks. I had supplied my social media details; that had become absolutely standard in applying for jobs over the last few years. So I guessed he had seen photos of me, and… and… what?

Mr. Alden didn't have any interest, apparently, in telling me more about that. "At any rate," he said, "at Selecta, your job title will be secretary ."

I felt the wrinkle between my eyebrows get deeper. I had grown up in a world where the men and women who did paperwork and scheduled meetings—the ones, like me after my two-year degree in business, who could type one hundred fifty words a minute—got jobs with official-sounding titles. The ones Mr. Alden had named, pretty much. A secretary was someone who worked high up in the government.

But I knew, from books and old movies, that another kind of secretary had once represented an essential, if subservient, part of the corporate world.

"Um," I said, though after having interviewed successfully for two previous admin assistant positions I liked to think of myself as an articulate interviewee, "why?"

I definitely had enough skill to make certain I maintained eye contact and kept a pleasant smile on my face. It only wavered for a moment, when I saw the obvious disapproval in Mr. Alden's answering gaze.

To my surprise and dismay, despite my business training and all the preparation I had put into this interview, I lowered my eyes. My cheeks blazed.

"Because, Ingrid," Mr. Alden replied. "At Selecta we embrace an older kind of organization in our offices. You'll get used to it soon enough, if we hire you. In fact, it's probably time for you to start getting used to it right now. Why don't you go ahead and take off your clothes for me."

I heard not the slightest hint of a question mark at the end of his sentence. I raised my eyes, willing them to blaze with righteous indignation, but I knew they only showed him utter confusion. Mr. Alden's simple blue-eyed handsomeness, the way he wore his charcoal gray suit as if he had been born a rich executive and the thirty-odd years since then had only added to his wealth and his superiority, made it difficult to respond the way I wanted to—and I hated myself for that.

Instead of trying to hold his steady, ironic gaze, I turned my head to look at the door. I commanded my legs to get up. I didn't want to risk speaking, because I felt certain I would burst into tears. Just walking out of the office, hastening to the elevator, and getting the hell out of the building seemed the obvious course of action.

Then I'll just forget I ever applied for this job, with its high salary range and its ‘opportunities for rapid advancement.' I'll forget how excited I was when I got the message telling me I'd gotten an interview.

I'll forget what happened inside my body when this… this monster said that horrible thing.

"It's locked," Mr. Alden said. "I locked it when you came in."

I turned back to look at him, my jaw slack. Then I understood that he must mean locked from the inside , so that if I obeyed his humiliating instructions at least no one would come in.

"You're thinking," he said, "that I mean to reassure you. To tell you that no one can disturb us while you get naked—or while I fuck you, which I'm going to do very soon. That's not what I mean, though. I mean that you can't get out until I let you out."

I felt completely certain, for an instant, he intended a truly bizarre, awful, degrading joke. The expression on his clean-shaven face, distractingly framed by his somehow neatly tousled golden hair, told me the situation was much, much worse than I'd thought, however. He had narrowed his eyes slightly, and his lips wore a smile that made my stomach lurch.

The little curl at the left side of his mouth told me that he felt completely in control of the situation. That he had told me nothing but the truth, at least as he perceived it, and that he took pleasure as well as knowledge from watching my mortified response.

"Which," Mr. Alden continued, "will of course be after I evaluate your body and your current level of sexual skill. So you'd better just go ahead and strip for me. I'm hoping you wore some nice lingerie, the kind you wore when you sent those selfies to your boyfriend. Jake? Is that it?"

He glanced down at the tablet on his desk.

"Jacob Smith, nickname Jake. Yup," he said.

I swallowed hard. My face felt like a blazing bonfire.

"How…?" I said weakly, though I knew that part of it didn't represent anything like the most important part.

"Does it matter?" Mr. Alden replied, his smile growing a bit. "It definitely doesn't matter to me, and to be very clear I have no intention of shaming you for sending Jake those naughty photos. Our read on him is that he wasn't the right guy for you, and you did the right thing by breaking up with him, but he got you started thinking about what you really need, Ingrid. I just need to make sure the gorgeous little tits and the tight little ass you showed off to him are everything they appeared to be—and I need to assess how well you know how to use them to please a man."

I felt my fists clench atop my knees, and I looked down at them, utterly lost in the panicked thoughts and emotions coursing through my mind and body. I saw the conservative navy blue skirt I had picked out for the interview, covering my tightly closed knees. I thought about the selfies, of the red lingerie and how it had looked—to me, in the mirror as I had thought about sending racy pics to Jake—on the slim, toned body I worked so hard to maintain.

The lacy bra whose underwire made my B-cup breasts look a little more prominent. The tiny thong that made me feel naughty just walking around in my apartment, let alone when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and saw that my blonde bush was mistily visible through the mesh in front.

The garter belt and stockings that I could hardly believe I had bought, and then actually donned, thinking about Jake and how it had felt to lose my virginity to him in his parents' bed a few days before.

Here in the handsome, horrible Mr. Alden's office I knew how very correctly he had spoken, saying that Jake was wrong for me. In fact, Jake's unenthusiastic response to the selfies that I had taken such care in shooting for him had brought on the breakup. I had gotten so hot and bothered as I did so that I had actually masturbated— for the first and only time—while I thought about him seeing me in the lingerie, and what he might do. He had replied merely Nice .

Why had I decided to wear that lingerie today, under my conservative skirt and conservative blouse? How could this man know ? What the… the hell … was going on?

I felt my face working in confusion.

I had worn it because I wanted to feel adventurous. I liked that, sometimes, despite thinking of myself as a sensible, self-contained person. I wanted to feel like a twenty-year-old badass, in charge of her body and of her life. If I happened to seduce someone at a bar—I never went to bars, really—I would know that when he took off my clothes, he would know just how experienced a young woman I was.

What had Mr. Alden said? He got you started thinking about what you really need.

I swallowed hard to force back a sob that unexpectedly rose into my throat.

I need a job, I thought fiercely. The company where I had risen to senior administrative assistant had gone bankrupt, from trying to compete with Selecta. The job posting that had popped up in my inbox had seemed like a dream come true.

I raised my eyes to Mr. Alden's. He gazed back at me seriously, his eyebrows rising a little.

"Maybe…" I started, without the slightest idea of how I planned to bargain with him, but the notion that because the terrible things he was saying couldn't really be true, I could strike some kind of a deal. I could promise not to tell the police, maybe, if he gave me the job and promised I would never see him again. "Maybe I can just have… you know… a regular interview? And, um, I won't tell anybody… what…"

I could see on the man's face that he didn't feel the least anxiety that he had said anything I might report him for—to his bosses, to the police, to anyone.

"Ingrid, sweetheart, I know this is going to be difficult for you. You wouldn't have gotten this interview if it weren't. But if you don't start taking your clothes off right now, you're going to get acquainted with another old-fashioned side of Selecta corporate policies, when I bend you over my desk and paddle your bare backside."

That broke the paralysis that had come over me when he had mentioned the naughty selfies. Part of my mind felt desperate to know what kind of logic lay behind… behind any of this. Logic… law… reason… whatever. How could this lunacy actually be taking place on the thirtieth floor of an office building in a major American city? Something about Mr. Alden's outlandish threat of… of a paddling , though, stopped the futile analysis and got my body moving.

I stood up, and despite the trembling in my legs I managed to maneuver myself around the chair in the direction of the door. I didn't want to look at the man behind the desk, but I couldn't help it; my desperate need to know how he had reacted to my rising made me cast a glance toward him. Mr. Alden had leaned back in his chair. I thought his right hand might be reaching for a desk drawer, and my stomach flipped at the interpretation that came instantly into my mind: He's getting the paddle out.

I walked in the direction of the door, and each step seemed to take an absurd amount of time.

He was lying , I told myself. The door is unlocked. I will open it, and walk out, and walk down the hall to the elevator. I will leave this building behind and I will never think about what just happened, or—above all—how it made me feel.

I half expected Mr. Alden to say something. Like, "Come back here. I was just testing you, and you passed," or "I'm sorry—I was joking," or even "Stop right there, Ingrid Vogel!"

He remained completely silent. I managed to keep myself from turning back to look at him. Did I hear a drawer opening? I bit my lip and told myself I had imagined it, and then I found myself at the door of the office. I reached for the handle, and I pressed down.

It didn't move. I tried again, my heart sinking lower than my belly. I felt tears forming in the corners of my eyes as I rattled the handle.

Then, just a moment before I felt his hands on me, I realized that Mr. Alden had come up behind me. I started to turn, crying out in surprise and alarm, but he kept me in place, facing the door, with his left hand around my chest and his right hand, even worse, on my backside.

"I told you, Ingrid, sweetheart," he growled into my ear. "You're not going anywhere until I've finished evaluating you."