THE ADJUSTERS

55

Intermezzo: The Platinum Plan

Jeffrey Coogan entered the nondescript building through the only door waiting beyond a well-manicured lawn. Nothing distinguished this building from those surrounding it within the Marina District of San Francisco. He double-checked the address, wondering whether he had taken it down wrong from his interlocutor earlier that day.

Inside, he found a charming and welcoming interior lobby, and made a mental note to ask someone about the interior decorator or architect that had designed it. He had been thinking about his new building for SocialCircles, his company, and wanted to demarcate it from other Bay-area headquarters. Maybe something like this would be nice? He tended towards glass and metal himself, but this could work too. Perhaps with a more modern touch. Like a touch more metal. And certainly more glass.

There was no one waiting in the lobby. The only person was a pretty receptionist who gave him a bright smile as he entered.

“How may I help you, sir?”

His sneakers scuffed slightly on the polished floor. He put his hands in his jean pockets, the way he often did when he was confronted with good-looking women in a social occasion. He was not a social person, had never been. He always felt awkward about it.

It was stereotypical, practically a cliché: a big-shot startup guy with social anxiety. He did not mind. It gave him a boost, a fire in the pit of his stomach, and it egged him on and forced him to be better than he would have been otherwise. He remembered hearing on a television show once about Laurence Oliver, supposedly one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century, who claimed that despite of all his success he always got stage fright before any of his performances, and sometimes needed to be pushed on-stage.

Jeff understood perfectly, and wondered idly whether Laurence was a better actor because of it. He made a mental note to check out the work of Laurence Oliver.

“Hi,” he said to the pretty blonde receptionist whose dress was open just enough to reveal a hint of cleavage. As usual, he fought the urge to look, knowing it was inappropriate. He had learned to control his urges. He was an adult now. “I’m Jeff Coogan,” he said. “I don’t know if I have the right address. I’m here to see Mister Srinivasan?”

The blonde—Mary, said the nameplate on her desk—smiled. “Of course, Mister Coogan. I believe that Mister Srinivasan is expecting you. Let me check with him.”

“Thank you.”

She made no gesture of recognition when she heard his name. He did not know whether to feel insulted yet. He was certainly disappointed. He was now one of the richest men in San Francisco, but it was still a recent thing. The SocialCircles IPO had gone through a couple of weeks earlier, and suddenly he found himself sitting on top of a lot of money, most of it virtual of course, tied up in stocks and options, but a lot of money nevertheless. A fortune was a fortune.

He idly checked out Mary as she picked up her phone and spoke to someone in a soft voice. He noted with curiosity a tattoo on her little finger, a pale blue set of circles intertwined around the base of her finger. It took him half a minute to realize why it was familiar: Rebecca, his VP Legal, had one just like it. He wondered whether it was a new trend among good-looking women.

Mary put down the phone after a short conversation. “Mister Srinivasan is indeed expecting you. Would you mind terribly waiting for five minutes? Is there anything I can bring you? A coffee, a soda, a tea? Anything at all?”

His ears caught on her statement, anything at all. It made him smile. He thought of a thing or two that she might bring him.

“No thank you. I’ll be fine.”

He sat down, choosing a seat from which he could look at the pretty receptionist without being too obvious about it.

What the fuck am I doing here? he wondered. But he knew the answer to that rhetorical question. It all came back to what his friend Salvatore Rivolli had said when he visited him after his IPO. He had slapped Jeff on the back while congratulating him on the success of the offering, a self-serving gesture since Rivolli had invested a fair amount of money himself in Jeff’s company.

“Welcome to the club, boy,” Rivolli had said. “Let me tell you about the Platinum Plan.”

* * *

Jeff Coogan followed Mary to the elevator bank, and he stared at her the whole way, taken in by the way her dress clung to her body—it was not a particularly obscene dress, but it did wonders for her curves, and the boots she wore with it gave her a hint of naughtiness that dried Jeff’s mouth.

He wanted to ask her to get a drink with him, and was trying to find the best way to work his new IPO and his even newer fortune in with his pitch when Mary led him inside the elevator. She gave him another bright smile. “Have a pleasant meeting, Mister Coogan.” And she stepped out of the elevator leaving Jeff alone before he could say anything.

The elevator moved by itself, even though he had not pressed a button. The trip was a short one.

The elevator door opened on a lavishly furnished suite, with wall-to-wall carpeting and beautiful paintings on the wall. Jeff decided that they had to be valuable, and made a mental note to add tasteful artwork to his new building when he got a chance. He would ask Jacques, who had some artistic sense.

“Mister Coogan, welcome. I’m Jawad Srinivasan. We talked on the phone.”

Having already talked to Srinivasan, Jeff knew that the Indian man spoke flawless English, with just a hint of a British accent. What he did not expect was for Srinivasan to be nearly a head taller than he was and broad shouldered.

“Hi, I’m, huh, I’m Jeff Coogan.”

“Nice to meet you, Mister Coogan. And congratulations on your IPO. You must be pleased.”

Jeff nodded, and felt his hand engulfed in the hand of the taller, stronger man. For a second, he feared Srinivasan would crush it and grind his bones into dust, and Jeff had a flash of those bullies back when he was young taking turns slapping him.

“And before you ask,” Srinivasan continued, not picking up on Jeff’s momentary discomfort or disregarding it, “yes, I used to play cricket. Top batsman in the league.”

Jeff nodded, as if Srinivasan’s words meant anything to him. They did not. He did not watch sports. And as far as he was concerned, cricket was played in resorts with bats with which you smacked balls through little bent mental wires.

“Follow me, Mister Coogan. Would you like something to drink?”

Jeff entered a well-decorated office with dark wooden furniture and leather books lining up bookshelves. There seemed to be a vaguely nautical theme. The office spoke of ease and luxury, and Jeff made a mental note to study a nautical theme and add wood to his own office in his new building.

“No thank you. As I said on the phone, Salvatore Rivolli gave me your name?”

“Ah yes, Mister Rivolli. He mentioned that you might pay us a visit. And I want to personally thank you for doing so, and welcome you to our family. I am delighted to let you know that your application has been approved.”

“I was not aware I made an application…”

Srinivasan had an easy laugh, as he poured himself a Perrier and sat down next to Jeff on one of the chairs in front of his oak desk.

“You did, but not in the way you think. Mister Rivolli contacted us and initiated the process. Our vetting procedure is rather extensive and time-consuming, and we have discovered that it pays handsomely to be proactive about it. As a new successful businessman in a competitive area, I am certain you will appreciate the wisdom of such an approach.”

Jeff nodded. “Sell before they realize they want to buy.”

“Exactly right. And while we’re on the topic, I have to admit that many of us have been watching your IPO with great interest. You are a wealthy man.”

“I do okay.” But Jeff was pleased with the attention.

“Wealthy and humble. Exactly the sort of client that we seek. Mister Rivolli showed great insight sending you our way.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask: what exactly is it that you do? Sal was pretty mysterious when he talked about it—he only said I really must talk to you.”

“Mister Rivolli was cryptic because he was required to be. But to address your question: we are in the business of pleasure.”

“Pleasure? You want to sell me luxury items?”

Srinivasan laughed again. His laughter was infectious, neither snide nor forced, and Jeff found it difficult to repress a smile of his own. He wanted to laugh with this man.

“In a way, Mister Coogan. May I call you Jeff?”

Jeff nodded.

“Then call me Jay. Yes, in a way, this is about luxury. But in a different way that you might think. How do you feel about women, Jeff?”

“Women? I… huh… I like them just fine.”

“As you should. Well, to put it bluntly—because as a successful businessman, I know that you value direct and succinct pitches—we facilitate access to women. Beautiful women, hired exclusively to cater to your pleasure and to make your life comfortable and happy and fulfilling.”

Jeff digested this information. “Are you talking about…” He looked around, unsure what he was worried about. “Are you talking about an escort service?”

“Oh, this is much more than an escort service, Jeff. We have access to a vast network of women that have joined as members to offer their services in exchange for the benefits that we provide. These are women that are perfectly normal, that you could meet in the course of your everyday life, and that have a, shall I say, kinky side to them that we can put to good use for the mutual satisfaction of both the woman and our client.”

“What do you mean, a kinky side?”

“That is part and parcel of the product we offer, Jeff. Let’s say that you meet up with a woman in our network. This woman will not acknowledge you any differently than any other man, until you tell her a secret code that identifies you as our client. That code that you exchange with her will let her know what kind of role she is to play, and she will start acting according to your stated preference. It is a sort of role play, a sort of game that these woman we hire simply love playing. Frankly, they get off on it. And you benefit.”

“That sounds… Wow.”

“Yes, wow, that is a good word for it.”

“And how many women do you have in your… network?”

“Enough to keep you satisfied for a very long time, Jeff. We have been in this business for more than ten years, and we have accumulated a large catalogue over the years. I’m actually proud of the fact that we rarely lose members—once a woman join our network, she rarely leaves. We treat our members very well.”

“So let me get this straight. I sign up with you, and I get access to your network of… women… with which I can make an appointments and spend time with and do… what exactly?”

“Anything you want. There are no real limits. Our members have been selected explicitly for that purpose. And before you ask, they are carefully screened for diseases and followed closely by our best medical services. And they are extremely good at their job.” Srinivasan’s complicit smile gave a clear indication what he meant by that statement. “Also, and this is probably one of the best feature of the plan I am about to offer you, there is no need to set up an appointment or anything of that sort. When you see one of the members of our network, you simply tell her your code, and she will make herself available to you. Don’t worry, they know all about discretion.”

Jeff was impressed. What Srinivasan was telling him explained much about Rivolli’s innuendos and teasing asides when they talked.

“And how does… payment work?”

“What we are offering you is a subscription plan. It’s called the Platinum Plan, our best offering on the market. For a yearly fee, you have access to our full member network, without any restriction of time or access or quantity. The Plan is renewable annually, subject to your satisfaction and your good standing.”

Jeff nodded. He liked that.

“As for our rates—” Srinivasan started, but Jeff interrupted him. He had no desire to talk about money. He could afford it—what was the point of having money if you could not spend it? He was rich now. He could do what he wanted.

“How do I know who’s a member?”

“Ah, that’s a beauty of our system, one that I’m sure you will appreciate. Our members all have a mark on their body, indicating that they are members of our network, and are available to our clients. The mark is meant to be inconspicuous, or at the very least easily explained by the member, but instantly recognizable to our clients.”

“A mark?”

“Yes. A small tattoo on their little finger, a series of intertwined bands circling the base of the finger as if it were a ring, usually in a pale blue ink. Whenever you see that tattoo, you will know that the person in front of you is a member of our network.”

“And she will recognize and respond to the codes you will give me?”

“Exactly. The codes will identify you, and she will know that you are requesting her services and will be more than happy to satisfy your demands.”

“No matter what she is doing at the moment?”

“As I said, we explicitly make sure that we hire members with… a kinky streak. They love the fact that they could be called upon for services at a moment’s notice. As I’m sure you will like as well…”

Jeff did. It was like a game. And he liked games.

Srinivasan watched Jeff, gauging his reaction to his words, never losing his easy smile. He took another sip of his Perrier before continuing. “In the last year, we have actually introduced a mobile app that you can use to identify members near your location. It has proved very popular with our clients. Once we finalize your subscription, I can talk to Tech to get it installed on your mobile device. We support all major devices. The app is biometrically locked for security, and require a thumbprint to activate.”

Jeff nodded. But he was already thinking of something else. Mary, the cute receptionist, had a pale blue ring tattoo on her little finger.

And then the second thought hit, on the heels of the first one. His VP Legal had a pale blue ring tattoo on her little finger as well! Jeff’s head spun.

“The app,” continued Srinivasan, “also helps you with the codes that are available and that the members have learned and will understand. Historically, this has been the most arduous part of the process, remembering the available codes. Now, the app is proprietary, and as I explained to you on the phone, this conversation and the details I am giving you are all confidential. You have verbally agreed to a non-disclosure agreement, and it is enforceable. Your subscription is nontransferable, and while you may share the members with whomever you like, you cannot tell of the details of the transaction. Our network and its existence is proprietary information. Do you understand, Mister Coogan?”

Jeff snapped out of his reverie—he was still trying to process what it meant that Mary and that his VP Legal were both members in this network that Srinivasan was describing. Could he really…? Would they…?

“Yes. Yes, I do. Non-disclosure, confidentiality. Basically, I do not reveal your existence, or the details of what’s going on.” Like Rivolli, he reflected. The man had directed him here without telling him why, or explaining any of this.

“Exactly. You will have the detailed restrictions on the app, where you can peruse them at your leisure, including what we consider abuse of our network. You should know we have an enforcement division ensuring that such abuses are punished. You do not want to run afoul of our enforcement division, Mister Coogan. Bad things happen to people that do.”

Jeff laughed. “Are you making a threat?”

Srinivasan gave a little laugh himself in response, but never answered the question.

“Shall we make a deal, Jeff?” Srinivasan’s smile was still warm and easy.

Jeff, thinking of Mary, thinking of his VP Legal, nodded.

* * *

When Jeff Coogan emerged from the elevator back into the lobby, the waiting room was still empty, and Mary was still at her desk, typing away at the computer. She lifted her head and smiled a bright white smile at him, her blonde hair dancing about her face. She was more than just cute, he saw.

I have a question for you, he had asked Srinivasan earlier as the Indian was reviewing the contract that Jeff was to sign.

Go ahead, had replied Srinivasan.

I’m not sure how to ask this, Jeff had said.

There are no bad questions, Jeff. Our goal is to make you happy.

Your receptionist…

Mary.

Yes, Mary. Well, she’s…

Srinivasan had smiled. She’s a member, yes.

Ah. And so I can…?

Srinivasan had grinned a knowing grin, a complicit grin, a grin that made Jeff feel that Srinivasan was on his side, a buddy ribbing a buddy, a wingman having his back. Of course, Srinivasan had said. If you remember only one thing about our members, it’s that they’re always available, always ready, and always eager to please. They enjoy what they do, truly. And if you would like to sample Mary’s expertise before you leave this facility, then by all means, indulge. That is exactly what you are paying for with our Platinum Plan: the license to indulge.

The license to indulge. Jeff liked that. It sounded good. It sounded like the tag line a successful company could build a business on. He wondered if SocialCircles’s tag line was as good. He would ask Jacques about it.

“Have a wonderful day, Mister Coogan,” Mary said with her sing-song voice. Jeff focused on her lips, the way they moved and formed the words.

Is she really up for anything?

It was difficult to believe.

“Thank you… Mary, right?”

“That’s right.”

He still resisted the urge to gaze where her dress opened up, the top three buttons undone, leading down toward breasts that he fantasized to be young and perky and wonderful to play with.

“Mary,” he said, hesitating for a second, remembering the exact wording that his new mobile app had given him a few minutes earlier. He almost whispered the rest, even though they were alone in the lobby. “Adjustment code C006, member 8JHC3487.”

He was too nervous to spot the change in her demeanor, to spot the slight stiffening of her spine, the change in focus in her eyes.

Fuck lust, said the app for code C006. No other explanation. He wondered how Mary would interpret it, how she would role-play it. He half expected her to laugh in his face, and he was gearing himself for the experience.

Even before she laughed, part of him was getting angry that he had been duped, that he had been bamboozled, that it was all a setup to humiliate him. How could Rivolli do this to him? Was he jealous of his success? He was richer than even Rivolli now, by a lot—was this a way for Rivolli to get even?

Jeff clenched his teeth, unable to believe what a fool he had been.

He was an idiot.

He would have left on the spot, possibly to plot out some later revenge that his newfound wealth would enable, some way to get back at Rivolli, at this bastard Srinivasan if that was even his real name, at this whole place that he would buy and then level out, if not for the moan that came from Mary.

He looked at her, and she was looking right at him, and there was no mistaking the expression in those bright blue eyes. And if Jeff had entertained any doubts about what she might have been thinking, the way her lips parted and her tongue darted out, the way her body shifted as she pushed her chest out, the way she tilted her body upward towards him swept all those doubts aside.

Jeff stared. When Mary stood, his eyes dipped on their own to the valley of her breasts. Had she undone one more button of her dress?

Mary navigated around her reception desk, swaying her body in a way that she had not done before. The dress still clung to her, but now given the way she moved it was tantalizing. And Mary was staring at his crotch, without trying to hide it. She stopped a pace away from him. He remained frozen in place.

“Hi,” she said, breathily.

“Hello,” he replied automatically, feeling stupid. He was rich, goddammit. And he was still acting like the tongue-tied teenager he had always been.

“I saw the way you stared at me.” Her voice was low, as if she had to keep it that way to maintain control. She pressed her hand against his chest, and was he imagining it or was her hand scorching hot?

“You… did?” Jeff was amazed. She was like a completely different person. She had been jovial and smiling and cheery before, and she remained that way but there was an edge now, a thread of something… of lust. Fuck lust. She was horny. Out of her mind horny. Even he could see it.

“Oh yeah.” She nodded her head, her eyes lifting up from his crotch to his face. She was breathing hard. “I saw you wanting to stare at my tits."

Her words were a shock to Jeff. Until that point, it could have all been happening in his head, just his mind casting a particular interpretation on reality. But hearing her voice, her words, ripped off any interpretation and exposed the underlying raw reality.

Mary, who was almost as tall as he was in her high-heeled boots, was leaning over to whisper in his ear. It was too much—her closeness, her warm breath on his face, her hand on his shoulder.

“They’re very pretty you know? My tits? They’re round and firm and super sensitive. My boyfriend really likes them. When he sucks on my nipples, sometimes, he can makes me come, just like that.” She snapped her fingers, softly, teasingly.

That passing reference to her boyfriend—was that code for something? Did that change anything? Why would she become member of Srinivasan’s network if she was involved in a serious relationship?

Jeff understood computers. Jeff understood statistics. Jeff understood cultural trends and population behavior. Jeff did not understand relationships.

“Would you like to see my pretty tits, Jeff Coogan?” Mary purred into his ear. “Would you like to caress them?” Her voice held such promise.

“Yes,” he managed to groan, kicking himself for his inability to play it cool, as if he was still that awkward kid from South Dakota and not the head of the most successful IPO of the decade.

“Come with me,” she said, and without waiting for his answer she took his hand and pulled him after her.

Jeff stared at her freely now, as she pulled him towards a door in the back of the lobby, behind the reception desk, stared at her legs, wondering what they might feel like under his hands, wondering what she wore underneath that dress, whether she dressed this morning knowing that she would be asked to service a client that day, wanting to, hoping to.

Mary followed Jeff inside after opening the door and practically throwing him into the small supply room that lay beyond. She shut the door by pressing back against it. Had Jeff known where to direct his attention he would have noticed her hips twitching toward him, but he was staring at her fingers, which were playing with the top button of her dress.

“Is this what you want to see?” She undid the button. The top of her breasts came into view, tantalizing.

“How about we make a deal?” she asked. “You’re a businessman, aren’t you? You must like deals.”

Jeff managed to snap out of his reverie. “I’m listening.” His voice was not as secure as he might have wanted it to be.

“How about I show you my tits? How about I let you play with my tits, caress them, touch them, paw them?”

“And… and in return?”

“In return, all I want is something hard and hot shoved deep inside my pussy.”

She undid another button. She was breathing harder, her eyes glazing over with lust. Where did they find this girl? he wondered. Any further thoughts were flushed away when she undid another button. “So?” Her bra was one of those flimsy shelf bras whose only purpose was to push a pair of breasts up, and this one did it well. The cups barely covered her nipples. Jeff wanted to extend a hand and touch them.

“Wow,” he said.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” she said. “Tell me you’re gonna fuck me. Tell me you’re gonna fuck me and my tits are all yours, baby.”

He nodded.

She laughed, a joyful, happy, victorious laugh.

Jeff thought she would pull her dress open, but instead, she reached down underneath her dress and pulled down her panties. They were flimsy, matching the bra, and when she pulled them up he could smell her on them, an intoxicating sweet smell. She wrapped them around her wrist, and then opened up her dress before pulling down her bra, letting her breasts pop free.

She had been right—there were round and firm and topped with little nipples that stuck out like hard erasers. Jeff could not resist any longer and he palmed them with his hands and Mary moaned and thrust her chest out to facilitate his mauling. He pressed them and squeezed them and kneaded them, and Mary seemed to enjoy every moment of it.

“Are they as nice as you imagined them to be when you were undressing me with your eyes? Do my tits please you?”

“God yes,” Jeff growled, unable to tear his eyes away from them.

“Then fuck me while you grope them. Feed me your cock, baby—I need it so bad!”

In a flash, with one hand never leaving her soft flesh, he had fished out his cock from his trousers and Mary took over and by wrapping a leg around his welcomed him inside her pussy and to Jeff it was like sinking his cock into a hot tight furnace. Mary gasped when he penetrated her, and she hung on to Jeff for balance.

“Fuck me, baby! Fuck me!”

And he did, one hand against the door, one hand on her breast, his hips thrusting in and out, while Mary moaned and groaned and shifted her own hips to help him out.

“Suck on my tits, baby! Suck on them hard!”

He managed to twist his body and suck on a hard little nipple while still thrusting into her, and the sensations must have been what Mary had been looking for because her moans turned into little squeals of pleasure, and she gripped his hair to keep his head in place as she humped back against him.

In a flash of inspiration, Jeff bit on the nipple in his mouth lightly, and it sent a shock of pleasure through Mary who bucked hard against him. He bit on the nipple again, rolling it between his teeth as he heard Mary’s squeals turn into a song of rapture punctuated with occasional “fuck yes!” Her pussy clenched hard around his cock, and it was almost a surprise to him when he realized that Mary was coming, and coming hard.

It sent him over the edge, and feeling him explode inside her must have done something to her for her orgasm seemed to hit overdrive and she bucked wildly against him, urging him to bite her nipple off and fuck her out of her mind, her hands never unclenching from his hair.

When they had recovered—after collapsing to the floor in a sweaty heap—Mary bore a satisfied glowing smile, and she unraveled her panties from her wrist and offered them to Jeff. “A souvenir,” she told him. “Besides, they’re pretty much ruined now. I must have leaked a gallon of juice in them before.”

She straightened up her dress, and buttoned it up.

“Thank you, Jeff Coogan,” she said before giving him a kiss on the lips and heading back to her reception desk.

* * *

Jeff Coogan biked back to the new SocialCircles building, at the edge of the Financial District. He had improved his biking skills ever since his undergraduate degree at Stanford, where he developed the basic idea underlying SocialCircles, and where he had met Jacques Montreuil, his partner and co-founder of SocialCircles.

He nodded to the receptionist, and he thought back immediately to Mary. He wondered whether she might be willing to be taken out on a date, whether she might enjoy a play or a concert—he had access to rather exclusive events now, and in any case, he could in fact create those events, invite a band out for a private performance or something. That might woo the pretty receptionist. It opened all sorts of possibilities.

He wondered whether there were any restrictions about his dating one of the girls in the Network. Questions he had not thought of asking Srinivasan. The man had told Jeff the various restrictions about asking members about their work in the Network, such as men they had been with, or even just the mention that there was such a thing as a Network and a Platinum Plan. Srinivasan had been adamant on the subject, raising the specter of the enforcement division.

Jeff wondered if it was too early already to call her and invite her somewhere.

His office was an open area encased in glass—he liked glass, although he could not help compare his office to Srinivasan’s, feeling a pang of doubt, wondering if he should maybe have gone with mahogany or oak wood instead, and plush carpeting, and bookshelves filled with old books. He determined to talk to Jacques about it, get his input.

He could not chase Mary out of his mind, the way she felt on him, around him, the way she moved, the way she fucked. He got hard again.

He walked to the row of vintage video game machines against the wall—Pac-Man, Zaxxon, Rampage. He always played when he needed to calm his mind. He was a big fan of Call of Duty, but sometimes the classics were what was needed—the sound, the feel, the touch of physical controls. It was retro, it was cool. He made a mental note to purchase some more arcade machines and put them in the lobby so that employees could play as well. They would enjoy that, he thought.

Soon he was immersed in playing, letting his subconscious sift through everything that had happened: the Platinum Plan, Mary, sex, SocialCircles. He wondered for a moment whether they should switch away from Hadoop the way Google had done, whether it was a mistake to cling to technologies of the past. Then he wondered whether Mary would prefer smooth jazz or indie rock.

He lost himself in the sounds and the noise of Rampage.

Until he was startled out of the zone by a quiet cough behind him.

He turned around, knowing who he would find, appreciating the anticipation.

“Hello Rebecca.”

Rebecca Delamy-Montreuil. His VP Legal—Vice-President of Legal Affairs, the one who had shouldered the brunt of the legal aspects of the IPO, and accessorily the wife of his partner and best friend, Jacques Montreuil.

Jeff, helped by her husband Jacques, had snatched her away from her previous position as a corporate lawyer for a much larger company, where she had been stuck into a role where she was underutilized, with a promise of heading the whole legal department of SocialCircles.

“Jeffrey, can I have a minute of your time?”

“For you, always,” he smiled, trying to act nonchalant.

Rebecca had always fascinated him. She was beautiful, tall and thin with shoulder-length dark hair and a sharp features, always dressed to the nines in tailored suits that emphasized her femininity while also radiating the poise and power that befitted a higher executive. She knew what it took to survive in the legal world and went to ruthless lengths to achieve it. How Jacques had managed to land such a hot babe was beyond Jeff’s ability to comprehend. Granted, Jacques was by any account a catch, having a form of French charm all of his own—Jeff had once overheard female employees saying that his smile was devastating. Rebecca clearly went for that kind of man, the kind with a devastating smile, and deep pockets.

Jeff wondered how Rebecca was in the sack. He had wondered for a long time, but Jacques was tight-lipped about his sexual proclivities. But Jeff knew first-hand that she was a phenomenal lawyer who had managed to navigate the difficult path to the IPO with efficiency and implacability, and that sort of drive and hunger had to reflect itself in her sexual attitudes.

She had to be an unsatisfiable tiger in bed.

“Jeffrey, are you here?”

“Sorry, Rebecca. Just… thinking. What did you want to see me about?”

“I just need to run some numbers by you.”

“By all means.”

Rebecca sat at his desk and went over figures with him.

But Jeff barely followed her. All he could do was glance over and over again at the tattoo on her finger.

He could not believe she was that kind of woman.

After all, she was his best friend’s wife.

* * *

Jeff Coogan flew to Los Angeles the next day. He was booked in first class, and he was alone there but for a couple of wealthy socialites that spent their whole flight discussing education reform in the rise of massive open online courses. Jeff listened with one ear, wholly uninterested in the topic except when the man naively tried to argue against the capabilities of modern technology to handle the scope of the project, and Jeff had the hardest time resisting the impulse to jump in and dispute almost every single one of the man’s arguments.

That man would not be getting an IPO at the scale of SocialCircles, that much was obvious.

His eye kept straying to one of the flight attendants—a pretty blonde with long legs and a smile that would be an invitation if not for the fact that it was artificial. She reminded Jeff of Mary, and his cock stiffened at the memory of the pretty receptionist and how tight her pussy had felt.

He casually looked at the flight attendant’s finger when she gave him his Orangina, and he was disappointed not to see a tattoo.

Not every pretty girl you meet is going to be in the Network, Jeff, he chastised himself. He idly wondered what sort of incentive the group—the paperwork simply called it the Network, with all its Orwellian overtones—gave its members.

He still could not believe the experience with Mary just happened the previous day—he had relived it in agonizing details as he lay in his bed, on his newly acquired black satin sheets. He had been tempted to call her up right then, but he did not have her number, had never thought of getting it.

In the end, he had masturbated thinking of every detail of their encounter, of the feel of her lips on his, the feel of her breasts in his hands, the feel of her pussy around his dick, sheathing it, stroking it, sucking on it.

And amidst those thoughts, those memories, those fantasies, Rebecca took the place of Mary. Rebecca, his best friend’s wife, and he was both aroused and guilty to think of her in that way, imagining her in Mary’s place, letting him paw her breasts while she fucked him against a wall, her perfectly manicured nails scratching his back as he rutted against her, mumbling and groaning sweet nothings into his ear.

The hour flight was a slingshot, with barely enough time to get to cruising altitude before heading back down, and he disembarked before everyone else, carrying only an overnight bag. He liked to travel light. Besides, he could afford to simply purchase anything he missed these days.

Rivolli had told him that he would send a limo, and Jeff spotted the woman holding a Jeffrey Coogan sign right away. She wore a driver’s costume of the kind he thought only existed in television shows. In fact, she reminded Jeff of no other than Mercy Graves, and it immediately endeared her to him.

But it was the young woman next to her that caught his eye. She was a little bit older than he was and older than the chauffeur, but she was astonishingly beautiful—movie star beautiful. Long blonde lustrous hair, high cheekbones, bright blue eyes, kissable lips, and a body barely contained by a skirt suit whose severity was alleviated only by a short pleated skirt.

He walked towards the pair, trying hard not to stare at the blonde. He concentrated on the driver instead.

“Mister Coogan?” It was the beautiful blonde, who extended a hand in his direction. The driver merely smiled and put down her sign. “I’m Bianca Bearce, personal assistant to Mister Rivolli. He sent me to greet you. Welcome to LA.”

Jeff shook Bianca’s hand, thinking Sal, you old dog!

And then he noticed the pale blue tattoo on Bianca’s little finger.

Braided circles going around her finger as if a ring.

His breath caught for a moment.

“Mister Coogan, are you okay?”

He shook his head and looked at the blue-eyed beauty. “Yes, sorry. I was…”

“Flying can be trying, I understand. Is that all you have?” She indicated the bag on his shoulder.

“Yes. I travel light.”

“Same here. Lost one too many piece of luggage. Well, Mister Rivolli is waiting for you. Shall we?”

“Sir?” The driver extended a hand.

Jeff stared at her hand uncomprehendingly. Did she want a tip?

“Sir, your bag?”

Jeff smiled to himself. Of course. “No, it’s okay—”

He never finished. His head spun. He had seen the pale blue tattoo around the driver’s little finger.

“Sir?”

“Mister Coogan, are you all right?” Bianca was at his side, a worried look marring her perfect features.

“I’m fine, I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath, hating himself for appearing so weak. “It’s just been a rough couple of days.”

“Of course. We have a selection of drinks in the limo. Perhaps that and some rest will make you feel better.”

The driver was still standing with her hand toward him, and he hesitated for a second before handing her his bag.

He followed them out, with Bianca keeping up a nearly one-sided conversation where she described the various activities that she had been involved in since joining Salvatore Rivolli’s law firm seven months earlier, and Jeff listened while at the same time processing everything he was feeling.

These two girls here with him were members of the Network? How could that be possible? They were beautiful, sophisticated, poised. Bianca would have been at home next to any leading man, and had she told him that she had modeled when was younger, he would have believed it before going to hunt down pictures.

In fact, he would look her up when he had the chance. Bianca Bearce.

The driver—he had not caught her name—walked in front of them, carrying Jeff’s bag. She had slacks on, and they did nothing to conceal her slim body. Again, the thought that these two were available, in some form or another, messed with his mind.

Bianca reminded him of Rebecca, his VP Legal, in style and in elegance. She was younger than Rebecca, but conveyed the same sense of competency. And the clothes she wore, while still professional, were younger and called much more attention to her person. Rebecca’s vestment choices were meant to give a sense of power and domination. Bianca’s were more of a fashion statement. She wanted to look good.

The limousine was waiting in the parking area, and the driver stowed his bag in the trunk. Bianca invited him inside. They were off in the Los Angeles traffic before he knew it.

When Bianca pulled out her cell phone, Jeff sneaked a glance at her legs, almost fully exposed in the position she was sitting. Dark nylons sheathed her legs.

“Mister Rivolli. Yes, I picked up Mister Coogan. The flight was on time, surprisingly. We’re on the way to the office now. Yes, hold on.”

Bianca handed Jeff her cell phone. “Mister Rivolli.”

“Sal,” Jeff said into the cell phone, a year-old model that he noted in passing would have some difficulty running the latest SocialCircles app. “Jeff here.”

“Jeff! Glad you made it! How was the flight?”

“Okay. It’s flying.”

“Yeah, don’t get me started on that. So have you?”

“Have I what?”

“You know, used her?”

“What are you talking about?”

Rivolli made an exasperated noise on the other end. “Oh for fuck’s sake! I sent you Bianca to welcome you. You can’t not have noticed her.”

“Well…”

“Her finger?”

“Yes… yes I did.”

“So go ahead. Have some fun.”

“So I just…”

“Yes, you just. Why do you think I hired her? She’s a great assistant, that’s for sure—best I ever had in fact—but she’s also got the sweetest warmest mouth I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something. I recommend code 7, at least while you’re in the limo.”

“Sal, I don’t know—”

“Don’t be a wimp, boy. You paid good money for this. Enjoy it. Trust me. Now go and use my assistant. I’ll see you when you get here.”

The call disconnected, and Jeff handed her phone back to Bianca, who smiled at him, unaware of what her boss had said.

“So,” Jeff cleared his throat as Bianca slipped her phone back into the side pocket of her purse, “how long do we have before we get to Sal—to Rivolli’s office.”

“At this time of day, forty minutes. The curse of LA. In the mean time, would you like something to drink? The bar is small, but fairly complete.”

Jeff was trying hard not to let his eyes wander down to her legs, tantalizingly close, exposed, beckoning.

And she was a member. She had the tattoo. Rivolli had confirmed it, too. Now go and use my assistant, he had said. Use my assistant. He thought back to Mary, how she let him fuck her—no, how she made him fuck her. He thought back to Rebecca, beautiful and stern and with the same tattoo on her finger, married to his best friend, but a member of a Network that specializes in illicit sex.

“Mister Coogan?” Bianca was looking at him with concern.

She must think I’m a weirdo, he reflected. I can’t focus. Come on Jeff, you’re better than this.

“Sorry, I’m getting distracted. Yes, drink. Do you have any Orangina?”

“Huh, no, I’m sorry, I don’t believe we do.”

“Ah.”

“But… it’s just orange juice and soda, no? We have those. So I can whip up some homemade Orangina if that would satisfy you.”

“That sounds perfect,” he said. That’s it, Jeff, nice and steady and normal.

He watched her prepare his drink, and he made conversation—talking about social networking apps and SocialCircles—trying to make up for his flakiness earlier, and for what he was about to do. He wanted her to think well of him.

He took the drink she offered him. While she reached for a glass of soda water herself, he thumbed the Platinum Plan app on his cell phone. He took a deep breath.

“Bianca,” he said. “Adjustment code C007, member 8JHC3487.”

He was looking right at her, and this time he saw the slight stiffening in her body, the momentary pause, the way she closed her eyes as if to savor something known only to her.

When she opened her eyes back and turned to look at him, she had some of the same expression that Mary had had the previous day, and that by itself was enough to make him hard almost instantly.

Bianca swallowed, and licked her lips. She still had her water in her hand, and she took a sip, her eyes never leaving his. Her sip became a full swallow, and she downed her whole glass of water as if she was suddenly thirsty. She licked her lips again.

Not quite knowing what to do—Mary had taken the initiative when he gave her the code—Jeff kept talking, asking Bianca whether she used any social networking apps, whether she had heard of SocialCircles before, and Bianca answered his questions, though she was noticeably less focused than she had been earlier. She kept licked her lips, swallowing, her eyes sometimes darting from his face down to his crotch in a flash. She had a light flush on, and if Jeff were not mistaken—and he felt way too self conscious to check carefully—her nipples seemed hard as rocks and poking through her blouse.

“I’m sorry,” Bianca said eventually, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “Look, I’ve got a big favor to ask of you.”

“Okay… What is it?”

She licked her lips again. Her eyes were burning with a hunger that was not lost on Jeff. “I’d like to suck your cock.”

Jeff had expected it, and not expected it at the same time. “You what?”

Bianca swallowed again, and edged closer to him. Her hand slid up his thigh, towards his crotch. “I want to suck your cock. I want to take it down my throat and suck on it until it explodes inside of me. I want to drink you up until you’re drained.” She looked feverish. Her hand had reached his cock, and was stroking it through his slacks. He was hard as a crowbar.

“Please,” she said, and the mounting desperation in her voice was clear. “I’ll do anything you want. Anything. Just let me swallow you…” Her hand was pressing harder, and it was almost painful. She kept running her tongue over her lips, as if to keep them wet.

He looked at her, remembering Mary, imagining Rebecca, taking the plunge. It this was a setup, so be it.

“Show me your tits,” he said, slightly uncomfortable with the term, but remembering Mary’s reaction.

“Of course, anything,” Bianca said, immediately reaching for the buttons on her blouse. “I’ll suck on your cock topless, so you can stare at my tits as much as you want. Show me your cock, baby?”

She pulled her blouse off exposing a half-shelf bra that did little to contain her generous chest, and Jeff stared shamelessly as he pulled down his slacks enough for his cock to shudder in the air of the limousine.

Bianca stared at his cock with a shiver of appreciation, and her mouth opened, breathing hard. The sight of his shaft momentarily distracted her, and she fumbled with the hook of her bra behind her back. Finally taking it off, Jeff’s stared when her large breasts came into view in their full naked glory. Without thinking, he reached for one, hefting it in his hand, savoring the softness the skin, the hardness of her firm nipple. Bianca gasped at the touch, closing her eyes.

“I’ll let you play with them as much as you want if you let me suck you off,” Bianca said.

“Okay,” Jeff nodded.

“Tell me,” she said, her eyes never leaving his cock, her mouth open.

“What?”

“Tell me that you want me to suck your cock.”

“Huh, Bianca, suck my cock?”

Bianca swallowed, and trembled. He felt it through the breast he was caressing.

“Tell me…” she said. “Tell me ‘get on your knees, bitch, and suck my cock.’”

Jeff stared at her for a second, but her whole attention was on his cock. She was fighting some sort of impulse, trying not to let go.

“Bianca, huh… get on your knees, bitch,” he tried to make his voice stern, “and suck my cock.”

Bianca’s trembling become violent, her moan deep, and she never broke eye contact with his cock as she sank to her knees and slipped between his legs and without a word of warning slid the head of his cock between her lips and sucked it inside of her mouth.

Jeff wanted to continue kneading her breast and squeezing it as she blew him but soon he had to lean back and simply let himself be serviced because the sensations from his cock were too wonderful to allow him to consider doing anything else.

Bianca bobbed up and down on his cock, taking most of it into her mouth, sucking him with a fervor that ought to be reserved for truly decadent and soul-fulfilling endeavors. Blow job noises filled the limousine, and Jeff wondered whether the driver up front could hear anything.

He watched Bianca slurp up and down on his cock, her eyes closed in bliss, drool dripping off her chin, her lips sealed tight around his shaft. Below, her breasts bounced with every one of her movements, an enticing arousing view.

After what might have been seconds or what might have been minutes—Jeff had lost any sense of time as he simply wallowed in the glow of Bianca’s expert mouth—she pulled her head up and stroked his saliva-drenched cock. She opened her eyes to look at him, the fever still in them. With her free hand, she reached for his, placing it on her head.

“I want to take you deep,” she said, out of breath. Drool had drenched the top of her chest and made her breasts shiny with spittle. “Force my head down, baby. Force your cock down my throat.”

Jeff was taken aback. “What?”

Bianca has a feverish smile on her face, and her stroking was fast and harsh. Her hand clasped his onto her head. “I can’t do it on my own, baby. I need you to grab my head and force it down onto your cock. Force it all the way down, all the way in. Choke me, baby, and come all the way inside. Please!”

It was the tone of desperation of that last request that did it for Jeff. Disbelieving what he was hearing, but unable to resist the urge of his loins, he pushed down on Bianca’s head and slipped his cock back into her mouth. When it was as far in as it would go, he pressed down, hard.

Bianca closed her eyes and gagged as the head of his cock pushed against the entrance of her throat, but she did not pull back. She held position for a few seconds before letting go, and Jeff pushed her head back down and before long he was pushing up with his hips as well as driving her head down and Bianca was gagging loudly and saliva was dripping down abundantly and there were tears in the corner of her eyes that made her mascara run. It gave him a disgusting visceral thrill.

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes, waiting, expecting, hoping, and Jeff wrapped a hand in her blonde hair and with his other hand pushed down hard and did not let up, and his cock broke through the obstruction and sank deep into her throat, completely, the root of his cock smashing against her lips. Bianca stiffened and her gag turned into a retching that seemed to milk his cock from inside, and Bianca’s whole body shivered as she closed her eyes and Jeff luxuriated in the feeling of completely embedding himself deep into this beautiful woman’s throat.

She pulled back after several seconds, and looked up at him with teary eyes still filled with hunger, and she pressed back down and he pushed his cock in her throat once more. He fucked her mouth deep and hard and it was the most insane sexual experience of his life. Bianca was impaling herself on his cock, over and over again, uncaring about her own comfort, gagging and choking and fucking his cock with her throat like it was the only thing that was important to her in her world.

Through the haze that had engulfed him, Jeff could see that she had slipped a hand between her legs and was stroking herself frantically.

When at last Bianca pushed hard and stayed put with her lips at the root of his cock and her nose pressed into his lower stomach, choking madly around his shaft, her red-rimmed eyes staring straight at him through her tears, her face smudged with running makeup, Jeff could not hold any longer and exploded, sending spurt after spurt of semen directly down her gullet which she swallowed effortlessly, never letting him go, seemingly not even breathing, her eyes closing in wild appreciation.

Jeff returned to his senses a few minutes later, disoriented, and wondered if he had fallen asleep or had passed out. Next to him sat Bianca, working on her makeup, dressed again in her blouse, looking as though nothing had happened. His slacks were refastened, and the only way he could tell that anything had happened was the smell of sex in the air, his cooling skin, and the feeling of utter emptiness that hung about his genitals. He felt satiated.

Bianca turned to him, nodded. “We should be at the office in about ten minutes,” she said. Her tone suggested that nothing odd had happened, that she had not acted like a wanton slut hungry for his cock, and Jeff marveled at her acting abilities. He wanted to ask her so many questions, wanted to ask her about why she had done what she had done, how long she had been doing it, but the contract he had signed expressly forbade him to talk about any of that with Network members.

And so he turned and stared out the window, silently sipping his limousine-made soda and orange juice, while Bianca called Rivolli to let him know they were about to arrive.

* * *

Bianca led Jeff Coogan to Salvatore “Sal” Rivolli’s law offices, after the limousine had dropped them off at the entrance of a squat glass-faced building on Sunset Boulevard.

Rivolli looked up from his work when Jeff entered his office, and the broad grin that Jeff had known for years ever since Rivolli took him under his wing in middle school broke upon his face. “Jeff, you stinker!”

In a flash he was up and hugged Jeff, who always felt ambivalent about those displays of affection to which Rivolli was prone. The older man had always been very physical, both when happy and when not.

“Thank you Bianca,” he said to his beautiful assistant. “I appreciate you taking the time.”

“Not a problem, Mister Rivolli. Do you have any further need of me?”

Jeff’s breath caught at her words, at her phrasing. It sounded so innocuous given the setting, yet with what he knew it took such blatantly sexual overtones that he could not help grow hard again thinking about her on her knees sucking on his cock. Mary had been nice, but Bianca was something else. Perhaps it was her that he should ask out on a date. He could so easily see himself falling in love with her.

“Not this afternoon,” Rivolli responded. “Jeff and I are going to go down to the set and I’ll show him around some, introduce him. So you’re free to go and terrorize our partners.”

“Very well.” She turned to Jeff. “Mister Coogan, “it was a pleasure to meet you. Enjoy your stay in LA.”

“I—I will. Thank you Bianca.”

“Bianca,” Rivolli interjected as the beautiful woman turned around on her high heels and was heading to the door, “you still coming to the party tonight?”

“Of course. Seven or eight?”

“Eight would be great.”

“Perfect. Yes, we will see you there.”

Rivolli turned to Jeff when Bianca was gone, and his broad grin had a touch of the wolf in it. “So, what do you think?”

Jeff looked around. “Well, it’s pretty nice. I’ve been thinking of something with more glass in my new building and—”

“Not the decoration, you punk! Bianca! What do you think?”

Jeff felt himself redden. “She’s… nice.”

Rivolli laughed, harder than Jeff ever thought anyone could laugh. He wondered whether Rivolli was laughing with him or at him. But Rivolli slapped him on the back, laughing still. “Nice? NICE? You’ll never change, Jeff. God bless your heart. I can tell by your blush that she gave you one of her outta this world blow jobs. Fuck, the girl’s the best damn cocksucker I’ve ever met, and I met many, believe you me. And she’s the whole package, too: nice tits, a tight pussy, and an ass that won’t quit. Maybe you’ll want to sample it at the party tonight.”

Rivolli laughed again at Jeff’s expression. “Come on, I’m sure you’ve got loads of questions. Not sure I have many answers, but I’ve been dying to talk to someone about this stuff.”

He grabbed his briefcase from the side of his desk and gestured towards the door. “Come with me. I’ve got some business to take care of on the set, and I figured you’d enjoy seeing how the sausages are made. And you get to see some of the eye candy the show’s famous for.”

Jeff, who had the definite impression that there was a whirlwind about him threatening to engulf him and wipe him out, merely nodded. “Sounds good.”

* * *

Jeff was back in the limousine, with Rivolli this time. Bianca, much to Jeff’s chagrin, did not accompany them. Although how much he would have been able to concentrate had she been around was up for debate.

“We’re going to the set,” Rivolli said, as he checked something on his smartphone.

“The Kittens’ Den set?” Jeff knew that Rivolli was involved in the production, presumably as part of the legal team. He did not know the details though. But he loved the show, like everyone of his generation.

“Correct.” Rivolli was texting while talking, not looking up from the glow of the screen. “Fred Krueger convinced me to head legal affairs at Bad Dream Productions, which co-produces the show. Trust me, you don’t know what complicated is until you stared into the mess that is legal affairs for a television show. The stuff is enough to give you grey hair, when not just making it all fall off.” He ran a hand through his luxurious mass of still dark hair.

“So,” Jeff said, breaching the subject that had been on his mind since he first set foot in Los Angeles, “the Platinum Plan?”

“Ah! Amazing, isn’t it?” Rivolli slipped his phone back in his pocket. “Greatest thing ever, if you ask me. And the girls… fuck me! The best of the bunch, by far. Beats all the escort services I’ve ever seen.”

Jeff did not ask him how many escort services he had sampled. “Yes, they’re beautiful, all of them I’ve seen. I wonder where they find them…” It was a question he had had ever since first fucking Mary.

Rivolli smiled mysteriously. “An excellent question, Jeff my boy. One that I fully expected you to start asking, with that big brain of yours.”

Jeff noticed that Rivolli did not answer him. “So, Bianca, and the driver…?”

Rivolli smiled. “No accident, of course. Bianca interviewed and when I spotted her tattoo I knew I needed to have her on my team. Whether she was good for it or not, really. I would have found something for her to do either way. Turns out she’s sharp and I couldn’t function half as well without her. Funny how those things go. Michaela, the driver, I spotted her downtown and after checking up on her offered her a job as well. There are many others on my staff.”

“So you’re going out to recruit… Network members?”

“Network members? Is that what your account manager called them? Interesting. But anyway, yes, I do look for them now. I mean, can you imagine? Having beautiful women around ready to drop their panties at the snap of a finger, willing to service you in ways that even hookers would blanch at?”

“That seems… I don’t know… like you’re gaming the system or something.”

“Hey,” Rivolli shrugged. “It’s their business model. If I find a way to use it to my advantage, they can’t stop me. I’m not doing anything wrong here. Just… coalescing resources. Beside, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

* * *

Kittens’ Den was a television series that had been running for the past couple of years, built around the notion of an organization taking in runaways and prisoners and altering and overwriting their personalities with technology straight out of a bad science-fiction serial in order to have them serve a variety of purposes. It was not an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, but the show was well done, and explored how such mind-controlled puppets—which the show called kittens when they were female and tomcats male—could be used as escorts, spies, collateral, and even soldiers.

One feature of the series was that it took full advantage of the permissibility of cable networks, and pushed the envelope to a remarkable extent on sexual exploitation in a mainstream series. That the show used guests stars of the highest order that often would end up showing up much more skin than expected was a nice bonus. The secondary actors and the extras went beyond even that extent and often veered into softcore pornography. The show was a ratings mastodon in the prime 18–24 demographic.

The studio where Kittens’ Den was filmed housed two large static sets and three areas where episode-specific sets could be constructed quickly. Overall, the atmosphere was less chaotic than Jeff had expected, after two years the process having turned into a well-oiled machine that ran without friction most of the time.

Rivolli walked Jeff through the main area between the sets—all of them being used in parallel, since scenes did not have to be shot in order—where the catering table was set up and where the various assistant directors discussed technical matters involving photography and sound and the sequencing of operations necessary to bring an episode into a form suitable for editing.

Jeff drank it all up, enjoying the buzz of technicality in the air—he wondered idly how he could get his building to foster the same energy; perhaps he needed a catering area, in the center of the building, around which cubicles could be laid out in a concentric pattern, to allow for mingling and for the free exchange of ideas—but he was constantly distracted by the skimpily clad young actresses that walked by him to and from the changing rooms, beautiful girls with bodies to die for, most of them not out of place on the cover of men’s magazines.

“Come on,” said Rivolli, smiling to Jeff. “Let me introduce you. Hey, Freddie!”

An thin gaunt older man with a dark piercing eyes looked up from what looked like a script and grinned wildly as Rivolli approached him. “Sal! What the hell are you doing here? Are we getting sued again?”

Rivolli laughed. “Not today, no. Just got some business to deal with. Brought a good friend of mine along, Jeff Coogan. He’s just started a company up in San Fran and he’s kicking it back in LA for the weekend.”

“Mister Krueger,” Jeff said, extending a hand. “Jeff Coogan.”

“Nice to meet you, Jeff. Any friend of Sal here is a friend of mine. Sal saved my ass more times than I can count.”

“I have no difficulty imagining that,” Jeff said. Rivolli had helped him too.

“Oh, guys—this is gonna make me cry.” Rivolli was rolling his eyes, but one could tell he was eating it all up.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” Krueger said, looking back down at the script, “I have to go and talk to Bob about this next scene, because it’s just not gonna work.” He nodded to Rivolli and to Jeff before heading off.

Jeff smiled to a beautiful actress passing him dressed in the skimpy leggings and bikini top characteristic of the costume that kittens wore on the show. Rivolli nudged him. “Notice anything?”

“What?”

“Just look.”

“At what?”

“The girls.”

“That’s what I’ve sort of been doing. Tough not to. I mean, how do people get any work done around here?”

“Look carefully,” Rivolli said, sounding mock-exasperated.

And Jeff looked. For five minutes, he looked, sipping on an Orangina he had seen on the catering table, and saw what undoubtedly Rivolli had wanted him to see.

Most of the actresses going by around him, talking to each other and laughing or looking serious and concentrating on their lines, had a tattoo on their little finger.

Rivolli smiled when he saw that Jeff had noticed.

“They’re all…?”

Rivolli nodded. “Well, not all, but many. A great many.”

Jeff’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. “Did you…?”

“Had nothing to do with it. I noticed myself six months ago when I visited Freddie for something unrelated to the show. Took me by surprise, too. It was like winning the jackpot in Vegas. Just look at them!”

Jeff did, taking in the beautiful and skimpily clad women walking about or standing reviewing their lines or hanging out and laughing softly.

Before he could ask Rivolli what it all meant, his friend’s face changed and a flash of disgust crossed it. “Well, there he is.”

“Who?”

Jeff turned in the direction Rivolli was facing, and spotted an overweight man coming their way. The man would have been broad even without a good eighty pounds extra to carry around, and he looked, for lack of a better term, oily.

The man leered openly at the extras as he made his way toward them, and Jeff could see that they did not particularly relish the attention. Rivolli shook his head. “Disgusting pig. Look at him,” he said. “Not even able to take a hint. Well, let’s get to it then. Hey Georgios! Georgios!”

The aforementioned looked up, and grinned, and Jeff half expected his teeth to be yellow. There were not. But his grin did not improve his image.

“Georgios here co-produces Kittens’ Den with Freddie. When Freddie needed money, he went out and found someone. That’s before I came in, or I would have helped him. Instead, he found this Georgios guy.”

Georgios was getting closer, beaming broadly. Rivolli suppressed a shudder, then turned to Jeff. “I have to spend some time with Georgios. He’s been having issues with one of his subsidiary production companies, and Freddie asked me to look into it, give the man a hand. Because you’ve got to keep your co-producers happy, right? I’m not going to impose him on you. And I shouldn’t be too long anyway: half an hour, forty-five minutes? So just hang out, mingle. A word of advice: don’t sample the girls here, because it’s a bit too public. But don’t worry about it, they’re all coming to the party tonight, so if you see someone that interests you, just remember her and be patient. You’ll be able to freely enjoy them. And don’t forget that Bianca’s gonna be there too.”

Rivolli grinned, patting Jeff on the back once more. “You’re gonna have to pace yourself, my boy.”

* * *

Jeff Coogan, an Orangina cut with a generous helping of vodka in his hand, was recovering from the whirlwind of emotions in which he had been engulfed for the previous two days.

Life was surreal.

Sal Rivolli sat next to him, sipping a green liquid that smelled sickly sweet.

They were on the balcony deck of Rivolli’s villa, enjoying the late afternoon breeze. Inside the villa, Rivolli’s staff were putting the finishing touches to the party that he was hosting that evening. It was, arguably, a party Rivolli was throwing for Jeff’s benefit: Jeff had generously accepted to invest in Krueger’s production house—a small payback for Rivolli’s own investment in SocialCircles.

“So,” said Rivolli, when the silence had stretched long enough. “What do you think?”

Jeff did not have to ask the topic. He had spent the afternoon surrounded by fabulous looking girls from the Kittens’ Den cast and crew, and had seen that nearly all of them had a tattoo around their finger, had known that they would be attending the party that evening, had known that he could have them, any of them, that they would happily spread their legs for him, or do whatever he wanted them to do, and it was still too much for him to process.

“It’s…” He had difficulty finding the right words. “It’s everything you hinted it would be.”

“Isn’t it? It’s amazing, really.”

“So, multiple thoughts in my head right now. Don’t know which one to pick.” He paused, and Rivolli merely watched him, a small smile on his face, encouraging. “Okay, the obvious one first. You said that when you hire now you look for members. Makes sense. Do you do that for Krueger, too? Do you go out and find crew and actresses from the Network?”

“Jeff, Jeff, Jeff… still with your knack to go for the question. And no, I don’t have any say in the hiring for Bad Dream Productions. And no, they don’t hire based on membership in the Network. I thought the same thing, but as near as I can tell, there’s no one that knows about the Network on staff. I spent a fair amount of money checking everyone out.”

“Then, what’s going on?”

“Indeed. All but one supporting actress hired were not part of the Network when they started, only to become members by their second month in. What does that tell you?”

“I’m not sure…”

“I did some digging for myself. Some careful checks on those actresses and new actresses coming in, lots of money spent. But I have a theory now. What do you know about the Network, or the girls in it?”

“Well, the guy I talked to, Srinivasan, was telling me that they’re girls who are looking for a bit of a thrill, making themselves available to satisfy the fantasies of rich men like, well, like us. Successful folks with IPOs or, in your case, established law firms.”

Rivolli nodded. “I was told essentially the same thing. Problem is, I don’t think it’s true. I don’t think they’re hired. Now, it’s surprisingly difficult to find information about the Network or the Platinum Plan. And believe me, I tried. With money, you can find out almost anything I’ve discovered. But this one’s a tough nut to crack. But looking deep into it, following through various subsidiary and shell companies, and asking the right people and bribing them and coercing them, you end up at the feet of a small company down in Costa Mala, which is a little island nation in the Pacific with draconian privacy legislation. I don’t think the trail ends there either. But that’s not the point now.”

“What’s the point?”

“If these girls are members, then they must interact with that company or something at some point or another. I mean, they must get approached, or someone must approach them. And they must be payed, or some sort of contract arranged. I mean, we’re talking about serious money here. But there’s no trail from any of the actresses to any of the companies in the chain, nothing to indicate any kind of economic contact. The financial paperwork is pristine.”

“So?”

“So I don’t think they’re hired. I think they’re being coerced. No, not in that way, not blackmail. Many of the girls I looked into had anything in it that would lend itself to coercion. And beside, you’ve seen Bianca this afternoon—do you think she was acting like she was coerced? No way. That girl loves to fuck when you tell her to. No, I think they’ve gotten their head messed with.”

“What? Seriously? You’ve been drinking the Kittens’ Den Kool-Aid, my friend…”

“I know how it sounds. But I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on. And there’s someone on staff at Bad Dream Production that knows about it, and siphons actresses into… well, whatever it is that they do. And it’s someone high up on staff, because there are a number of discrepancies in the books. Well hidden, for sure, but there are large payments going out at regular intervals to yet another chain of shell companies that eventually lead to… take a guess?”

“Costa Mala?”

“Costa Mala.”

“Wow…”

“Wow indeed…”

Rivolli’s watch beeped, and he grinned. “Ah, here we go…”

He stood and motioned for Jeff to follow him. He walked to one end of the balcony, where a panoramic viewer was set up, of the kind one found at belvederes and scenic overlooks the world over.

It was adjusted for Rivolli’s height, so that he did not even have to touch it before peering in. “Here we go,” he repeated. He sighed, a deep sigh of longing that intrigued Jeff. “Bet the water’s nice,” Rivolli muttered to himself.

After a few minutes, with Jeff wondering what he was supposed to do, Rivolli beckoned him.

“Have a look,” he said, sipping from his green drink, “and you’ll understand everything.”

Jeff looked through the viewer, and immediately recognized a pool, large, surrounded by a tall hedge on two sides, with the third side opening up toward the hills on a view of the valley rivaling with Rivolli’s own.

There was a shape in the water, swimming beneath the surface for two lengths of the pool. The shape broke the surface at the end of her lap, climbing out of the pool, and Jeff was impressed.

He must have made a sound, because Rivolli gave a little laugh. “Bet she just came out of the water.”

The girl in question was tall and thin and toned, with a body that belonged in a fitness magazine. When Jeff thought of the term California Girl, this is what he imagined at some subconscious level: long blond hair sticking to her wet back, tanned skin, nice breasts, flat stomach, a round ass barely covered by a yellow string bikini, legs that seemed way too long for her body.

She was beautiful—in a different way from Bianca, who was sophisticated and elegant. This girl was youth and innocence incarnate, a playmate, a friend. Someone you shared a beer with before fucking into oblivion.

Jeff watched the girl dry herself then stretch out on a deck chat to catch some late afternoon sun. She looked like an ad for sunscreen, or like the background shot of a music video for a boy band.

“You get it now?” Rivolli asked.

“I don’t think I do.”

“Her name’s Tracy,” Rivolli said. “She’s starting college in the fall. She moved in with her parents three years ago, when they bought the villa next door. The father’s a real estate big shot. A real hard ass. His daughter, though, well, she’s the cutest, sweetest little thing. And she’s a virgin. The most she’s ever done is give head on dates, and she really likes getting her twat eaten out.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

Rivolli shrugged. “Told you—you pay enough money, you can find out whatever you want, or almost. Anyway, Tracy.”

Jeff still did not understand where Rivolli was going with it. Unless… “Wait, is she in the Network?”

Rivolli grinned. “No. Or more accurately, not yet.”

Jeff looked at Rivolli.

“That’s one of the reason I’ve been digging. I want her. I want her bad. Ever been obsessed by something—someone? Well, I’m obsessed. Can you imagine having that sweet little creature at your beck and call, spreading her legs to invite you to plow her whenever you get hard, begging you to fuck her harder?” Rivolli made a face as if he were savoring in advance getting his cock inside his neighbor’s daughter.

Jeff took another look at the girl through the viewer—she was indeed delicious, though his tastes seemed to veer more toward professional women. Like Bianca. Like Rebecca.

Rebecca, who had a tattoo on her finger. Rebecca, who was married to his best friend, and his partner.

“So how are you going to do it?” he asked Rivolli, disturbed by where his thoughts were leading him.

“That’s what I’m still digging for. These guys are well hidden. Good enough would be for me to find out how to get her into the Network—get her tattooed, and poof, she’s free to use.”

Rivolli took a sip of his drink, swished it around in his mouth, then looked back in the direction of the girl, Tracy, wistfully. “Best though would be to just figure out how they do what they do, these folks, how they… convince… these girls, and just do it myself. Then I could get little Tracy here all to myself. Have her move in with me, and be my live-in, well, my live-in anything-I-want. No college for little Tracy, of course. Just hands-on training.”

While Jeff contemplated that project, Rivolli sighed again. “Can you just imagine sinking your dick into that soft, pure, pristine twat? Grabbing those boobs and holding for dear life as you plow in and out? Heaven, pure heaven. I’ll teach her to be the best fucking sex doll that ever existed.”

Rivolli fell silent, dreaming, and Jeff followed suit.

They were interrupted by a pretty young Hispanic maid announcing that guests were starting to arrive, and Rivolli thanked her.

Jeff could not help notice the pale blue tattoo on the maid’s finger, and how short her dress was.

* * *

The party was a grand affair, at least in Jeff’s limited experience. He paused for a moment to look around and take in everything, with the hope of being able to reproduce it back home, when he would decide to throw such parties to celebrate his company’s milestones. He particularly enjoyed the Frozen theme, where ice sculptures decorated various corners of the room, kept cold via dedicated cooling units that must have used an insane amount of power. Jeff reasoned that these would be easier to maintain in the colder San Francisco air. He wondered whether they might not look good in the lobby of SocialCircles’s headquarters.

The whole lower level of Rivolli’s villa was taken over, and a jazz band in the foyer served to enliven the atmosphere. The food was delicious, the alcohol ran freely, and everybody seemed happy.

Left and right, wherever Jeff would turn, a beautiful woman, often accompanied by a date, would cross his path, sporting a pale blue ring tattoo on her little finger. Long evening gowns and little black dresses abounded, and Jeff could not keep from getting hard at the sight, knowing what those women meant, what they would be willing to do. It made his head spin anew. At the same time, he could not believe any of it.

And then he ran into Bianca.

She looked stunning in a dark green dress that hugged her body from chest to mid-thighs, fitting like a second skin over a body that looked like it was built for sin. Tall heels and a complicated hairdo that sent her hair in a twisted braid over her head completed the look and did little to distract from her perfect body.

“Mister Coogan,” she said, holding a glass of sparkling wine in a small hand. “I trust you’re enjoying your time with us? May I introduce you to Sven, my husband?”

Jeff had to almost crane his neck to look up at Sven, a mountain of a man whose neck was almost wider than his head. He looked strong and fit and muscular enough to break a man with a twist of the hand. He had a pleasant smile though, which served to make it only slightly less frightening.

“Huh, pleased to meet you, Sven. Jeff Coogan, CEO of SocialCircles.”

All Jeff could think as Sven’s broad hand engulfed his own was to imagine this large brute mounting on top of dainty Bianca, furiously thrusting between her spread thighs, ripping her apart with broad strokes of what must be a gigantic cock.

“Hi,” said Sven, his voice as deep as his size suggested.

“Sven’s a defenseman with the Kings,” Bianca said, not a little proud of her husband. “Best scoring stats since Bobby Orr for the position.”

“Wow,” Jeff said, despite not knowing the first thing about whatever sport she was talking about.

“Bee,” Sven said, almost blushing, “it’s okay, you don’t need to advertise it.”

“If I don’t, who will? I’m just proud of you, baby. We all are.”

She stretched up to give a quick kiss to her man, and Jeff had difficulty reconciling the obvious love and pride he could see in her eyes and her every move with the otherworldly blow job she had given him earlier that day. Jeff remembered what Rivolli had said, that he believed that she was not acting that way out of something she wanted to do, but rather that she was somehow coerced into it.

The thought did not make his erection go away.

Quite the contrary.

Bianca took Sven away to promote her man and show him off, and Jeff watched her go, his eyes straying down to her perfect ass held up in that tight dress, her long beautiful legs exposed, and he dreamt of what he might do to such an ass and such legs if he were given a chance with them.

“Told you she’s got a great ass.” Rivolli was by his side, watching Bianca walk away as well. Then he turned to grin at Jeff. “And you should see it out of that dress, too. Miles better.”

Jeff merely nodded.

“You should take her upstairs. The guest bedroom is yours.”

“But… what about her husband?”

“What about him? Sven is going to be happily distracted down here, and you get to enjoy Bianca’s tight little ass in the privacy of your bedroom.”

Jeff stared at Rivolli, the thought of fucking Bianca’s right under her husband’s nose one that repulsed a part of him while exciting another.

As if he knew exactly what Jeff was debating, Rivolli smiled. “Sven’s never fucked her in the ass.”

“How… how do you know?”

Rivolli shrugged. “I paid a guy once to take Sven out and get him drunk and talkative. Really, I wanted to find out if he had anything to do with Bianca being… well, being a member in the network. And it doesn’t appear so. But Sven got really talkative, and he did reveal far more than he should have about his and his wife’s sexual proclivities. Point being, they have a healthy sexual relationship, but she doesn’t take him up the ass. But she’ll let you. She’ll even beg you. You know the codes.”

Leaving Jeff with that image, Rivolli let himself be grabbed by a young woman wearing a little black dress that left little to the imagination, and went to dance with her and another woman that Jeff realized with a start was Michaela, the limo driver, smashing in an evening gown slit up to her waist.

It took Jeff half an hour to make up his mind. Half an hour during which he walked around the room, trying to chat up people, eyeing the women, evaluating them, all the while his mind going back to Bianca and what Rivolli had said. Fucking Bianca at a party while her own husband, the man she loved, the man to whom she had promised love and fidelity, was at the same party, unaware, made him shiver without understanding why.

Bianca. Rebecca. Two beautiful women that Jeff desired, two beautiful women that were married to other men, two beautiful women his to use and abuse.

When Jeff made his way back around the room and ran into Bianca again by one of the punch bowls, he asked her if she could serve him a glass, and while she did he furtively looked left and right before leaning over and whispering the fateful words into her ear. “Bianca, adjustment code C005, member 8JHC3487.”

He watched with trepidation as Bianca stiffened slightly, the way she had done earlier in the day—was it really just earlier today? he reflected with wonder—and he reached out worried that she would drop the glass of punch that she had been about to hand him.

But she did not drop the glass.

She held it as she stared straight at Jeff with a look not unlike the one she had given him earlier. She took a step towards him, and Jeff could see a blush rising on her face, her pupils dilating, her breathing picking up.

“Hey sexy,” she said, her voice low. Around Jeff, the sounds of the party seemed to recede in the distance. Her voice was an invitation, an opening. It was a call to mate.

“Hi,” he said, feeling as lame as he sounded. “You look wonderful tonight.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the step that brought her so close to him that he could kiss her merely by stretching his lips forward. She smelled delicious, and he convinced himself he could feel her heat even from where she was. “I chose this dress hoping that it would help me catch the attention of a man that’d find me good enough to fuck. What do you think, Jeff? Do I look good enough to fuck?”

Jeff swallowed, and nodded. He tried hard not to appear too eager. “That you do. Hot and sexy and fuckable.”

She shivered at his words, closing her eyes as if to savor them. “I feel fuckable,” she said. Opening her eyes, she smiled. “Wanna fuck?”

“Me?”

“Oh yeah,” she said, and she looked left and right conspiratorially before putting a hand on his chest. “Definitely you,” and she trailed her hand downward, “and your cock,” downward still, “and my tight little cunt.” Her hand stopped before his crotch.

“What about your ass?” The way she acted made him more daring, and he remembered what Rivolli had said.

Bianca’s smile grew wide. “Oh, you dirty dirty boy! You want to stick your cock in my ass? We’ll see… we’ll see how good you are, whether you deserve that sort of reward.”

Jeff swallowed. “I have a place,” he said. “Upstairs.”

Bianca’s eyes lit up, and he almost could hear the growl in her voice. “Let’s go.”

He followed her through the crowd of partygoers, the jazz music from the band a background theme to their escape. When he pointed to a staircase she headed up and he followed close behind, his eyes never leaving her ass, her legs, the way she moved like a feline driving him crazy. He kept wanting to peek up her dress, see what sort of panties she was wearing, knowing but hardly believing that he would see them for himself soon enough.

When they made it to the guest room, Bianca was all over him. She glued herself to him and kissed him, her body molding itself against his, her hands all over him.

“Oh baby I want you so fucking much!” she moaned in his mouth. “How would you like me?”

Jeff was catching up, and looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“Would you like me naked? With my dress hiked up and my tits hanging out? On my back with legs spread wide? On my hands and knees like a little hungry bitch? Or do you want to take me against the wall? Or do you want me to ride you and your fat cock? How do you want me, baby? Tell me! Or better, just take me—however you want—no need to say, no need to ask, just put me in position and take me, I’ll be your thing, your toy, your piece of ass!”

Her words, the way her body wiggled against his, the way her lips danced on the side of his face, all of it served to push Jeff over the edge. His hands were already running all over her body, and they now grabbed her ass more fervently than perhaps Bianca expected for she gasped and then moaned when he pulled her dress up over her hips and then found the thong she wore underneath happily nestled between her cheeks.

She gasped again when he slapped her ass, and moaned in his ear. “Oh yes, spank me, baby—I’m such a bad girl thinking about cocks all day long—cocks in my mouth, on my tits—cocks in my cunt, in my ass—cocks everywhere, fucking me, taking me, claiming me—”

She punctuated her tirade by kissing him again, while he alternately stroked her ass and slapped it, enjoying the feel of her flesh under his palm, enjoying how her crotch pressed into his demanding cock.

As if in a dream—he would later only remember flashes of what was happening—Jeff pushed Bianca onto the bed, and while she shifted to find a good position, leaning forward with her perfect ass raised high, he slipped her thong off and tossed it to the other side of the room.

Between her legs, he could see her pussy, shaved bare and glistening. Her lips were swollen red. She made little mewing sounds as she tilted her hips back and forth, fucking the air.

Above her slit, between her cheeks, her pristine rosette winked at him, daring him to breach it. He had not used the code his app labeled Anal Lust; he had not had the guts. But seeing her asshole right there before him, and remembering Rivolli’s words—“Sven’s never fucked her in the ass”—made him hesitate for a second.

Hesitation which last a moment too long, for Bianca whined, “Please, baby—fuck me! Fuck me hard!”

She did not push back against him, though. Jeff lined up behind her, his cock in line with her pussy, and she gasped and shivered when she felt his cock head flirt with her pussy lips. He savored the position, savored the feeling of kneeling behind this beautiful married woman prostrate on his bed, her dress bunched up around her waist, her perfect ass offered to his gaze, her drenched pussy ready to be taken, ready to be owned. He savored it all. He felt powerful. As powerful as when the IPO went through successfully.

“Please, baby,” she groaned. “Please fuck me! Grab my hips and tell me ‘Take my cock in your slutty cunt, you little bitch!’ Take me! Claim me! Own me!”

And he did.

Grasping her hips with both hands, growling “Take it all you bitch,” he thrust his cock forward while pulling her back toward, and he sank to the hilt into a tight oven-hot glove that threatened to make him come right there on the spot. Bianca let out of a wail as he split her apart, and he saw her hands clutch the bed spread.

He remained in place, embedded inside her, and waited for her to say “Please…” again before pulling out slowly and thrusting while pulling on her hips as hard as he could, forcing another scream of pleasure from the elegant young woman.

Bianca liked it rough.

And he gave it to her rough.

He fucked her hard, with long strokes, at some point reaching down to grab her hair and pulling her head back and he swore he could feel her pussy clench about his cock as he did so, just as her groans increased in volume and frequency.

She came when Jeff sucked on his thumb to wet it before twisting it into her ass as he fucked her hard. The feel of her pussy spastically grasping his cock forced a growling orgasm out of him, and he exploded deep inside her, pulling out just in time for his last few spurts to splash all over the back of her dress.

As he collapsed next to Bianca, spent, Jeff made a mental note to thank Rivolli—for inviting him to stay, for introducing him to Bianca, for leading him to the Platinum Plan.

* * *

Rebecca Delamy-Montreuil was standing catching her breath after a long grueling workout session when the front doorbell rang. She frowned, not expecting anyone in the early evening.

She headed down, her naked feet paddling on the thick carpeting. She stepped into the foyer, and thumbed the video display that gave her a picture of who was ringing downstairs in the lobby of their condominium building.

Much to her surprise it was her boss, Jeffrey Coogan, staring at her through the small screen. “Jeffrey? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s perfectly fine,” came Jeffrey’s voice through the small speaker.

“What are you doing here? Jacques is still at the office. He’s finishing up the presentation for Microsoft, he told me.”

“I know, I just saw him there. Listen, Rebecca—there was something I sort of wanted to talk to you about, one on one.”

“Can it wait for tomorrow?”

“Not really. It’s sort of urgent.”

“All right, hold on…” She keyed in the code that unlocked the lobby door and gave him access to the elevator. She looked down—she could not welcome her boss in her skintight yoga pants and her sports bra. She had just enough time to grab her dressing gown before Jeffrey knocked on the front door.

She let him in, and immediately noticed something was different about him. It was subtle. Of course, Jeffrey did not make house calls, but he also moved…. differently. WIth more assurance. He seemed less like the gawky teenager he sometimes looked like.

“How was your trip to LA? It was LA, right?”

“It was good. Really good. It was… eye opening.”

The way he said it made her stop and look at him. There was an expression in his eyes she had never seen before. It made her pull the dressing gown she had on tight across her chest and keep it close. She felt memories banging on the back of her head, and it made her angry, irrationally angry.

“Jeffrey, I think you should go now.” Her voice was even. She was doing a beautiful job controlling herself.

She knew Jeffrey had always fancied her—that much had been obvious from the start, from the first time they met, and so had Jacques of course—and they were cute about it in their own way, almost inoffensive compared to the high-powered lawyers that made up her daily world and that considered every interaction they had as a form of trial or negotiation that naturally had a winner and a loser. The lawyers she knew where braggarts rarely backed up by real skills, while Jeffrey and Jacques had undeniable skills—anyone could sense it—without a bragging bone in their body, except sometimes for Jeffrey who had an almost pathological need for acceptance and recognition. She and Jacques talked about it at night, sometimes. Jacques was kind and understanding and understood people, one of the reasons she had fallen in love with him.

“Jeffrey, did you hear? You should go.” She tried control herself, not to let her nervousness or anger show. She took a deep breath. She was overreacting. She must have been mistaken. The look he had given her had reminded her of law school, of her fellow students who had not enjoyed having a woman beat them at their own game, a look that she equated to let’s put the chick in her place. That was not Jeffrey.

“In a bit. I heard something when I was in LA that made me think that I needed to talk to you, something sort of urgent.”

“Something wrong with the company? With the IPO? I thought everything was going fine?”

“You could say that. Maybe it’s nothing, Maybe it’s something. I can’t tell. I’m not a lawyer. I just wanted to get your expert opinion on the matter.”

“And it can’t wait for tomorrow?”

He grinned slightly, and it was the Jeffrey she knew well now. “You know me.”

I thought I did, she caught herself thinking.

“Okay then, what is it?”

He took a breath, he looked nervous suddenly. “Rebecca, if I tell you, adjustment code C003, member 8JHC3487—does that mean anything to you?”

But Rebecca never heard the final question. At his words, there was a flash in her mind, a flash that her consciousness never saw as it obliterated anything on its path. Warmth coursed through her veins, making her tremble, and it was as if her eyes closed while they remained open, and when they were open once more, everything was different.

It was still Jeffrey in front of her, now looking at her with an intent look, half curiosity, half expectation, and there was a flush of arousal that coursed through her when she realized that he was waiting for something, waiting for her, for her reaction to something he had said or done that she could not for the life of her remember. He was expecting, wanting, demanding.

He had a look in his eyes that she knew well, a look she had seen often before. He wanted her, wanted her body, and that made her hot. She looked down, not willing to look at him in the eyes for too long, wondering what she was supposed to do. He was waiting, she knew, he was waiting for something from her. What was he waiting for? Did he ask her to do something? Did she blank when he asked her to do something? And she was not doing it. Was he getting disappointed? Was he upset? Was he about to punish her?

She could not contain the shiver that ran through her at the thought of getting punished. She did not want to get punished, yet at the same time she knew that she deserved it, she knew that she was not good enough and that she had to fight for every single scrap and punishment was merely confirmation of what she knew down deep in her bones. And somehow, that confirmation was everything—she pictured Jeffrey grabbing her and pulling her onto his lap and her bare ass, every slap of his hand on her ass resounding in the empty apartment, loud, hurting like nothing else, and satisfying that craving she felt deep in her gut.

She stifled a moan, not wanting to upset him further. Jeffrey took a step toward her, a hand out, and she wondered whether she should be naked in front of him, and she wondered whether that was what he had asked her, to strip naked for him, but she could not be sure, and she did not want to take any initiative. She was stuck. Her moan of arousal threatened to turn into a sob, and she wanted to apologize, to beg for his forgiveness, to ask what he wanted so that she could make it better. But he did not tell her to speak, so she did not speak.

Jeffrey reached out with a hand, and she braced herself for whatever he was about to do. She flinched when she felt his hand on her face, but he was merely cupping her chin and tilting her head up. He was looking at her. He did not look upset. He looked ecstatic. And he had a smile on his face. “Amazing…” he said. And somehow she knew he was not talking to her, so she remained silent.

His thumb was near her mouth, and she yearned to grab it between her lips and suck on it, to show him she was a good girl, that she could make up for whatever it was that she had done, that she could satisfy him, that she would be good for him. Only sluts suck on their bosses’ thumbs—everybody knew that, she knew that, her cunt knew that.

Jeffrey merely looked at her, his eyes roving up and down her body. He pulled the sides of her dressing gown apart, and she did not resist. She let him do whatever he wanted. She was his. Everybody knew that, she knew that, her cunt knew that.

He pushed her sports bra over her big tits, baring them, her nipples standing out even more in sudden draft. “Fuck,” he said. “Even better than I thought they’d be…”

She wanted to tell him that he could see them—touch them, fuck them—whenever he wanted, that all he had to do was snap his fingers, tell her “show me your tits” and she would, let him touch her, paw her, whatever he wanted. But she did not. She let him touch her tits, and he seemed to enjoy it, spending a long time just pressing them and caressing them and playing with her hard nipples, and it was driving her crazy and her cunt was leaking all over the place but she remained motionless until he told her what to do. She was a good girl, and good girls obeyed.

When he looked up again, the lust in his eyes was now raw hunger. He would take her, she knew that. Her husband always did when he looked at her that way, every boy she ever had always did when they looked at her that way. The boys in law school that sought to punish her for being a woman by reminding her the hard way that she was, indeed, a woman, with a cock pleaser between her legs, had looked at her that way before ganging up on her. They were all the same, and she was the same.

When Jeffrey spoke, she figured he would ask her to strip and get herself ready for him. But he took a step back, looked at her, and said “Let’s do this right. I’ve been thinking about this for three days now. Go put on something nice.”

Nice? she wanted to ask. She did not know what he meant by nice. Something sexy? Something slutty? Something elegant? What did he want?

“Go put on some lingerie,” he added. “And not just any lingerie. Go put on Jacques’s favorite. Go put on whatever it is you wear when you want your husband to fuck you like a slut.”

And she was so elated, because she knew exactly what that was!

She raced up the stairs, dropping the dressing gown on the way, pulling her sports bra over her head, ditching her yoga pants and her now useless panties, all in order to save time.

She knew exactly what to get. She still remembered Jacques when he saw her in it that first time. He looked like a boy who had stumbled upon a candy field with no one around to stop him from eating everything in sight.

It was still in a small box in the back of the closet. She opened it up, and pulled out the white satin corset that she had worn on her wedding night, complete with the fine lace stockings and the sheer bra and thong set. Her wedding lingerie. She had not worn it since that night.

She slipped on the corset and was pleased to see it still fit her like a second skin. All her time spent working out had been worth it to make Jeffrey happy tonight.

The corset cinched her waist, emphasizing her hips, and it made her look like someone straight out of a male fantasy. Jeffrey would love it, she knew. Any hot-blooded male would love it. She pulled her stockings on while she fantasized about walking out in the streets like that, with her white stockings and her white corset and nothing else on, everyone looking at her, pointing, snickering, leering—calling her a floozie, a slut, a whore out on the prowl hunting for a hard cock to teach her her proper place in the universe. The images were making her head spin.

Only one thing was missing from her outfit. She got out her pristine white pumps, the ones she rarely wore because they hurt her ankles after a while, but Jeffrey deserved her pain.

The corset was meant to be worn with the fine lace bra and the matching thong, and she thought about putting on before decided that Jeffrey would prefer her as she was now, with her tits flopping out and her cunt exposed and dripping wet. She took a last look in the mirror, made sure she looked the way a man would want her to look, and trotted out. She wanted to hurry, but the heels prevented her, hobbled her, and even that, the fact that she could not walk properly because she wore something purely for the benefit of a male’s prurient pleasure sent a blaze of lust down her cunt.

She thought about dropping down to her hands and knees and crawl down the stairs to him.

When Jeffrey saw her come down, his eyes took her in and devoured her, and she wanted to be eaten, consumed. She arched her back, pushed her tits out, legs spread slightly, cunt exposed. She was wet, and she was waiting for him to tell her what to do. She was ready for anything. She wanted him to tell her to drop to her knees and to suck his cock, or to drop down and spread her legs as wide as they would go and offer her cunt, or lick his feet, or suck on his balls.

“Oh, you and I are going to have a lot of fun, Becky,” Jeffrey said. No one ever called her Becky—she did not like it. Nicknames were demeaning. But Jeffrey could, and did. “So this is what Jacques likes, huh? No surprise there. You look fucking hot. White and virginal, like the sort of thing you’d wear at…” His face lit up. “Is that what you wore on your wedding night?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, feeling herself blush, looking down at her heels, wishing she had had time to paint her toenails red.

“Nice! Very nice! Jacques’s a lucky fuck, I always said. Well, now, Jeff’s a lucky fuck, right?”

It was a rhetorical question. She knew better than to answer him. He was happy, that was all that counted.

“Tell me, Becky, did Jacques ever claim your ass?”

Rebecca shook her head. “No, sir,” she said softly.

Jacques never did. Not that he would have minded. He probably would have liked it. She was the one that always refused it. Those law school kids, though, of course, were a different matter. Not that they asked her back then what she wanted. They just took her ass as if it was their due, and now, in retrospect, she saw that it was the right thing for them to have done, to teach her her place, to train her for what they knew she was and she was now just learning, a set of holes for powerful men to fuck.

“Well, then, I guess it’s all mine. A little bit of virgin territory to plunder,” Jeffrey said with a smile.

She did not disabuse him. If he was happy, she was happy. It would hurt, but she welcomed the pain. It was what she deserved.

Jeffrey pulled out a tube of lube from his pocket, and tossed it to her. “See, I’m nice. Lube yourself up, Becky, and show me that cute little bubble ass of yours. You’re going to be showing it to me a lot from now on, believe me. I discovered I’m sort of an ass man these last few days. Who knew?”

Rebecca shivered. She knew what he meant. That he would give it to her up the ass often. She turned her back to him and leaned against the table, bending over and lubing herself up, the way she had never done for any man.

Her boss was about to claim her, claim her ass, and here she was with her own fingers sliding into her tight hole, spreading the gooey cool substance, knowing what was to come.

Her boss would claim her ass for himself.

She was to be ass fucked.

Like a filthy slut.

She came for the first time before Jeffrey even touched her.

* * *

ADCORP CONFIDENTIAL MEMO to Adonai Davenham.

SUBJECT: Salvatore Rivolli

MEMO: Summary of report OB-33-09-545 attached as addendum to the Q3 Earning Report for the Platinum Plan program. Following reports OB-23-44-230 and OB-25-56-230 on the activities of Salvatore Rivolli (Platinum Plan membership 9SFR2216) attempting to uncover details about FCS Platinum Plan operations — confirmed by our liaison in Costa Mala who intercepted an undercover operator hired by Salvatore Rivolli, Investigation and Enforcement Division has been contacted to determine the extent of Salvatore Rivolli’s knowledge and that of any of his associates. Termination measures are recommended.

Close ties between Salvatore Rivolli and Frederic Krueger (FCS client ID 4341B332, see footnote [3]) via Frederic Krueger’s Bad Dream Productions are suspicious and should be investigated further to determine whether leaks occurred.

[3] Frederic Krueger benefits from a special deal with FCS (authorization SG-3321 by VP Sales) pertaining to procurement for Bad Dream Productions. See attached. Contract should be reviewed in light of Salvatore Rivolli’s possible contamination.