She had no problem relaxing with me in the tub where we sat with our shoulders companionably touching and our brandy balloons held just above the gently steaming water. I felt my own well-exercised body compared favourably enough with her soft, almost flabby tawny quality. We were both women, both naked and a little more than half drunk; just what I would call an ideal situation.

We chatted a little about the office, although I don't discuss personalities with my staff. Sexual pleasure is never allowed to influence my business decisions, but, all other things being equal, the memory of lips fluttering under mine, or a successful skirmish in my bed, might be to the advantage of an ambitious girl. And this one was ambitious. She had had to wait for my invitation, of course, but when it came she was ready for it.

In fact, I had an uncomfortable sensation of being charmed into making the approach before the three months probationary period I normally insisted on had been served.

Sitting beside her, I placed my right foot across her left ankle, moved my leg slightly upward. She didn't appear to object.

I remembered that when we were in the restaurant she had held her hand on my arm a little longer than was necessary as she told me some trivial stories about her country upbringing, leaning close so that her breath was gently vibrating my hair. That had excited me more than I would have expected.

I picked up a silver goblet, based on a Roman original, that had been given to me for my forty-fifth birthday. I filled the goblet with scented water and gently poured it over her beautiful shoulders.

"The day to day running of the business could soon need new blood," I said, embarrassed at a totally inappropriate thickening of my voice, as desire suddenly flooded me like moonlight. I recovered myself and continued, "You may now be looking at the next Mayor of this town." Pam looked at me and smiled.

I could see her mind working "Timing is everything," I said. "I didn't regard the last approach as opportune, as there was a popular incumbent. But now he's retiring and I'll have a free run. And I think they're ready for a woman."

Three key business people, two men and a woman had wanted to bankroll me to run for Mayor two years ago. Now they knew I couldn't refuse. Pam nodded at me, smiling, as she wound a towel round her hair, her pale, plump breasts gleaming wet as they lifted clear of the bubbled, oil-scented water. Why did I have to brag to impress this big country girl? Even that makes me cringe now when I think of it.

"I think I'm getting sleepy, Ms Gregg," she said in that slack- tuned rural accent which was the least attractive thing about her, yet charmingly voluptuous in our present mood and setting.

"Do you need something to wear?" I asked.

"That's okay Ms Gregg," she said.

"Just call me Susan to-night," I said.

She smiled at me, big mouth, big teeth, dazzling me with her youth and brilliance. I climbed nimbly enough from the tub to fetch towels and robes.

While she dried off I locked the door to the balcony. It was an old habit, since a rather disturbed girl had tried to go off it a few years back. It was the only such incident in nearly thirty years, not a bad record, but it had scared me badly at the time.

*

We drifted towards the bedroom, laughing, carrying our brandy balloons, my arm around her waist. I had never wished to share my life with anyone and only brought a girl home for the night every few months. I always got full value, however, as I securely locked away the memories of my assignations and made them serve me without respite as I masturbated furiously during my periods of "abstinence." Pam had a towel, turban fashion around her head and the white robe loosely belted around her waist.

She looked radiant from the pool and I knew I had chosen well. I had never been so sure. This was often the difficult part, even with employees - when they found they were not being allotted a separate bedroom. Most of them, however, were only too well aware of what was happening.

Pam was plainly impressed by the room with its Charles Reid watercolours (a still-life and a plump, pink and cerulean, blonde nude), the magnificent walnut cheval glass and wardrobes, the canopied bed with the satin- polished butternut pillars, each as wide and curved as a woman's waist, the red shaded lights that cast a flattering, rosy glow.

Pam seemed unsure for a moment, and put down her glass on a bedside table. I quickly put down my own glass and embraced her. I was so sure of her now. Seldom had I had real trouble, once or twice girls who had sobbed almost all night. With one, I remember pressing my thumbs on her greasy eyelids, kissing the agitated lips, and how her resistance had so increased my pleasure and captivated my dreams. I pushed my hand inside Pam's robe, ran it tenderly around her prominent buttocks.

Pam was gripping my shoulders, a flushed, angry look on her face. So unattractive, I thought, feeling a strange weakness in my belly, then she caught my wrists and threw me on the bed, landing heavily between my legs and on top of me so that my breath was crushed out of me. "Get off me," I shouted, fighting her angrily and astonished at this assault. None of my girls had ever behaved like this before. "I'll get you, you bitch," she shouted in my ear.

She had my wrists again and, in a quick move, she straddled me, grunting as she came down on my belly, then pinning my upper arms with her powerful knees.

Because the bed was so soft, I was able to generate some movement and she was not as firmly seated as she thought. She swayed as I fought back, trying to thrust to the side, pushing against her wrists. At this point I was still furiously angry. I had no doubt I could threaten or fight her off and was planning already how I would punish her when I got her beneath me in my bed.

But, with her superior weight, she did not have to exert very much effort to hold me down. With my arms trapped under her knees, she was able to use her hands to steady herself against the head of the bed and I was no longer sure it would be easy to throw her off.

We struggled for nearly five minutes and I cursed her in the foulest language but did not realise until I was completely exhausted that she had simply been letting me tire myself to no avail. Before much longer I was hopelessly defeated and she was still sitting firmly astride me. I rested, gasping for breath, glaring up into her placid, square-jawed face.

"Give in?" she demanded

I shook my head.

She sighed, then leaned down and, wetting the palm of her right hand with her tongue, she placed it over my mouth, sealing it tight shut. Then she pinched my nostrils between the finger and thumb of her left hand.

My lips, on my despairing attempt to draw in air, became vacuum-sealed. I couldn't move my head or breathe and in less than a minute I started to black out. I tried to surrender, to beseech her with my eyes, but she just grinned and held on.

I was sure I was going to die, that she really meant to kill me there and then and I felt as if my soul had left my body and floated to hover and stare from the ceiling.

I blacked out and when I came to again I had a dull headache and she was still on top of me but I was lying on my face and she was seated astride my back.

My wrists were bound behind me with the sash of one of the gowns. I was naked and she was still wearing her robe. She ordered me lie on my back again, lifting off me just enough to let me turn, then straddling my belly, disregarding the discomfort of my bound wrists underneath.

"Give in?" she asked again in just the same calm tone.

I had to make two attempts before my voice came out huskily.

"Yes."

There was a voluptuous flush in my belly and womb, a vibrant tingling in my breasts, a feeling of almost passing out of my body, as if I crossed some invisible frontier between resistance and complete and utter capitulation.

And, staring down at me, she knew it. No one, much less a woman had ever beaten me, yet I wanted Pam to grind me beneath her into the bed, to ride me with derisive contempt while I pleaded unavailingly for mercy. If she understood the game we were playing now, as I thought she did, I knew that she would deny my pleading, thus gratifying her triumph and deliciously pandering to my perverse delight at being utterly helpless underneath her.

This was a whole new game to me. I could hardly speak, my throat was so congested with desire, but I poured out my agony of longing and surrender, said things that still make me cringe when I recall them, yet delighted in her cool and mocking response.

"You know, this is turning me on a bit," she said. She wriggled her butt slightly.

"Don't fight it," I said. "Let me show you."

"Victory turns me on," she said. "I like to win. Believe me, I'm not into making love with old women."

The cruelty of this remark was unexpected and shook me for a moment.

I believed there were few women I couldn't seduce. If only she would untie me? No, I was enjoying this too much. I could seduce her, even bound as I was beneath her like this.

"Then why did you come back with me to-night?" I asked.

"I had to be sure," she said. " I'd been asking questions - around the office. There was a funny atmosphere at work, but nobody would really talk.

Are they all that much afraid of you?"

For a moment I almost smiled, forgetting my present situation.

"Please," I begged.

"No," she said, unrelenting.

"Get off me, then," I said huskily, but I wanted her to refuse me, to taunt me in my humiliation, felt the perverse desire almost floating me. "You've been doing this for years, haven't you? Making love to girls from the office?" she demanded.

"Among others," I said. My throat was still swollen with desire. "What of it? I haven't had all that many complaints."

"Well, you've got one now," she said. "And you're going to remember it."

Then she got off me and stood beside the bed. I missed my warm prison between her legs, her weight on me. The desire I felt was terrible.

"Please," I begged, "just lie on me. Put your thigh between my legs."

"Sorry," she said.

"Your hand, anything."

"Fuck off you shameless old bitch," she said, looking at me with a mixture of amusement and contempt.

"I want you to fuck me. Please, please, fuck me," I screamed hoarsely.

I started to cry.

I struggled violently, but the belt of the robe, though soft, was too tightly knotted.

"I'm sorry," she said. "But I can't untie you either. I don't trust you."

"Then get out, damn you," I screamed. "Get out of my room."

"Is there another bedroom?" she asked.

"None of the beds is made up. You were supposed to sleep here with me."

"Sorry," she said again. "Would you like some tea or anything."

"Get out!!" I screamed.

"I'll go down to the lounge and sleep in a chair, okay?" she asked.

"No, it's not all okay. I beg you, I implore you to get in bed with me."

"I can't untie you, Ms Gregg," she said. "You know that."

"I don't care," I shouted hoarsely. "Just get in the bed and get on me." I had lost all shame. She looked at me in disgust and went out of the room, leaving the door ajar with just the light from the landing and a heavily shaded bedside lamp dimly illuminating the room, as though for a child frightened of the dark. I screamed in humiliation and frustration.

I lay on my face, burning alive with desire. My headache had almost cleared. I opened my legs, trying to get my fingers between them. After a few minutes I fell back exhausted. I struggled to my knees and crawled to the end of the bed where I locked the satin- polished wood of one of the bedposts between my thighs and started compulsively masturbating.

Then the flash of a Polaroid camera exploded in my face, blinding me.

Pam didn't pay any heed to my cries of despair as she pulled me up towards the pillows. She dragged open my underwear drawer and threw half the contents on the bed. I struggled to escape, but she sat on me again, this time facing my feet, and bound my ankles with pantyhose to one of the bedposts. She forced me to take a sleeping pill and some water.

Then she stuffed a pair of my own panties in my mouth, making a gag with the help of a black nylon stocking, which she knotted at the back of my head. She threw the coverlet over me and left the room, closing and locking the door this time. I didn't want to sleep. I started trying to hump the mattress, but somewhere I lost consciousness. In my dreams Pam was leading me on a rope naked through a hostile and jeering crowd.

*

Pam was fully dressed in her cherry-colored business suit and black heels when she slapped me briskly awake at four in the morning and showed me the Polaroid photograph.

At first I didn't recognise myself in the old hag, with the distorted face smudged with mascara, those incredibly skinny, veiny legs attempting to grapple and ride the bedpost, the red demonic pinpoints in an old woman's eyes which expressed both terror and an obscene lust.

"I forgot the redeye reduction button," Pam said sardonically as she un-knotted the stocking at the back of my head and pulled the sodden panties from my mouth. She allowed me a glass of water. I was terrified now. "Please, I beg you," I said. "Is there nothing I can say, nothing I can do?

"This is for Cathy," she said. "She worked for you once."

For the life of me I couldn't remember a Cathy. The little one with the wet eyelashes? No, that wasn't her name. There were too many of them.

I really only remembered the very few who had stimulated me by the strength of their resistance or, on the other hand, matched me equally in their ardour.

"You're an old woman," she said. "I've nothing against... I mean, I had sex with a girl one time, at school, but, hell, I believe in ... in consent." "There is, please believe me," I begged.

She didn't bother to reply.

"Cathy?" I croaked.

"I don't know for sure if that was her name twenty years ago," Pam said. "I met her last year... at a commune in the mountains. She was in a bad state because her guru told her there was something coming between her and complete spiritual fulfillment. If you ask me, I think the guru was trying to hint that it was her money."

Cathy snickered.

"Oh, she was loaded. She'd been married to a rich guy and she ripped him off for plenty. Cathy saw it different to the guru. She knew there was something in her former life that held her back. He had to agree."

"I don't know her," I pleaded.

"She blames it for her depressions, for fucking up her life," Cathy went on. "Remember, she was very young at the time. This was twenty years ago. She was too ashamed to tell anyone."

"Why are you doing this?" I croaked.

"She's my friend," Pam said. "But, as well, she's helping me out with a money problem I have,. Cathy isn't going to let fifty thousand bucks stand between her and complete spiritual fulfillment - you bet!" "I'll give you more," I said hoarsely.

I didn't even convince myself and Pam's laugh mocked me. I struggled furiously against my bonds and pleaded with her in vain. I felt an overwhelming compulsion to masturbate.

"That's a well-equipped little office you have down the hall! Pam said. "I made twenty photocopies of this picture. I sent faxes to the machines at the main office."

I burst into a storm of ugly weeping, yet I didn't care how degraded Pam saw me and the desire in my belly and crotch was insistent. "Yeah, I found your address book. I also sent copies to the three people you were bragging about last night. I'll be leaving the rest with you. I won't be going back to the office."

She started putting lipstick on her plump mouth.

"Neither will you, if you have any sense," she said and then she gagged me again.

At four-thirty, around dawn, she came back, carrying her shoulder bag. She untied my ankles and put my robe loosely over me. Leaving my gag in place and with my wrists still bound behind me, she made me stand in front of my cheval glass and look at my reflection.

I almost fainted at the sight. My hair was lank and unkempt looking and my normally immaculate makeup had fouled my face and neck with crusted muddy patches. My own body odour disgusted me, but I knew now it was useless to beg her to let me wash. Pam wasn't finished.

She scribbled the bright scarlet lipstick on my cheeks, then smeared them all over, so that I looked even more of a raddled whore than I did in the photograph. She made me wait while she washed her hands, then led me to the elevator, holding me by the collar of my robe, like a common criminal.

When we reached the underground car park she laid the robe on the ground and ordered me to kneel on it with my back to one of the concrete pillars while she took a length of electric flex from her shoulder bag. She passed it through the bonds on my wrists and then wrapped and tied it round the pillar.

Pam went clicking about briskly on her high heels, putting copies of the Polaroid photograph under the wipers of about ten of the cars. I burst into a storm of weeping. It was so UNFAIR!. I begged and begged her again, but she wasn't listening. She was nearly finished now. She took a folded white card from her shoulder bag, opened it out and hung it from a cord around my neck. Then she took a couple more Polaroid's. The card bore the word RAPIST in large red letters.

Because of the pillar just behind me, it was impossible to kneel upright and, by the time she finally clacked confidently away towards the elevators my head had fallen to rest on the filthy surface of the floor. I cried with utter despair when she left. It was cold in the garage and I was petrified by the thought of the humiliation I had yet to endure.

Yet I was still in her bonds and I was astonished at the unsatisfied compulsion that raged in my womb and breasts. Had she any idea of how much she was punishing me? I fought and wrestled with all my strength and managed to get my body a little nearer the ground, then tried to get my head between my legs, but I felt my body sag in defeat.

Then the cold took over. I started shivering, crying. I still hoped Pam might have mercy on me and come back and release me. At around six thirty I heard the determined click of high heels and my heart nearly turned over. But it was a woman coming to get her car out. She called the janitor and he called the police.

The End