Lisa and I weren’t particularly close, so I was a little surprised when she asked me if I’d like to have lunch with her.

"Sure, fine, great."

I was taken aback and my politeness pilot automatically kicked in. And lunch was actually fun. I was pleasantly surprised. I had always distrusted Lisa. Though we worked in different departments, she had a reputation that was well-known. One of those hyper-careerists, she had an unerring sense of corporate timing. She always knew whom to be seen with, what projects to associate herself with and how to play the game.

And I knew I wasn’t one of those company players—I admit, I’m bit of a mouse. I like my quiet job in Accounting. I’m always courteous, dress conservatively and in general keep to myself. I take care of myself—I like to jog at lunch everyday—and I’m considered cute (an old boyfriend once told me I looked like Joyce DeWitt). But I’m a self-confessed wallflower. Which was why it was flattering to be approached by the flamboyant blonde Goddess of Marketing—I was surprised she even knew my name!

As much as I disapproved of her grandstand manner, especially for one so young—she was all of twenty-five—I accepted. But as I said, lunch was very enjoyable. Despite what I had thought and heard about her, she was actually very nice when you got to know her. For all her stylish clothes, her high profile position in the company and striking beauty, she seemed very lonely—no doubt because everyone assumed she was such a bitch.

"But you’re different, Karen. You’re SO damn nice—I really appreciate you’re taking your lunch with me. It’s been hard since the break-up."

Her blue eyes misted and I examined my salad. Everyone knew about the break-up. Dan, another up-and-comer in Finance, was actually my boss, though he was only twenty-seven and I was thirty-six. I was just one of his drones and he barely acknowledged me in the departmental meetings. He and Lisa had been an office item for the past year, until recently. Something had happened and since then the two had studiously ignored one another in the hallways since.

"I can imagine." Actually I couldn’t—it had been a while since I had been in a relationship. Flat chested brunettes weren’t in high demand recently. Even when I was asked out, the promising date never got much farther when I’d inform the gentleman in question later on in the evening that I wasn’t THAT kind of girl. Needless to say, there weren’t many second dates.

She thankfully gave me the benefit of the doubt for all my phantom experience with romance. For the next sixty minutes, we chatted lightly about office politics, where I learned more from my younger co-worker than I had in the proceeding ten years at the firm, and sipped white wine. I take a drink perhaps three or four times a year—my absitenence at office parties threw an unwelcome spotlight on me—but the fine, cool wine was welcome today. As we chatted gaily, I could understand why she had been so successful—she was so easy to talk to—and I wasn’t as envious as I had been only a short time ago. I even regretted the lunch’s abrupt seeming end and said so.

"Say-- to hell with men! Let’s have a regular girl’s night in tonight!" She quickly suggested a rental and some Chinese take-out at her apartment. It was flattered, maybe too obviously because I was a bit slow in my reply. She sighed and waved the suggestion away.

"Oh, well—maybe another time."

"No! Let’s do it! Really, it’s fine."

"Really?" She didn’t want to presume.

"Oh, let’s do it—it would be great to have a girl’s night!"

I surprised myself with how eager I was to spend time with my new friend. Maybe I’m too particular, but I don’t have many close friends. I’m perfectly pleasant—I had fast friends in college—but I don’t gossip or waste my time on silliness. Some found me—I admit—I bit prickly. Still Lisa’s invitation proved I’m wonderful company with the right person.

It was the wine that made me a little giddy the rest of the afternoon, but the prospect of spending an evening in some place other than the same four walls of my modest apartment may have had something to do with it. My boss Dan gave me a hard look or two over the top of my cubicle and I guessed he had seen me leaving with Lisa earlier. Perhaps he didn’t much care for the idea of his lowly accounting assistant having lunch with his ex. I on the other hand savored the conspiratorial sensation—though I respectful averted his glance when I knew he was staring at me with his troubled, handsome face. Let him wonder.

I met Lisa promptly outside her office, though it was closed. A knock elicited a cheerful request that I come back in twenty minutes—she was in a brief meeting. I did so, returning to my desk and finishing up some filing which Dan had thoughtfully left me before leaving for the day. Twenty minutes later, Lisa’s door was opened and she was drawing on her suit jacket. She shared some directions to an expensive condo development and I dutifully jotted them down. I in turn offered to pick up the Chinese take-out.

"Great—let me do the wine and the movies."

Forty-five minutes later, we were ensconced on a leather couch in Lisa’s impressive living space, I place I couldn’t have afforded at twice salary. When I complimented her on her home, she tossed her blonde hair and laughed, then caught herself, as she realized that I really was impressed, no simply polite.

"Oh, it’s nothing. I’m looking at a place over on the West Side that’s something though. Let’s put the movie in."

I did so, feeling awkward somehow and anxious that the physical task would restore our equality somehow. Soon we were quietly engrossed in the movie and enjoying the take-out. It was some romantic comedy from the Forties which I had never seen, but evidently Lisa had, for she knew the cues and scenes by heart. She pressed more wine on me and not wishing to seem prudish, I accepted. She had returned from the kitchen for the third time with filled glasses and I was feeling decidedly tipsy. We sat and watched, sipping the wine in more generous swallows, but the mood was shifting. My hostess had grown progressively more silent, despite the rising intensity of the farce. Once when I looked over, I realized there were tears coursing down her tanned cheeks.

"Lisa?"

"Oh damn!" She looked at me with a haunted, miserable expression and hid her eyes.

I rose shakily, unsure as to what to do. "I s-should leave." I looked around the slightly spinning room for my purse.

"Please, no. I’m sorry." She quickly composed herself with the tissue I handed her from my purse and I resumed my seat. Fortified with my wine glass, I prepared to assume the role of confidant, for surely there was some awful reason why the Goddess of Marketing should lose control in front of me.

"I can’t help thinking about that--," she was unable to complete the statement.

"I know, I know," I offered, comforting her was a soothing nod.

She twisted her face up in an evil, visceral way that made me flinch. "He’s into such--- disgusting things. That’s why I left him."

"What…things?"

Those sharp red lips curled in world-weary wisdom. "Oh, those things that men always seem to like—you can imagine."

I shrugged in a sophisticated way. "What, uh, particularly?"

She seemed anxious to humiliate her former beau and was quickly forthcoming, spitting out each indignity with the rapidity of a machine gun burst. "Oh, first with the bimbo outfits he was always trying to get me into—you know, what the other girls wear in your department."

I knew well—the twenty-somethings in their miniskirts and little tops that revealed so much who pranced around, winking at the male executives. They hated me because I looked down on them and they never invited me out to their little lunches because of it.

"But that was the least of it. The blow jobs, the facials—"

My heart jumped a beat. They did sound awful, shameful…and yet darkly compelling.

"—dildos and vibrators—"

I had always wondered what they were like, confining myself to an occasional fingering or two.

"—spankings and bondage—"

The vision of Lisa stretched bare-bottom over Dan’s knees filled my wine-soaked brain. The Proud Ice Queen of Marketing on her knees—on a leash.

"—even anal sex. God, he’s so sick!"

I nodded, mouth agape. "Yes," I managed at last, "sick."

Those cool blue eyes flashed furiously at the mention of these humiliations. "I would NEVER have anything to do with any of those…things he so much wanted to do. And so we broke it off—good riddance. Still…"

There was more? So there was. Running her fingers through her long blonde hair, she took hold of herself, apologized quickly and sipped her own wine.

"I can’t believe he talked me into it-- the bastard!" She spat the words out like she was expelling acid from her fierce red lips.

Again, I traded on my phantom stock in the romantic enterprise, assuming she was referring to the affair. "There are others—you are beautiful," I added, pointing out the obvious.

She nodded—that was a given. Then she shook her head. "No—it isn’t that. It, well, this is difficult…"

I leaned forward, with dozens of humiliating situations suddenly illuminating the mystery. She was pregnant, he was gay, there was another woman--- I carefully kept the smirk off my face. My eyes assumed that ‘yes, tell me everything’ cast and I nodded, encouraging her to continue to confide in me her new friend.

Then she looked up, relieved in a way. "You know Karen, I wanted to share this with somebody and I’m glad it is you. I don’t have many friends-’

This was untrue—she had lots of friends—but she was trying to be polite.

"- but I needed to tell someone who is solid, dependable, reliable-- someone who could keep a confidence."

I couldn’t keep the proud beam from my eyes as I listened intently.

"Oh sure a lot of people don’t like you—they think you’re too old-fashion, a stick in the mud, a school marm and all that. But not me—I respect you Karen. And," she inhaled deeply, "I trust you."

"Go on Lisa—what is the matter?" I pressed insistently. I was determined to drag it out of her, friend or no friend. I fought a delicious, guilty flutter in my stomach—Lisa was ashamed of some awful thing!

"Pictures," she stated, looking into her wine.

I repeated the word, not understanding.

"Yes. Dan…took them. And he won’t give them back—the bastard!" The acid was gone. It had been replaced by a creeping fear.

So that was it! I had no idea the blonde Ice Queen was so kinky! Well, well, well. A rising sense of righteousness bloomed within.

"What will he do with them?" I asked cautiously.

Her blue eyes widened. "I don’t know! He won’t talk about them! But I know he has them, even where they are! But as long as he has them—"

"If you know where they are, why not just get them?" Her hard-edged common sense seemed to have deserted Lisa in her predicament!

"They’re in his apartment—"

"So you can’t get them afterall—"

"Well, I DO still have his key, but—"

I wanted to shake the silly young woman. I was eleven years older than her after all, and despite her successful career, I did have some advantage in life experience.

"Then, simply go into his apartment and GET them, Lisa." It was technically breaking and entering and I had coolly advocated it. It was a strange and pleasant twist for the Wallflower to be bold and the Queen to be so timid about things. I took another healthy swallow of the expensive, dry wine, staring at her expectantly.

"I couldn’t do that—it would be, well—illegal!" Her bright blues had lost their brash confidence. She was just a scared little girl now.

Lisa in a g-string.

"Besides," she added, "people know me there—they know we dated. If I went into his apartment and he reported a theft…"

Lisa on a leash.

"I’ll do it." She’d owe me now, wouldn’t she?

Now the apprehension, the misery, and the uncertainty in those luminous blue eyes evaporated. Gratitude replaced them. She smiled, those sharp cherry red lips arching sweetly.

"Let me get you another glass of wine."

We drank more wine, then I realized how late it had become—then drank some more wine. It was impossible for me to drive at this point—we both realized it. So Lisa pulled out the sofabed and we continued to enjoy our newfound complicity in this little espionage I had concocted. It was like a slumber party—both of us giggling and drinking until finally, after a last too-potent glass, I collapsed into a vinous sleep.

I dreamed and was aware of it vividly. Two women played a part—one a slender, short-haired brunette, the other a lustrous long-maned blonde. One shy and small busted, the other proud with pulchritude. One primly pretty—the other a self-aware beauty. But one held a whip and the other cowered before her. The whipwielder wore a Mistress’es black lace corset and stockings, the slavegirl a mere scrap of red silk to cover her sex. She watched ecstatically, a voyeur in her own visions, as the Mistress began training the slavegirl patiently--expertly—strictly. There were lessons in new rules, in serving another. There was more too—vaguer sensations of penetrations by tongues and toys and more.

Karen sprang into reality, staring like a zombie into Lisa’s worried face.

"You o.k.?"

Sleep shook off slowly. I nodded.

"I was worried—you really enjoyed that wine last night. It’s almost seven-thirty--you better get back to your place. I’ve got an earlier meeting so I better scoot."

I felt the wetness between my legs immediately. Casually I reminded her I needed the keys to Dan’s apartment. The keys to Lisa.

Lisa on a leash.

"Here you go—I didn’t want to say anything if it was, uh, just the wine talking…" she admitted, trailing off. She was wearing a navy blue Anne Klein suit that befitted her mover and shaker role. I idly wondered what she’d look like in a hip-hugging spandex mini.

I took the glittering silver key from her hand. "It wasn’t. I’ll take care of everything. Wait for me after work today. Things will change," I promised. In more ways than she could imagine. She left me with a flash of her smile, all gratitude and friendship and I accepted it all with a pert, patronizing smile.

Then my groggy brain registered the fact than under the covers, I was completely nude. And thoroughly aroused.

The first part of the day was a blur. Dan scolded me mildly for being fifteen minutes late, but since it was the first time I’d been tardy in my entire seven years with the firm, he knew better than to push it too far. I accepted the rebuke with impatient silence, then returned to my desk without comment. I contented myself with the thought of the upcoming invasion of his privacy. If he only knew!

Lunchtime finally came. Dan implied I should make up my fifteen minutes then, but I blithely ignored the suggestion. I had to get to the Registry, I informed him, then left the department before he had a chance to interfere.

"Just be back by one!" he called after me. I waved back an acknowledgment and slammed the door. My little errand wouldn’t take longer than that.

Traffic and some missed turns did conspire to make the trip longer than I calculated. Still I pulled up to the address Lisa had given me in plenty of time, a tall pre-war brownstone that was numbered among the city’s more exclusive addresses for successful young singles. Looking around me like an amateur sleuth, I ascertained no one was even in the hallway in front of Apartment 1017. Fatefully, I turned the key in the lock and entered Dan’s apartment. Immediately, I noted the handsome surroundings with disgust. Both Dan and Lisa enjoyed high-paying positions, were attractive and lived in places that made my studio look like a broom closet. Who were they? I had played by the rules all my life and had nothing to show for it! Well, that would change.

There was the desk, where the computer stared back blindly at me. Gripping the bottom drawer by the edges, I drew it out slowly. The thick manila envelop was just where Lisa said it would be—good girl. Gingerly I lifted it out. Dan realized what a treasure it represented—it was thoroughly taped up from end to end. It had a nice heft to it—it was a good two inches thick! My goodness—Miss Lisa was captured in dozens of compromising poses! I’d have fun reviewing them at my leisure. In fact, I was dying to tear into it when the phone rang. I almost dropped the package in fright.

Reality tapped me on the shoulder. I could be arrested for what I was doing! Me—of all people, a trespasser! The phone refused to stop ringing, each grating jingle biting into my resolve. My eyes twitched o the desk clock—ten of one. Time to leave. I clutched my prize and hurried out, grateful no one was wondering why the phone kept insisting on being picked up in 1017. My heart spasmed all the way back to the office, though from exhilaration or fright I couldn’t say.

After carefully depositing the taped package in the bottom drawer of my desk, I was immediately greeted by Dan. With a gruff determination, he pointed to his watch, informing me that I was twenty minutes late and I would be making up that time after five o’clock. I nodded tightly, though my face flushed a bit. He was chastising me in front of my younger co-workers, who cattily smirked at my unprecedented upbraiding.

"Frankly I’m surprised Karen. You’re usually so dependable. Is there a problem you’d like to discuss?" he asked curiously.

As if a twenty-seven year old had anything to tell me about life! Besides, I doubt he’d appreciate the particulars of my ‘problem’—or opportunity! I shook my head resolutely ‘No!."

"Fine. I want you to work on this filing for the rest of the afternoon." He dropped a huge stack of past invoices, which virtually covered my entire desk.

"But the junior girls do this kind of work!"

Now he was insistent. "Today," he replied starchly, "you will do it." With that he left, staring down the foolish, giggling girls who were enjoying my situation. My own eyes bore into his back, not even bothering to conceal the hate. Frustrated, I began to sort the files that would require my whole afternoon to deal with.

As the interminable afternoon wore on, I daydreamed about what the photos would reveal about my Lisa. I had never so much as thought about another woman before—the idea repelled me. But this was a chance a wallflower would never get again. All the snickering, the unspoken jibes from the silly secretaries with their boyfriends, from my peers, all more successful and happier than me, all the patronizing remarks and commands from younger superiors like Lisa and Dan—it had built up within me. And now the opportunity in the form of the confession and the photos—it was a gift from God. Now I had what I had never had before. I had power over another. Even if it was over another female, I would take it. Even now my imagination pivotted from fantasy to fantasy, all involving a stern Mistress and a pretty slavegirl.

Lisa on a leash.

My phone rang me harshly out of my erotic reverie. It was Lisa.

"Did you—you know—get them?" Her voice fluttered on the other end like a butterfly.

I smiled. "Oh, yes."

"Can you, uh, bring them to me now?"

I looked at the wall clock. Five seventeen. "In a few minutes. I’ll meet you in your office."

She murmured more gratitude, but I hung up on her. Dan was approaching.

"Have you finished the filing?"

"Yes, it’s all finished Dan."

"Fine. You can leave then. But Karen, remember I can’t run a department with you picking and choosing your own hours. Understand?" His wan handsome face stared me down.

"Yes Dan." I couldn’t return his stare.

"You may go." He walked away.

I waited a moment, till he returned to his office and shut his door. Then, ducking down I transferred the manila enveloped into my large, practical purse. Taking the elevator up to Lisa’s office, I considered how to play my next move. I hadn’t quite rehearsed my blackmail speech, but I knew it would sort of bubble out of me. As I entered Lisa’s office, I was a giddy as a schoolgirl.

She smiled with those sharp, red lips of hers and offered me a seat, even as I was taking it. I shut the door behind me.

"Got it?" Her fingers danced on the desktop.

I nodded, first drawing out Dan’s apartment key. I was anxious first to get rid of that evidence of my criminal behavior. I slid it onto the smooth desktop.

"Here."

The door behind me opened. I turned. It was Dan.

Lisa looked up. "Do you need this?" She held up the key.

He considered and shook his head. "Shouldn’t she have it?" He tossed his head at me without a second look.

"I suppose so." She reached into her purse. "Here’s mine." She unclipped a spare key, laid it on top of the other and slid them back toward me.

I looked down at them dumbly, not quite knowing what to do with them.

"You have the photos?" It was Lisa. She asked as casually as if she were asking the time.

I nodded, my brows creased at her failure to be more subtle. My hand dropped down to the manila package and I clutched it with an iron grip. He was right here in her office and--

"Yes, let’s see them." Dan’s wry, amused undertone both annoyed and chilled me. As did Lisa’s nonchalance is pushing a letter opener toward me.

My questioning expression received a blank look from Lisa’s clear, blue eyes. Dan was still behind me, looking down over my shoulder. Numbly I cut through the heavy tape, cutting open the envelope lip. Glossies peeked out from inside.

"Show and tell," chided Dan. Lisa’s cheshire cat grin followed me as I withdrew a handful of the three by fives. I began flipping through them, slowly at first, then manically, like some demented poker player.

"Put that thing down." It was Dan, commanding me.

My knuckles were white from the intensity of the grip. I loosen it, letting the letter opener drop to the carpeted floor with a light ‘thwup.’

"How?"

Lisa’s perfect, white teeth spread to life under those perfect, shap red lips of hers. "Flunitrazepam."

"Also known as rohypnol," Dan kindly expanded. "The rape drug."

I dropped dully back into the photos. I sighed. The brunette’s pale, tense face was cast respectfully down, even as she thrust out her small breasts for an unknown master or mistress. Now she knelt, masturbating in fear, a crop raised over her back to ensure compliance. Then on her knees, her head buried between the black-stockinged long legs of another woman, lips pursed against her sex. Nude but for a red silk thong panty. Me.

"Why?"

Lisa shrugged. "What I told you was true-- I had broken up with Dan. I wasn’t about to do the things he wanted me to do—"

The party in question rolled his eyes comedicly at me. I shuddered in revulsion—I knew what those things were.

"-- just as he refused to do things I wanted done. So we needed someone who would service each of our needs. That way," she rose and standing on the other side of me, took her boyfriend’s hand, "we have everything we want."

"And deserve," added Dan solemnly.

There was only one question left. Actually two, but I already knew the answer to the last one.

"Why me?"

"Well, I didn’t want a pretty girl," Lisa cruelly admitted, teasing my chin with a rub of her forefinger, "who would challenge me for my man."

"And I didn’t want a naughty girl," Dan agreed, while putting his hand on my shoulder, "who would be difficult to control."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "What will you make me do?"

Dan moved his hands down over my breasts, then squeezed them hard. "Oh—anything we want. Lisa, would you lock the door, please?"

My life has changed quite a bit since then.

I’ve grown my short dark hair out and dyed it a bright red. My conservative pant suits are gone, replaced with snug minis and colorful, tight-fitting tops—all of which advertises unequivocally that my new position is Dan’s new personal assistant. He let it be known that my demotion—and that’s exactly what it was, he always makes clear—was due to my attitude ‘problems’ and inability to work effectively with my co-workers. I’ve been publicly instructed by him to smile, be as helpful as possible and to show a "more respectful demeanor" to my superiors. This includes all the younger accounting assistants I once worked with. In my new place in the departmental hierarchy, I have little recourse but to endure their petty jibes with a mask-like smile. These young women—girls really, for I’m ten years older than many of them—make a game of tormenting me. As the administrative assistant in the department, they have lots of latitude to do so. Cold coffee, misfiled documents, unanswered phones—all go reported to Dan. Dan, who is always looking for the slightest pretext to discipline me.

That’s the worst aspect of my new living arrangement. Curiously, the other parts aren’t as odious as you might suspect. Not that it would make the least difference if they weren’t—their control over me tightens daily. Lisa was the one who suggested putting the photos on the newsgroups. I didn’t know what they were, till Dan showed me. And they I was—in the more incriminating poses, lewdly stretched out in my whorish lingerie playing with one of my new ‘toys’—available for viewing around the world. Only my face is absent from these pornographic visions—a face that Dan and Lisa promise will appear across the Internet as soon as I disobey any command given to me.

But like I say, it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be at first. There are the new toys and if I’m attentive to the needs of my master and mistress, I am permitted to play with them to relieve myself. I’ve become quite adept at performing orally—even my mistress has expressed her satisfaction with my performance in this regard. The taste of my owners’ sex is always on my lips now. And the master is pleased with my eagerness to accommodate him anally now—a practice which I’m the first to say required some initial corporal training to persuade me to accept. I even bear up well under the mistress’s strap-on—I hardly ever cry anymore.

I’m even doing better in all the bondage games we play. My pussy wettens now when the collar is placed around my neck. And when I see myself in the mirror—on my fours between my master and mistress—I don’t even need my toys to cum. All I need to see is the reflection of the new me—Karen, thirty-six year old plaything to my young, beautiful, and harsh master and mistress.

Karen on a leash.

The End