BOUND AND DETERMINED
By Chiara Setaraso

The boardroom was on the top floor of one of the highest towers in the city, and its south-facing glass wall provided a breathtaking view of skyscrapers, bridges, the flowing river, and, just at the moment, a sky that was cobalt blue and cloud free. A tourist might gape and a photographer would surely drool. But there were no tourists or photographers in the room, and everyone that actually was there had their attention fixed on the human drama that had been playing out since the board convened promptly at 10:00 a.m.

Austin Amaranth, the company’s CFO, had a presence that mostly came from his capacity to be perfectly, completely still. In a room where everyone shuffled and moved, leaned forward or back, scratched their noses or checked their phones, Amaranth’s uncanny ability naturally drew attention. To all appearances, though, he was unmoved by the stares. He might even have been unaware of them altogether, for all that it showed. He just sat there in his corporate navy blue suit with his perfectly-made bow tie, his hands loosely folded on the tabletop, and his pale, expressionless eyes fixed on Harlan Sims, the CEO.

“Mr. Amaranth.” Dustin Welker, the Board Chair, was the one to break the silence. “You’re going to have to elaborate on the statement. Now.”

“Of course, Mr. Chairman.” Still, Amaranth did not move or shift his gaze. “The draft quarterly financial report that was provided in your packet for this meeting includes sales numbers that were artificially inflated by a series of round-trip transactions with four of our five largest customers. The transactions were specifically authorized by Mr. Sims.”

Sims, a large man with ruddy features and swept-back silver hair, surged out of his seat, planted his hands on the glassy smooth mahogany table, and leaned forward to shout at the man across from him. “That’s a lie! You snivelling son of bitch, I’ll make you eat those words!”

“I stand by my statement.” Amaranth’s calm tone refused to even acknowledge the older man’s threat.

“You’d better have some evidence to back all that up,” the Board Chair warned. “And it had better be iron-clad.”

“He doesn’t have shit, because it’s a lie. If he’s got anything – anything! – he frickin’ invented it!” In contrast to Amaranth, Sims was practically snarling.

Welker leaned forward, frowning. “Now would be a good time, Mr. Amaranth. What have you got?”

“Me? Nothing at all.”

Welker’s “what?” was wholly drowned out by Sims’ triumphant shout. “See! I told you!”

“I don’t have any evidence,” Amaranth repeated calmly. “But I know someone who does.”

“Bullshit,” barked Sims.

“Don’t keep us waiting,” warned Welker.

Finally, Amaranth’s eyes moved, shifting from his boss to the row of chairs against the wall that were reserved for flunkies – department heads who might have information pertinent to an agenda item, or executive assistants to one or another of the people who had seats at the table. “Miss Teschmacher?”

The object of his attention was a woman in a tight grey skirt-suit with enormous glasses and hair pulled back in a bun so tight it had to hurt. She seemed to shrink back against her seat, and her eyes widened dramatically. “No!”

Sims spun around and redirected his glower. “What’s this, Eva?”

Welker rapped the table. “Who is this woman?”

“My secretary,” Sims snapped. “Executive Assistant. Whatever.”

“Miss Teschmacher,” Amaranth said calmly, “can you confirm the percentage of inflated sales on the draft quarterly report?”

“No,” she said, her voice shaking, “I don’t know anything!”

Sims gave Amaranth a look of pure malice, then turned his attention to the head of the table. “I told you – there’s nothing. I want that bastard fired. Now!”

Amaranth’s attention, once again, remained fixed – this time on the trembling secretary. “You aren’t under oath here, Miss Teschmacher, but you will be, eventually. And when you are, they will want to know about what you said today. The Board has the right to know the truth.”

“No,” she whimpered.

“I’ve heard enough!” Sims crossed his arms.

“It’s not your meeting, Harlan,” Welker retorted. “Now sit down.”

“I don’t have to take this!”

Claudia Shindlein, the General Counsel, spoke for the first time, her bright blue suit a rare spot of color at a board table dominated by corporate navy. “Mr. Amaranth’s allegations are serious. Very serious. We’ve got a fiduciary obligation to investigate.”

“It’s all bullshit – Teschmacher just confirmed it. What more do you need?”

Shindlein ignored him. “Miss Teschmacher . . . please?”

The young woman against the wall seemed to collapse on herself. “Thirty two percent,” she whispered.

Welker looked at her, surprised. “What was that?”

She looked at him, seated at the head of the table. Rich, successful, the founder of two companies who was on five different corporate boards. A member of several Presidential Commissions, and a fixtures on cable news business round-tables. So secure in his position. He probably didn’t even remember what it was like to be at the bottom of the corporate ladder, assuming he ever had been.

“I said thirty-two percent.” This time, her voice was stronger. “The sales numbers are inflated by thirty-two percent.”

“That’s a God-damned lie!” Sims shouted. “You know it’s a lie!”

Across the table, Amaranth re-inserted himself into the conversation. “You have records of this, Miss Teschmacher?”

She looked back and forth between Amaranth and Sims, her eyes still wide. Finally, her head bobbed up and down, a spasmodic “yes.”

“And, who instructed you to include those ‘sales’ in the draft quarterly report?” Amaranth pressed. Judging by his tone, he might have been asking about an order of bathroom tissues.

The room fell silent, and every eye was fixed on the young woman in the grey skirt suit with the tight bun and the big glasses, squirming in her seat against the wall with all the other flunkies.

“Miss Teschmacher?”

Finally, she raised her eyes to meet Amaranth’s gaze squarely. “Mr. Sims gave the instruction.”

The meeting dissolved into chaos.

It took a day to sort it all out. Only a day, though, for Teschmacher’s records were immaculate. With the backing of the General Counsel and the full board, Welker fired Sims on the spot. It appeared likely that a deal would be worked out that would preclude any legal action by Sims, in exchange for the company declining to make a criminal referral. Shindlein was already working on it.

Amaranth did not allow the incident to affect his routine, since he had no personal evidence to offer. Instead, he returned to his office and worked with his staff to prepare a revised draft quarterly report, methodically making sure that every transaction was real and legitimate. He let them all go home around six, but he remained in his office working late, as he often did. At seven pm, the lights in the outside suite went off automatically, and slowly the building itself began to go dark. It had been a long day.

The motion detectors activated lights on Amaranth’s floor shortly after 9:00 pm. First the corridor leading from the elevator, and then the outer suite where the secretarial staff worked during the day. The sound of heels on the parquet floor was unmistakable in the silence, approaching slowly. Clip . . . clip . . . clip. The steps could have sounded tentative, but they didn’t. Instead, they sounded measured. Deliberate. Taken without any hurry whatsoever.

Amaranth rose slowly, his chair rolling back across the pad behind his desk.

Eva Teschmacher stood in the door, taking in the scene. She leaned against the doorframe and raised a lazy hand to remove the clip that kept her long, wavy hair imprisoned. Shaking it loose over her sleeveless black shell, for she’d left her jacket and her silly glasses behind, she gave Amaranth a predator’s smile. “You did well today, pet.”

For the first time, Austin Amaranth’s face registered an expression. He licked his lips and said, “Thank you.”

Her smile vanished and she straightened. “Thank you, what?”

Quickly, he corrected himself. “Thank you, Mistress.”

“That was careless,” she warned. “You’ll need to be punished properly.”

He bobbed his head. “Yes, Mistress.”

“Give me a show, then,” she ordered. “You know what I want to see.”

“Of course, Mistress.” He removed his jacket and carefully laid it on the desk, then untied the bow at his neck. This, too, went on the desk, followed in short order by his heavy Oxford shirt, his pants, and his socks and shoes.

“Very pretty,” Eva said, smirking at his dusty rose camisole, panties, and garter belt, which held up a pair of fine silk stockings. The rich, soft colors seemed to make his skin glow like a magnolia petal caught in a shaft of moonlight.

He lowered his head, dipped a curtsey, and murmured, “thank you, Mistress.”

Slowly, teasingly, Eva raised the hem of her modest gray skirt, exposing creamy smooth skin inch by inch until her own panties were fully exposed. Black, silky, trimmed with delicate lace.

Austin remained stock still, head and eyes still lowered, watching the show through his naturally long eyelashes.

“Hungry?” Eva’s lips curled in amusement.

“Yes, Mistress,” he husked.

“Come and have a taste, then.” As he took a step she added, “Uh, uh! Not like that, baby. Crawl to me.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, the CFO lowered himself to his hands and knees and began crawling toward his mistress. It didn’t take long.

“Kiss my feet,” she ordered.

Austin lowered his head and kissed the top of her right foot, just above the toes of her patent leather heels. Three more kisses, moving up the side, then he gave similar attention to her left foot.

Nothing turned Eva on quite so much as power. She could no more hold back from using it than she could make herself stop breathing. Seeing the man on his hands and knees before her only made her want to push further. “Good girl,” she purred. “Now sit back on your heels. That’s it. Hands at your sides.”

Austin knelt, legs demurely together, his tented rose panties resting on his stockinged feet. His head remained bent, but his back was straight and his arms hung at his sides.

Eva stepped forward, planted a foot on either side of Austin’s legs, and put her right hand at the back of the man’s head. Then she pulled him forward, burying his face in the fine black silk of her high-cut panties. “There you go, pet. There you go.”

As the man knelt at her feet, worshipping her sex, Eva ran her long fingernails through his thick hair possessively. Her smile was all power and hunger, for her tenderness had been burned out long before.

Three years, it had taken her. Three years since that horrid man had forced himself on her. Three years of learning to look meek and small, of pretending to be submissive and weak. Sims wasn’t smart when it came to people, and he was a downright idiot when it came to women. He saw exactly what she wanted him to see.

Eventually, she had everything she needed. All the information that allowed her to put his fingerprints on anything. Literally anything. The critical signatures had even been his, he just hadn’t had a clue what he was signing.

All she’d needed at that point was a cat’s paw. Someone to throw the charge in Sims’ face. Then she could allow the “truth” to be dragged out of her, all so very unwillingly. And unlike Harlan Sims, Eva could read people like they were billboards. One look at Austin, and she’d known that his impassive mask covered a soul as desperate to submit as hers was to dominate.

He was making mewling noises as he pressed his lips to her silky underwear. “Pull them off, pet,” she urged.

Grabbing a bit of the lace waistband with his teeth, Austin tugged her panties lower, moving back and forth as needed. She released his head and let him bring the lingerie to her feet, at which point she stepped out of them. “Hold them for me in your lap,” she ordered. “There’s a good girl. Now come get your honey.”

Her excitement rose to new heights as Austin straightened and began to kiss and lick her lower lips. “That’s it. That’s a good girl.”

Austin was no less excited. It was all he could do not to move his hands – hands which held his mistress’s panties against his own, both covering his aching penis. He had felt shame, naturally, when Eva first brought him to his knees, but that shame hadn’t been enough to conquer his own quivering desire. He’d never known how much he craved submission; Eva had known right away. In time, she taught him not to fight his desires. Even when she pushed him, hard, he found release and joy in simply letting her desires override his own. After two years, he never even considered saying ‘no.’

“They’ll ask you to take over as CEO,” she said, her voice just a touch breathless. “You’ll be in charge of the company.”

He paused his sucking just long enough to say, “yes, Mistress.”

“You’ll be in charge of the company, and your ‘secretary’ will be in charge of you.”

His eyes were closed, his usually opaque expression replaced by a look of purest ecstasy. “Yes, Mistress!”

“And you’ll do everything I tell you, won’t you?”

“Of course, Mistress,” he panted.

“Good girl!”

When they came, they came together, two broken people who had each achieved their heart’s desire.

The end