“Really? Is it? Look.” She sets a miniature bottle of mouthwash on her desk and gets up, goes to our office door, and opens it. I don’t allow my eyes to follow the roll of her hips. “Do you see a foosball table out in the lobby? Ping-Pong?”
All I see is a comms manager tapping at her phone and sucking on a lollipop. “No.”
“A row of those footbaths with the fish that eat calluses?”
“Of course not. That’s disgusting.”
After shutting the door, Rae starts moving items from her desktop to the cupboards. “Well, you can thank me because Dorothy wanted those things.”
“Seriously?”
“You have no idea.”
“She’s a menace.” Maybe I should talk to Malika. Dorothy’s wife might know how to curb her more absurd requests.
“Don’t you want to know how I did it?”
I sigh. “Go ahead. I can tell you’re dying to school me.”
She stops what she’s doing, turns, leans back against her desk, and folds her arms across her chest, which pushes up her ample breasts. For a handful of seconds, the edges of my vision literally go dark.
“Like I said, I always agree to Dorothy’s shenanigans. Always. Bring Your Pets to Work Day? Bagel of the Week? Best Zoom Background awards… I said yes to every one of those suggestions.”
“That’s silly. Just tell her no.”
She shakes her head, making that little librarian, you’ve-been-a-bad-boytskingsound, and I’m suddenly not so sure this shared-office thing was a good idea. “See, if I agree, she forgets and moves on to the next outlandish request. If I refuse, it becomes a thing.” She leans toward me conspiratorially. “Trust me, refuseand you wind up with a pair of llamas disturbing the peace and a summons to appear in court.”
“You’re saying that happened?” I’m beginning to suspect that I don’t know Dorothy at all.
“Yep. The llamas were aggressive. We paid fines.” The sparkle of humor in her eyes makes me want to, hell, tickle her or something. I do not fucking tickle. “Try it sometime. Agree to one of her ideas.”
“Harebrained nightmares, you mean.”
“I’m serious. Agree, write it down, and walk away.”
“What if she asks about it later?”
“Oh, she might.” She gives a wicked grin that I want to lick off her face. “That’s when I pull out the list.”
“The list.”
As she bends to grab something from the mystery bin, her skirt goes taut around her hips, sending a jolt to my cock. The fact that she emerges holding a clipboard in no way diminishes my body’s inappropriate reaction. “The master list—or as I like to call it, themistresslist—of all requests made to date.” With long, crystal blue fingernails, she points at one column and then the other. “Those fulfilled and those pending.”
I watch, slowly filling with something like awe at how this woman has managed to hide an entire Machiavellian underbelly beneath that Strawberry Shortcake facade.
Then again, she did come into a kink club on her own the other night, shopping for a Dom, so there’s definitely more than meets the eye with this one. What worries me now is this urge to scratch the surface for a glimpse at the other good stuff within.
“And?” I finally prompt.
“And nothing. I hold up the clipboard, flip through the many pages.” She does it now, wide-eyed and cheerful as a Costco hostesshell-bent on getting rid of her last pig-in-a-blanket sample of the day. “I mention the budget and how we’ve got to whittle it down. Maybe, in this case, I’ll let her know that if I stop getting her butt cushions, we can afford the paw-ternity leave. For one pet. But I’d be happy to go over all the line items with her. One at a time.”
“I’ll bet she hates that.”
“She really does. Nothing gets her out of the office faster than bringing out the list. Works like a charm. And…” Rae lifts that bossy little finger again. “Every once in a while, when something’s not too egregious, I give it to her.”
“Such as?”
“Such as homemade cookies at staff meetings,” she deadpans.
