Aura takes off like a marathon newbie as soon as Cutter Dale appears beside us. Annoyed by the interruption, I round on him with a snarled greeting which makes him fear for his position. As I’m striding away, it occurs to me that there’s something going on between him and Aura despite the strict company policy.

Why else would she have taken fright like that as soon as he appeared? I almost lost my calm and fired him on the spot. The idea that anyone else was enjoying her was like a multiple stab wound.

Why does she have to fight with me about every single thing? She even accused me of being a macho when I suggested that the Women’s March after the inauguration was sexist. Why did women need to segregate to protest something that related to all of us? She started a barbed showdown with me on that when I was merely saying we’re all human.

“Men and women should revolt together not separately,” I said and merely received a harrumph for my joke.

Aura flatly refuses to relax around me, no matter what I try. She even goes so far as to question every new initiative I deliver to the team, simply for the pleasure of making me look less masterful. Like I should leave the new tech ideas to the youngsters. It has occurred to me that she’s in accord with some of the kids in the office who think I’m ancient. They forget that there wouldn’t be a Facebook if my generation hadn’t been early adopters.

Whatever. Ageism is for the young.

Maybe that’s her problem. She thinks I’m some skeezy old dude trying to get her panties off. I can’t deny there have been times when she’s standing across from me and her cheeks flush with barely repressed anger at our different positions on a subject. Her sense of being inferior to the boss makes her fire up. Then I’d love nothing more than to tell her to come to me, to turn around while I bend her across the desk.

Aura is a girl just asking for a spanking every time she comes into my office. And I have dreams most nights about how flushed I’d make her hidden cheeks if I ever got the chance.

Her favorite boss-bait is why don’t I have more women working in the office.

“Women are a distraction,” I tell her and am rewarded with an eyeroll I’d have loved to punish her for. “I mean it. Why do you think you don’t see any female Buddhist monks at the temple?”

“Are you going to suggest that tech is like religion?”

“It is to me. Or was.”

I couldn’t tell her that I’d been subjected to no end of abuse from women. But only once I’d made a fortune, earning eleven billion dollars for two Apps I developed and sold before I was thirty. Then they all came buzzing out like an irate hive. The women that I’d dallied with or had dallied with me, or had dallied with other guys in the company and suddenly wished it had been me instead, saw their payout.

There were rumblings of inappropriate this and that. A couple of kids that never showed for DNA tests. But all that stuff hits the Internet and sticks like sick on the carpet. I may be saddled with my rep because I’m too focused on work to want to devote my attention to a woman’s needs, but does that make me a playboy?

Aside from my own emotional trials, I’ve also seen too many guys driven to distraction by office romances.

“After I spent a little time on Mt Koya, a sojourn after a manic business deal in Tokyo, I still like to maintain a little zen in my life,” I tell Aura, thinking she was mature enough to get it. Instead she got riled up with her liberation thing.

“And that means eradicating women?” she snipped. “When if men could only keep it in their pants and not look at every skirt as a potential fuck buddy, I mean hook-up, then...”

“You can say fuck buddy, Aura, I’m not your father.”

I got another harrumph and saw her board herself up like she was preparing for a hurricane. The line drawn between boss and employee was set in stone not sand. I could never get her to move across it. The second I see her standing at the door to the office inner sanctum, a pixie in fishnets beside her, I know why I went to all this trouble. It’s partly the way she’s holding the eyemask like it’s ticking down to detonate in thirty seconds. Why the mere mention of a roommate had me sweating bullets. Why I want to sock her co-worker’s smug jaw.

If I went all out on this Christmas party it’s all for her. That may sound hypocritical, seeing as I did seduce the woman running this event but even if it sounds crazy, my intention was to give Aura a good enough time that she’d loosen up. And come to see me as a man not a monster.

As she waggles her perfect ass across the playground I built for the staff, I can’t help but think this is going to be more of a challenge than one office Christmas party can take care of.

“Are you remembering to tell everyone that the masquerade lasts all day?” I ask the pixie who’s looking up at me like she’s seen God and is literally young enough to be my daughter.

“Yes,” she squeaks, nervous as a mouse.

“Including Aura?” I demand. She looks confused about the identity of Aura so I add; “The girl that just left.”

“Oh yes, I was about to put it on her myself, then you, um...”

“Okay,” I bark, not needing any reminder that she blew me off good and hard.

Any other woman would have undulated softly under my touch, maybe leaned back into my chest and allowed her butt to graze the slightest amount across my bulge. Not Aura. She stiffens and takes the first excuse to dash off without so much as a coquettish glance back over her shoulder.

Shit.

I walk into the office, now a construction zone covered in fake snow, ice and glittery fake flakes and wonder why I bothered. I should have constructed some fake convention in Hawaii to spirit her away to, instead of this winter wonderland themed masque.

“Yoo-oo, Milo.”

Shit. Tania’s here already.

She comes tripping over the snowflakes in her towering streetwalker shoes and I brace myself for her to fall into my arms. She makes the journey without tumbling but still she clasps my arm in both hands.

“Would you like to test out the photo booth?” she purrs, stroking her fingers up and down my bicep and licking her lips as though it’s my cock she’s caressing.

Again. Never again.

“Maybe later,” I grunt. “I’ve got work to take care of.”

I don’t. At least nothing that can’t wait until I can get the roiling thoughts of Aura out of my head.

What do I have to do to interest her? To show her I’m not who and what she thinks I am.

“Promise?” Tania pouts a little. “I’ve set it up so that everyone can get a shot sitting on a mountain man, but I want mine sitting on you. That’s all I want for Christmas, Daddy.”

I mutter something that alludes to a promise, in order to extract myself. What the fuck was I thinking, fucking Tania in the parking lot when I knew she’d be here running the party? I wasn’t thinking. All my available thought is consumed by Aura.

The staff are working until noon, then heading into the screening room we usually use for training and demos. Today there’s a popcorn cart and hot dogs and Scrooged. Aura doesn’t leave her laptop at the same time as the rest of the staff. She’s the only one still working at the hotdesk outside my office, the only area available, that isn’t being decorated. I put in a call to the pixie’s WhatsApp and tell her there’s a missing person.

She comes running in moments later and virtually throws Aura off of her high stool. She cajole-bullies her into the mask before leading her away. Seeing Aura masked like that has my cock twitching hungrily. It’s kind of insane what she does to me and I ought to do something responsible like move her to the New York office. Instead, I wait a few moments until the heat scarring my insides lowers and I’m sufficiently composed to follow her.