I could be so way off here as to be a python in a duck pond but I don’t think so. My primitive male urge to stand up and walk away is kicked to the curb and I lean back in the chair, letting Aura know she won’t scare me off. She gapes at me in outrage and throws herself back into her chair, resigned to the fact that she has nowhere to escape to. The office is on lockdown as Tania’s crew work their makeover for the party. She’s on my time so she can’t leave.

In truth I don’t know why she’d want to.

I don’t know why she dislikes me so much. A few words about the role of women in the workplace hardly makes me a Weinstein. She has a job, she’s paid on parity with the guys. If she’s heard about my past on the office Snapchat, which travels faster than the real one, that could make her wary. But I’m pretty sure she’s pushing me away for a test. To see whether I like her enough to stick around.

That’s strange because Aura didn’t test as a woman prone to headgames. The psych profiling I have carried out on prospective employees is designed to ensure that there’s as little drama as possible in the office. And yeah that means especially from the soft and sweet members of the team – because they tend to become the most virulent. If that makes me a macho pig, my bad.

Aura shakes her head in disgust at almost every scene in the movie. The ones where the guy is cheating on his wife with a girl in the office seem to irk her the most. Especially when the wife thinks she’s getting the jewelry and instead unwraps a Joni Mitchell CD.

“Ever had that happen?” I ask, meaning about the gift disappointment.

“No,” she hisses. “I would not date a man at the office. Ever.

“I meant the thoughtless Christmas gift.”

“Yes. Thanks for bringing that up.”

Shit. I forgot about the sex toy in her hand yesterday. But now she’s brought it up, my wood starts stiffening, from the recall of her stroking the pink plastic cock in her palm.

“That was a joke. I’m sure they didn’t intend to humiliate you,” I say.

“You’re sure?”

“My team of geeks are geniuses, they’re also infantile.”

“Oh well that makes it okay then,” she snips. “Except if they were murderous geniuses, they’d still be tried as adults.”

“Aura, would you like me to discipline the perp?” I ask in all seriousness.

If she feels victimized, I’ll take up her cause. Not only because she has claimed a special place in my -my affection - but because I care about all the people that work for me.

“No can we please forget it?” she hiss-whispers. “If there were a more equal spread of gender in the office, I wouldn’t be subjected to this constant teasing.”

“Do you think that’s the reason or could you be setting yourself up for the jokes?”

“Great, make it my problem so you don’t have to deal with it.”

“No man will abuse you unless you allow it,” I tell her.

“Oh is that the same as asking for it?”

She pulls back the instant she’s blurted out her statement. As though she suddenly recalls she’s sitting here with her boss, not the janitor. Her expression reads; “Damn’ and she grabs the untouched hot dog from the armrest to shove it in her mouth.

“No, I’m saying if a woman has a healthy head of self-esteem she won’t accept abuse or shame.”

We sit in silence, staring straight ahead at the screen as she stuffs the snack hungrily. It would be amusing, the ferocious way she attacks the dog, if I didn’t have to fight the image of her taking my length in the same manner. I’m not afraid to admit that having on her knees in the dark would be my one and only Christmas wish. There’s something about this girl that makes me burn with desire. I’d love to rip the clothes from her body, stripping her of all her barely repressed anger.

I feel the same hunger simmering inside her as we sit here in loungers casually staring at a screen, taking nothing in. To anyone observing us, we’d appear to be boss and employee kicking back for a Holiday movie. But if they were to insert themselves between us, they’d be hit with the wall of heat sitting there like jungle humidity.

The tension lying on the armrest is tight with the need of unfulfilled desire. Mine for a woman that views me as a real man, not a money pot, hers, I assume, for a man that won’t let her down by proving to be a douche only interested in her honey pot.

“I have a problem with women,” I say, before I realize I’ve spoken.

Disarming her with my own story is maybe not the best idea.

She looks at me and her mouth opens to speak. Her expression says, ‘No kidding’ so I lift a finger for silence.

She snaps her lips shut again and I reach out my finger to wipe a smear of bright yellow mustard from the fleshy bottom one. She turtles her head back as an instinctive response then freezes, wide-eyed as I swipe my thumb pad across the stain. Her doe-stunned eyes are a revelation. Aura’s always so tough and in command of herself, seeing her vulnerable and afraid is a surprise. I pad across the mustard but it’s dried and doesn’t shift.

I power up all my reserves to stop myself from automatically leaning in to kiss her mouth, to suck her lower lip between mine and lick her clean. Instead I dip a finger into her tequila shot glass and wipe it over the mark again, the liquid releasing the hold. Her tongue pokes out to lick compulsively at the stain, her eyes never leaving mine. She holds me trapped there. Whether to intimate something more or to prevent me from watching her tongue lap so seductively across her flesh is anyone’s guess.

We gaze at each other and the movie seems to slow to half speed, the words of the actors slurring like drunks. The need to cup Aura’s head and pull her mouth onto mine is overbearing, as though a stampede has picked up in my chest and thunders on despite my attempts to hold it back. I notice Aura undulate slightly in her seat. The tiniest movement that indicates she’s desperate to release the lust rising in her, threatening to overwhelm her.

She slides one leg over the other, pressing her thighs together. If she was mine, if she belonged to me, I’d slide my hand between that sweet flesh and feel the heat of compression claim me. I’d pull her up onto my lap, to straddle me as I pulled her panties to one side and…

Her huge eyes lure me forward. They flutter each time her glance trails lower to my lips, like she’s begging me to take her with them.

The desire for her on me, her lips pressed against my mouth has me teetering at the edge of the precipice. I don’t give a shit about the danger. I need her now. Right here. In front of everyone. Her breasts lift up and down a little faster as though she reads my thoughts. The nipples press hard through the fabric, pleading, begging. I’m willing to go over the edge to have her.

I’d do anything.

A roar fills the cinema and the heads of the crowd all tip back in unison. Someone on the movie said ‘Merry Christmas’. Aura unlocks the hold between us and grabs at the tequila glass I’d doused my finger in. She tips her head back and swallows the liquid down hard.

“Excuse me, Sir,” she splutters, then rises from the chair and stumbles up the aisle, zig-zagging like a zombie until she shoves her way through the door and disappears.