I wake up with a jolt. Light daggers through the rips in the roller blind like a guard’s flashlight in my eyes. It’s not yet 6am. My ears are almost stretching for the sound of the big steel key turning in the lock, followed by the clump clump of boots on steel walkway. Four steps between each door before the key scrapes through its rotation and across my nerves.

I’m still attuned to the regime of the detention center.

Every nerve ending still waits for the steel door to be thrown back on its cranky hinges and the buff voice of the guard telling me to get up. We had to be out of bed and fully dressed by the time the door was unlocked, or expect to receive a warning with points. What happened when you racked up enough points I was lucky enough not to find out.

How much further we could be punished kind of eluded me but I didn’t want to risk it. I’d reached the bottom of the barrel as far as I was concerned although solitary confinement may have been more pleasurable. Not having to deal with the bullying guards or the chaotic mindsets of the other women caged up with me would have made life less fraught with tension.

I can tell there’s no way I’m going back to sleep. Seeing as I’ve got to find my way into the city and locate the office for my first day, I may a well get out of bed. The bathroom is vacant at this early hour – bonus.

I shower quickly. Funny how my nerves are still on edge. Expecting some unwelcome attack for no reason. I might have given up on reason after everything that’s happened the last ten months. My body is attuned for bad stuff to happen every moment.

I get dressed quickly in the bathroom and check my face in the mirror.

Drawn and pasty looking from lack of light. And life. And I only have some cheap cosmetics that came in the bag of essentials Commander Cynthia gave me to ease my return to humanity. The business attire I was given is no better. Cheap polyester fabric for the ill-fitting skirt and the kind of blouse that gapes open at the chest. Great. It’s going to look like an open invitation if I run into that handsome and very full of himself older dude again.

I’m doing my best to make my eyes look less like a sad raccoon’s when the door flies open. Shit, I forgot to lock it. The concept of being in control of my own lock in has become completely unfamiliar. As though I never had it before jail.

My fists clench automatically, ready to defend myself if necessary. In the doorway is a girl even paler than me but wearing a ton of black eyeliner. Her hair is white blond with dark roots just starting to grow in.

“What are you doing in here?” she demands in an unusual accent. I think it’s Russian. Maybe Polish, but with a harsh throaty rasp.

“Getting ready for work,” I tell her. Keeping it neutral, not hostile not friendly because that would indicate fear.

“Work,” she repeats, like it’s such an impossible concept I must be lying. “This is my bathroom,” she announces.

“I was told it was communal.”

“Cum-munal,” she cackles like she’s heard a hysterical joke but whether of her own invention or mine is beyond me.

“You can’t be in here when I need to pee,”

“I’m just about done then I’ll be out of your hair.”

“You got the wowcher?” she asks, a sudden sweetness in her tone.

“What’s a wowcher?”

“The wowcher, wow-cher,” she enunciates in a loud voice like she’s trying to make a dumb foreigner understand.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“For the food. The supplies. Didn’t you just get out?”

“Yeah,” I say, a wash of shame traveling up my spine.

“What you in for?”

“Drugs,” I say. Even though it’s bad practice to ask someone what they were in for and liable to get you tripped in the hallway.

“You carrying?”

“What? No, I’m not carrying. I was used as a mule without my knowledge by my bastard ex.”

“Yeah. Of course you were.”

Right, I forgot that other rule. Never claim innocence.

The girl who hasn't yet introduced herself moves into the washroom and comes close. Too close. Everything around me contracts as I throw up an involuntary shield.

“Gimme the wow-cher,” she says menacingly. “I need to get me some things.”

“I don't have a wow – cher. Oww.”

My head snaps back as she yanks my hair hard. Then her free hand clamps around my neck, cutting off my air supply. I react immediately. My elbow jabs behind into her spongy stomach. The shock makes her release my throat in shock and I spin around, grabbing her by her hair now and slamming one fist across her jaw.

Then I lean her back over the basin so her back arches uncomfortably.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” I snarl. “I don’t want to be here either but as long as I am, let’s keep it civil.”

I’m not really a fighter. I don’t want to have to get physical but I’ve learned how now for whenever it’s necessary.

Without waiting for an answer, I slam out of bathroom, grab the nasty cheap purse from my room and head out of the house for the subway.

Rain has started pouring down during my sub-terrain ride and no one thought to include an umbrella in my supplies. I don’t even have enough to buy one from the skinny African selling them from a box on the corner. It’s six blocks to the Hopper office tower off Wall Street. Confused by all the tall buildings, I head in the wrong direction and have to double back, making it nine.

By the time I get there, my clothes are drenched and sticking to me. What a way to start a new job. Plus if the hottie sees me he’ll disappear even faster than yesterday. My god that kiss has occupied all my thoughts. Even during the subway ride, with everyone around me engrossed in their phones, I drifted off into the hard body lining my skin. How his tongue tangled around mine making me slowly melt into a pool of whiskey flavored dark chocolate. Rich and luscious and aching to be licked.

No, stop.

I need to stop thinking about disappearing man’s firm lips trailing across my skin. It sends a shiver down my back, straight to my clit every time I recall the forceful way he took hold of me. Men are nothing but trouble. No matter how much they promise to be good, they can’t seem to help betraying your trust.

Amazed that they let me past the front desk looking as bedraggled as I do, I arrive at Janice Markle’s desk. She’s not in yet. In fact none of the other team members have arrived in he office. Perhaps because it’s not even eight am.

I have no idea what to do with myself or where to even sit. Right across from Janice’s desk is a set of imposing dark wood doors. The brass hardware is heavy and well-made, rich with power. Clearly the boss’s office.

I shouldn’t, but I do. Maybe it’s a permanently unbridled impulse in me to do what will get me into trouble. Testing authority is the only way to stamp some of my own.

I stealthily, like a burglar, turn the smooth handle. I don’t know what I’ll say if the old guy that runs this place is in there. But I know he’s not. I can just feel it.

As expected, the office is empty but unbelievably huge with a double aspect window looking out on the sunrise over the East River and to the Statue of Liberty on the other.

“Liberty. What a joke,” I snort. “No wonder she’s blindfold.”

There’s a long sofa, faced by two banker chairs around a coffee table. The desk is as large as I’d anticipated, larger. The thing would fill all the space of my bedroom at my ‘home’.

I trail my fingers along it’s solid length and then slip into the leather chair. It cocoons around me like a palm. A firm masculine palm. With the aroma of rich well-tanned leather.

The man from yesterday swarms into my head again. I doubt I’ll ever forget him, especially in my current state of desperate hunger to be touched. Don’t people literally die if they aren’t touched by another human?

What would he do if he discovered me hanging out in the Boss’s office? This chair is big enough for both of us. I could easily straddle his thighs and allow his hands to travel all over my body, stripping away the crackly material and allowing his mouth to follow where his fingertips led.

Pleasure lifts like a phoenix in my core. I arch my back and lift my hips off the supportive seat. My fingers slide up my leg under the nasty flared skirt and I slide across the erect little point of my aching clit. It seems so naughty to be sitting in the CEO’s chair, in his luxurious huge office and touching myself that I give the cleft a pinch. My pussy instantly responds, the pressure pushing at the edges of my body. I know I could come in mere seconds, I’m so tingling with desire to let go.

My fingertips slide under the fabric of my underwear, which is soaked and not from the rain.

I close my eyes and let out a sigh that turns into a moan.

“Yes sir,” I whisper, seeing the coffee room guy in my mind as my fingers circle around my protruding hard point.

I have no choice but to do whatever he wants of me. I’ve been told to keep this job no matter what and the guy is so dominating, so overwhelming in the power in his arms, I have no choice.