“There you are Grace. I told you to stay where I left you.”

A voice I think I know shatters my – what?

What do I call what just happened? A fantasy? An assault? No, no that. Because after my initial shock at his kissing me so abruptly, my pussy starting to clench so hard I almost unwound into a frenzy of need. I’d never been touched or kissed by a man that much older. He must be at least forty. Although he looks damn good on it. A rapture then. Yeah, I’m enraptured.

“Grace, this is Janice Markle – she’ll be your boss here at Hopper Financial. You’re to do whatever she asks and not make any trouble, promise?”

Why do they speak to me like that? A wayward child. A rambunctious pet to be tamed.

“Yes of course. Whatever she wants.”

The woman actually seems okay. Older, almost motherly. If your mom was your best friend which mine never was. And not looking at me like I’m a dirty smear on her shoe.

My eyes flit to the ground like I know they want me. Humiliated, shamed, grateful for their charity. Repentant is the word. I hate that word.

I feel the two older women’s gazes fixed on my head as I surreptitiously lift my lids to seek out that hunky guy’s disappearing back. He’s good and gone however. Leaving only confusion roiling around in my stomach. When he pressed his mouth over mine, it was like having every last drop of me sucked up between his powerful thick lips.

Why does Janice Markle have to be the big boss around here? Because if it was the guy that just claimed me, I’d be willing to work for nothing but more of his hard hands all over me.

“You’ll be a general office assistant,” she says. “Helping me with whatever tasks I need done as well as a runner.”

“A runner?” I ask. “Does that mean I get to come to work in sneakers?”

“Grace,” Commandant Treadwell says with a warning tone.

“Here at Hopper we like women to wear office smart, so a skirt and heels will be required.”

She eyes my current outfit with all the disdain of inappropriate.

Ya don't look at me like that B because I was just attacked in this break room and could bring some vicious assault charges if I was that sort. Your office policies can ram themselves in my cherry.

“Back to the corsets it is,” I say.

I can imagine that dominant guy would have me all trussed up in bondage outfits if he thought he could get away with it. So much for equality in the workplace.

“Grace, you’re very lucky that Hopper has taken you on. Try to get along with people while you’re here.”

It was wanting to get along with people that landed me in this situation in the first place. I was just a girl aiming for good grades and a great job but wanting to be liked finally got the better of me. When Carl approached me, coming up on me outside the gym – a place I rarely frequented – to ask me to drink a beer with him, I admit it I was flattered.

“I don’t drink,” I murmured, terrified I was going to trip up over the words, my lips almost numb from the sexual energy pouring off him.

“Come on, don’t make me drink alone. I’m new here.”

“Well okay, just one.”

I caved that easily. He was also a man with experience, at twenty eight years old and me not yet twenty. His eyes trawled through my soul and through my chest cavity like he was burrowing for treasure. I couldn’t stand up to that much intense examination, being more accustomed to being a girl that people ignored unless they were seeking someone to criticize.

“I think a different outfit is required for this job,” Janice Markle says. “You can start tomorrow. Be here tomorrow at nine.”

“Ready to start running,” I say.

“She’ll be here,” Cynthia says and after thanking Janice profusely she leads me back out of the building, now starting to heave with workers swarming in the opposite direction. They part around either side of us then merge again like rushing water.

“Remember how lucky you are that the judge agreed to all my recommendations,” my adviser continues now, scrolling her finger down the top paper in the stack in front of her.

That’s me right there, my life, reduced to a set of papers in a file. That’s who I am now.

“He isn't usually this lenient, even for a first offense.”

That word.

Offense. I’m an offender. I’m offensive.

“His only stipulation was that you must stay in this job you’ve been given. Stay out of trouble, no drinking and stay employed. He wants to see commitment to your future now. If you lose this job he’s offering tough rehabilitation instead.”

“Prison?” I gasp, barely able to comprehend the horror of that. One mistake. One wrong emotion crashing through your body and your whole life can go to, yeah, pot.

“Well yes, but don’t worry about that now. I’m sure you can manage this job as an office um, associate. Just keep your head down and don't get involved with anything unsavory.”

“Where will I live? I’m not from here.” I guess she knows that. She has my entire life noted in bullet points in front of her. She knows more about me than I know about myself – or so she tells me.

“You have a room in a shared house. It’s nothing glamorous and it’s a bit of a ride into the city to get to the job but it’s a start.”

“Can’t I just go home? Back to Missouri and do my penance there?”

“I’m afraid not. The offense was committed in this jurisdiction.”

That word again. I doubt I’ll ever hear it without this shudder of shame rippling down my back.

“Look on the bright side,” she continues. “Most girls would be thrilled to land a job at a good company and a room in the city.”

I try to smile back at her sudden perky optimism. She’s already filing her papers away in her bag and pulling out her car keys.

“Shall we go?” she asks, as though I have a choice.

I follow her, back to the parking lot where the jockey brings out her small car. Then charges her $22 for the half hour we were in the office. Wow, this place is expensive. How am I ever going to pick myself up at these prices? I get in beside her and we drive out through the midtown crush toward the suburb I’ll be calling home for the next year of my life. The house she parks in front of looks the same as every other on every street for the last few miles.

I climb out and only hope I can be equally nondescript for the time I’m here. I don’t want to attract any attention. All I want is to get this time in purgatory over with, prove to the authorities holding my life in their steel clad palm that I can be a good citizen, then get the hell out. Where I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything any more. Life seems to be floating freeform and not in a good way.

“Well, it’s not much but it’s all yours,” my adviser says as she unlocks the door to the house and leads me directly around the shared living space and kitchen with its ancient cabinets, the laminate peeling from the edges of the doors. Burn marks from cigarettes covering most of the furniture.

She heads straight up the stairs and I follow. One bathroom shared between six of us, all girls of course. No men allowed into our lives while we prove ourselves as penitents. That’s going to make for some aggressive mornings as we fight over the one mirror.

She unlocks the door onto a small room with a twin bed supporting a thin mattress and a half closet, freestanding set at an angle, there’s so little space.

“Last in, you have the smallest room in the house,” Cynthia says with a shrug. “At least it’s cozy.”

I resist the urge to say, ‘Yeah if cozy means being able to rifle through your closet while lying in bed.’

Instead I say “Thank you.” And “Yes see you next week for my review, bye then.”

And watch her disappear down the stairs. I know I’m supposed to be grateful that this room doesn't come with a set of bars across the door and window. But I can’t help feeling like I want to run after the woman who controls my life and beg her to take me home with her. Anything but leaving me here. It’s almost as bad as the detention center. Jail.

I drop my backpack and throw myself down on the bed. I need to bite my lip to stop hot tears gushing from my eyes. Break Room guy’s face swarms up in my thoughts. And my hands find their way down my stomach to rest in the crease between my thighs. He was so gorgeous, more so the way every limb was energized with confident power. My palm came up to his chest to push him off then fell under the spell of touching him.

As my body succumbs to filthy thoughts, I yank my hands away from my tingling pleasure spot. How could I have been such an idiot to throw everything I was working for away just because some hot guy, and not even that hot, gave me a snippet of his attention?

Was I really that desperate for a man to find me attractive that I allowed him to convince me to break the law?

Forget it.

No point dwelling on the past. Just let’s call it a lesson learned and at least I learned it early enough that I have time to correct it. I will not become intoxicated by some old dude that works in the office. Not for anything.