Free Tears for My Master: Cat's First Punishment by Lara Simon

“No, I’m so sorry Mr. Stowe, it won’t happen
again,” said Cat, blushing from the verbal beating her boss had
just given her.
    “Don’t let it,” her boss replied, his deep,
powerful voice raspy with thinly veiled anger. Cat studied his
flushed face quickly, looking down at her desk as he strode
confidently back into his office and slammed the enormous, heavy
oak door. Her reaction was the most difficult part to process--
instead of feeling embarrassment at her failure; Cat became aware
of the flush of blood that rushed to her hardened nipples pressing
against her lace bra and out into her silk blouse and her hot and
increasingly wet groin. She was turned on. All of her fantasies at
night at home alone of seducing Knox Stowe always involved--to some
degree-- his anger. She touched herself thinking about that smoky,
impatient tone in his voice—the enraged gleam in his eyes. What’s
wrong with me? She thought, knowing that she hadn’t rescheduled the
meeting on purpose, somehow wanting and needing the stern Mr. Stowe
to reprimand her.
    It had to be something with the new position;
she rationalized, looking around at her plush office on the
seventy-ninth floor of the Hudson Building in downtown Seattle. The
job had come to her as part of what could be described as a kind of
happy accident. Cat had graduated from Oregon State University in
the spring, just a short month before Knox Stowe’s long-time
administrative assistant had retired and moved to Tucson to live
out the rest of her days in the warm, dry sunshine of the Arizona
desert. Cat, full-name Catherine Adele Harper, had just moved back
to Seattle to live with her parents, and was working part-time at a
local coffee shop while she was sending resume after resume out to
just about every reputable corporation in the greater Seattle area.
It just happened that the Stowe Holding Company had been her first
callback.
    When Cat had first entered the office she’d
been in a quiet state of shock. The sheer opulence of the operation
was beyond anything she’d seen in her three brief college
internships or imagined in her wildest dreams. She’d been ushered
in from the glass-walled security desk by a stunningly tall and
model-esque blonde with a high, tight ponytail, a designer black
business suit and even higher heels to the private elevator that
whisked personnel and clients alike to the three top floors of the
high-rise that Stowe Holding Company occupied.
    Cat remembered her pounding heart and stifled
breath as she was guided past the sleek reception desk, a monolith
of stainless steel mixed with gleaming marble and the three
gorgeous women, all young, beautiful, and seemingly busy with
important tasks, manning it. After they walked down a long,
plush-ly carpeted hall lined with glass walls through which one
could glimpse multitudes of young, attractive and smartly-dressed
professionals, avoiding eye contact with her, the unimportant
potential employee, busy on conference calls or typing on their
brand new Mac computers, they finally reached the desk, now her
desk, in front of the massive door leading into Mr. Stowe’s office.
After they entered, she was left by her stunning chaperone in a
soft leather chair inside, waiting for his highness to enter and
decide if she was worthy of the position. She remembered her jaw
dropping at the floor-to-ceiling views of Elliot Bay, the Seattle
skyline and Pike Place market. The windows were wrapped all the way
around the massive room, which Cat reasoned was at least twice the
size of the first floor of her family home, and she could see all
the way from Queen Ann hill to the north to the Seahawks stadium
and SoDo to the south. She remembered biting her nails nervously as
she waited, listening to the howling wind whipping around the
heights of the elegant heights of the building, for the mysterious
man would become her new boss.
    When she’d first seen Knox Stowe, something
new inside of Cat had begun to stir—a new kind