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

cold concrete of the building, just out of
the rain and put her hand to her chest as she took a few deep
breaths, giving herself a silent lecture. You need a job, Cat, and
this is a good one, she told herself, so it was time to put any
physical attraction that she had for Knox, no wait—Mr. Stowe, away
and comport herself in a mature and professional manner.
    Except things hadn’t exactly worked out that
way. Every day as Cat made her way up the elevator to her desk
outside of Mr. Stowe’s office her heart leaped out of her chest
with excitement laced with a new and particularly frantic brand of
anxiety. She tried to arrive at least twenty minutes early just so
she could watch Mr. Stowe walk in each morning, always
perfect-looking: sleek, sexy, immaculately dressed he’d stride past
her desk, causing Cat to stop breathing as she longingly watched
him. Most of the days he didn’t even make eye contact with her as
he brushed past her into his office where he remained most of the
day. Cat found herself wishing fervently that he’d speak to her,
but instead of coming out to her desk and making conversation, Mr.
Stowe preferred to send clipped, impersonal emails detailing his
requests.
    A few times when she’d first started Cat had
ventured into his office to ask him a question, trying to create at
least a work-appropriate relationship, but to her chagrin he’d put
a stop to that within the first two weeks, requesting, by email,
that she speak to Maggie if she had any questions instead of
interrupting his work. So Cat became more and more frustrated with
herself, her rampant sexual desires for Mr. Stowe and with him, and
she’d finally resorted to purposefully making mistakes. She knew it
was stupid—so incredibly stupid--to risk sabotaging her career to
fulfill her physical need for Mr. Stowe, but she simply could not
stop herself. She was a victim of her own deep, dark need.
    Now, with the door slammed in her face, Cat
looked back to her computer screen and sighed. What exactly have I
accomplished? She asked herself. I got yelled at, and I’m here
turned on like a weirdo and my boss hates me. What am I doing? She
picked up the phone and began dialing the office of Mr. Stowe’s
client to re-schedule the meeting as he’d originally requested.
Suddenly, an email came in, labeled the red-alert coding she had
given Mr. Stowe’s emails so that she’d see and answer them as
quickly as possible. She bit down on her lip, hard, as she placed
the phone back down on the cradle and clicked the message open.
Terse, as usual, but the words still shocked her.
    “Come into my office,” the message read.
    “Oh my God,” Cat whispered to herself under
her breath. She hadn’t been in his office for months and she was
extremely nervous. She said a silent prayer that she wasn’t getting
fired but even in her state of terror Cat still felt her body react
with a kind of sexual shudder that started at her toes and
travelled up she stood up and smoothed her blouse down over her
hardening nipples and flat belly. She felt her face flush with
blood and knew that she couldn’t do anything about her reddening
cheeks, but still ran her fingers through her hair, trying to
quickly brush out any snarls, and at the last minute grabbed the
lip gloss from her desk drawer and applied a bit to her full lips.
As she approached the office door, Cat did her best to put a
courteous smile on her face, not revealing her physical and
emotional turmoil to the stoic Mr. Stowe.
    “Come in, Cat,” he said when she entered,
standing facing away from her towards the window behind his desk.
Just the sound of Mr. Stowe’s authoritative voice saying her name
made Cat falter a bit on her black kitten heels. She crept into the
room, conscious of the silence, and when she got to the desk she
tucked her hands under herself and sat down in one of the large
leather chairs facing Mr. Stowe’s chair. Cat could hear herself
breathing as she waited for him to turn