Chapter One

 

I've always had a kind of problem with men. The problem, of course, is they all want to sleep with me and I don't want to sleep with all of them. That's it in a nutshell. Most of them are fairly reasonable about it and keep their desires to themselves, especially when they know they have no chance of it happening.

Some of them haven't seemed to learn, despite considerable experience and age to keep their eyes as well as their hands to themselves. I don't really appreciate being gawked at like some fascinating creature in the zoo, especially since I have a pretty good idea of what they're thinking.

Who wants to have some guy three times their age undressing them with their eyes and fantasizing all kinds of nasty things about them? Especially when it happens constantly, everywhere I go. I get that there are pros as well as cons to being considered sexually attractive. I mean, I certainly have no difficulty getting sales help at stores when I walk in.

I've never had a problem getting dates, either. Kind of the opposite, really. I've learned to be tactful in turning guys down. Because even if I wanted to, I don't have enough hours in a day to date every guy that wants to date me. And I don't want to. Most of them are fairly obviously only interested in my body.

Even when I was in junior high there were men in their forties and fifties licking their lips when I walked by. Which of course I found to be gross. By the time I graduated from high school, they had felt more comfortable in making their wishes known in more obvious ways, like telling me flat out what they wanted to do to me.

It was a little odd to me, freaky, how many of them had really kinky, perverted fantasies. I mean, I understand guys wanting to fuck me. But too many of the ones that confessed their fantasies to me, people I never asked, and often didn't even know, by the way, seemed to have really nasty ideas.

I eventually worked it out that it was because I had a very innocent face with large blue eyes, a small nose, and full lips. I'm a blonde, which adds to the problem, though I don't really do anything fancy with my hair. I just part it in the middle and it kind of falls down around my shoulders.

But anyway, my being cute and innocent looking seemed to really draw out the nasty fantasies in some of the men who wanted to dominate women. When I was working as a waitress I had a manager twice my age confess that he wanted to tie me up and spank me and then fuck my brains out while I called him daddy.

I mean, gross on so many levels.

When I finished high school I ran into more and more trouble at jobs. Because now the adult men that I was around all day weren't restrained by the requirement teachers operated under to show no interest in younger girls.

I say adult by the way, even though technically I was one too. I didn't really think of myself as one, especially compared to guys or even women, in their thirties and forties, and fifties. There was also a kind of psychological thing, since I was used to taking orders from 'adults'.

I got lucky just before my nineteenth birthday in getting hired by the federal government. Like a lot of other people, I took the civil service test and did well in it. That doesn't mean you get hired. They put you in what they call a pool. And then various different areas can check that pool when you're looking for people to see who matches what they want.

I had done a lot of phone work as well as data entry and had learned how to do word processing by myself. I went to community college and took some courses for six months that taught me more about working in offices and about office software. So I figured I should be able to work as some kind of government clerk.

Working for the government would probably be boring, but they paid really well, and you got sick leave and medical coverage, and all kinds of other benefits. So lots of people wanted to. Anyway, I got called to an interview with a guy called Larry.

Larry was like, about forty, had a bit of paunch, and had that kind of attitude which I really didn't like in guys. Like, a kind of swaggering sense of superiority who treated me like a kid, except when he treated me like a hot chick. Fortunately, the government was not a place where he could safely do much about that so when he offered me a job I accepted.

He was the administration manager for a division in the Department of the Interior that had about three hundred employees spread over three floors in a federal office building downtown. I was one of a dozen people, mostly women, that worked for him.

I was fine because I mostly worked by myself or with a few other people in my group. I had my own cubicle, with my own L-shaped desk, cabinet, coat rack, and desk lamp. It didn't take me long to master the software they used and my job was a mix of ordering supplies and distributing them to the lower-level clerks who worked for the different subgroups within the division.

It really isn't very complicated and I enjoy it since it's kind of stress-free. I also enjoy the money, which is way better than anything else I have ever made. I even started looking around for my own apartment. Not that I don't like my family, but I wanted my own place.

"This place should be perfect for you," the guy showing me the apartment said.

He was in his early forties, balding, wearing a poorly fitting suit, and doing his best not to leer at me. It was hot outside, and I was dressed informally, in blue-and-white sneakers, thin white drawstring pants that sat low on my hips, and a loose, midriff-baring blue halter.

The clothes were comfortable, and not designed to attract men. But of course, they did attract men. I'm not busty, but I'm sure not flat-chested either, and I definitely work out. In fact, at one point I was a gymnast, but I grew just a little too tall and my curves came in just a little too curvy.

"Look at this key," he said, showing it to me.

It wasn't like any key I had ever seen before. It was much longer and thinner.

"The previous tenant was a young lady like yourself and she wanted really good security, so she had this high-security deadbolt lock put in place."

Even the keyhole look different than usual as he slid the key in. I could hear the heavy bolt snapping back as he pushed the door open and led me inside.

The door led into a very narrow hall. There was a storage area directly across from the door, and next to that a small bathroom. Past that was the actual bulk of the apartment, such as it was. It was not very big, to put it mildly. But it was very open because it was an older building and the ceiling was quite high.

That meant there were very tall windows looking out on the city. And that they had been able to improvise a way to make the little place seem bigger by placing the bed up above the bathroom and storage area. The actual kitchen, you can call it that, is right underneath that, it consisted of a small counter, a small sink, a microwave, and a small fridge.

It was at least all fairly new looking. "The sleeping loft is up there," he said, pointing at a kind of angled ladder.

Well, I'm young and nimble, so I climbed up a few steps, peering over the edge. The sleeping loft consisted of a sunken rectangular area for a queen-size mattress, cupboards against the wall on one side, and wall sconces for lighting on the other, along with a little headboard where you could put an alarm clock or something.

I realized after a moment that my butt was just about at the same level as his face and that he was having a hard time keeping his eyes off it. So I climbed up the rest of the way into the loft. It wasn't very tall, but I had no difficulty moving around and opening the cupboards to see how much space there'd be.

I turned and looked out through the windows at the view with a daunting sense of delight. It wasn't as big as other places I had seen, but it was kind of new and shiny and a little unusual. For what I wanted to pay, it wasn't bad. And it certainly had a good location.

I climbed back down the ladder, not even caring if he was staring at my butt, then turned around happily.

"I'll take it," I said.

I moved in a couple of weeks later and had a great deal of fun decorating to make it seem cozy and homey. My father installed a big flat screen on the wall downstairs in what would be my living room. My mother brought in a toaster oven to add to the kitchen... Kitchenette, really, and I added a smaller TV up in the loft.

Meanwhile, my brother the nerd was adding a little camera to the outside of the door frame so I could not only see who was directly in front of the door but anything to either side for some distance. He also spliced the cable line and ran it up to the loft for me.

My new apartment took a fair chunk of my paycheck to pay for but was well worth it. It also cut my commuting time by two-thirds.

My main job, like I said, was ordering and distributing supplies. It took me a little time to get used to the inefficiencies of government. And shortly after they gave me a credit card I apparently made a mistake. Sheila, the admin assistant to the director, said that the director's monitor had gone on the fritz.

The clerk responsible for that kind of thing called IT and they quickly came up and decided it was busted. But they didn't have a spare. So this being a director, I solved the issue by going downstairs, getting in a cab, and driving ten minutes away to a computer store where I bought one. Within an hour I had it on her desk, unpacked, and plugged in.

I thought I was being very efficient. But apparently I had violated several rules. To buy computer equipment, I was supposed to go to the branch purchasing people, draw up a purchase order, and have it included in their weekly orders so that it would be cheaper. At least in theory. Also only IT was supposed to install computer equipment, even if was just a monitor that any idiot could do on their own.

Fortunately for me, the director was happy to have her monitor and just told the rest of the people that it was no big deal. Larry was a suck-up to those above him so of course he quickly folded, and IT grumbled and went away.

This did bring me to the attention of the director, though. Which is really what this is about. The director's name was Natalie. We tended to use first names and be informal around the office. Natalie was almost the reverse of me. I'm blond but she's brunette. I'm relatively tall for a woman while she's short. I have a bit of a higher-pitched voice while hers is low and dusky. She has wider shoulders, and definitely bigger breasts.

Most differently, she seems quite intimidating while absolutely nobody is intimidated by me. Of course, part of it is that she's the Director. Generally, what the director says goes. She was kind of an aggressive, go-getter, and young for her position at midway through her thirties.

It was only about a month later that Sheila went on paternity leave, and Natalie asked me if I wanted to be her temporary admin assistant. Since it was a bump up in salary and would give me more experience at a higher level, and since I was frankly too intimidated to think of a reason to say no, I agreed.

The other thing you have to know about working at this place was that everyone was divided up into what they called teams. They weren't really teams, of course. There were usually anywhere from six to twelve people in each group headed by a manager. But since I was now working for Natalie, I essentially only worked in a team of two.

That meant I spent basically all day outside her office going in and out, communicating mostly with her by email or phone, doing stuff like photocopying and arranging for messengers for her, and running her errands.

So I figured I kind of got to know her faster than I had my other coworkers and I was very impressed by her, by how smart she was, and how she managed to get her way and didn't back down. Some of the managers were scared spitless of her, even the male managers I was impressed by. So that impressed me all the more.

The other thing that you have to know is that the higher up you go the harder you work. People might not expect that of the government, but directors and higher-ups were expected to get their work done regardless of how long it took. And they didn't get overtime.

Natalie often seemed to be frustrated at the confusion around her. She told me that the higher up she got, the more disorganized her bosses were. They tended to set a lot of conflicting priorities without a lot of understanding of how difficult it would be to meet them. This meant she had to work lots of overtime, without pay. Fortunately, that didn't extend to me.

She mostly did her extra work at home anyway, though she still often stayed late.

Since I was still kind of new, I didn't know a lot of people to have lunch with. Even most of the people I had been working with in admin were much older than me, for one thing. They nicknamed me baby Paige, because I was by far the youngest employee in the group.

Anyway, this often meant that I just ate at my desk. And since I went down to the cafeteria to grab something, I often wound up grabbing something for Natalie, as well. One day she had me sit down at the table in her office to eat with her since we were both eating pizza.

"I shouldn't have this," she said. "I have to watch my weight. I'm not a skinny-Minnie like you."

"I'm not a skinny-Minnie," I said. "And believe me, any extra weight is pretty visible on me."

"Are you suggesting I'm so big that the pizza wouldn't be noticed?" she asked dryly.

"Uhm, you're very slender," I temporized.

She snorted in amusement.

"At least you can reach stuff on the higher shelves without having to jump up and down," she said.

"You're very athletic too," I said with a smile.

"Ha! If I jump up and down the girls get angry," she said. "And all the boys notice."

I frowned in confusion for a moment before realizing she was talking about her breasts. My eyes flicked automatically to them and since she had removed her blazer they were more noticeable than usual.

"They don't seem all that uh..."

"Thirty-eight D," she said, biting another piece.

"Well, they look great on you, I mean, from what I can see."

"Oh don't get me wrong, I look great in a bikini or in a low-cut dress. My husband loves them. So they can be useful, at times." She smiled slyly. "But they do draw the wrong kind of interest if I wear anything the least bit revealing."

"Tell me about it," I sighed.

"I hope nobody bothers you around here," she said.

"Oh no. They know the rules. That doesn't mean they don't pay a lot of attention any time I walk up the hall.

"There aren't a lot of younger women here, and none that look like you. Plus you have great legs."

I sighed. "People say that and I honestly don't understand. What does that even mean? They're legs. They're not fat and they're not sticks but honestly, they're just legs."

"And female legs look great under a skirt," she added. "But don't ask me to explain what turns men on."

"Everything?"

"When guys are young all they want is sex, sex, sex," she said. "They're very easy to satisfy. When they get older, they start coming up with weird ideas to make things a little different, to add spice. On the other hand, they make up for it by being more capable and less eager in bed."

This was a strange conversation to have with your boss. On the other hand, she was talking to me like no older woman ever had. Certainly, none of my older relatives were going to talk to me about sex.

"You don't want them eager in bed?"

"I don't want them playing with my breasts like they're squeeze toys."

I laughed suddenly and sharply and had to put a hand over my mouth.

"That is what they do!" I said, giggling.

"Fortunately, once you have a long-term partner, you get to train them into acting the way you want. When they're young, they're used to every girl telling them how good they are even when they're not. Have you ever told a boy you slept with that you really didn't enjoy it?"

"Well... Um... No."

"I didn't think so."

"They have such delicate... egos on that subject," I said.

"Oh, I know. But if none of us ever tells them they're doing anything wrong, it's hard to criticize them for not improving. Besides, what most young women think of sex is more a way to please their boyfriends or potential boyfriends. Most of them don't really expect to have a wicked good time of it."

She wasn't wrong, but I didn't answer that. I doubted she was one of those most girls, though. It was hard to believe that some guy would've slept with her even when she was younger and she would've flattered them about how good they'd been when they didn't perform well.

"Plus, most young girls don't sleep around enough to really realize just how much they could be missing. Until they hit on a guy that knows his way around a woman's body they don't really understand how good things can be. But once you have that experience, they won't want to put up with these fumble-fingered, selfish idiots anymore. Believe me."

"Are you saying I should be a slut?" I asked in amusement.