Asset Management

Chapter 1

Prima International LLC’s offices at night weren’t the worst. Roselyn tried to tell herself that.

The lights were soft blues and purples, and it was easier to focus without either the office drones or the menial workers buzzing around her head. Aircon was nice to have too. It was dark outside, and still pushing thirty five degrees centigrade. Geoengineering in the Pan-European Economic Zone was really going to crap.

Maybe the aircon wasn’t that nice, actually. Even with the stream of cool air flowing into her corner office, Roselyn could still feel how damp the underarms of her expensive Krello-brand suit were. She popped another button on her blouse, but it didn’t help.

She was sitting at her desk, pretending to work. She wasn’t pretending very well. She tokenly tapped at her keyboard, only occasionally looking up from her phone. She was trying and failing to figure out how to explain herself to the date she’d stood up tonight. Every time she thought she’d come up with something, another (usually all-caps) text popped up.

Right on cue, another one arrived. Roselyn skimmed it.

Cold-hearted… corporate climber bitch… worthless… hope you CHOKE…

Roselyn grimaced. Ugh. She slipped her phone away, leaving the messages on read. Maybe staring at her blank computer screen would be better after all.

The charade of working could be mediocre. She didn’t have many people to fool. There were only two people left in Prima International’s Virtual Life Experiences department at this hour; her, and Nick. And Nick was still in his office. Had been for the last several hours. He was pulling an all-nighter.

Again.

Roselyn glanced up from her phone, glaring across the office at Nick’s door, the only other non-cubicle office on her floor.

Nick had in fact been pulling consecutive all-nighters since the start of August. Upper management was pleased to see the department’s star programmer putting in so much work, but it had set off alarm bells for Roselyn.

Sure, Nick was a gifted programmer, and responsible for crafting some of Prima’s most lifelike virtual sims. That didn’t mean he wasn’t also a habitual slacker who constantly showed up to work out of uniform, who ignored Roselyn whenever she tried to discipline him, blankly staring through her lectures, with the infuriating knowledge that upper management would back him up if Roselyn ever seriously tried to challenge their golden boy. Oh, she knew exactly what they’d say, because she’d heard it all before. “He’s an invaluable asset! The last sim he’d designed had just cleared five million sales domestic, six million international! You can tolerate a little mess in the office if it means success for the company, right, Roselyn?”

And yes, Roselyn could. Of course she could.

But that didn’t mean she wanted to. This was her office, and the other drones (of both varieties) didn’t need to see their superior being routinely defied by some weird, gross little nerd like Nick!

So when she’d noticed him staying late, she’d started monitoring the network traffic passing through the hardline in his office. It was encrypted, but there was enough of it, at strange enough times of day, for her to suspect that something was up.

So here she was. Middle of the night. Pretending to work. No date.

Waiting for Nick to slope out of his office so she could go and snoop on his computer, and, hopefully, find evidence that he was leaking something important and sensitive to a rival company.

Roselyn sighed, and looked back down at her phone for the millionth time in the four hours she had been sat here. The flood of furious messages had finally stopped.

God. She’d really stood up her date for this shit.

Roselyn hadn’t gotten laid in almost six months. It was unreasonable. A girl had needs. And when she couldn’t get those needs fulfilled, she couldn’t be held responsible for her actions. Sure, Roselyn had blown up at her driver for only getting her to work ten minutes early instead of the usual twenty that morning. And maybe she’d suspended her assistant for bringing her the wrong work stims once she’d gotten into the office. And yes, maybe she was relentlessly trying to get one of her subordinates fired, partly for suspected corporate espionage, partly for defying her while she was cranky and sexually frustrated. So what?

There was a clunk, audible from across the office. Roselyn perked up. Nick was coming out of his office.

She got up, quickly checked her appearance in the glass of her office door.

Non-prescription cat’s eye glasses? Check.

Makeup still professional, yet sexy? Check.

Black glossy hair in her signature updo? Check… kind of. The heat had made it a little frizzy, but the messiness was sultry rather than dishevelled, so Roselyn left it.

What did come off as dishevelled were the… stains. She winced; even in the dark reflection of her office door, the underarms of her blouse were visibly dark. Not that she needed to be able to see them to know that; she could feel it too. She glanced longingly back at her black suit jacket, draped over the back of her chair, but there was no way she could wear that in the stuffy heat of the office. Besides… as humiliating as it was, there was a certain utility to her look.

Finally, she glanced down at her tight black pencil skirt. The new bio-responsive panties she’d bought last month were still working a treat. Even in this heat, everything she had tucked away didn’t feel particularly sweaty, and she was completely flat down the front. Excellent.

Roselyn looked hot, and she also unquestionably looked like Nick’s boss. Both were essential for her plan.

She marched across the dark office as the heavy security door in Nick’s office slid open. Network protections were all well and good, but keeping your star programmer’s office computer behind three inches of steel with a retinal lock didn’t hurt either.

It opened slowly, so Nick shuffled through sideways rather than waiting for it to open all the way. He hadn’t seen Roselyn approaching yet, and the crappy office carpet was muffling the click of her heels.

Nick’s long-sleeve t-shirt was crumpled, and his brown hair hung messily around his shoulders. He reached up, scratching at it, before his hands returned to their habitual position, half-folded, half clutched together in front of his chest.

“Working late, I see.”

He almost jumped out of his skin, whirling to look at Roselyn. Kind of. Eye contact wasn’t his strong suit, even when he wasn’t (presumably) wracked with anxiety over whatever devious corporate fraud he was no doubt engaged in. So his dark brown eyes flashed up to hers for only an instant, before heading back down to the floor. Although given how many blouse buttons she’d undone, it was hard for Roselyn to miss how they caught on something else during the descent.

“O-oh! Uh, hi there, boss. Didn’t uh, realise you were still here…”

He was flushing, already. Ugh. Roselyn’s lip curled. He was as insolent as ever.

“Just catching up on some reports, nothing special,” she lied, folding her arms. She was easily taller than Nick, even without her heels, and while she mostly hated their interactions, it did always feel good to sneer down at him. Especially since his back was currently against the security door that had just closed behind him. “But I’m curious about what you’re getting up to after hours.”

“O-oh! Me? Um… nothing special. Just. Side project, you know?” Nick played with his hands.

“Is that so?” Roselyn asked sweetly, taking another step closer. Nick made a weird, strangled noise, almost like a whimper.

Normally, Roselyn would just ignore Nick’s leering, or if she was feeling particularly mean, snap her fingers, and direct his eyes above her breasts. But today…

She smirked. Then straightened her posture, pushing her chest out. She’d gotten them done again just last month, after all, and for lack of any date to appreciate them, Roselyn supposed her subordinate would do. His reaction was such fun.

His eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets. Roselyn couldn’t resist running her tongue over her plump lips as she wondered which was under more strain, the buttons on her blouse… or the no doubt cheap, threadbare fabric on Nick’s sweatpants. She couldn’t see anything directly; his habitual hunch was serving him well here. But that hunch was getting more pronounced as he continued to gawk at Roselyn’s tits.

Roselyn all but snapped her fingers to get his attention again. “Care to tell me about your project? Since you’re using company resources for it. And didn’t ask me for approval.”

“U-umm! The section chief signed off on it, s-said not to bother you with the paperwork… and it’s… I’m working on an… adaptive response package, for use in our sims… u-using environmental data to make the character interactions more… um… immersive… you know?”

Roselyn did not know. She did not understand any of this nonsense at a development level. Usually she would dismiss his babbling as irrelevant, or focus on the fact that the section chief was apparently enabling Nick behind Roselyn’s back, but today, she took one more step closer to Nick. This time the noise Nick made was definitely a whimper. Because Roselyn’s body was pressed right up against his.

Roselyn was hot. Of course she knew she was hot. But more than that, she knew that for all of his insolence, his tardiness, missed meetings, and open flouting of the professional standard she set, Nick was utterly smitten with her. On the rare occasions he poked his head out of his office, he always spared a glance at Roselyn, and he was nowhere near as subtle as he thought he was. Which is why Roselyn knew it would probably scramble his head to have his head practically pressed against her chest, soaked in her sweat and smothering him in her scent.

Ugh. This close it was mixing with his too. Stale sweat and something else, thicker and heavier and probably exactly what it smelled like, clung to Nick, and now it was clinging to Roselyn too. Disgusting. Letting that stain her body was just… disgusting!

Crap. She needed to focus. She recomposed her expression, smirking down at him. “Sorry, Nick, I’m afraid I don’t know. These things have just never been very intuitive to me,” Roselyn smirked. “I guess I’m just not as smart as you, huh? But then, I guess nobody is smart as the company’s best asset. Upper management’s golden boy.”

Nick squirmed, but didn’t answer. Not that it would have been very audible, given how Roselyn’s own ‘assets’ would have muffled him.

Roselyn could feel her heart pounding. She licked her lips. God, he was so weak…

“No? Nothing to say to me? Not even going to explain yourself, after you went over my head?”

Nick gasped. “O-oh, I- wait, I was… I guess I-”

“Apologise,” Roselyn almost snarled, pressing her leg between his, slamming her hands against the door on either side of him. He was trapped now. Not that he seemed likely to try and escape anyway; she felt something hard twitching against her thigh, and she didn’t miss the way his eyes briefly flicked up to the dark stains under her arms.

Ha. She knew she’d been right about catching him staring there before. Probably fantasising about how she smelled… maybe even hurrying back to his office to jerk off, imagining exactly this sort of scenario…

“Fucking freak…” she grunted.

She felt his hips buck. “S-sorry…” he gasped, barely audible with his face pressed against her tits. It wasn’t totally clear what he was even apologising for, which made sense. He had a lot to apologise for. Still, circumstances did call for a little more specificity.

“What was that?” Roselyn sneered.

“I… s-sorryyy-” Weak. Feeble. Pathetic. This was the guy who corporate let walk all over her?

“Look me in the eye when you speak to me, Nick.”

He continued to shiver and whimper for a few moments, before finally looking up at her.

Roselyn didn’t miss a beat, tucking her finger under Nick’s chin and forcing him to look right into her eyes. She glared down at him.

Two seconds of eye contact. Her glasses chimed softly, so that only Roselyn could hear. She’d gotten all she needed. She could just release Nick now, and leave him to stumble off to the bathroom to jerk off. But…

“Now. What do you have to say to me?”

“S-sorry… for… um… going b-behind your back…”

Roselyn all but shivered. God, but it felt good to humiliate him.

“And?”

“U-um… it won’t happen again…”

“It won’t happen again…?”

“R-Roselyn…”

“Try again.”

“M-Miss Roselyn!” he moaned this time.

“That’s better,” Roselyn cooed, finally stepping back, and releasing Nick. He stumbled, his expression almost as addled as it was disappointed that the contact was over. How disgusting. His hands were awkwardly splayed over his sweatpants, but not enough to cover the dark stain in them.

Gross. Awful. Pathetic. Disgusting.

… the stickiness Roselyn could feel in her underwear was just sweat, right?

She took a moment to catch her breath, and then smiled. “I trust that this little… disciplinary issue has been resolved to our mutual satisfaction?” Nick nodded meekly.

“Very good. Take at least an hour on your break, ok? Can’t have our most valuable asset burning himself out with all these late-night shifts.” Another nod, and just like that, Nick was gone, practically running for the bathroom.

Perfect.

Her cheeks were hot. God, she’d enjoyed that a little more than she should have. She really needed to get laid soon. It was obvious her… frustration was starting to affect her decisionmaking. Nick? Seriously? Ugh. One more reason to get him out of this damn office.

Roselyn smoothed her clothes out. They’d gotten a little crumpled during the… ‘impromptu disciplinary’. Especially her skirt, which…

Fuck.

Ok. She’d enjoyed that far more than she should have. Her hand lingered over her bulge for a moment. She had a whole hour. Maybe she could slip back to her office, and…

No, no, absolutely not. She had a job to do. And Roselyn really did not want to have to deal with the post-nut clarity she’d get after cumming over Nick, of all people.

Everything was perfect. The office was empty. It was just Roselyn, Nick’s office door, and the retinal scanner. This would normally make it pretty difficult to snoop on his office, but Roselyn had planned for this.

She tapped the frame of her glasses twice, activating the small built-in computer. Excellent. The entire interaction between her and Nick had been successfully recorded. She didn’t just wear the non-prescription lenses because they looked hot.

The recording would be a HR nightmare for Roselyn if it ever got out, obviously, so she was going to wipe the glasses after she was done today, before they synced back to the corporate network. But before then…

She keyed the external lens screens on, then loaded the recording of Nick’s scared, weepy little face… and zoomed in on his eyes, projecting them over her own as she looked into the retinal scanner.

There was a click, and then the door slid open.

With a glance over her shoulder, Roselyn slipped into Nick’s office.

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