“Turn around slowly,” the woman in authority directed her. “A full circle.”

Joanne did as she was told, moving as slowly as if she was in a dream. She was, she noticed, not really taking in the office around her; it seemed somehow vague under her gaze as she rotated. That in turn made it all seem even more dreamlike. She completed her circuit and came to a halt, faltering slightly, but aware now that it had felt surprisingly good for her to do as she was directed.

“Very good,” the woman in authority said. Joanne felt happier, lightheadedly so, and didn’t really understand why. Not that she thought it mattered. Very little mattered to her at that moment; her list of priorities had abruptly become very simple, with only one entry. The crime statistics were entirely forgotten. “Do you actually keep yourself in shape, or do you dress to hide a little slack?”

A conscious Joanne would have refused to answer the question, considering it rude; even in the state she was in, she doubted the women in authority would have asked the same question of someone conscious. Joanne was silent in any case; she didn’t know how to answer.

With a chuckle, the woman in authority made her way around the desk and up to Joanne. “You don’t know what to make of that,” she said cheerfully. “You probably don’t know what to make of me either, really. What matters to you is that I have authority, not who I am, after all.”

She took Joanne by the hand, lifted it, inspected it. “No wedding ring,” she said. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“No,” Joanne answered softly.

“Wny not?”

Joanne fielded this question quite often, usually in professional situations. Her answer was always that the few men she met in her line of work were unsuitable. She opened her mouth and was surprised to hear herself say “My last relationship ended so badly I’ve avoided any possible repeat performance.”

Confusion appeared across her face. Her last relationship had been a decade ago. She had forcibly put Ewan out of her mind four years afterwards.

Was that still affecting her?

The woman in authority had released her hand. Instead she was slipping the jacket from Joanne’s shoulders, where she dropped it onto Joanne’s office chair behind her. She made an assessing noise. Largely positive. “You keep fit?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The woman ran her hands down the fabric of Joanne’s blouse, close against her skin, as if assessing what lay beneath. Then she began to unbutton it, taking her time, Joanne realised she was excited by the prospect of someone else undressing her, now that it was actually happening. Or by the prospect of an authority undressing her.

With the blouse drawn open, Joanne remained still while the woman inspected her bra-clad cleavage, then ran a hand down her belly. “Delicious,” she said. “Does your job require you to keep fit?”

“No.” Once upon a time, it had. She’d left that behind bit by bit, as promotions kept her in the office more and more.

“Do you enjoy keeping fit?”

“No.” Not now that it involved blocking out time to go to the gym. She didn’t like the time, the travel, or the way every pair of eyes in there was judging her, one way or another. Joanne didn’t like to be judged. Except, she was discovering, by the woman in authority. She didn’t know why this woman was an exception. Really she didn’t know anything about her.

“So why do you do it?”

“I don’t want to be what my ex called me.”

Joanne had thought she couldn’t remember the specifics of her last few arguments with Ewan. Now that she’d said that, the words frumpy old bitch echoed through her head as freshly as if they’d been said yesterday.

Maybe burying your resentments didn’t work as well as she’d believed.

“What do you want to be?” the woman in authority asked. This was another question that was more difficult for Joanne to answer, that didn’t have a simple answer waiting between brain and lips; Rather than lift her consciousness enough to think, she reversed what Ewan had said and called it near enough. “A hot, mature woman.” Was bitch an opposite to woman? She didn’t want to sound like a pushover. She did want to sound sexy, which Ewan clearly hadn’t found her. Was woman sexy enough? The only words for sexy women coming to mind were milf and whore.

Some part of Joanne’s brain formed a determined resolution to find a discreet therapist in the event she got to make her own decisions in the future. Possibly also to leave the police. It felt like she’d absorbed some negative ideas and just never noticed until compelled to speak them aloud.

“Well, good news,” the woman said. “Mission successful.” She leaned her head forward and planted a kiss on one of Joanne’s breasts, just above the braline. Joanne’s spine and scalp tingled with a sudden giddiness, but she didn’t react; she just stayed standing where she was.

“At least above the waistband,” the woman in authority continued. “But I’m sure further inspection will pay off for you.”

Joanne heard a sound she knew, even without having the initiative to look at her desk, meant the woman in authority was sorting through her stationery pot. In spite of this realisation, she was surprised to hear three brisk snips from her scissors, after which the woman in authority took hold of one bra cup and pulled, drawing the whole bra out; it was still clasped at the back, but with the straps and the connection between cups sliced it came away around her easily without disturbing her bra.

Joanne whimpered. Somehow this was the thing that underlined for her just how little agency she had at that moment. She wasn’t used to having no agency.

She was pretty sure it wasn’t meant to feel that good.

The woman in authority unbuckled Joanne’s belt. “Turn to face away from me,” she said.

Joanne did as she was told. Following the wishes of authority felt strange, she realised; she was used to being the authority herself. Had she grown used to it?

Police were citizens too, some part of her said. So it should be easy to move between the two states, even if it didn’t feel that way.

The woman in authority lifted Joanne’s shirt and ran a hand affectionately over the folds of her back. A satisfied noise emerged from behind the Chief Superintendent, and then the shirt was allowed to fall again. The woman in authority stepped in close behind her, her chest pressing against Joanne’s back. She reached around, found the zipper in Joanne’s waistband, and undid it.

Joanne remained stock-still as the woman in authority pulled her pants down, then squeezed one buttock through her panties. After the squeeze she hefted it; Joanne was left with a sense of being assessed. The thought emerged from nowhere that she wanted to measure up. But that made sense; the woman in authority was inspecting her body, and Joanne wanted to be a hot mature specimen of a woman.

…Where had specimen come from, she wondered? And why did thinking of herself that way feel so good and so right? A specimen was surely someone else’s judgement, if a positive one. Could it be that simple, and she that shallow?

The woman in authority then reached between Joanne’s legs to run a finger along her panties, stroking the mound down from the front to the middle. Joanne heard an almost girlish giggle as that exploratory figure discovered fabric not still wholly dry. “You’re enjoying this,” the woman said.

It didn’t seem to need an answer, so Joanne said nothing. The woman chuckled. “Say ‘Yes, Madame’ when you don’t disagree with me.”

“Yes, Madame,” Joanne answered obediently. Doing as she was told, she thought, seemed to perk her up. Without realising it, she stood slightly straighter. The woman in authority took her by one arm and the other hip and turned her back to face her desk, moving behind her as she did so.

The woman in authority took her hands away. A few moments listening to the rustle of fabric later, Joanne heard the squeak that always signalled someone sitting in her office chair.

“Joanne, have you ever been with a woman?”

“No,” she said.

“Now, Joanne, I know you’re smarter than that. Try again?”

For a brief moment Joanne wondered if she was being called a liar, but she couldn’t think of anything. And then she realised. Of course.

As a Chief Superintendent herself, Joanne detested having to spell out how a new order applied in all hypotheticals. Those under her had to learn, interpret, and enforce laws; in Joanne’s opinion, this should prove a basic intelligence test of its own. Yet here was an equivalent, and with her thoughts largely out of reach from her trance state, she had been complacent enough in her unhesitating submission not to notice. “No, Madame,” she said.

“Much better,” the woman in authority said warmly. “But Joanne, you know what you like to do to please your own body, don’t you?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“You know what men can do to please you before they even reach for their cock, don’t you?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Take off your bra and lay it on the desk there.”

“Yes, Madame,” she said again briskly. She slipped the straps down from her shoulders and reached back to find and undo the clasp, then dropped her bra over her keyboard.

This was the least she’d worn in someone else’s presence in years. It was surprising to her how much that excited her.

“Turn back around, Joanne.”

“Yes, Madame.” She turned on the spot. The woman in authority was sitting in her chair, looking up at her, and naked from the waist down. Joanne was not sure how to react to this. On the one hand, it was her chair, and she felt obscurely that she should have the right to complain. On the other, this woman held authority over her. It did not do to question authority.

“Do you speak any other languages?”

“Spanish, Madame.” It had been useful to know some earlier in her career, especially when trying to persuade female witnesses to open up. Later it had been politically beneficial that she was capable in the language. As with any law enforcement officer, the gaps in Joanne’s vocabulary in her second language were very different to the gaps in someone else’s; whether talking to suspect or victim, words relating to crimes come up more often than haute cuisine or career tracks.

“Not French?”

“No, Madame.”

“A shame,” the woman in authority said. “Your legs are crying out for fishnet tights and a short black skirt.” She said it as if Joanne knowing French would somehow have suited the legs; Joanne didn’t understand.

Not understanding wasn’t the same as disagreeing, she decided. “Yes, Madame.”

“Let’s try that a little differently. In French, yes becomes oui and no becomes non. Do you understand?”

Joanne was not sure that she did, but she wanted to please the woman, and a failure to show initiative had led to being lightly shamed already. “Oui, Madame,” she said, and hoped this was correct.

The woman in authority’s delighted laugh was almost musical. Joanne squeezed her thighs together against the shudder that this sent through her. “Very good,” the woman said warmly. “But let’s add a little more, shall we? When you speak, you speak with your best attempt at a French accent. Do you understand?”

“Oui, Madame,” Joanne said again. There was that giddying helpless feeling again, as if she had somehow missed the chance to opt out of what was happening. She wasn’t sure she ever actually had done; certainly if she had, she hadn’t realised it was happening.

“Tell me you understand,” the woman in authority said.

“Oui, Madame. I understand,” Joanne said, and it was surprising to her to hear words in her own voice loaded with such a broad, almost parodic French accent. She found herself feeling… lesser… but then, the woman had authority over her. Wasn’t it right that she felt lesser?

“Now, Joanne,” the woman said, What do you know about the French?”

Again, Joanne had the brief impression of a trick question in front of her, one which could be answered ‘wrongly’ and where a wrong answer would be a problem. But equally, as she stood almost to attention, naked except for her panties, in front of a seated smirking woman whose legs were bare, it came to her that there were a number of context clues.

The woman in authority, she decided, was testing her. But the test was not a trick question; it was more like a test of her willingness to pay attention. “They are horny, Madame,” she said, although the h almost disappeared and the th- sounded a lot more like a z-. “Always they are horny. And they like to eat.”

The woman in authority smiled and Joanne knew she had been right, which made her feel happy. Another stray thought bubbled across her mind; at the start of the conversation, the woman had said something about a problem with two of her officers, hadn’t she?

“Well, since you understand that, Joanne, I’m sure you’re feeling horny yourself. Always horny. Is that right?”

“Oui, Madame,” Joanne said. A dreamy “Always horny,” escaped her lips afterwards, and she blushed. She seemed to have learned so much about herself, about her role, about the people under her, just since this woman walked into her office, from the questions the woman asked and from her own answers to them.

How much of herself had she buried without realising? How much had she changed and never noticed?

Was a bad French accent an acceptable compensation for this realisation?

“On your knees,” the woman in authority said, and she again answered “Oui, Madame,” as she sank down to her knees.

“Very good. Now, since you’re so horny…” She smiled. “And since you don’t have much experience with other women yet, I thought it would be fun to put you to the test. Don’t you agree?”

“Oui, Madame,” she said. The gradually quieter voice in her head that kept trying to offer up logic wondered what the test meant; there was an obvious direction, but the woman in authority had shifted from one topic to another so many times.

“So, show me what you can do to please another woman, using what you have learned in pleasing yourself.”

“Oui, Madame,” Joanne replied. She leaned forward on her knees, breathing in the scent of the other woman. She was, she suddenly realised, excited.

She lifted one hand from her side, traced it along the other woman’s thigh, and when she parted her thighs Joanne trailed her fingertips over the woman in authority’s pussy lips. There was a waiting slickness there which delighted her, a readiness that intoxicated her.

Her gaze slid up to the face of the woman in authority, and seeing the anticipation written across her features was what pushed her into slipping her fingers inside. The sudden moue of delight on the other woman’s lips was galvanic.

Joanne was doing this, was having this impact. It was her actions that made someone feel this good, and in turn that felt wonderful. She found a rhythm, began to stroke, matched her action to the woman’s responses, feeling almost as if it was those responses which shaped her.

She was an instrument. Finely-tuned to the other woman’s reactions, and responding to them so swiftly that her own conscious mind barely seemed to be involved.

The woman in authority had almost certainly been enjoying someone else recently, Joanne thought; something under her fingers, some quality of touch or slickness, seemed to tell her so, though she could never have put the why of that into words.

It didn’t matter, in any case. Joanne found herself experiencing what she was doing abstractedly, as if she was an item performing a function rather than a person doing something they’d decided to do.

By the time she leaned forward to add her tongue’s enthusiasm to that of her fingers, Joanne didn’t seem to be thinking at all anymore. She responded to the woman in authority’s reactions. Adjusted performance. And that adjustment made her feel happy, excited her. But there was no question of thinking, of decision. She was barely aware beyond what she needed awareness of to function.

Then the woman in authority came, and Joanne’s awareness seemed to freeze in the elation of that moment, leaving her empty and unaware and achingly happy.

*

“...as of now, you may not remember those instructions, but you will follow them nonetheless,” Madame was saying. “Do you understand?”

“Oui, Madame.” Joanne was standing. Her panties and bra lay discarded on her desk, the panties soaked through. For the first time Joanne understood that the moment her mind had stopped tracking current events had not been driven by Madame’s orgasm but by her own, following hot on its heels, and no doubt driven by it.

“Good, then. Pull up your pants.”

“Oui, Madame.” Stooping where she stood, she did so.

Madame picked up her jacket and passed it to her. “You have your orders,” she said. “You will carry them out for me.”

“Oui, Madame,” she said. Holding the jacket in one hand and her purse in the other, she walked out of her office into the anteroom where her assistant Hugh still sat. His smile had not changed; his posture had not noticeably changed, either, and Joanne would happily have believed he had not moved in the entire time she had been talking to Madame.

The accent Madame had imposed on her was impossible to avoid when saying Hugh’s name; the first letter disappeared entirely. “Hugh,” she said, walking up to him. “I need you to look up the measurements of two of our officers.”

Hugh’s expression seemed to flicker for a moment, but the smile he gave her was warm and genuine. “Of course, ma’am” he said, and if he wondered why she was speaking with an accent, he didn’t show it. “Which two?”

“Trevor Packham and Victoria Ashford,” she answered crisply. While he was running the search for her, she said “Do you recognise the names, Hugh?”

The accent was so pronounced, especially around his name, that hearing herself made her squirm. It was a delicious feeling, but she hoped he hadn’t noticed.

“I don’t think I do, ma’am,” he said at first, eyes on the screen. Then, more thoughtfully, he said “I think Packham may have hit ten years with the department this year. I don’t recall hearing of trouble with him, but I don’t recall commendations or talks of promotion either.”

“Hm. Thank you,” she said. “Email me their records.”

“Of course, ma’am.” One of the things she liked about Hugh was that he was too polite to indulge his curiosity, but you could always see that he was dying to know. She didn’t tell him. She never did. But she smiled more warmly.

By that time Hugh had picked up a post-it pad and was scribbling down measurements, first for one then the other. He tore off the top leaf and handed it to her. “Anything else, ma’am?” he asked.

“Non,” she answered. “I’ll be out for the rest of the day.” She turned toward the door that led into the station’s corridor.

“Uh, ma’am?” Hugh piped up, sounding nervous. “Your blouse is undone.”

“Oh!” She looked down at herself, her tits on full display through her open blouse, and laughed. “Have I been flashing you this whole time?”

He was bright crimson. “I’m afraid so, ma’am.”

Joanne hung her jacket over the elbow of the arm holding her purse, then reached out with her freed arm and pulled his face into her tits, her eyes glassy. She could not have told you why she had done so, but there was a humming satisfaction in the back of her brain that she had started to associate with Madame.

Hugh himself made a blurt of startlement and struggled initially, but seemed to draw in a breath of her scent and relax. He began planting kisses against her titflesh until she released her hold on his head, which she did the moment he planted the tenth kiss.

She then set down everything she was carrying and buttoned up her blouse. “That’s better, oui?” she asked.

“Yes, uh, oui, ma’am. D’accord.” He was still blushing crimson. She wondered at the hint of absence in his eyes, but it passed quickly while she was putting on her jacket. She collected her purse, favoured him with a wink, and walked out into the corridor.

She did not know how well she was obeying her instructions, but she still felt the pleasure reward for doing so, and did not question why.

She wondered idly why Hugh had begun kissing her. It seemed out of character for him. Not being allowed to consider Madame as a reason, however, she was unable to come up with anything satisfactory.

At the door to the parking lot she looked at the measurements Hugh had written down, committing them to memory, then dropped the paper in the trash. She got into her car and drove out to where she vaguely remembered the existence of a local sex shop, squirming in her seat the whole time.