Posted by Alice Weston

I bring people and their dreams together

2d

It’s been a busy few months. Hoping you’ve found the same thing.

My mentoring business is really beginning to take off, and I’m hoping to have some good testimonials for all of you to read before too long. But that’s not really what I want to talk about here. What I want to talk about is information security.

Any secret you share has a hugely increased risk that soon it won’t be a secret. Any time you take someone else into your confidence, you make it more likely someone else finds out. And in work or in your private life, that can quickly become a nightmare.

There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle, and it won’t be you whose wish gets granted.

On the other hand, if nobody ever hears your secrets, every project is a one-person job, and those are a genuine nightmare.

Think about who you let in on your secrets, and who you have working on your projects. The right people to choose may surprise you.

#careeradvice #infosec #morethanpasswords

(thumbsup) (heart) (applaud) Dirk Jones and 72 others

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*

The next step in her investigation remained tantalisingly uncertain. Joan had switched her focus, and the positive associated with that was that now, at last, she was probably looking at the right people.

A slight negative was that the right people were of similar ranks to her and, for the most part, they were the origin of the pressure on her to get it solved - making it much harder for her to openly investigate them.

She went back over her conversations with everyone, finding the paranoia that all this had stirred in her thoughts highly distasteful. Oliver Hendricks went from a confidante she could rely on to someone she had to feel suspicious of.

She’d passed him over; he’d seemed like one of the few in Mountelligence who hadn’t either taken that as a bad thing or objected to her anyway, simply on the basis that she was a woman. Her attention had, necessarily, been focused on the others, and the concern she was seeing, whichever of them she spoke to, resonated; it felt genuine, it felt real.

But for at least one of them, it had to be a lie. A front, a mask they put up while they were stabbing her in the back.

Joan had been certain she could see through those masks. But now, with her being the only executive she could be completely sure wasn’t responsible for the leaks, she had to concede: she’d been wrong, and in a bad way.

She was contemplating visiting the company’s IT department to try and schmooze access to their email accounts, even though she doubted anyone involved would have been foolish enough to use their own email, and planning the best approach to get her answers when she was, instead, provided with a possible avenue.

Her cellphone rang, an unstored, unrecognised number, in the middle of her lunch break. It was a surprising enough event that Joan almost didn’t answer it.

“This had better be important,” is what she said.

“I’m speaking to Joan Bradley,” said a feminine voice. She didn’t recognise it, but that certainly didn’t mean she didn’t know them.

“You are,” Joan acknowledged. Somehow she was more annoyed at the presumption. “And who are you?”

“I’ll provide my identity later,” the woman said. “I understand you’re looking to fix a problem with leaks?”

Joan fell silent for a moment. Obviously her initial impulse had been the wrong approach; this wasn’t a call she could afford to get a negative response to. “I don’t know who you heard that from,” she said. “But I’d have to admit that’s the case. Can I ask how you found out?”

“You can, but you won’t get an answer,” the woman said. “Honestly I’m reaching out to you for two reasons, and only two reasons. One is that we women have to stick together, and the other is that he’s an asshole.”

Joan laughed abruptly, startled out of her questions. “I don’t know which of them you’re talking about yet,” she said, “but I’d certainly believe you’re right.”

“Well, good, because I am.” There was amusement now in the other woman’s voice. “Are you familiar with the hypnotic side of the city?”

“I might be.” This was an angle she hadn’t even considered. Most of the Mountelligence execs didn’t show any signs of being interested in that kind of thing, which didn’t surprise Joan; they weren’t, by and large, what she’d call classy people in the first place. Didn’t have the taste to be interested in something so focused on the mind.

“That’s how the information’s getting out,” she was told. “There’s a party in Montlake, every first Friday of the month. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it?”

“I have a standing invitation,” Joan said drily. Not that she attended anything like as regularly. It didn’t do to give the impression your time was always available.

“Ah. Then you have everything you need to run them down,” the other woman said. “I understand the courier has no idea what they’re doing. But I also understand a fleur-de-lys is involved. Good enough?”

“You still haven’t told me-“ Joan only got that far before the sound of the call disconnecting. She stood there, frustrated, staring at the phone.

So. Somebody had tipped her off, but they were being very cagey about it. They’d given a couple of justifications for Joan to listen to them, but she wasn’t foolish enough to take that as being confirmation that the tip was good.

This could absolutely be a shell game of some sort.

It was also the best lead she currently had. Sometimes things could be both.

Joan swore to herself and started planning to attend the party. It wasn’t far into the future.

*

She knocked off work early that Friday. It was better to be out and feel like she was doing something than it would have been to linger in the office, imagining she could feel the mutterings and distrust around her.

She changed into her white catsuit and hung the sapphire pendant at the top of her cleavage, a ritual she was very familiar with and one which calmed her, helped prepare her for the evening.

The Uber driver who picked her up spent most of the drive quietly boggling at her appearance and stealing glances at her in the rear view mirror. Joan ignored him.

Usually when she attended parties like this - it was in someone’s home; the thing was that the home had three stories and a quite ridiculous square footage per floor, to the point it was possible to attend the same one as a particularly loathed enemy and for neither of you to realise the other had been there until afterwards - she found an area to which she could stake a claim, and either played with one of her select group of informal subjects or picked one or two people who caught her interest to be interested in in turn.

This time she didn’t feel she could do that. She was here to see a fleur de lys and find a lead, and as such she circulated like blood pumping through a body, almost unhesitating, moving everywhere, trying to see everything - an impossible task, of course, the way the place was laid out.

Joan was very aware she was collecting odd looks. Before too long, embarrassment would even get to her; on the other hand, before too long she might have the culprit in her grasp.

She was passing the kitchen door again, pausing to look inside, when someone she didn’t know pressed a champagne flute into her hand and ran a finger along the skin between thumb and forefinger. “Don’t wear yourself out,” she said.

Joan blinked, turning back to her. “Sorry,” she said, trained instincts making sure she started out by being polite. “Have we met?” Something about the way she’d run her finger along her hand had felt… strangely familiar, but Joan had no idea from where.

“I’ve seen you here and there, but we haven’t been introduced.” The blonde smiled, bringing out her dimples; a little rounder than Joan, a little shorter, but she was the kind of person who appears taller than they are in memory. She transferred her own champagne flute to her off hand and offered the now free hand for a shake. “Alice Weston.”

Her appearance didn’t really match the person Joan had assumed Weston to be, though the unmerited confidence was definitely there. Joan accepted the shake grudgingly. Alice ran her thumb across Joan’s hand again.

Joan did her best to keep the frown from her face. If Alice was repeatedly touching her the same way, she might be trying to set up some sort of association or prepare for a suggestibility test, and honestly either one, done so surreptitiously, made Joan like her even less.

There was nothing about the way Joan presented herself, she was confident, that might make someone take her for a submissive. So this was a challenge, except she wasn’t making it openly. Trickery.

“I’ll know you again,” she told her, firmly extracting her hand, and made off in search of a fleur-de-lys, champagne flute still in hand.

Alice Weston watched her go with a light smirk on her lips. “Will you now?”

*

The fleur-de-lys wasn’t long in coming up after that, but Joan didn’t want to believe it when she saw it. It was Marina; it was a lapel badge Marina was wearing on her jacket, which fastened over obviously bare skin.

Marina wasn’t part of Mountelligence, and she certainly wasn’t a top. She was one of the most regular of Joan’s irregular play partners, and Joan had believed Marina when she’d said that she didn’t play with anyone else.

And yet here she was at the party, when she hadn’t known Joan would be there - Joan hadn’t told anyone, in case news getting out meant tipping off whoever was doing this - and she was wearing the pin badge of this person, whoever they were, who was giving Joan so much trouble.

The only positive was that just about everyone at the party knew that Joan and Marina had an arrangement of longstanding, so when Joan took a hold of her with one hand loosely gripping her throat and kept walking forward, backing Marina into a room (in truth, barely more than a closet) for privacy.

She kicked the door shut behind her with her heel, wondering as she did so why Marina looked delighted to see her, with no hint of nervousness. “Miss!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t-“

“Hush,” Joan urged softly, cutting her off. With her free hand she slid two fingers under her sapphire pendant, holding it up. “Look,” she directed. Marina’s eyes slid obediently onto the glittering sapphire. “Stare,” Joan continued.

“Stare,” Marina echoed.

“Sink.”

“Sink.”

“Surrender.”

“Surrender.”

“Submit.”

“Submit.”

With every response, there was less and less of Marina’s personality in her voice, and it wasn’t long at all before she was empty and vacant, just as Joan wanted her. A mind so deeply accustomed to dropping for her couldn’t have fought the full force of her intensity, even if it was capable of wanting to - and Joan had seen, through this induction, that Marina didn’t want to resist her. It was good to know, but it made it harder to understand why she would betray her.

“Marina,” Joan began, “Whose are you?”

“I am Yours, Miss.”

“Who else has hypnotised you?”

“Nobody, Miss.”

“Why are you wearing this badge?”

“I was told to, Miss.”

Joan frowned. “So who else has hypnotised you?” she repeated, an intensity filling her voice that made it impossible for her to keep her voice low or soft. Even entranced, Marina clearly felt her anger, as her blank visage creased slightly into the echo of a frown.

“Nobody, Miss.”

Whoever it was, evidently, was good; they probably had a knack for hypnotic amnesia, something Joan had never bothered to learn. She wanted her conquests to remember who they had come to belong to, after all.

“When you were told to wear the badge, were you told to do anything else?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“What?”

“I was told to take a pen drive and deliver it to someone here.”

That had to be the person behind her pain. “How did you get the pen drive?”

“I woke from trance and I had it, Miss.”

“Who hypnotised you?”

“You did, Miss.”

It took Joan a few moments to process that. For one thing, it was self-evidently untrue as far as being the person who tranced her to carry this drive. But on the other, it was a plausible answer for someone who couldn’t remember the other person who’d hypnotised her.

“Fuck,” Joan said, with feeling. Another lead that wasn’t, or that only barely was.

“Yes, Miss,” Marina said. She reached forward, finding the zip to Joan’s catsuit, and worked it down, glassy-eyed, until she could slip her hand inside the opening and squirm her obediently eager fingers under the white leather to find Joan’s waiting pussy.

It hadn’t been Joan’s intention to command her - her mind had been elsewhere - but if she wasn’t going to get a breakthrough there anyway, why not?

She released the other woman’s neck, leaving her free to sink to her knees to better worship her mistress, and parted her thighs.

She took a sip of the champagne she’d been handed as Marina’s tongue joined her fingers, teasing Joan’s pussy, eagerly seeking the best way to please her, questing for her clit.

Before too long, Joan had braced her back against one wall in the confined space, one boot up over Marina’s shoulder braced against the far wall, as Marina knelt and licked and moaned and worshipped, her glassy eyes crossing in unfocused, devoted obedience to a one word order.

Joan wasn’t angry with Marina - she hadn’t betrayed her, except that someone had chosen to use her as a way to attack Joan - but she was angry, and having Marina worship her messily was a great way to burn off some of that anger and to turn that frustration into brimming satisfaction. Marina had no idea how much she was atoning for by her service, not even after Joan had taken her head by the hair, after she came, and ground Marina’s face into her juices, and then made her lick Joan clean.

She left the party still frustrated, but with a delighted spring in her step. And if some people might have stared at her as she went, well, that was their problem. It wasn’t hers.

*

Whatever small victories she had crafted for herself, she was still very little closer to finding the leak. At the same time, the pressure on her had risen. Just over the weekend, there were nearly thirty new emails in her inbox just on the question of leaks, and reading them made for an extremely clear message; it wasn’t that her job depended on solving the problem, because that suggested that the decision hadn’t been taken.

The decision had been taken, and it wasn’t in her favour. If she could undo it, on the other hand, that would all go away. Nobody would officially take her job out of jeopardy; nobody would be willing to admit it had ever been at risk in the first place.

She woke up at four a.m. on Monday morning after a fitful night’s sleep, and it struck her then that she hadn’t slept well the night before, either. When she put her mind to it, she wasn’t sure when she’d last had a good night’s sleep; it definitely hadn’t been in the last few months.

This was something she’d vaguely been aware of, but she’d put it aside as stress over rumours of the leak. Lying there in bed, that morning (or night, depending on your personal definition of when night becomes day), she realised it actually predated that some way.

She couldn’t face going into the office that Monday. After dozing fitfully until well past her alarm usually went off, she logged on from her laptop and picked away at tasks as best she could until nightfall, when she logged off and sat down, staring into space, quiet.

Then she picked her laptop back up and composed an email to the board.

*

Gentlemen of the Board,

I understand the concern with which my department must currently be viewed. I also understand that the responsibility to resolve this situation falls to me.

However, I am finding that doing so while simultaneously attending to the Business As Usual of my department is a task for more than one person.

Accordingly, I write to notify you that I am taking an indefinite leave of absence, beginning immediately, with the intention to find the culprit and bring them and the evidence required to our Legal team.

Sincerely,

Joan Bradley

*

Just sending the email had given her peace, although she still wasn’t sleeping as well as she wanted. She didn’t remember waking, but was still tired when she rose the next day to an email confirming that her leave of absence had been accepted.

The relief was enough to help her, but without a direct plan of action she elected instead to take Tuesday to recover her thoughts and regroup.

Mid-morning Wednesday, her phone rang.

“Did you find your surprise?” the woman on the other end of the line asked, when Joan finally answered. The same person who’d called her about the party.

“I don’t know what your game is, but-“

“Oh, are we playing a game?” There was amusement in her voice, but the question brought Joan up short. It was like she’d taken a deep breath, found herself looking at the call dispassionately. She had learned something at the party, after all; it just hadn’t got her anywhere. “We can stop if you’d like.”

“No,” Joan found herself saying. “I want to play the game.” If she went along with it, she told herself, she might learn something.

“I’m so glad to hear it. I happen to know where you can find more information.”

Joan found herself smiling. “You just happen to know, do you?”

“Fishing for information? No, we do this my way. Mayflower Park Hotel, any time after two this afternoon. Tell the concierge your name is Madison Silver.”

“That… sounds like a trap.”

“Don’t you want to play the game?”

“I want to play the game,” Joan agreed. As the click of the call ending sounded in her ear she found herself filled with a peace and calm.

She had the next step of her quest in her sight.

*

Joan waited until a couple of hours after the time given, just in case there was a trap. A couple of extra hours was going to take the focus out of anyone’s watchfulness, and that might be the difference between beating the trap and not.

The Mayflower Park Hotel was a beautiful old building, and the hotel that occupied the building was very exclusive in its turn. Joan had therefore opted for a white power suit rather than her catsuit, but she wore the blue sapphire pendant in any case, on the theory that it had to be good luck.

She gave the name Madison Silver and an extremely disapproving concierge smiled politely, gave her a room number, and handed over a key. Joan walked over to the elevator seething with the absolute certainty that he had presumed her to be a hooker; the only reason he’d be that mad was if both he thought she was a hooker and he was mad that he wasn’t getting a cut.

She let herself into the room, surprised to find out it was still uninhabited, or at least the lights were out.

She flipped the switch and went further into the room, curious but cautious.

Caution was abandoned when she saw the objects lying on the bed.

A wheeled suitcase had been hoisted onto the bed, laid on its side, and opened up. What was lying beside it now had presumably been lying in it before, although they must have left a lot of empty room inside.

A ball gag with a purple ball on a white leather strap, a pair of restraints with a dark purple material mostly but not completely covering the gleaming steel that showed their strength, a larger pair of cuffs in the same style, and three small padlocks, the keys in each one.

Joan responded immediately, before even stopping to think about it. She crossed directly to the bed, marching like a woman with a purpose, and picked up the larger pair of restraints. One by one, never stopping to consider her actions or even wonder what she was doing, she fastened them around her ankles, then clipped them together, removed the key from one of the padlocks, and then locked it around the clip.

With her ankles bound she picked up the ball gag like it was the most natural thing to do, just an obvious action to take. It took her a couple of fumbling attempts to fit the ball firmly into her mouth, but once it was in fastening the strap behind her head was easy. Again, she didn’t rely just on the buckle but removed the key from another tiny padlock before securing it in place, taking care to keep it from catching in her long dark hair.

She added a cuff to each wrist and hooked the padlock in place along the clip, ready to fasten it, with both hands in front of her, and took out and dropped the key. Then she reached both hands behind her back, fumbled the clip into place, and pushed the padlock sealed.

Once it had audibly clicked into place, Joan suddenly thought What the fuck did I just do?

She tried to make a noise but it was, of course, stifled by the gag. “Mmmmng!”

Her restraints did not give when she tried to test them with her own strength. She turned around, sitting on the edge of the bed and trying, now she could take her weight off her heels, to pull apart the ankle cuffs, but that didn’t work either. “Fffffc!”

Frustrated, she stamped one foot on the floor three times in quick succession, and immediately she heard the bathroom door open.

Someone had been in there the whole time, waiting for her. Someone who had set the trap. Someone who had known, somehow, that once she’d walked into the trap that Joan would obligingly silence and truss herself.

Alice Weston walked out in front of Joan and, as she struggled back to her feet, pushed her back down onto the bed. There was a glint in her eye, a smile on her lips.

Her blonde hair was scraped back and tied into a braid that probably ran all the way down her back; for the moment she was wearing black jeans so tight they must have been personally tailored and a black vest top with a neckline that plunged deep. Her hips and her well-fed chest really stood out; the bright crimson lipstick was, to Joan’s tastes, garish, but if she could look at it abstractly, she’d admit that the presentation was attractive and powerful.

Not that Joan was exactly of a mind to look at the woman that way right now. She started to sit back up on the bed, but Alice stepped forward, one thigh either side of Joan’s belly, and she put one hand on her shoulder, pinning her in place. The other hand gently tapped at the underside of one of Joan’s breasts. “Good old Joan Jiggles,” the blonde grinned, and something shifted in Joan’s head.

“So I’m curious,” Alice said, “and I know you can’t answer too well right now but don’t worry, I can read you like a book.

“How much do you really remember, do you think?”

Joan’s eyes widened as something slowly began to unfold…

*

She had been drinking champagne that night. A celebration. Another mediocre suit who’d pretended to her position had shot his shot and failed. Had to leave the company in the fallout. She’d been enjoying herself, when Alice sat down next to her, all smiles.

“What are we celebrating?”

“Never you mind,” she’d said, and then, on reflection, “Achievement.”

There had been that same glint in Weston’s eye when she said “You must be very proud.” Joan didn’t even dignify that with a response.

“Of course, pride can be a weakness…” She reached out, running her thumb along the edge of Joan’s hand, and Joan’s attention sharpened. “Pride is all about yourself. Even pride in your team is about you; how smart you are to support them. How clever. And pride doesn’t allow you to think of other things.” There was something in the cadence of Alice’s words that should have made Joan concerned, but she dismissed it. This jumped-up little thing surely couldn’t believe she was capable of entrancing Joan.

…

They were somewhere else. Joan was on her back, on a bed maybe? She could feel the buzz of a vibrator shuddering through her, setting the jelly her mind had become quivering, but she was staring at her own sapphire pendant, being held above her head. “Are you really sure you wouldn’t obey, just because it could hurt you?” came Alice’s teasing voice.

She had swallowed. “Yes,” she’d said. Alice had laughed, then tutted. Joan felt a hand on her tit, shaking its flesh, making it jiggle. She jiggled. Joan Jiggles.

“Pride,” she said again. “So proud… but let’s see if you’re right. Listen closely, now.”

“Yes,” Joan had agreed.

…

“…thoughts come and thoughts go. They’re as transient as the bubbles in that champagne you’re drinking. Look at your drink, my dear.”

Joan looked, just as she had been looking into Alice’s peaceful brown eyes a moment earlier.

“See those bubbles fizz and pop?” Joan nodded. “Let’s try an experiment. When you see one pop, giggle for me.”

It seemed an odd experiment but Joan didn’t think about that much. One popped, and she giggled obligingly.

As she did so, Alice slid her hand inside Joan’s open catsuit, taking hold of her breast, and shook it. She felt her flesh quiver. “One giggle,” Alice said, “means one jiggle. And one jiggle is enough to make you happy. For now.”

…

Joan laid back on the pillow on her own bed, closed her eyes, and seemed to drop away to sleep immediately.

A few moments later, Joan Jiggles opened her eyes. Without help from her shoulders or elbows, she sat straight up in bed in one fluid movement, her eyes staring straight ahead, unmoving, blank. Her hands came up and jiggled her tits and she smiled dreamily. Happy, for now.

Her legs swung as one to the side of the bed and as her feet touched the floor, her torso turned to face the same way. She rose and walked out of the bedroom, a slow, languorous stroll, the walk of a proud woman who enjoyed her body and the pleasures of her flesh, who had no time for questioning or self-doubt in that pride.

She stood at the desk downstairs where the company laptop rested, opened it up, and logged in.

…

“Do your achievements come at the expense of others?”

“Yes,” Joan said. She didn’t feel bad about it. Everyone’s did. Her uncle had taught her that before he ever recommended her for a job.

Her uncle hadn’t told her that mostly men secured the achievements at the expense of women. She’d learned that later, but that just meant she felt even less bad about it.

“Who?”

“Men.”

There was a gentle slap at her tit. It jiggled for a moment, and she smiled emptily. “Be specific. Who would be your enemy? Who would pay to see you gone?”

…

Alice was sitting on her face, jiggling her tits as Joan worshipped her pussy with all the joy, reference, and deference that she usually received rather than gave.

Every jiggle was a little silent giggle bubbling up through her soft jiggly tits, Alice had taught her.

Alice had taught her that Joan Jiggles was just as obedient as Joan Bradley wanted to be dominant.

“If little Joanie deserves to be so proud,” she was saying, “she’ll know you’re there. She’ll work it out, and she’ll remember me, and then we can talk. Right?”

“Ymmf,” Joan answered through a mouthful of cunt.

“But you want to be good, Joan Jiggles, you want to be very good and obedient and successful for me, don’t you?”

“Ymmf.”

“So you’re going to hide from her.” Her breathing came raggedly now, her voice nowhere near as level as it had been when she began, and the way she was groping Joan’s tits had a major new urgency. Joan Jiggles knew she was pleasing Alice, just as she should, she knew she was being very good and obedient and soon she would be successful in making her cum. “You’re… you’re going to outwit her… and you’re going tooOOO make me a… a whole… mess… ungghhhh…”

Alice came, then, painting Joan’s face with her reward, hands squeezing and tugging at her jiggly tits not through calculation but reflex, lost to the pleasure. Joan Jiggles had never been so proud.

“…a whole mess of money,” Joan finally told her. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes, Miss,” Joan said, and wished she had been told to lick Alice’s cum off her face and drink it all down.

But she hadn’t, so she waited.

*

Alice grinned. “Remember everything now? Good.” She jiggled Joan’s tits again, and to her own horror she could feel her lips try to twitch into a smile around the ball gag.

“We’ve got work to do,” Alice said. “I only really had a bit of time to work on you first time. I wasn’t entirely sure you’d still be ready to bind yourself for me, truth be told. So I didn’t want to bring you back home until I was sure.”

She rose from the bed, taking hold of Joan by the lapels of her power suit, and pulled her upright. “I wouldn’t try running out the door,” she told her. “Not while you’re all dressed up like this. Besides, I’ve got the keys now.” She grinned, and she lifted the suitcase and set it down on the floor, still on its side.

Joan stared at her in shock. Alice reached behind her, finding her hand, and squeezed it for a moment, running her thumb from thumb to index finger. She snapped her fingers and pointed at the briefcase.

Trembling, Joan stepped in. Alice stroked her hair, then took hold of it, and brought her hand lower and lower, until Joan was kneeling in the briefcase.

Alice snapped her fingers again and Joan went limp, allowing Alice to fold her into the case and zip her in.

Through the fabric she could hear Alice calling for a porter to collect her case, but she could not cry out, and she could not move.