Davis felt the afterglow leave him in a heartbeat, replaced by a sudden uneasy chill. There was no reason for Sarah to be here; they’d only ever had a couple of mutual friends. He wasn’t sure she’d even been to his place before. They’d got on fine, but only up until the Chelsea incident.

It didn’t help that he was pretty sure, if it came to anything, he’d be the one in trouble.

And there was probably no point pretending he was glad to see her…

Wait a minute.

He hadn’t done anything wrong. There was nothing she could possibly do to him!

Buoyed by the realisation, he plastered a halfway-false smile on over his concern and tried to project arrogance. “How nice to see you, Sarah. What can I do for you?”

“Who was that?” she began.

Davis blinked. Marina had just left, but this was so far from any question he’d expected that for the moment his brain went blank and refused to give him any ideas. “Who was who?”

Sarah slapped him. The sound seemed to echo around his skull. His head was spinning. He’d never even seen it coming; there was a furious twist in her expression, then there was a loud noise, and his head was facing a different way, a stinging ache around his jaw and a faint ache at the back of his neck, where the turn had been most painful. His face was already hot where she’d slapped him, but now he was flushing.

“Don’t fuck me around,” Sarah demanded. It wasn’t a growl, but it wasn’t far off. Davis fell back a step, mouth open, staring at her.

It was then that his brain finally caught up with all relevant circumstances. “Oh! That’s M - uhh… my boss.”

“You’re fucking your boss?” she demanded.

How does she know? he asked himself. Time seemed to stand still for a moment before he realised: this was just an obvious explanation for why Marina had been in his apartment at a reasonably late hour on a weeknight. Bosses don’t tend to visit employees unless something’s going on.

…He really should have tried putting a cover story together before anyone might notice. Davis knew, intellectually, that he was bad when he had to react in the moment - honestly, the way his last conversation with Chelsea had gone was testament to that - but he always forgot, in the moment, that bullshitting his way through never worked.

And so he tried, again and again. Doomed to do this to himself, over and over.

He was still grasping for a reply, mouth agape, when Sarah seemed to relent. “That’s awful,” she said. Davis, who had complete control over the situation and had lusted after his boss in his fantasy life for some time, didn’t understand what was wrong with it, but he’d been on the back foot in this conversation for so long that Sarah obviously didn’t notice. “Have you tried speaking to HR? Or don’t you think you can?”

This was, none of it, a conversation to have on his doorstep. For one thing, Sarah didn’t know how to have a conversation quietly enough that it couldn’t be heard by any eavesdropper, so far as Davis remembered.

“Look,” he said. “Come inside, OK? If we’re going to talk about this?”

He saw in her eyes that she had no intention of stepping inside. At that point, suddenly, he had a clear vision of what he needed to do. A moment of inspiration. Or of wishful thinking.

He wasn’t sure which, but he was already acting on impulse, just like he always did when he hadn’t bothered to plan. So as she said “No,” he was already turning in the doorway.

He pretended not to have heard her and disappeared down the short hallway back into his living room. The front door was open. Sarah hadn’t said whatever it was she’d come here to say. And he was out of sight.

If she wanted closure, she had to follow him in. Sure enough, a moment later he heard his front door close, then heard her heavy boots clomping as she approached.

Which was when he realised Marina’s signed panties were still out on his desk by his keyboard.

Davis hadn’t thought about what Sarah understood about his relationship with Marina, but he still knew that those being seen could ruin everything. He dived forward, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste. His hand fell on the panties. Fingers closed around them. And as he stumbled forward he flicked his arm at the elbow, aiming to pitch the panties out of sight behind his beanbag.

Panties are not aerodynamic. They billowed in midair, losing all their forward motion, and fluttered down onto the beanbag, in full view of the door, just as Sarah arrived.

God, he had to look like an actual fool. His cheeks still burned, no longer with resentment of the slap but with embarrassment.

He had to learn to fucking plan things.

“Oh my God,” Sarah said from behind him. “Pick yourself up, this is ridiculous.”

Davis glanced across at the panties. At least the signature was hidden.

“I already know she’s been fucking you, remember?” Sarah asked. “Why are you hiding it?”

He picked himself up and turned around, still trying to find his mental footing for the conversation. “Sarah, why are you actually here?”

Sarah visibly caught herself and corrected, and Davis registered that the whole Marina thing had been an opportunity. For a few moments there, mixed in with her anger at - well, at whatever this was - she’d had some sympathy for him. She’d thought she understood the issue, and it had distracted her.

More than that, now he was determined to use Sarah against Chelsea, losing her sympathy meant there was no easy way to get her into subliminal trance. She was much more likely to object to anything he tried.

“What’s going on with Chelsea?” Sarah asked. “What did you do?”

Something must have showed on his face, because Sarah’s expression sharpened. She leaned forward. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Davis’ stomach churned. “Perhaps you’d better tell me what you mean?”

“She got a call from you. Then, boom, she’s acting super screwy.”

Fuuuuuuuck.

OK. Maybe the problem wasn’t the lack of planning. He hadn’t even thought through his one plan properly. It hadn’t even occurred to him that someone she knew might be with Chelsea when a call went through. Not even when he’d heard the bar in the background.

He knew he must have looked like a cornered rat. Sarah was focused in on him.

Could he afford to fob her off and keep trying?

It had to be a snap decision. And his gut said no, if he kept on after Chelsea now Sarah was suspicious, it was going to go wrong somewhere along the line. Even if Sarah didn’t pick up on anything, the extra warning might put Chelsea off answering his calls.

He could try doing with Chelsea what he’d done with Marina, but that wasn’t what he wanted for her. He knew Marina had to be pretty conflicted - he’d fucked her enough to make her doubts clear, even if she wasn’t willing to speak them aloud. He didn’t want Chelsea to be conflicted. He wanted her to want him. Which was why he was spending his time making her fantasise about him. If that became her natural state, Neil would soon be a thing of the past. She’d come to him.

He cared less about Marina. He was more than OK with her feeling conflicted so long as she followed her programming.

And, he decided, he felt the same way about Sarah.

He turned slowly to his computer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. Maybe if he started playing his music she wouldn’t realise what was happening until he had her in the trance state. That would solve everything, wouldn’t it?

His thumb tapped at his space bar to set the music playing. But, after a few moments, no sound was emerging.

Right, he remembered. Because I set the music for the earbud for the test.

Shit.

“See, I find that hard to believe,” Sarah said.

The earbud was on the table. This was a stupid idea. Sarah was only an inch shorter than him, and she really enjoyed the gym; her thighs were gorgeous sculptures of steel, and the muscle on her arms was always at least a little visible. Unlike Davis, she loved working out; he had a vague memory that she did or used to do martial arts too.

But he was committed.

“It sounds like this whole thing doesn’t make much sense,” he said, filling for time. “You’re not exactly making this clear to me.”

He picked up the earbud and made his way over to her. “What exactly happened?” he asked as he approached.

Thankfully, she wasn’t immediately on edge. Didn’t step back - she was probably too dug in on the benefits of an aggressive approach to this conversation. Didn’t go defensive. If she had, he still might have held off.

*

Sarah didn’t like any of this. Davis was acting weird. As he’d never exactly had a poker face at the best of times, she had no doubts he’d somehow done something.

And the way he was approaching her was weird. In anyone else she’d have read it as a threat, but she’d always thought Davis was intimidated by her, and not just because she was only interested in women. (But that was definitely part of it.)

She rolled her eyes. “She got a phone call. From you. It didn’t exactly last long.”

“And then what?” he asked. He was standing close now; she could reach out and touch him without fully extending her arm. She paused, remembering how Chelsea had looked, trying to choose her words.

Davis lunged forward abruptly. His arm came up toward her head.

Sarah hadn’t been ready. Her stance wasn’t good for sudden reactions, but she brought up her own arm, looking for an inside block. Her eyes were wide, but her reflexes carried her even as her headspace switched from aggressive conversational to defensive physical.

Davis was still moving - she wasn’t even sure it was intentional, but his weight was carrying him forward into her, and the impact quickly had them both off balance. He had caught her defending arm with his other, and he was trying to hit her round the side of her head, maybe? Except there wasn’t much force behind that arm.

She twisted and tried to block, turning it away, but it had come very close to her ear in the meantime. She’d heard something strange, just a burst of it, like wind chimes and desert animals, coming from his hand.

That threw her, and Davis took the opportunity. He bore down on her again, releasing her hand and trying to kick her legs out from under her. A little bit of fancy footwork kept her on her feet, but the hand with the sound connected with her ear, a weird, half-hearted slap that almost deafened her for a moment. Something hung there, or seemed to; there was a snatch of music in her ear, and she tried to bat it away.

Davis seemed to panic at that. He grabbed her arm on that side with his free hand and shoved forward, pushing her up against the wall. His other hand just clapped over her ear, with the music playing inside.

She hit him in the kidneys with a short punch and got a lot of satisfaction from his startled yelp, but he managed after just a moment’s flinch to get his weight back in place. She had no idea why hearing this music was so important to him, but he was leaving himself basically undefended to make sure she did.

She hit him again, a grunt of pain mingling with the odd acoustic soundscape, and wondered at herself - it definitely seemed like that punch had been less… impactful? Like she’d thrown it with less strength.

Sarah shifted position slightly, turning into him, and went for a knee to the crotch. It should have been a simple and incredibly effective way to shut down whatever he was doing. She was strong, she was tall enough for a deep follow-through, he was undefended. Everything was right for her knee to make him scream and leave him unabke to hold her at all.

Her knee thumped into his inner thigh with almost no force whatsoever. She hadn’t been planning to go easy on him, it just…

She didn’t have the anger or the fear to drive her. Not even the adrenaline that had driven her strikes in her old martial arts classes. What was going on here made no sense, but as much as Sarah objected to what Davis had been doing with Chelsea, as much as being assaulted should push her to new heights of justified fury, she found a heavy, stultifying sensation of peacefulness floating down over her, weighing down her body and her thoughts.

Before very much longer she was still and quiet, eyes unfocused, listening to the music. Davis slowly released her, almost jumping back out of range when he’d fully let go. Through her almost unseeing eyes she could see him favouring the side where she’d punched him.

None of it seemed to matter. Having been shoved against the wall, she stayed there, leaning uncomfortably but without the motivation to move or even adjust.

“Stupid bitch,” Davis muttered angrily. Sarah felt something seem to tingle in her head, but no more than that. Without the music to soothe her angry heart, she might have felt pride. He straightened up, then winced, putting his hand to the side where she’d hit him. Whatever was happening, she’d made him pay a price for it. Although the eerie calm she felt suggested that maybe whatever he’d done was fine.

“You’re changing your mind,” he told her. “About me, I mean. You think actually I’m not so bad. Chelsea’s overreacted.”

It was strange for Sarah to realise that Davis was right about something. Stranger still that he’d bothered bringing it up, out of nowhere. But it was nice that he’d spotted her changing her mind, especially as that process had started a while ago now.

“You think Chelsea should fuck me,” Davis continued, and Sarah smiled approvingly. He was on the money about what she thought, what she felt. He’d clearly been paying attention, and that was great to know. “You even want to help, if you can just figure out how.”

She was listening with the glazed eagerness of the deeply entranced.

“You’re going to have to take my lead on that,” Davis said. Sarah watched him, a detached curiosity in her eyes. Davis had a plan. That was good to know. He might actually get Chelsea to fuck him if he was being sensible about it. “You’ll do anything to help me fuck Chelsea and break Neil and her up.”

Sarah wasn’t sure about Neil, but she knew there was something wrong with him. He definitely wasn’t good enough for her girl.

“You get to remember that I have audio which changes people,” he continued. There was doubt in his voice; he was trying out the ideas he was talking about, Sarah thought. Building the bridge as he tried to cross it. Sarah didn’t understand why he was acting like he got to decide whether she’d remember something or not, though. “You know I can change Chelsea bit by bit.” He gave a strangely unpleasant laugh. “You know I’d never use it on you, Sarah.”

And she certainly did. That had nothing to do with the music she was hearing through one ear. Davis wouldn’t do that to her.

She figured he’d probably built it entirely to change Chelsea. Just bit by bit. Just enough to get her how she should be.

Frankly she didn’t think he’d have let her in on the secret at all if he didn’t think she’d help him with Chelsea.

Davis was looking at her with an expression he usually wore just before he did something outrageous. Sarah had never been sure if it was usually him psyching himself up or if it was the moment where he decided whether to push his luck, but either way, the results were the same. What he did next was always a bad idea.

“You may be a lesbian,” he began, “but once a week, you get an urge to suck cock. It’s got to be my cock. You come over here and visit me every week just to scratch that itch.” He was watching her carefully, which did seem very odd when he was saying something so basic, so obvious. She’d thought he was going to push his luck.

Seeing her confusion, a grin spread over his face. He tapped something on his keyboard and plucked the earbud from her ear; Sarah blinked, and half-smiled as she saw him wince from stretching to do both things swiftly. Still hurting from her punches.

Why had she hit him? It didn’t make a lot of sense anymore. They’d been… playfighting? Sure. Playfighting. And she’d thrown a genuine punch. Which was cruel of her, sure, but she’d make it up to him. “You ready?” she asked, and she sank to her knees before him.

She knew he’d be able to see the need in her eyes. The urgency of her desire to suck his cock. It was embarrassing, frankly. But beneath his smirk, he nodded, fumbling with his own belt.

Sarah closed her eyes and opened her mouth. Just needing to suck cock didn’t make her a bad lesbian, but not seeing what she was actually doing definitely helped her feel better about it all.

*

Chelsea had made it back to the comfort of her own bedroom before the urge had finally grown too impossibly large to ignore. Her breathing had become heavier and heavier on the trip back, and some part of her brain had registered just how many young men (and not a few young women) had stared at her chest as it rose and fell, ore and more obvious the more agitated she became.

She was digging her top out of her waistband as she shouldered open the front door; as it closed behind her, her purse was deposited onto the drawers in the hallway. She kept walking, headed directly for the bedroom, as she struggled out of her top, tossing it to one side. Her chest felt awkwardly constrained by even the bra in the way, her breasts (her big juicy tits, a little voice somewhere in her head insisted) feeling confined, aching with need.

She didn’t even bother to shut the door behind her; in her hurry she snapped a bra strap getting her bra off and letting her big juicy tits free. Moving forward on momentum alone, she twisted to one side and flopped onto the bed hip-first, her hands already rising.

The sheer haste in what she was doing and how she was doing it boggled her mind, but that didn’t stop her. The fact she was picturing not Neil’s face but Davis’ between her tits was even stranger. But it, too, didn’t stop her. Nothing should stop her, she told herself. And nothing would. Not if she could help it.

Fuck, she needed this. Chelsea’s big juicy tits were aching to be played with until they ached from overuse. She tugged with finger and thumb, she stroked with sensitive fingertips, teased with her nails, squeezed with everything she had. She writhed on the bed in a prison of her own pleasure, driven to new heights of delight as she did. And throughout, her eyes were closed - lightly, as if she were gently asleep, not tightly, but still closed enough that they let in nothing of her real circumstances.

Instead, Chelsea pictured Davis. His smug smirk, his slim-from-under-care body, his general bad-boy-you-could-change-for-the-better demeanour. Everything about him which drove her up the wall; everything about him which had led her to warn her female friends off him from time to time. She felt, as much as she could, as if it was his hands on her big juicy tits, most difficult to do with the nails but certainly not impossible.

God, it felt so good; her body was alive as it almost never was.

She found herself sprawled back on the duvet, head against her pillows, writhing in bliss, imagining that smirk loitering over her.

Her breasts were never that sensitive. It was amazing; pleasure fizzed through her. Her back arched, her lip bitten almost enough to draw blood. Her gasps grew into eager pants as her pleasure grew.

Chelsea never came from playing with her breasts along. She rarely came from any one type of play alone; it took all kinds of tools at her disposal to push her beyond just pleased and up to the edge of orgasm.

But this time, just playing with her big juicy tits, it was quick and easy and - and -

Chelsea came screaming, nipples between thumbs and forefingers, as she tugged away at her big juicy tits. Behind her closed eyes, Davis smirked.

*

Marina took her time driving home after her time with Davis. It wasn’t, she told herself, just her feeling guilty. But at the same time, it was sort of her feeling guilty.

She knew she shouldn’t. She knew her secret work lover was a natural thing to have, and she was very happy hers was Davis. Especially now he’d finally started pushing to take control, without her ever suggesting he should. (He was sensitive that way, she thought; he picked up on things before she could vocalise them. It was probably why his music was so good.)

She just…

She also knew her husband would never understand. If the stories of her and Davis leaked and he found out, it’d be over for them both.

Marina knew she’d never do anything to upset her husband. She knew she wasn’t the kind of woman to break the sanctity of marriage. She wasn’t the kind of woman to cheat. She knew that.

Being a good wife was part of her identity, much the same way she prided herself on being a good boss and a good mom.

So what she was doing with Davis wasn’t cheating. And not telling her husband wasn’t cheating. They couldn’t be. If they were, that would either mean she wasn’t as good as she believed, or that something had happened to her when Davis started acting weird. And that wasn’t acceptable.

It was the same argument that reminded her that fucking one of her employees didn’t make her a bad boss. That favouring the employee she was fucking didn’t make her a bad boss.

The same argument that confirmed for her that abandoning her children to run out and let her secret lover fuck her while she signed her own panties for him wasn’t being a bad mom.

But on the drive home, in that strange clarity that comes with the very end of the afterglow, she found herself doubting these ideas.

It wasn’t cheating. It couldn’t be.

But it sure as hell felt a lot like it was.

Marina was feeling guilty. She’d abandoned her kids. Passed up the chance to be home when her husband arrived. She wasn’t even there now; she was driving in circles around town trying to solve the problem of her guilt.

Nothing about any of this made sense. Her secret lover was meant to be a good thing, a blessing. Not something that made her5 dwell on her own behaviour. Why, when she was with him it felt like she had no control whatsoever…

Marina smiled fondly at that thought, even through her concern. It had been fun; it had been, in fact, exactly what she’d needed, something she’d only really realised when Davis had dropped in at the office. Sometimes letting go - letting her secret lover call the shots - was exactly what she needed. She spent enough of her time elsewhere having to be in control - and not just be in control but look in control.

Maybe that was it, she decided. Maybe what she needed to do was pretend - just pretend - that she wasn’t giving up control to Davis willingly.

If she made believe like it wasn’t a choice she got to make - like Davis had some way of taking over - then she’d have nothing to feel guilty about, would she?

She decided to let herself go. To give it a try.

That was probably going to feel a lot better.

Marina smiled and went home, making plans to ride her husband into the ground as an apology. Then it’d be time for a new day, with no guilt.