My New Boss Asked Me to Stay the Night

Quitting the flower shop was the healthiest thing I’d done in years. The gossip, my boss’s absurd demands, the sideways looks from my coworkers: all of it had become a knot of tension I carried from the moment I left the house. The last week I couldn’t even sleep properly. When I handed in my resignation and saw the manager’s face, I felt, for the first time in months, like I could breathe again.

I sent my résumé everywhere. Five days later, while I was making the bed, my cell phone rang from a number I didn’t have saved. I answered almost on instinct.

“Good morning, Camila,” said a woman’s voice, low and polite. “I saw your résumé. I’m interested. Could we meet tomorrow at nine?”

She gave me an address in a residential neighborhood, not an office. I told her yes without thinking.

I got there five minutes early. The house was two stories, with a high wall, carefully tended plants, and a doorbell that sounded like a long piano note. She opened the door herself. And I was speechless.

Licenciada Mariana Beltrán had to be about thirty-seven. She wore a black dress, short, fitted at the waist, and suede heels that made her look like a woman from a magazine. Her brown hair fell in waves to the middle of her back. Impeccable skin, discreet perfume, a perfect smile. With my jeans and sneakers, I felt like I was in pajamas.

“Come in,” she said, and led me down a hallway to a study with a glass wall facing the garden.

The interview lasted half an hour. She asked precise questions, wrote down two things in a notebook, and before I had finished explaining why I’d left the flower shop, she looked up and cut me off.

“Do you have any problem starting today?”

***

On the first day she barely spoke to me. I was at a desk across from hers, typing up spreadsheets, answering two calls, taking in a messenger. She typed without looking up, her back very straight. Every so often she’d get up to go to the kitchen and come back with a coffee she didn’t offer me. I didn’t dare break the silence.

That went on for two weeks. I started to understand the routine: the licenciada handled contracts for three or four large firms. She worked from home because, as she told me one of the few times we talked, she’d grown tired of hallways and gossip years ago. The sentence made me smile. I understood her better than she realized.

Things got strange at the beginning of the third week.

One Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon, while I was answering the landline, she came up behind me and put her hand on my waist to hand me a folder. She left it there longer than necessary. Another day she leaned over my shoulder to look at the screen and brushed my neck with her breath. Another time she tucked a strand of hair behind my ear like I was a daughter.

You’re being suspicious, I told myself. She’s a single older woman, too proper for that kind of thing.

But I couldn’t sleep спокойно.

***

On Friday she asked me to print some files from her phone. While she was seeing to a client in the living room, I plugged the phone into the computer and started looking. Her WhatsApp was still open in the browser. I wasn’t going to open it. Really, I wasn’t going to open it.

I opened it.

The first chat was with a man. I read it from bottom to top. They were talking about me. “The new girl looks good, let’s hope she lasts longer than the last one,” he said. “This one is prettier. She has the lips I like,” she replied. I kept scrolling. And scrolling. I found another contact saved with just one initial: “V.” The conversations were long, full of photos I closed quickly without opening, though I did manage to catch a shaved cunt and an open mouth full of semen before the screen changed. The last one was from eight months ago. After that, silence.

I heard footsteps in the hallway. I closed everything, straightened up in the chair, and when she walked in I heard myself say:

“Excuse me, licenciada, I can’t find those files.”

She looked at me. That wasn’t a boss’s look. It was the look of someone who knows exactly what the other person has been doing and decides, for now, to let it go.

“Don’t worry,” she said softly, and came closer.

She leaned in behind the chair, rested her hand on mine over the mouse, and left it there. I felt her hair against my cheek. I felt her breath on my ear.

“Here they are,” she whispered. “Print them, please.”

She took her hand away slowly, dragging her fingers along my forearm, and on the last stretch the back of her hand brushed my breast over my blouse, barely, just enough to make my nipple harden. Goosebumps rose on my skin. My heart was pounding against my blouse.

***

On Monday she invited me to lunch after hours. “I cooked too much,” she said, as if that were something casual. While I was setting out the plates, I bent down to reach the glasses on the low shelf. When I stood up, I caught sight, in the glass reflection of the pantry, of her eyes fixed on my body. She didn’t look away when she saw me notice. She smiled faintly, as if that too were part of the game.

We ate almost in silence until she set down her utensils.

“Camila, are you comfortable in this job?”

“Yes, licenciada. Very much.”

“I’m glad, because I wanted to ask you for something. My previous secretary kept me company sometimes after hours. It’s voluntary, of course. I compensate well. I live alone, and honestly, I don’t like sleeping alone anymore.”

I swallowed.

“Let me think about it. I have a boyfriend, I’d have to talk to him.”

“You have a boyfriend?” Her voice dropped half a tone. “I thought I understood that the vacancy asked for single women.”

There was a long silence. I was seeing my salary, my rent, the two months it had taken me to get that interview. I was also seeing the chat with the initial “V,” and that other woman whose end I had no idea about.

“I can stay today,” I said, and my own voice sounded чужой.

“Today?” She raised her eyebrows, pretending surprise I didn’t believe for a second. “And your boyfriend?”

“He’s working. We weren’t going to see each other today.”

She smiled, and that was the first time her smile felt complete.

“Then make yourself comfortable. You’re at home.”

***

She lent me a clean robe, folded carefully, as if it had been ready for a long time. I showered, trembling. I sat in front of the television and didn’t understand a word of what was happening on the screen. I could feel her moving through the house, tidying things, speaking softly on the phone, laughing with someone.

At eleven she turned off the living room lights and appeared in the hallway.

“Camila, are you coming?”

“Where do I sleep?”

“With me. The bed is big.”

I felt the blood rush to my feet.

“I can sleep on the sofa. I don’t mind.”

“No, with me. It’s no trouble. Besides, I already told you I don’t like sleeping alone.”

I walked slowly to the bedroom. She was already lying there, with a low light beside the bed. I slipped under the covers as close to the edge as I could, stiff as a board. I heard her get up and lock the door.

“I always do that,” she said, before getting back into bed.

She lay on her side, looking at me. She took one of my hands and started tracing it with the pad of her thumb.

“Has your boyfriend told you you have beautiful lips? He has no idea how lucky he is.”

She came closer. She kissed me. At first it was barely a brush, but then she slid her tongue into my mouth and searched for mine slowly, pushing it against my palate. I didn’t move, not because I was consenting, but because I didn’t know what to do in a situation like that. She kissed my neck, my collarbone, and with one sharp pull she opened the robe. I was naked underneath. She stared at my breasts for a long second, as if measuring something, and then lowered her mouth and sucked my right nipple until it went hard, never letting go of my wrist. She did the same to the other one. She bit me lightly. I felt an ugly throb between my legs and hated myself for feeling it.

I tried to pull away. She pressed my wrists against the mattress.

“If you scream,” she said, her mouth against my ear, “I’ll call the police and say you broke in to steal. Who are they going to believe? Stay still.”

She pulled two things from under the pillow that were not there by chance: leather-lined handcuffs and a gag. She locked my wrists to the headboard, pulling the clasp tight until the leather bit into me. She stuffed the gag between my teeth and tied it behind my neck. Tears ran silently from my eyes. She kept speaking to me in a low voice, almost tenderly.

“Shhh. Nothing’s going to hurt. You’ll see how much you like it.”

She settled between my legs and spread them with her knees. With two fingers she parted the lips of my cunt and stared at it for a while, like someone finding something they’d been looking for for a long time. Then she lowered her head and licked me from bottom to top, one long, slow stroke, all the way to the clit. I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want it and I was getting wet. She licked me again, and again, and when I was already slick she pushed her tongue inside me, thrusting in and out, while her thumb circled my clit. I felt a muffled moan slip out against the gag. She looked up without stopping sucking me.

“That’s it, my love,” she said. “Let go.”

She shoved two fingers deep inside me. She curved them, searching for a spot I hadn’t even known I had, and then she found it. She started moving them fast, her palm thumping my clit with every thrust, and at the same time she took my breasts in turn into her mouth. I bucked against the cuffs. My first orgasm came without permission, in waves, and I felt it soak her hand all the way to the wrist. She laughed softly and brought her fingers to her mouth, sucking them one by one in front of me.

“You taste good,” she whispered. “Delicious.”

She climbed on top of me. She opened the robe and pressed her wet cunt against my thigh. She started to move. I felt her hips moving like a man’s, rubbing against my leg, leaving a warm trail on my skin. Her nipples were small and hard and she kept putting them in my mouth without giving me a break, forcing me to suck them over the gag. She talked to me the whole time, in the voice of someone asking for something politely.

“Look at me. Look at me when I come. I want you to see.”

She came there, squeezing my thigh between hers, her face pressed to my neck, biting my skin just enough. The mark lasted two days.

She didn’t stop. She came back down and spread my legs again. This time she pressed her cunt against mine, scissoring, pushing her clit against mine, moving slowly at first and then hard, with her hands braced on the headboard to leverage herself. I watched her from below, with the gag soaked in saliva, and felt her breasts bouncing over me. I came again, against my will, and she came a minute later, riding my thigh, gripping my hair with one hand.

The third time was with her face pressed to my shoulder, whispering something I didn’t understand, with two fingers inside me again, until she fell asleep like that, on top of me, still with her fingers inside. I didn’t sleep. I stared at the ceiling until dawn.

***

In the morning she went into the shower and came back to the bedroom naked. I was still handcuffed. She looked at me with the same calm she’d had the previous Monday when she sat down for lunch. She came to the bed, sat on the edge with her legs open in front of me, and started masturbating while looking at me. She ran two fingers over her clit in slow circles, squeezed one breast with her other hand, and never took her eyes off me. The gag was gone, but I didn’t dare speak.

“See what you do to me?” she said. “I spent all night thinking about you.”

She straddled my face. She planted her cunt over my mouth and lowered herself just enough for me to smell freshly showered woman and need. She didn’t need to give me an order. I stuck out my tongue and licked her from below. She closed her eyes, braced her hands on the headboard, and started moving over my mouth, rubbing herself, moaning softly. I found her clit with the tip of my tongue and she guided me with her hips. When she came, she pressed my face to her cunt with both hands and didn’t let me breathe during the last few seconds. I felt the warm liquid dripping down my chin, my neck, all the way to my chest. She got down slowly, settled against me, and ran her fingers over my lips, cleaning me like someone combing a little girl’s hair.

She came again over my stomach, rubbing against my navel. She didn’t hurt me. She didn’t hit me. But she didn’t ask me anything either.

When she finished, she took off the gag that was no longer there and ran a finger over my mouth.

“Promise me you won’t scream.”

I nodded.

She freed my wrists. I had red marks from the handcuffs, and she bent down and kissed each one. She told me she had made breakfast for me, that I could shower first. I walked to the bathroom like an automaton. Under the hot water I cried without making a sound. I thought about leaving, about grabbing my clothes and running out. I thought I had nowhere to go, that there were no witnesses, that my word against hers was worth nothing. I also thought, and that scared me more, about the way she had looked at me while she came. Like I was the most desired thing in the world.

She came into the bathroom without knocking. She took off her robe. I looked at her in the mirror. This time I didn’t say anything. Neither did she. She turned me around slowly, bent me against the tiles, spread my legs with a gentle kick of her bare foot, and kissed the nape of my neck. She pressed my breasts against the cold wall and with her other hand she found my cunt between my legs. I was wet again, and she knew it. She shoved three fingers into me in one thrust and started fucking me like that, against the tiles, her mouth against my ear, whispering things to me.

“See? It asks for it on its own now. Look how it’s sucking my hand.”

She rubbed her hips against my ass, sliding her fingers in and out, and with the thumb of her other hand she found my asshole and pressed it lightly, not entering, just threatening. I rested my forehead against the fogged-up glass and came like that, with hot water falling over both of us, biting my lip so I wouldn’t scream. She came afterward, rubbing herself against my thigh, biting my shoulder. I closed my eyes. And I let her.

***

Days passed. In the mornings we worked as usual, her focused on her contracts, me on my spreadsheets. In the afternoons sometimes she’d call me to the sofa and ask me for things that at first were hard for me and later not so much. She made me sit on her face with her office pants pulled down to her ankles, or kneel between her legs while she kept signing papers with one hand and guided my head with the other. At night she didn’t leave me alone for a minute. She started buying me clothes: dresses like hers, underwear I would never have bought for myself, lace thongs she took off me with her teeth.

One Friday she made me kneel in front of her at the desk, held my hair with one hand, and asked me, in that low voice I knew by then, to please her with my mouth. She pulled her skirt up to her waist. She had nothing on underneath. She opened her legs by planting one heel on the arm of the chair and pressed my face to her cunt until I felt I was suffocating. I sucked her the way I now knew she liked, first the lips, then the clit with the tip of my tongue, then sliding it inside and out in a slow rhythm. She squeezed my hair every time she wanted me faster, and pulled me away for two seconds every time she was about to come, so I wouldn’t finish yet. When she finally let me keep going, she came in my mouth with a long, silent shudder, pressing my neck against her until I swallowed everything. Then she lifted my face with two fingers under my chin.

“Good girl.”

I did it without hesitation. When I looked up I found her watching me with the same intensity as on the first night, but this time mine was no longer the look of a victim. It was something else. Something I still don’t know how to name.

I told my boyfriend that work had me on weird hours. I started inventing excuses to stay the night two, three times a week. He believed me at first. Then he stopped asking. The few times we had sex, I closed my eyes and came thinking of her mouth, her fingers, her voice telling me good girl.

I don’t know when the fear went away. I don’t know when I started looking forward to the hour she’d close the computer and look at me from across the desk with that half-smile. I don’t know when, watching her sleep, I started thinking that that big bed had a side for me.

What I do know is that I still say, when someone asks, that I’m not a lesbian.

I say it with less and less conviction each time.