reason for asking?”
“Just prurient.”
“Yes, I spank Laura.”
“Often?”
“Yes.”
“How does she feel about that?”
“You two go out to lunch together. Ask her,” William replied carelessly.
Damaris wiggled off the desk and took a stroll around the room. His gaze followed her taut little bottom with a connoisseur’s savor. Her waist seemed impossibly small, perhaps 22” around. He watched her promenade awhile. Then he rose and locked the door.
“To answer your original question, Damaris, yes, I am a pervert. And your questions seem to indicate that you are one as well.”
He pulled a chair into the center of the room, then stepped up to her and took her by the arm. “Come over here,’ he said, pulling her to the chair, sitting down and putting her briskly across his lap.
“No! Don’t!” she cried, fully breathless yet feebly trying to resist. This seemed necessary. She had her pride. But as she only weighed 100 pounds to his muscular 165, she was tucked neatly under one hand and easily held fast. Damaris squirmed in vain.
“Right,” he said; “This won’t take long.” And he smoothed down the seat of her pencil skirt, pausing momentarily to admire her shapely legs, glamorously hosed in seamed stockings and shod excitingly in spike-heeled pumps.
While holding her firmly in place by her impossibly small waist, he administered no more than a dozen resounding smacks to the well-rounded seat of her skirt. But each spank was a shock to her system that left a penetrating sting in its wake.
The spanking was over almost before it began, and she was set back on her feet. To Damaris, it had been a teaser, like a spanking in an old film that you catch by accident at 2 am
“Boss, that hurt!” she told him, because this was a normal thing to say. To keep acting normal seemed crucial to her.
Similar thoughts were flashing through William’s brain. Which was why he had kept her first spanking so short. If he kept it light and flirty, she mightn’t be scared off. “Spankings hurt,” he told her, while watching her rub her buttocks with both hands.
“No,” she replied, “that huge boner sticking into my ribs was what hurt.”
“Are you still being fresh?” He pulled her down to sit on his lap, locking his arms around her waist.
“In my culture,” lied Damaris, “when a man smacks a woman on the bottom, it’s as good as a proposition.” She nuzzled his ear as she purred this, grinding her freshly warmed seat into his corded thighs.
“Mine too,” William said, boosting her off his lap with a swat. “Go lock the outer door,” he told her.
Michael Flagg had been asked to detect the security leak at Random Construction. Damaris was the prime suspect. But William needed proof before acting. It was his contention that she had been selling information to his largest competitor, Price Enterprises. William hadn’t gotten near a property in almost a month; just about the length of time that Damaris had been his secretary.
It was quiet on the Cape at that time of year, with the rowdy summer crowd long gone. So Michael Flagg had plenty of time to devote to solving the sordid little corporate mystery revolving around the seductive secretary. Autumn had taken hold fully in the village and tracking Damaris to and from her coke dealer made for a delightful drive through leafy, dappled lane and pumpkin patches. He’d found her motive for selling her company out. No salary is ever large enough to support a coke habit. Now he only had to spot her making one exchange.
There was to be a land auction on Friday. Damaris typed and sealed the bids herself on Thursday night, not forgetting to make a photo copy for herself.
That evening Michael followed Damaris straight from work to The Serpentine Lounge, where she began to drink, while awaiting the arrival of her contact. Michael sat in his car outside until Randall Price himself strode into the bar. This was the arrogant young owner of the company to which Damaris had been selling information.
Michael slipped into the club just in time to observe them swap envelopes the instant Price slid into the booth beside her. His went straight into a breast pocket - it was thin. Hers immediately vanished into her large handbag. It was thick. Randall Price ordered a cocktail, but left well before it arrived. He hadn’t much to say to Damaris after picking up what he’d come for. Soon after this Damaris paid her bill and also left.
The wind was whipping leaves around the street when Damaris came out. She was half drunk on cocktails. The sky was filled with clouds. Soon it would rain. Damaris turned her collar up and started to walk towards her car, feeling lonely and sad. She hated the things she’d been doing. She never had an ounce of coke all to herself before. She resolved to quit using for good when it was gone. Nor would she ever deal with the officious Price again. It wasn’t a bad resolution, but it could not dispel the guilt that now oppressed her.
Damaris felt utterly wretched when she thought about her boss. The pleasure she’d enjoyed with him lately had been intense. But it always ended all too soon; and then he went home to his wife. A strong man to lean on was missing.
Hearing steps behind her in the street, she turned. He was tall and seemed familiar. And he had left The Serpentine to follow her. Something was wrong.
Up until this moment she had liked the new arrangement of trading information for cocaine instead of cash. Serial numbers on bills worried her, for she could imagine stranger things than being set up by Randy Price. Particularly after she had ceased to be of use to him.
“Just a minute, Miss Perez,” said the man, closing the distance between them in a couple of strides. With a sinking feeling she remembered him as the police detective who had visited the office a few weeks before.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“We do?”
“Yes, and you know why. Come on, we’ll go in there.” He took her arm and steered her towards Basil’s Coffee Shop. Lightening flashed and thunder rumbled as they entered. Then rain began coming down hard. He led her to a booth by the window. Damaris asked for coffee.
“You ought to eat something, you’re getting thinner every time I see you,” he commented.
Damaris excused herself to go to the bathroom. But when she reached for her purse Michael stopped her.
“Leave that,” he said firmly. Evidence had a way of disappearing in bathrooms.
“Can I just get my lipstick?”
“Sure.”
Damaris reached into the enormous handbag with an unerring hand and pulled her lipstick out, then disappeared. Clearly, the stash she had just acquired was about to be seized. She was now more depressed than before. She reached into the pocket of her well-cut suit jacket for the tiny brown glass bindle containing all her remaining cocaine. With a sigh she spilled it out on the porcelain tank top and used her little straw to snort it up in two very long lines.
While she was blotting her lipstick in the mirror, the drug hit her brain with a blast. “Maybe
