Tears for My Master: Cat's First Punishment

Tears for My Master - Cat’s First Punishment
(A BDSM Short)

By Lara Simon

Smashwords Version

Copyright © 2012 Lara Simon, all rights
reserved

This book is sold subject to the conditions
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,
hired out, copied, or otherwise circulated without the author’s
prior consent in any other format or changed in any way, including
the author’s name and title, and without similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales
is entirely coincidental. The use of any real person, company or
product names are for literary effect only and used without
permission. The author does not assume any responsibility for
third-party websites or their content.

“No, I’m so sorry Mr. Stowe, it won’t happen
again,” said Cat, blushing from the verbal beating her boss had
just given her.

“Don’t let it,” her boss replied, his deep,
powerful voice raspy with thinly veiled anger. Cat studied his
flushed face quickly, looking down at her desk as he strode
confidently back into his office and slammed the enormous, heavy
oak door. Her reaction was the most difficult part to process--
instead of feeling embarrassment at her failure; Cat became aware
of the flush of blood that rushed to her hardened nipples pressing
against her lace bra and out into her silk blouse and her hot and
increasingly wet groin. She was turned on. All of her fantasies at
night at home alone of seducing Knox Stowe always involved--to some
degree-- his anger. She touched herself thinking about that smoky,
impatient tone in his voice—the enraged gleam in his eyes. What’s
wrong with me? She thought, knowing that she hadn’t rescheduled the
meeting on purpose, somehow wanting and needing the stern Mr. Stowe
to reprimand her.

It had to be something with the new position;
she rationalized, looking around at her plush office on the
seventy-ninth floor of the Hudson Building in downtown Seattle. The
job had come to her as part of what could be described as a kind of
happy accident. Cat had graduated from Oregon State University in
the spring, just a short month before Knox Stowe’s long-time
administrative assistant had retired and moved to Tucson to live
out the rest of her days in the warm, dry sunshine of the Arizona
desert. Cat, full-name Catherine Adele Harper, had just moved back
to Seattle to live with her parents, and was working part-time at a
local coffee shop while she was sending resume after resume out to
just about every reputable corporation in the greater Seattle area.
It just happened that the Stowe Holding Company had been her first
callback.

When Cat had first entered the office she’d
been in a quiet state of shock. The sheer opulence of the operation
was beyond anything she’d seen in her three brief college
internships or imagined in her wildest dreams. She’d been ushered
in from the glass-walled security desk by a stunningly tall and
model-esque blonde with a high, tight ponytail, a designer black
business suit and even higher heels to the private elevator that
whisked personnel and clients alike to the three top floors of the
high-rise that Stowe Holding Company occupied.

Cat remembered her pounding heart and stifled
breath as she was guided past the sleek reception desk, a monolith
of stainless steel mixed with gleaming marble and the three
gorgeous women, all young, beautiful, and seemingly busy with
important tasks, manning it. After they walked down a long,
plush-ly carpeted hall lined with glass walls through which one
could glimpse multitudes of young, attractive and smartly-dressed
professionals, avoiding eye contact with her, the unimportant
potential employee, busy on conference calls or typing on their
brand new Mac computers, they finally reached the desk, now her
desk, in front of the massive door leading into Mr. Stowe’s office.
After they entered, she was left by her stunning chaperone in a
soft leather chair inside, waiting for his highness to enter and
decide if she was worthy of the position. She remembered her jaw
dropping at the floor-to-ceiling views of Elliot Bay, the Seattle
skyline and Pike Place market. The windows were wrapped all the way
around the massive room, which Cat reasoned was at least twice the
size of the first floor of her family home, and she could see all
the way from Queen Ann hill to the north to the Seahawks stadium
and SoDo to the south. She remembered biting her nails nervously as
she waited, listening to the howling wind whipping around the
heights of the elegant heights of the building, for the mysterious
man would become her new boss.

When she’d first seen Knox Stowe, something
new inside of Cat had begun to stir—a new kind of feeling, a
feeling that she absolutely, unconditionally needed him. It went
beyond attraction-- although he was devastatingly handsome, his
perfect athletic build, the carefully chosen and expensive suit,
the sleek black Italian leather shoes and his face, that face that
Cat saw every night in her dreams. Knox’s strong, square jaw led up
to full, sensuous lips, which he pursed in anger when he got bad
news on a business deal or was frustrated with a client. His
mesmerizing eyes were a metallic grey color, something Cat had
never seen before, and the way the color played off the constant
grey of the Seattle sky that made most people look tired and wane,
made Knox’s eyes gleam with an alluring and constant energy and
intensity. This new feeling was obsession, addiction, a compulsive
drive to be near to him, to please him, to possess him. The sheer
power of the emotion made Cat nervous, but excited. For the first
time in her life, she really felt alive.

He walked into the room wordlessly and sat
down at the executive desk in front of her, studying her. She
remembered not being able to raise her eyes to meet his, regardless
of how much interview training she’d had at the University career
center that eye contact was vital to making a that ever-important
personal connection with a potential employer. She felt her
delicate pale cheeks flushing with pink, as they always did, giving
away her nervousness, and waited for him to speak first. It took
several minutes, as he was perusing her resume silently, but Cat
had a feeling that he wasn’t really interested in its contents. It
was more like somehow he was looking straight through the paper and
directly into her consciousness. She’d blushed further, feeling her
cheeks glowing hot and red, and begged her body not to give away
the turmoil of emotions she was feeling. Cat reached up and tucked
a strand of her palest strawberry-blonde hair behind her ears.

“How old are you, Catherine?” was the first
thing he’d asked her. She gulped.

“Twenty-two,” she said, beginning to babble,
“and everyone just calls me Cat. I just graduated from school in
the spring—my birthday is in August.” Realizing that she was
prattling on, further revealing her nerves, Cat bit her lip hard,
causing a jolt of pain to rush through her body, but successfully
stopping herself. She finally looked up at Knox, watching her, and
took another deep breath. When she finally met his eyes, she seemed
to physically shrink in his glare, and realized that she would
happily do whatever this man asked of her.

“Good,” he said distracted. He tilted his jaw
slightly, thinking. “You seem qualified for the position. I’d like
you to start on Monday,” he hit a button on his desk and spoke to
someone unseen. “Maggie,” he said, “please take Ms. Harper down to
HR and get her set up for a Monday start-date.”

“Certainly, Mr. Stowe,” came the responding
voice from some unseen speaker. Knox got up and walked around the
desk until he was standing a foot away from Cat. Her body tingled
with his closeness, and she breathed his masculine scent in deeply
before she realized that he was waiting for her to get up. When he
escorted her to the door, Cat remembered her manners and tried to
put out her hand to shake his, thanking him for the opportunity,
but wouldn’t take it. He’d avoided touching her, instead opening
the door for her and ushering her out into the hall, then
unceremoniously slamming it behind her. She’d stood there blinking
for a second in disbelief at what had transpired, before an older,
gentle-looking woman named Maggie approached her and took her down
to HR to fill out stacks of IRS paperwork and a very thick
non-disclosure agreement binding her to secrecy lest she leave the
company and take a position at a competitor. Finally after
seemingly endless mounds of paperwork, Cat had been dismissed. When
she walked out of the building onto 5
^th
Avenue, Cat
leaned up against the cold concrete of the building, just out of
the rain and put her hand to her chest as she took a few deep
breaths, giving herself a silent lecture. You need a job, Cat, and
this is a good one, she told herself, so it was time to put any
physical attraction that she had for Knox, no wait—Mr. Stowe, away
and comport herself in a mature and professional manner.

Except things hadn’t exactly worked out that
way. Every day as Cat made her way up the elevator to her desk
outside of Mr. Stowe’s office her heart leaped out of her chest
with excitement laced with a new and particularly frantic brand of
anxiety. She tried to arrive at least twenty minutes early just so
she could watch Mr. Stowe walk in each morning, always
perfect-looking: sleek, sexy, immaculately dressed he’d stride past
her desk, causing Cat to stop breathing as she longingly watched
him. Most of the days he didn’t even make eye contact with her as
he brushed past her into his office where he remained most of the
day. Cat found herself wishing fervently that he’d speak to her,
but instead of coming out to her desk and making conversation, Mr.
Stowe preferred to send clipped, impersonal emails detailing his
requests.

A few times when she’d first started Cat had
ventured into his office to ask him a question, trying to create at
least a work-appropriate relationship, but to her chagrin he’d put
a stop to that within the first two weeks, requesting, by email,
that she speak to Maggie if she had any questions instead of
interrupting his work. So Cat became more and more frustrated with
herself, her rampant sexual desires for Mr. Stowe and with him, and
she’d finally resorted to purposefully making mistakes. She knew it
was stupid—so incredibly stupid--to risk sabotaging her career to
fulfill her physical need for Mr. Stowe, but she simply could not
stop herself. She was a victim of her own deep, dark need.

Now, with the door slammed in her face, Cat
looked back to her computer screen and sighed. What exactly have I
accomplished? She asked herself. I got yelled at, and I’m here
turned on like a weirdo and my boss hates me. What am I doing? She
picked up the phone and began dialing the office of Mr. Stowe’s
client to re-schedule the meeting as he’d originally requested.
Suddenly, an email came in, labeled the red-alert coding she had
given Mr. Stowe’s emails so that she’d see and answer them as
quickly as possible. She bit down on her lip, hard, as she placed
the phone back down on the cradle and clicked the message open.
Terse, as usual, but the words still shocked her.

“Come into my office,” the message read.

“Oh my God,” Cat whispered to herself under
her breath. She hadn’t been in his office for months and she was
extremely nervous. She said a silent prayer that she wasn’t getting
fired but even in her state of terror Cat still felt her body react
with a kind of sexual shudder that started at her toes and
travelled up she stood up and smoothed her blouse down over her
hardening nipples and flat belly. She felt her face flush with
blood and knew that she couldn’t do anything about her reddening
cheeks, but still ran her fingers through her hair, trying to
quickly brush out any snarls, and at the last minute grabbed the
lip gloss from her desk drawer and applied a bit to her full lips.
As she approached the office door, Cat did her best to put a
courteous smile on her face, not revealing her physical and
emotional turmoil to the stoic Mr. Stowe.

“Come in, Cat,” he said when she entered,
standing facing away from her towards the window behind his desk.
Just the sound of Mr. Stowe’s authoritative voice saying her name
made Cat falter a bit on her black kitten heels. She crept into the
room, conscious of the silence, and when she got to the desk she
tucked her hands under herself and sat down in one of the large
leather chairs facing Mr. Stowe’s chair. Cat could hear herself
breathing as she waited for him to turn around, and closed her eyes
for a minute, calming herself. She took a deep breath and exhaled
slowly through her nose, taking her time to completely empty her
lungs of air before inhaling, a meditative trick she’d learned in
her weekly yoga classes that always seemed to take her to a better
mental place.