Human Resource

She coughed, lungs trying desperately to grab as much oxygen as they could after a long time without. Her head was being held up by a rope knotted into her hair, so that her whole scalp was bearing the strain equally.

A slight widening of her eyes was all the warning she had as the man stepped forward from off-screen, grabbed her head in both hands, and forced his cock deep into her throat.

Robin shoved the dildo into her mouth, until her fingers were just barely holding onto the base of it, and spasmed in her chair as she fingered herself.

'There you go,' the man said. 'There you go. Take it all the way. Do it for Daddy.'

In wet, bubbling gasps and whimpers, the girl cried as her face was used repeatedly. The man, above average in length, used her face like it was any other hole regardless of her need to breathe. Her cheeks were a beet red in color for the entirety of the scene, with thick gobs of indistinct fluid pouring from her lips in a near-continuous flow when it wasn't being expectorated across the room. His entire shaft was thickly coated in the same translucent, off-white substance.

'Tell me how much you love my cock, babygirl.'

'I-lub-it,' she blubbered.

Robin's knees twitched together as she orgasmed, but not fast enough to block herself from squirting. Fluid erupted from her, coating the underside of the desk and the wall behind it. She whined, but didn't even pause for a second as she rammed the dildo back into her throat until her stomach heaved forcefully.

'Oh god,' the girl whined, when she finally had a moment for herself. 'Please. Please. Please!'

Robin couldn't take her eyes off the screen. Her fevered, tired mind couldn't do more than take in what it was seeing, and what she was feeling. It was her body that reacted, or, at least, that's what she told herself. She didn't take breaks. She didn't pause to catch her breath. She kept going as long as the girl did, doing as much as she could to match the pace and stamina of the man. Her dildo was longer than he was, but it was also softer. It flexed and curled to follow the natural shape of her throat, which meant that she felt it down near her vocal chords. The only thing she didn't mirror were the slaps to the cheek.

Not that she didn't want to. Were it a Friday she would have, and would have taken the weekend to let it heal, but it had only taken one instance of showing up to work bruised the next day, and answering some uncomfortable questions, to adjust her behavior. It didn't matter, though, because her empathetic response was so powerful that she felt them all the same. There was so much heat coming off of her cheeks.

'Come on, babygirl. Gag on it. Let me hear you gag!'

To her credit, Robin tried. At least as hard as the girl in the scene did, though the girl had less control over the moment. Just as the waves of nausea and delirium washed over Robin, she hit a moment of release so powerful and soul-crushing that her grip on the dildo slacked and she coughed it out onto the desk. It bounced across multiple keys on her keyboard, pausing the video on a particularly gruesome frame. The girl's eyes were fluttering, with veins popping out beneath the skin up and down the length of her neck. Her skin was flushed a deep red, near to purple.

Robin just stared at it, bleary-eyed, as she continued to touch herself, cumming over and over in a mixture of sympathy, empathy, and a desire to be that girl. To be treated like that herself. To be used so casually, like a thing barely worth consideration. One orgasm bled into the next, until her toes were cramping and her throat was ragged.

When she just couldn't take any more, she flipped down the screen on her laptop and unplugged it. She could deal with closing those browser tabs later, once the battery had run out and she was in her right mind.

Once that was done she just laid there in her chair, slouched so her lower back was against the seat with her left leg hooked over the arm of it. Boudicca jumped up on the back of her chair, and nuzzled the top of her head with a wet nose. That was enough to get her going, and Robin drifted lazily to her bed. As she curled up under the covers, her thinking brain woke back up just a little, and she cried herself to sleep.

***

Tuesday

There were two women waiting for her in her cubicle when Robin rounded the corner at the top of the steps the next morning, and a pit formed in her stomach when she realized who they were.

"Did you hear?" the taller woman said, as she turned in a tight circle. Both of them had their arms folded tightly over their chests. Annette had been her replacement as their former CEO's executive assistant.

The other woman, Heather, one of their introverted process engineers who rarely left her office for anyone or anything, looked positively mortified. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and she didn't look up.

"I haven't heard anything," Robin said, patiently. "I'm sorry. I'm just walking in the door."

"Dave sent out a company-wide email this morning," Annette said. "They don't want anyone talking about... you know... it." Her cheeks flushed with color, and Heather seemed to shrink into herself a little.

Robin shook her head. Technically, Dave was the VP of Finance, but somehow in the most recent restructuring of the staff the HR department had been put within his domain. He might have been gifted with numbers, but he was definitely not a people person.

"Well," Robin said, as she set down her purse, "I'm sure Dave had his reasons."

Heather's voice was always a bit of a shock to hear, since she spoke up so infrequently. It was deep and smooth. "He said all anyone is doing is gossiping... and that it needs to stop."

"It's a gag order, or whatever," Annette added. "They're trying to sweep it under a rug and pretend it didn't happen."

Robin tapped her index finger against her lips, to indicate quiet, and held out an arm toward the conference room. Both of the women hustled in first, and Robin only paused to retrieve her phone from her purse before following and shutting the door behind them.

"I'm sure that's not the case," Robin said, as they all took seats at the far end of the table. "I know Dave is taking this all very seriously. I've been compiling a report for him, and assembling a timeline. I know he and Bill had been talking about it a lot, and I've got a meeting scheduled with Turner tomorrow to get her up to speed on everything."

"Maybe with a woman CEO," Heather whispered, "it'll be different."

Robin cleared her throat lightly, and said,"Before I go any further, do either of you have anything... new? Anything you haven't already told me?"

Heather and Annette looked at each other briefly, but they seemed to be somewhat isolated from each other. To the best of Robin's knowledge, they had never been close. Their experiences with Carl Davis had perhaps given them something to bond over, but if they had it didn't show. It seemed more likely that they had both come to talk to her about the same thing rather than having come together.

"Okay. Well, mostly, I just wanted to pull you both aside to make it crystal clear that our conversations are confidential. Whatever Dave put out in his email, and whatever he said or whatever he thinks he's preventing, it doesn't apply to me. You ladies can always come and talk to me, about this or anything else. I'm here to help you. Carl doesn't work for Koenig. He is not my concern. You are."

Both of them nodded slowly.

"I know that it's hard not to worry, but I promise. I'm in your corner, and I'm fighting this." She tapped her index finger against the desk with each word. "For you. Every day."

"Thanks, Robin," Heather said quietly. Annette nodded in agreement.

She tried to give them a reassuring smile, and it looked like it worked, but the truth was she was even less certain than they were. There was a nerve-wracking amount of tension among all the women in the company, not just the ones who had caught the eye of the office Lothario.

They hadn't had anything new to share except their heightened fears. She did her best to help them calm down, and was back at her desk by nine-thirty. She took off her heels, set them aside just so, and logged in. Her boss's email, the one the girls had alluded to, was as brusque and unhelpful as she'd thought it would be. Dave wasn't a bad guy, but he also wasn't really fit to oversee HR. She'd implored him, on multiple occasions, to run emails like those past her first, but he thought he had the lay of the land and fired from the hip.

Underneath his unsympathetic tone, though, he was right. Koenig did not police the personal behavior of its employees. Their private business was their private business, and that cut both ways. She had known, immediately, when she started hearing about the whole fiasco, that there was nothing Koenig could do directly. All of the affairs had happened off hours, away from the property. There had been no coercion, as Carl Davis was not in a position to reward or intimidate anyone at Koenig, and every woman she had talked to had been clear they were willing, consenting partners. Her only hope, one which Dave's email had specifically not addressed, was that in documenting Carl Davis' pattern of seduction, as he carried on as many as six simultaneous affairs at any given time in the previous two years, she would open some eyes as to the kind of man he was. He had used their offices and their staff as a hunting ground. They couldn't hurt him but they could choose not to do business with him, and Robin was banking pretty hard on that chance.

She added her interactions with Heather and Annette to her dossier, for the sake of completeness, and kneaded her temples. It was an awful way to start her day.

***

One more thing, she thought, as she typed furiously. One more thing. Almost there.

The thing, this time, was a response to an ADP inquiry about a minor payroll discrepancy. It was small, but it had to be done before she could go or it would affect ADP's ability to cut a paycheck on time to the employee in question. Nevermind that it was nearly six p.m., and they had only just deigned to ask an hour before. She glanced down at the corner of her desktop to check the time, and nodded. It wasn't too late. The bar was right around the corner. She wouldn't be late. She would be fine.

And then, as if karma had heard her thoughts and decided to intervene, she heard the sound of sniffling coming her way. Robin sat up, brow furrowed, and put her glasses on just as Nadia, one of the girls in Sales, walked into her office with her hand held out in front of her. She was shaking. There, in the middle of her palm, was a tiny little thing. It was maybe an inch by an inch by two inches, all black plastic and a bit of glass, and it made Robin's blood run cold. She knew what it was, instantly, because she had one just like it.

***

"Robin!" Luis called, from his spot at the bar. He waved vigorously at her, though the yellow of his shirt was so loud that she could have spotted him from the moon.

She had to shoulder her way through the 'two dollar Long Island' crowd, and sighed in exasperation as she finally sat down next to him. "I'm so sorry. It was one thing after another."

Luis leaned over the bar, smiled until his dimples were as dimple-y as it was possible to get, and waved two fingers at the bartender. Within seconds, there were two shots of vodka in front of them.

"Nazdorovya," Luis said, as he raised his shot.

Robin downed the shot as fast as she could, winced, and pushed the glass out for a refill.

"All right," he said, gritting his teeth. "Need to get at least one more in you, honey."

"It's going to take more than that," Robin replied, digging her thumb into the bridge of her nose. "I'm so screwed."

"That sounds terrible and I'm sorry," he said , as he laid a hand on her shoulder, "but the bartender is super cute so wait just one second before you tell me all about it."

The man behind the bar came back, gave Luis a shy smile, refilled their shot glasses, and left the bottle. Luis mouthed 'thank you' to him, and winked.

"Okay. Is this more about that sleazeball that slept his way through the office?"

She shook her head, drank her shot, and then drank his too. Her stomach roiled, and for a moment her body shuddered uncontrollably. "One of the girls in Sales..." She pressed a hand to her chest and swallowed, hoping to keep it all down. "She found a webcam under her desk. Or-or a spycam, maybe? I don't know what the difference is."

"Under her desk?" he hissed, leaning in very close.

Robin nodded and poured herself another shot. "Aimed right at her legs. Said she knew it wasn't there two weeks ago."

He sounded almost hysterical when he said, "Did you tell someone?!"

She just shook her head and, as she stared down at another shot of vodka, said, "I have one, too, and I've been performing for it for weeks." Then she downed it, refilled it, and downed it again.

"Okay," he said, laying his flattened palm over her glass. "I think that was, like, six shots. You need to slow down."

"No," she said. "More."

"What do you mean, performing?"

Robin turned and gave him a flat look.

"Oh. Oh! Like pretending you don't know it's there and just going to town?!"

She wrenched her shot glass out from under his hand and poured herself another one. "I thought the new maintenance guy put it there. Õscar. He was running some wires down there when they put the new phone system in, and I thought it was him. I..." She blinked and downed the shot.

"Okay seriously," Luis said, as he took the glass out of her hand, and moved the bottle out of her reach. "Stop."

She just blinked at him and shook her head. "What am I supposed to do? I was so stupid! I thought, hey he's rugged. What's the worst thing that could come out of him getting an eyeful?"

"Honey, don't take this the wrong way, but you are the thirstiest bitch I have ever heard of."

She grabbed his shirt, and, as he tried to deflect her awkward grasp, she said, "It's not him! It's the fucking IT guy! Nadia s-s-said there were no wires attached to hers except for the power. It's on the Wi-Fi! Mike has to approve every device on the Wi-Fi! I never looked at mine closely. Once I noticed it, I tried to pretend I didn't know it was there so the... fucking... what do you call it?"

Luis bit down on the insides of his lips, as if stopping himself from speaking, and smiled devilishly.

"The illusion," she said, exasperated. "I didn't want to break the illusion!"

"Okay, so... what?"

"Mike c-c-could blackmail me! Ruin my life! He's gotta have lots of me fingerfucking myself at my god damn desk!"

"Oh my god," Luis laughed. "How much? How many times?"

"Two-three times a day?! I don't know! I didn't keep count!" She placed her palms over her eyes and groaned loudly while Luis cackled madly. "What am I gonna do? I can't go at him and be all high and mighty! He's a devious, creepy little shit! What the hell was I thinking?!?"

"You and I both know that you weren't," he said, with a gentle smirk.

Robin punched him, but her aim was bad and it barely landed. "This is serious!"

Instead of responding, Luis just wrapped his arms around her, and said, "It's going to be okay," just loud enough to be heard over the crowd and the music.

"I thought it was just me," she sobbed, "but I'm not the only one! Do you know how guilty I feel right now?"

Luis grabbed the bottle, put an arm around her shoulder, and then quickly reached back to put his business card on the counter along with two twenty dollar bills. The bartender picked it up and smiled.

"What does," the bartender said, "an industrial architect do?"

"Call me and find out," Luis said, smiling brightly.

A minute later, they were ensconced in one of the booths in the back. Robin caught her breath, and leaned into the soft, red cushions.

"I'm not screwed," she said, as she blinked. "I'm not. I just... I haven't figured out what I'm going to do yet."

"Robin, sweetie, you need to get out in front of that. Be notifying people. Don't let him make you afraid first."

"I know," she said, nodding.

"You know what? Don't let him make you afraid, period."

Robin rolled her eyes. "Easier said than done."

Just then, the bartender appeared from out of nowhere with two glasses of ice water with a slice of lime in them. Luis flashed a brilliant smile at him, and then the man made himself scarce.

"You are a shameless flirt," she said, as she pulled a small bottle of ibuprofen out of her purse. "God, why did you let me drink that much?"

"Bitch, please," he laughed. "Do I look like your momma?"

"You have a better ass than my mom does. You know that."

"Damn right," he said, with an arch smile. "Plus this is all just part of your process. One, Big freak out, two, deep breath, three, hand me my crown."

Robin held up her glass of water, and made a show of extending her pinky.

"That's my bitch." He clinked his shot glass with her water, and downed it. "How is that other thing going? With the manwhore?"

"Trying to be hopeful. Too soon to tell."

Luis smiled sideways at her, and then broke into a full-on grin. "At your desk?"

"Shut uuuup," Robin groaned.

"I know you've got that darkness, girly, and you know I love it and you, but three times a day at your desk? Oof!"

"It's been getting worse," she said, looking down.

Luis just stared at her, wide-eyed. "Worse?"

Robin nodded. "More often, I mean. Like, it's harder to make it go away, and it comes back faster."

"Since when?"

"Last couple months, maybe," she said, shrugging. "It didn't used to hit me during the day if I had a blowout at night. Now it's, like, constant."

"Bad timing all around then, huh?"

"Real bad," she said, leaning forward to brace her elbows on her knees.

"You know, I actually... I have a little something to help you there. I mean, I have it in my car because I was going to give it to you tonight anyway but now I'm gonna say it's to help you in this time of crisis because I'm suuuuch a good friend!"

Robin looked back over her shoulder, smiled, and leaned into him. "I don't know what I'd do without you," she said, as she laid her head on his shoulder.

"Mmm-mmm," Luis said, smirking and shaking his head. "This is a rare chance for me to be the one pulling you out of a spiral."

Robin sighed softly. "Thanks."

He nodded, and they settled into a comfortable silence. The bartender brought Luis a margarita, and Robin continued to sip at her water. The scene around them was like a meat market; everyone hitting on everyone else. She couldn't spot any couples, and even the groups of friends seemed to all be individually on the lookout. Flirty glances, with drinks being sent back and forth. There was a pang of loss in her heart as she watched the goings on. Nobody in that room could have kept up with her in the slightest.

Every time she thought about that, it went to a dark place. She'd tried to be honest about it with her boyfriends over the years. Some couldn't handle even the most basic dirty talk while others had gone straight to the judging. The few that had been able to muster the basics had all gone on to take things too far by trying to appeal to her darkness outside the bedroom. She hadn't dated anyone in two years, and the loneliness was starting to get to her.

"I think it was the guilt," she said, eventually. "Fueling that freak out, I mean. I'm not so much scared as I am ashamed. God, I feel like shit."