Human Resource

"Girl," he said, "You get your freak on however you need to."

"No," she said. "I mean, I should have tracked down that camera as soon as I found it. If I get fired for this, it'll really suck, sure, but that's on me. Nadia, though? She's sweet. I could have stopped that. And-and before you say anything, I know. I can't just sit around wishing the past was different."

"You don't know what I was going to say," he said, raising one eyebrow significantly.

Robin rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"That actually was what I was going to say," he whispered. "It's weird that you knew that."

"No it isn't," she snickered. "Come on. How long have we known each other?"

"That's not the point, devil woman!" He gave her a little nudge with his elbow and sighed. "But seriously. None of this is on you. None!"

"I mean—"

"None," he said, more emphatically. "Say it."

"Say what?"

"None of this is your fault."

"None of this is my fault," she murmured.

"We'll work on that."

"I mean, there's a whole negligence thing where because I didn't—"

He leaned to the side, glared at her, and shook his head. "That's it. Give me your keys."

"What?'

"Give 'em."

Robin reached into her purse, fished out her keys, and stuck her tongue out as she handed them over.

"All right, come on. I'll drive you home."

She sighed heavily as she stood up, feeling every shot of alcohol as she tried to keep her balance. "Why didn't we stay together?"

Luis laughed as he held his arm out for her to steady herself on. "In ninth grade?"

"Yeah," she said, slurring her words.

"Because you have gross lady parts just kidding I love you."

Robin laughed, harder than she had meant to, and sighed again. As they moved out into the parking lot, Luis led them to his car first.

"Almost forgot your present," he said, as he set her against the side of the vehicle. Luis opened the passenger side door, snaked his arm in, and came back out a second later with a box wider than it was tall or deep. "Et voila!"

Robin blinked at it, and her head fell to the side. "Love Egg?"

He snickered quietly, and pointed down at the bottom. "Look!"

"Oh my god, it's a toy!"

"Not just any toy," he said. "A remote control one!"

Robin's eyes widened as she stared at it. "Oh my god," she whispered. "Aren't these expensive?"

"Technically, this was a gift," he said, quickly and casually. "I already have one, and the one that I have is already almost too big. This one is bigger, and so naturally I thought of you!"

"Me and my gross lady parts?" she asked, laughing.

"Exactly. I mean, what haven't you tried to shove up there?" He leaned against the car too, so that he matched her slight tilt, and smiled. "It might be a bit of a nuisance to have in there while you walk around, but there's an app for it. Get it for your phone, and then any time you want all you've gotta do is crank it up. Keep those legs crossed, girly. This is hands free and real quiet."

"Hands free," she said softly.

Luis nodded, slipped an arm around her shoulder, and led her back to her car while she turned the box over in her hands slowly, reading through it carefully. As soon as they pulled out onto the street, she started opening it up.

***

The clock on her microwave read eleven-fifteen when Robin shuffled into her apartment and leaned back against the closed door. Luis' Uber had met them in the parking lot of her apartment complex, and was driving him back to his car. She'd tried to get him to stay over, but the effort was half-hearted and he hadn't picked up on the real reason.

Boudicca was waiting on the counter, and rammed her head into Robin's upper arm. Robin made a weak effort to return the affection, but the tabby was on high alert and the bedroom window desperately required monitoring. Robin dropped her heels near the door and slung her purse into the chair. The motions of it were rote, done without thought. She moved like a zombie, mind too tortured to focus, to her laptop on the desk in the corner. Articles of clothing fell away behind her, until she was naked in front of the computer.

Robin's attempt to get Luis to stay had been rooted in a fear of herself. Without a check to its power, Robin found herself drunk and giving in completely to her libido.

At some point during Robin's formative years, there had been some kind of shift behind the scenes of porn. She didn't know who was behind it, or why it happened. Robin knew a lot of the scenes by name. They had a specific kind of look. Older porn had been shot on good cameras, with specific lighting. It aged, but it aged more gracefully. The rough stuff always looked blocky and low resolution. Cheap.

The scenes would get out of hand quickly. It wasn't usually clear that it was out of hand, as the women were professionals, but it was there if one knew where to look. Robin did. She'd watched them over and over, meticulously cataloging every moment where they tried to pull a hand out of their mouth, or where a slap to the breast had really caught them off guard. Every scream they'd tried to mask as a moan. The first time anal, when it was clearly too much. The moments where they were looking down, trying to hide their faces while they composed themselves. The thousand yard stare dripping with regret.

Every time they grabbed the woman's hair and yanked too hard, every time they put hands around the woman's throat, and every time they pushed their fingers too deep into a woman's mouth, Robin's sex drive dug its hooks a little bit deeper.

She was mortified, in perpetuity, but she could not look away.

Her labia were bright red, from repeatedly spanking herself with a cupped, open palm, by the time she came back around to herself. She didn't have it in her to put herself back together just then, so she closed the screen, pulled the power cord, and crawled into bed. Sleep came mercifully quick.

***

Wednesday

Robin's stomach was in knots as she strode across the plant floor. Her heels made a sharp clack against the shellacked concrete. She'd tried to put off going to Dave or Turner about the camera by handling another important task, but it had only bought her a brief refrain.

"Robin!" came a booming voice behind her.

Hair stood up on the back of her neck as she turned around.

"What the hell is this?" Alex yelled, holding up a little white card.

Robin blinked at him. "It's the safety observation card I just put on your desk."

He came to a stop right in front of her and puffed himself up, using all of his six-foot-five frame to tower over her. He kept his voice at the same volume as he'd used when he was yelling at her from across the building. "If you want to walk around and criticize the other office ladies on their cubicle neatness, that's fine, but you don't come out here and make judgement calls on my goddamn plant floor! You got it?"

"It's an obvious suggestion, Alex, and I'm not the first person to make it."

"It's bullshit is what it is!"

"Those crates are sixty-to-eighty pounds, and they're so low to the ground! This is how—"

"This is my goddamn plant," he shouted, and the stiffness in Robin's spine started to melt away.

How amazing would it be for him to unleash like that on your cunt? He's so big. I bet his cock is monstrous.

"Alex," she said, emphasizing his name, "it's too much weight, and it sits so low! It's outside of the normal range of motion! This is why they keep hurting themselves!"

"Oh, and you know so much about putting in a full day's work, don't you? Up there in your office."

For a whore, maybe.

"All it would take is a dolly to help move that weight around more safely," she said, voice rising to meet his. "It's basic physiology!"

"No, it's you and this ridiculous agenda of yours to start putting women on my plant floor! Again!"

"No, this is you avoiding a common sense, best practice solution to justify the macho bullshit idea that what we do here is somehow special and sacred, and only your boys club is good enough!"

That's it. Get him good and mad. Can you imagine those big hands of his around your throat?

"I have two daughters," he shouted, "and I don't appreciate the insinuation or your tone!"

Her skin felt like it might catch fire but, at the last moment before she really started to tell him what she thought, she took a step back and a deep breath. She held up her hands, palms out, and shook her head. "We're not doing this."

Alex ripped up her card, shredding it into one-inch pieces, and made a show of throwing the pieces all over the floor.

"Very professional," Robin snarled. She stood there, staring after him as he walked away, with her heart hammered away in her chest. Her breath was coming fast and shallow, like she'd just run a mile. Everyone was staring, and it wasn't until she noticed them, and met a few of their sheepish glances, that she came to her senses and turned back toward her cubicle.

She had her arms crossed tightly, and kept running her hands up and down over her biceps in a subconscious attempt to calm herself down, but nothing was taking the edge off. She was so worked up, more so than she had ever been in her entire life. Nobody had ever spoken to her like that.

And you loved it. You are nothing to him. Less than nothing. He would just as soon spit on you as look you in the eye.

She went back toward her office, where there were more observation cards. Alex was technically on her level within the company structure but nobody treated her as his equal, least of all Alex. She needed to be out in front of it, and inform Dave, and remembering that specific phrasing reminded her that she still had to handle the camera thing. She groaned, loudly, and quickened her pace.

One more for the road? Before the whole thing blows up and your little peep show goes away? It would be such a shame to be this wet and not show it off.

Robin angrily tamped down on her intrusive thoughts as she made her way through the warren of the office. She was deep in trying to figure out where to start explaining, as Dave had to be told things in a specific order—starting with the conflict and working backwards through the lead-up—in order to be sure he understood the full scope of it, when she made the final turn toward her office and her heart fell hard. Regina, one of the women in Accounting, was standing outside her cubicle and biting her thumbnail nervously. When she saw Robin, the gaunt woman seemed to freeze.

Robin knew this conversation was going to be about Carl Davis. As near as she could tell, Regina had been one of the last, if not the last, of the employees that Carl had approached before things started to unravel, and Regina had been one of the last to come forward. He had groomed her, preparing her for the possibility that others would be talking about him.

As she stepped past the empty cubicle where her predecessor had kept office, Robin had a terrible thought. It wasn't the kind of idea that spoke to her so much as it was a memory, or a fragment of one. She had remembered very little of going out for drinks with her friend the previous night, but there were some glimpses. One of them was that she had tucked the love egg into her purse.

You get off on all the wrong things, Robin. You aren't attracted to Alex, or Mike. You wouldn't sleep with them if they were the last men on Earth, but if they grabbed you by your hair and just screamed in your face? You would need a mop to clean up the mess you'd make. You're a glutton for punishment, and it's pathetic.

Robin's knees buckled ever so slightly, but she caught herself before Regina saw.

Regina had cause to feel the most betrayed by Carl, as she'd definitely defended him the longest, and, given the bloodshot rims of her eyes, it was likely to be an awful, grueling conversation. Tense emotions. Tears.

It's not so different from the porn you watch, when you think about it. Pain is pain. This woman is about to expose the worst hurt of her life, and you're dying to get off on it.

She held up one finger to Regina as she skirted past the woman, into her cubicle, and grabbed her purse. "One minute," Robin said, as she headed for the bathroom. Regina nodded and headed for the conference room.

She stopped at the sink, since she was alone, and rinsed the toy off quickly. Once she was safely in a stall, Robin pulled out her phone and quickly found the bluetooth app. As soon as that was downloading and installing she spread her legs, pulled her panties to the side, and fingered herself briefly.

I'm surprised you aren't leaving a trail of that behind you as you walk. You're practically dripping.

Robin's toes bunched in her heels as she worked the toy inside, little by little. It was such a rush. A dark and terrible rush.

Maybe too big for Luis, but not for you and that bucket you call a cunt, right?

She groaned, doing her best to keep it quiet, as the widest part of the egg slid inside of her, and then it was over. The worst of it, anyway. She bit her lip hard as she pushed on the little pink tail, helping it slide fully into place, and squirmed. It felt within her. Parts of her that didn't normally feel were feeling, and it was strange to be so aware of it all. The strain was lovely, in its own way.

Robin stood up slowly, testing her hips by twisting this way and that. Being so full was right on the line between discomfort and hurting, and it sent a spark right down her spine. She could feel it nestled against her cervix, and she didn't know what turning it on was going to feel like.

But you're going to do it anyway.

Her cheeks flushed with embarrassed color when she pulled her phone back out of her purse and checked it. The app came right up. The interface of it was simple and clean, and it connected quickly. Both her phone and the egg gave an appropriate rumble to mark the occasion, and the sensation of it made Robin gasp.

We could get used to this.

A minute later, Robin sat down at the end of the table in the conference room. She winced, and gave a small whimper of discomfort as she crossed her legs and adjusted herself. It felt like it was pressing outward on her hips, or that there wasn't room for her thighs to be so close together, so she leaned into it and squeezed. Diving headfirst into the part that hurt the most. The sensation made her eyes mist.

Regina reached over and laid her hand on Robin's, and it was like a thousand volts running through her.

She thinks you're crying with her. It's too perfect.

Robin's normal MO, in meetings like these, was to use her phone to take notes, and she did, but everything Regina told her were things that had been shared before. The whole time, as Robin sat through another recitation of Carl Davis' continued predations, Robin had the app for the love egg open. She played with speed. She played with intensity. She played with presets.

This one could target different specific areas, one of which hit her g-spot if she squirmed just right.

Regina wept. Robin hated herself a little more with every tear, but she didn't stop. She couldn't. The riptide had her, and she couldn't come up for air...

...until she felt the tickle.

Do it. Do it. Do it.

It wasn't the normal swell, the building warmth, that told her an orgasm was coming. It was the other one. The deeper twinge. Pure panic set in, and her thinking brain attempted to wrest control back. She couldn't orgasm because it would be a squirt. She couldn't turn that off. It was out of her control. She quickly thumbed off the egg, and tried to catch her breath in a brief moment of lucidity.

No. Turn it back on.

She couldn't. She'd never been able to control the squirting, and it was only because she was sitting upright that she felt it coming at all. There was no stopping it except to stop.

Turn it back on. Now.

Regina was hurting. It was obvious how distraught she was, even a week after finally coming to grips with how she'd been treated. Robin's empathic response was off the charts, feeling that pain right alongside her. Feeling the betrayal, and the lies. It hurt to be lied to, and Robin leaned into that as hard as she could as she thumbed the egg back to life.

The tickle hadn't gone away. It was still there. She was still going to squirt. It felt so good, and so wrong. It was pure agony, and she hated every moment of it. She hated what it did to her. She hated how her body reacted, and hated how good it felt. She wanted to turn it off, to stop, but she didn't. She waited until the last possible second and edged herself. Again. And again. And Again.

Robin was practically panting, and barely hiding it, when her boss, Dave, opened the conference room door.

"Dave," she said, wiping at her eye with the back of her hand. "This is... not a good time."

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but Robin, I need to see you in my office. Are you two... almost...?"

Regina nodded and made her way out toward the bathroom, but Robin lagged behind. The way she could barely stand drove home that she could barely stand herself or what she'd just done. It was a new low for her, and her newly-reawakened conscience shined a spotlight on the fact that she was ashamed of herself. Deeply ashamed.

He was waiting for her in the hallway, which was a bad sign. Her senses went numb, head floating as though disconnected from her body, though her heart was still pounding as she followed him down the stairs. He opened the door to his office, stood just inside, and closed it behind her.

"How're you doing," he said, as he sat down at his desk. At the best of times Dave was brusque, so that was practically heartfelt. When she nodded, he continued, saying, "It looked like I walked in on something. I'm sorry about that. Is Regina okay?"

"More of the same," Robin said, and as she did she became aware of the fact that she was still holding her phone in her hand. She looked down at the black screen, and it was like staring into an endless void.

"I called you in here for a couple things. First of all, Turner just sent an email to the two of us, regarding Mr. Davis, and I thought we should talk about it." He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Basically, what she said was, uh, that we need Carl. We're just... not in a position to succeed without his contacts in aerospace. I know you were hoping for a different outcome there, but in the end it was a business decision."

Robin's mouth opened and closed, several times, without making any sound. In her gut, she'd always known this was the way it would go, but she wanted so badly to make a difference. Her eyes became distant, and to her horror she saw herself unlocking her phone.

Do It.

"Turner went through everything you sent her, and she and I had a talk yesterday. Her, me, Alex... the rest of the Leadership Team." He looked down for a moment. "It wasn't... it wasn't an easy decision. I hope you know that."

It's probably been long enough. Do it. Right here.

Robin stared at the app as it went through its handshake connection to the toy. The simple control on her screen suddenly looked like nothing else so much as a self-destruct button. Both phone and toy gave an affirmative rumble, and she felt empty when she turned it on full blast. The egg sprang to live inside of her, vibrating in every direction. She squirmed uncomfortably, crossed her legs as tight as she could, and tucked her phone under her thigh. If she crossed her legs any tighter, it felt like she was going to push the thing through her cervix. She didn't, but not for lack of trying.