The Voss Corporation occupied floors 14 through 22 of a glass tower downtown. I’d been working there for six months—an entry-level marketing position that my stepfather had arranged, a favor that felt like a leash. Sloane was VP of Operations. Twenty-nine. Her father’s heir apparent. And the woman who’d been looking at me across the boardroom table with an expression that made me forget how to use Excel.
We’d been avoiding each other since the company retreat, since the moment she’d pulled me into an empty conference room and kissed me against the whiteboard while a presentation about Q3 earnings played on the screen behind us. We’d agreed it was a mistake. We’d agreed to professionalism. We’d agreed to lie.
Tonight was the quarterly audit. Everyone had gone home except the night guard and us. Sloane had texted me at 9:30: Copier room. First floor. Now.
I went because I was weak. Because the fluorescent lights had melted my resolve. Because Sloane Voss said “now” and my body answered before my brain could object.
The copier room was a closet with a machine, a shelf of paper, and a lock that Sloane had installed herself—”for sensitive documents,” she’d told facilities. The green display glowed behind me, illuminating the dark room in pulses of digital light that made her face look alien, beautiful, completely predatory.
“The night guard does rounds at 10,” I whispered, my back against the warm machine, my white blouse already unbuttoned one button lower than office appropriate. “It’s 9:47. And your father owns this building. He reviews the security footage personally. He’ll see us. He’ll know.”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just leaned in closer, her cheek brushing my jaw, her hand sliding from my waist to the buttons of my blouse, undoing them with a precision that spoke of every fantasy she’d had in her corner office.
“If he reviews the security tapes,” I breathed, my voice trembling as her fingers found my breast, my nipple, pinching through the lace of my bra, “and sees his daughter kissing his stepdaughter against the copier he bought with company funds—”
She turned my face toward hers with one finger under my chin. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like toner and power and the exact moment when corporate policy becomes completely irrelevant. Her tongue slid against mine, her hand sliding down my stomach, under the waistband of my pencil skirt, finding me wet and ready and completely unprofessional.
The copier beeped.
A loud, mechanical sound. Out of paper. The green display flashed red, strobing across Sloane’s face like a nightclub light, turning her into something dangerous and beautiful.
Then a knock.
“Hello?” The night guard’s voice. Muffled by the door. “Someone in there? Machine acting up?”
Sloane didn’t remove her hand. She just pressed deeper inside me, her thumb circling my clit, her mouth moving to my neck, biting hard enough to leave a mark that my blouse collar wouldn’t hide.
“Let him hear the machine,” she whispered against my skin. “Not you.”
She pressed the copy button. The machine roared to life—scanning, printing, making enough noise to cover every sound I made. And Sloane used the cover, the darkness, the strobing light to destroy me against the machine that her father had bought.
Her fingers moved faster, deeper, finding a rhythm that matched the machine’s mechanical grinding. The copier flashed. The paper fed. And I came with my hand over my mouth, my body shaking against the warm metal, my vision blurring with the green-red-green of the emergency display.
After, she fixed my buttons. Smoothed my skirt. Picked up the paper the machine had printed—a copy of my ass, pressed against the glass, taken while I was coming apart.
“For my desk,” she said, folding it. “A reminder that you belong to me. Even at work. Especially at work.”
She left first. I stayed in the copier room for five minutes, trying to remember how to breathe. When I finally walked out, the night guard was standing by the water cooler.
“Everything okay?” he asked. “Heard the machine going crazy.”
“Paper jam,” I managed. “Dr. Voss helped me fix it.”
“She’s a lifesaver,” he said.
She was. She still is. Every Tuesday night, when the office is empty and the copier needs “maintenance,” Sloane locks the door and shows me exactly what corporate culture means.
I have a drawer full of copies now. My face, my body, my hands pressed against the glass. Sloane keeps them in her desk. Her father thinks they’re “abstract art.” He has no idea they’re evidence.
