Hypnotized by the Billionaire

It was a late night at the office, but I knew the drill: keep the light on in my cubicle, and keep the door locked. The locked door was really more of a formality, one that up until recently I hadn’t even bothered with. However, after the incident that happened on the floor above mine in the building, I decided I wasn’t going to take any chances.

It had been five weeks without any more incidents, but everyone was still talking about it in hushed tones, as though at any moment someone else would disappear, only to be found in a fetish club downtown a week later with no memory of their past life as a respected grant writer, or an up-and-coming web developer, or as was the last case, a very adorable pink-haired but definitely not fetish-club-attending graphic designer named Cass. At least, that had always been the impression I had gotten of her prior to the incident.

The incidents. It was all we around the office ever called them. Incidents. It was a totally neutral term for them, devoid of any feeling, good or bad. We could have been talking about the traffic during rush hour, the mysterious way someone glanced at us on the metro, or a rash of pranks around the office. But we all knew deep down in our bones...underneath our skin...right down to our teeth the way you do with a truth you can only barely keep inside...we all knew what we were really talking about when we talked about the incidents. We were talking about the way overnight, people who had once been our colleague, our friends, and our lunch partners seemed to transform into sex addicts. It’s all they talked about -- how they were only working for the moment they could leave work to go to the club and fuck a stranger, or how they were suddenly discovering that what they’d really wanted all their lives was to be someone’s sub-slave (a title I’d only just now had inserted into my hushed daily office vocabulary).

The funny thing was, everybody knew about the incidents, and yet everyone talked about it in code, as though to outright ask ‘is something happening to each of us one by one to turn us into different people?’ would be tantamount to asking to be fired, or admitting that you yourself were secretly interested in being tied to a Saint Andrew’s Cross at the club downtown. One evening someone would leave work, and the next morning, they’d have bite marks on their neck. Different offices had different numbers of people involved. The coding team had a particularly rough time of it on the third floor, with three of their members involved in incidents (separate incidents, we thought at first, but there were rumors that the three were involved in each other’s incidents as well); the city’s art commission group on the second floor had one person. My own office, a group working on a seemingly endless project of trying to build bike paths in the city, hadn’t had anyone -- yet. The cute graphic designer had been my lunch buddy, but ever since her incident, all she ever talked about was pleasing her Master while I politely sipped my coffee and hoped eventually that it was a passing phase. Except I knew it wasn’t. None of the prior abrupt incidents had been passing phases, and so it seemed logical that whatever had happened to Cass was permanent. Her life revolved around doing whatever her Master wanted her to do, and from the marks around her wrists and the way her eyes lit up, it was some rough stuff he wanted her to do, and she loved the hell out of it.

The final straw -- the one that exasperated and perplexed me beyond all patience -- was earlier that afternoon over our usual lunch meetup in the cafeteria.

“So then he told me that I wanted him to let me be handcuffed to the cage for the night at the club,” she told me in a hushed whisper, her eyes wide as she leaned over to tell me. “But then halfway through the night he thought I was flirting too much with the other guys who were looking at me -- and I mean, I was handcuffed to the cage, he
wanted
them to stare at me -- but he strode over to me and said I was a bad girl, that I was flirting and that was a naughty thing to do. So he blindfolded me for the rest of the night.” She bit her lip, as though she could barely contain her excitement just thinking about it.

I, on the other hand, was skeptical. “You let this guy handcuff you to a cage, then he got mad at you for other guys looking at you?” I repeated.

“Well I belong to him and he didn’t want them to think they could just do whatever they wanted to me.”

“Even when he handcuffed you there himself to tease them, making you practically bait,” I said, stone-flat.

“Of course. I told him what I wanted him to do to me. He can do whatever he wants to me, and if he says I was flirting, then I must have been flirting.” She licked her lips and touched a strand of her hair, twirling it slightly as she stared off towards the atrium’s tall bright ceiling. “If I do it again, he’s sure to punish me like I’d deserve.” She moved the strand of light pink hair away from her eyes and looked at me as though I were the one who was daft.

I couldn’t take it anymore. “You have to stand up for yourself, Cass, Christ!” I stood up, picking up my coffee to go back to my office on a higher floor. “I don’t know what this Master’s done to you, but please try to come back to your senses.”

Cass looked after me, but didn’t try to stop me as I started to walk off. From behind my clicking heels, I faintly heard her voice trail after me, saying, “You don’t understand, Lydia.”

I pretended not to hear her though, and continued on my way, punching the elevator button as though it were a missile launch activator. Whenever I was mad I poured myself into my work further, and as I seethed over the groveling slut Cass had suddenly let herself be turned into, I typed faster, losing myself in the work and letting the hours slip by. Cass was a strong, independent young woman, fierce and fiery and always ready to stand up for her rights, she was the one who had introduced me to online forums of smart women in tech and cool feminist blogs and suddenly here she was glassy-eyed over some Master who was having the time of his life handcuffing a girl to a cage in a dirty club. That Cass was so willing to throw her old persona under the bus made me furious. It made me want to sink my teeth into a pillow and scream with rage, but instead I buckled down and just worked harder, pushing myself to make as much headway with my current project as possible. And so by the time I started coming down from my anger-high, I was alone in the office, waving others away saying I just needed another hour, just an hour more, just a little more time...

I softly walked to the main office door and clicked the lock with a soft turn of the key. My cube light glowed solo in the otherwise dark office. So when a hand suddenly grazed my shoulder from behind, I stiffened in pure shock, emitting only a sharp intake of breath.

Incidents. It was an incident. And the incident was happening to me. A shiver ran down my spine as I slowly swiveled my chair around.

“Lydia -- it is Lydia, isn’t it?”

His voice was deep and calm, as though he were asking me to sign in at a doctor’s appointment or sign a piece of paperwork at the bank, rather than the question from a man standing too close to comfort to my chair, blocking my exit. His eyes were dark in the soft light of my cubicle, his hair a deep chestnut, and he smelled like a mixture of rich tobacco -- and I mean rich as in oh-my-god expensive because you know that smell when it hits you and I’d been in its presence once or twice in my life before -- and an undertone of teak wood, as though he were bringing the essence of a man’s leather-bound book library into my tidy little cubicle.

I nodded my head slowly. “Yes.” There was really no denying it. The must that surrounded him throbbed with a vital sort of urgency, and I shifted my weight in my chair slightly, trying to hide the fact that I felt incredibly aroused as he leaned down closer to me.

“You’ve heard about what happens to girls who stay all alone after hours in this building, haven’t you?”

“Men, too, I’ve heard,” I replied too quickly to stop myself from being cheeky. For a moment he looked at me, and then the trace of a smirk flashed across his face.

“Men too, Lydia.”

I knew there would be cleaning people somewhere in the building, there nearly always were. If I acted casual and then screamed, I might escape and be able to tell the tale, maybe even catch him on the security cameras if I played my cards right. But then, wouldn’t someone else in my position have thought of the same thing when this man approached them in their cubicle as they slaved away over lines of code or pushed through a headache to finish writing something for the next morning’s urgent deadline? I couldn’t be the only one to think about bolting, surely. It would be the obvious move. Trying the obvious seemed like a bad idea. Plus, he smelled terrific. Sexy, throbbingly terrific.

Against my better judgement, I inhaled obviously, letting his musk fill my nostrils, and then I let out a small sigh of pleasure.

“You smell...rich. Rich as fuck,” I breathed. It was odd, but it felt as though I were hearing myself say it from across a large expanse, like a large field, or a very wide atrium.

“I am...very, very able to take care of myself, let me say that,” he chuckled. “It’s funny, others have said about as much, but you’re definitely the most direct about it so far. I should probably patent the blend, call it
Donovan: Rich As Fuck
.”

I breathed in again, unabashedly this time. “Call it Sexy Rich As Fuck, it’d be more accurate.”

Who the hell
was
I all of a sudden? Somewhere in my mind as I sat in the chair looking up at him as he hovered over me, his tall body casting a long shadow across my body, I wanted to tell myself to get out of there, he’s doing something to you, something isn’t right, but I was powerless to resist. His hand reached for my chin and with a firm tilt he lifted my face up to meet his.

His voice was low and husky and his feral musk of smoke and wood filled my senses as he spoke. “You’re going to do what I say because I’m rich as fuck and because deep inside you know you want this. I think deep inside there’s a dirty girl aching to get out.”

“Your cologne...Donovan...” I started to breathe, but he chuckled, cutting me off with one finger pushed firmly to my lips.

“Yes, I’m Donovan. And you’re already on your way to your new life -- don’t fret too much, pet,” he said. He stood back and surveyed me, as though contemplating how to best prepare a meal. “I think you’ll do best telling me what you want.”

The voice inside me that before had been trying to tell me to get away was silent now. In my head, the only thing I seemed to be able to pull together was something that made my face flush a deep crimson. I didn’t want to get away and he seemed to know it, because again Donovan chuckled.

“Perhaps I can help you out a little. I’ve found it’s always best to give easy suggestions at first, and you’ll soon be willing to do whatever I tell you to do without much effort at all. It really is quite easy once you come around and realize it’s what you want. It
is
what you want, Lydia.” His voice was smooth and was like liquid silver. “You want me to fuck you.”

“I want you to fuck me,” I breathed, hearing my own voice as something sultry and husky, as though I were someone different entirely. Someone who wanted to be fucked in her office by this Donovan. Hard.

“I’m sorry, I do think you need to speak up a little louder,” he said, tapping a finger to my lips again.

I licked my lips.

“It’s really quite easy. Tell me you want me to fuck you. You want me to take you to the atrium and fuck you there.”

“Take me to the atrium and fuck my pussy there,” I echoed.

“You want me to fuck you hard, not gently, but hard and rough, don’t you Lydia. You want me to fuck you there and then take you out and parade you at the club I own.”

I nodded, biting my lip this time in an attempt to hold back to slight shudder that ran through my body as he offered the suggestions to me. “Fuck me. Parade me. I’ll be yours.” The words tasted like bitter chocolate on my tongue when I said them. This is what I wanted. I needed this. It was a convulsion in my body, a sudden burning need. He was right. Donovan was right.

He caught my wrist in his hand and pulled me up, then set me to stand before him and once again I was surveyed. His scent was heady and intoxicating as he moved slowly around my body, examining me where I stood.

“Fuck me hard and rough. Use me,” I whispered. I stole a glance at his own body as he passed in front of me and dared to reach out a hand towards his cock where it bulged clearly in his dark pants.