Collateral Damage Pt. 01

----@----

I went home that night in a very good mood, and found that Rosie was in an even better one.

Rosie wasn't a big girl by any standard; at 125 pounds, she was essentially half my weight and a little over a foot shorter than me. But she'd been a little down on herself because of some minor flab that wouldn't go away after our second child 6 years before, so, after discovering she wouldn't fit into an old, favorite pair of jeans, she went on the warpath to lose weight and started working hard to get back to her 'original shape'. Just that morning, she had managed to squeeze into the jeans, an act that resulted in a triumphant shout that I'd heard all the way in the kitchen.

Rosie had also gotten a bump to her already good mood when she got a great job review. She was a conscientious worker and had been able to complete a difficult, fairly complex project on time. Her bosses had noticed and made it clear she'd done well and had put herself in line for a raise.

So, between fitting into her jeans and killing it at work, she was very excited about her great day and she met me at the door with a huge smile, a tight hug and a big kiss followed by an invitation to celebrate in the bedroom once the kids were down.

I didn't hesitate to accept.

Now, despite her small size, Rosie could be a pretty physical girl in bed and she was more than willing to take things over. She could ride me like a cowboy or buck back at me like she was a rodeo horse, and when she wrapped her legs around my waist, it felt like I'd been gripped by an anaconda. By the time we were done on any given night, we'd both be completely out of breath, covered in sweat and saliva, and barely able to catch our breath.

But, that night, she was particularly energetic and really took complete charge right from the beginning. She pushed me on my back, tore my pants off and attacked my cock with her hands and her mouth until it was a throbbing erect spear on which she aggressively impaled herself. She threw her pelvis at me savagely and gave me little chance to hold back on my orgasm, which erupted, along with hers, within a few minutes.

She wasn't going to let me rest much after one go around, though, and after a very short intermission, began aggressively using her mouth to call me back to attention. The second I was stiff enough to mount, she was on me again, her teeth clenched in determination, letting out a long hiss as she lowered herself onto me.

I always take a long time to orgasm the second time around, and Rosie took full advantage, getting herself off a couple of times on top of me before insisting I take her from behind and then on her back. She kept encouraging me the whole time, shouting my name in combination with any number of endearments and epithets, screaming that she loved me, loved my technique, loved my body, loved my cock. By the time we were done humping and pushing and driving ourselves into each other, I was wrung out like a wet rag.

I lay next to her, breathing heavily, trying to keep my eyes open, feeling about as contented as a man could feel. Rosie nuzzled in close to me and whispered soft, obscene little compliments about how well I'd done and that she hoped I could say the same. I turned to her, stoked her face a couple of times and laughed gently.

"Yea, I think it's fair to say that you did a pretty good job there too."

----@----

Things around the office remained strained with a near palpable sense of anxiety and anger that resulted in an atmosphere of abysmally poor cooperation punctuated with low level arguments that threatened to boil over into outright shouting matches on any given day. It seemed everyone was on edge, dreading the ramifications of Teri's newly proposed policy changes.

I managed to short circuit some of Teri's plans for at least a little while by asking HR to perform a formal review of any new policy suggestions by management that could result in any disciplinary action. This, I knew, would buy time, but unless Teri changed her mind, Gabe and a couple of other guys on her shit list were in trouble sooner or later.

A couple of weeks into this uneasy cease-fire, I was eating lunch outside, trying to enjoy a few minutes of sunshine alone, when Devin plopped himself down beside me with a grin that the Cheshire cat would have considered excessive.

"I've got a little something that I think you should see."

He was obviously itching to show off what he'd been able to do, so I held up a finger to indicate I couldn't talk, chewing as slowly as possible, trying my best to aggravate him. Eventually I had to stop my passive aggressive mastication and look at the evidence.

"Are you saying that you got Teri Leigh in the sack?" I asked flatly.

"Oh, yeah." He said, without breaking his impossibly annoying smile. "In fact, I tapped that ass twice."

He patted his shirt pocket that held his cell phone. "And I've got the proof right here. 500 bucks worth of proof."

I leaned back and crossed my arms, looking at him dubiously.

"It's got to be good. No vague pictures that might have been lifted from a porno site."

"Oh, it is. It's very good, very clear."

He pulled out his phone with a flourish, pressed a couple of icons and started scrolling through his pictures.

"How about this one?" He handed me the phone with his eyebrows raised in expectation.

The picture was about as explicit as any porn I've ever encountered and if I hadn't seen it, I might have had trouble believing it. There was Teri Leigh, on her knees and elbows, her head down, her teeth clenched and her eyes closed while Devin crouched behind her, his cock obviously shoved to the hilt. She was wearing a fancy red garter belt with stockings and had a red high heeled shoe on the foot that was visible in the picture. The image showed Devin holding his cell phone and the picture had evidently been taken using a well-positioned mirror. His expression was pure mockery with his tongue lolling out and his eyes open wide in fake, conspiratorial surprise.

"Hmmm." I said.

He laughed. "There's more. Go ahead, and flip through the pics."

There were probably 10 pictures of him fucking Teri and 3 or 4 of her sucking his cock. The pictures were...an education. At work, Teri was proper and stuck up and a by-the-book bitch that acted like she had an icicle shoved up her ass. But, she was totally out of control in these pictures. Her makeup was smeared, her hair was wild and her expression bore no resemblance whatsoever to what she sported in the office. She looked like the personification of lust and I had to wonder at Devin's ability to recognize and unlock the whore that evidently lived somewhere deep in Teri Lee's heart.

When I looked up, Devin was still grinning, his hands open in an expectant gesture.

"I think you owe me..." He said with a wink.

I nodded my head slowly and smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do." I admitted reluctantly, drawing my words out slowly, trying my best to sound casual.

I took a couple of minutes to congratulate him and to concede that I'd lost the bet and underestimated his ability. I had to give him the win because, after all, he'd earned it apparently fair and square. So I faced the music and groaned out loud as I opened my wallet and pulled out a couple of hundred bucks that I counted out into his open palm while he smiled like a triumphant Caesar. I was going to pay him the rest the next day, but I figured I might as well complete the capitulation right away, so I took him over to an ATM in the office lobby where I got another 3 bills and gave it to him. I shook his hand, smiled and congratulated him again, doing my best to be gracious.

Losing hurts, it always does, but this loss was hedged against the fact that it made it possible for an even greater victory in a more important setting down the road.

I'd eaten crow and lost 5 hundred bucks on a bet, but I was smiling when I went back to work.

----@----

I found that knowing about Teri's 'indiscretion' and actually doing something with it were two different things. As I thought of the various ways the information might become a useful workplace weapon, I recognized that, no matter how the information was used, it essentially amounted to a form of blackmail. There was just no way around the fact that I'd be holding something over her head to make her do things my way.

I considered talking to Rosie or someone from work about my dilemma, but I was certain they'd think less of me if I went into the details of what I'd already done, let alone what I was thinking about doing with the information I now had. So, I kept my own counsel and agonized a couple of nights and days about it, looking for answers as I stared at my office door or the ceiling of my bedroom. Gradually, the better angels of my nature took over and I decided to shelve the whole idea of strong- arming Teri with what I knew.

My new resolution to ride on the moral high road didn't last long, however. On the day after I'd finally decided to 'do the right thing', she brought out her big guns again at yet another highly contentious staff meeting, announcing that she'd been working closely with HR and that they were starting to see things her way. She trotted out a list, headed by Gabe Prince, of at least 10 staff members that she intended to discipline regardless of the inclinations of anyone else in the room. The usual arguments ensued, but this time I simply stewed quietly while the idea of confronting her about the tryst rapidly became more attractive.

At the end of the meeting, everyone dumbly shuffled out of the room leaving Teri and me alone.

I just stared at her while she gathered up her papers until she started to feel uncomfortable.

"What's wrong Grant? Nothing to say? Finally recognizing the behavior issues around here?"

I cleared my throat and started to speak slowly, almost formally.

"I noticed, Teri, that everyone on that list is a man and that the main complaint against most of them is that they are in violation of some sort of harassment policy.

"Well, let's be honest Grant. Look at what's been going on. Men in this company have been treating women in the workplace like they are some sort of decoration for their own pleasure, rather than as valuable colleagues. That's totally unacceptable. And, frankly, since women simply don't violate sexual harassment policies like men do, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the list is just men. Face it, this sort of bad behavior is written on the Y chromosome."

"Really?" I said, raising my eyebrows incredulously. "You honestly think women are immune to sexual harassment issues?"

"The vast majority of them. I mean, come on now. Men are generally barely in control of their libidos and it ends up making them act like a bunch of college boys on the make. This is a business, Grant, not some frat house where any kind of behavior is in bounds. You have to know..."

I'd had enough and raised my hand up to interrupt her.

"Holy shit, Teri, you sure make a lot of accusations about men's uncontrolled libido for a woman who's been fucking around herself."

She pulled away from me like she'd been threatened with a gun, her face a combination of outrage and fear. "Are you accusing me of something?"

"Well, yeah, I guess I am. I'm accusing you of extreme hypocrisy I suppose. I mean, you've been spending all this time calling out some of the men for their boorish behavior, lording your superior morals over guys like Gabe and I, yet all this time you've been more than willing to take an off limits roll in the hay with an associate like Devin Tinian."

She squinted at me, trying to kill me with her glance before hissing back. "Whatever Devin said is bullshit. He's like the rest of you, making up pure crap to get a slap on the back from the other rednecks around here."

I laughed at that. "You know, you might be able to make some of your little followers believe that, but I've seen the pictures." That statement clearly shook her and she looked stunned but a little dubious. I leaned in closer.

"The pictures on Devin's cell phone. Pictures of you and him, taken at the Drury Inn." She was shaking her head slowly, still in denial. "Honestly Teri, I never thought of you as a garter belt kind of a girl. But, hey, I guess I never thought you'd jump in the sack with someone from work either, what with the endless moralizing you do around here about professionalism and all."

For the first time since I'd known her, Teri was simply speechless. She stared at me furiously, her brow wrinkled and her nostrils flaring in anger, but no sound at all came out from behind her clenched teeth. I simply smiled back as smugly and triumphantly as I could, trying my best to enjoy her discomfort.

I could see the wheels turning and knew that she was thinking carefully about what I'd said, about what I knew, and what the ramifications of that knowledge might mean to her. For the next few moments, I watched as that understanding was reflected in her facial expressions that went from surprise to contempt to anger and then, finally, to something I'd never seen in her before in her, a kind of sadness or regret borne out of fear.

Her chin started to tremble, her eyes got wet and she bit her lips nervously, opening her mouth a couple of times without saying anything. Finally, she gave out a cry like a little child and actual tears began to run down her face. She stood up abruptly and backed away from me for a couple of steps, shaking her head and pointing a shaking finger as though she'd just discovered I was the anti-Christ , before turning and literally running from the room.

I thought I might feel some sort of satisfaction at this little victory, at gaining the upper hand in this strange chess game we'd been playing. But somehow I just felt empty and more than a little ashamed.

----@----

I'll never know for sure how much the threat of my knowledge about her trysts with Devin had to do with it, but Teri throttled way back on her campaign to punish Gabe. She finally agreed to a compromise in which he'd have a probationary letter put in his file that would be removed after 6 months if he attended sensitivity classes and if he kept his nose-and his jokes-clean.

But, Teri isn't the kind of person to take a defeat lying down, so I knew there'd some attempt at retribution and I figured it would be directed at me personally.

It wasn't particularly long in coming.

The counter-attacks began within a week of the time I'd confronted Teri about her 'missteps' with Devin. At first I thought maybe my mind was playing tricks on me, maybe I was looking too hard for a trap. But gradually it became evident that something all too real was happening. 3 or 4 of the younger gals at work, all friends of Teri, were suddenly wearing relatively provocative clothes, low necklines, high skirt hems, borderline trashy stockings. And there suddenly seemed to be a lot of things for them to pick up on the floor around my work area, because they were all bending to expose copious amounts of cleavage, nicely tanned legs and well developed rear ends pressed tight against jeans or skirts.

Now don't get me wrong, I was more than willing to look a little. But I was very sensitive to the game that was being played, so I made sure that I didn't look 'a lot' and was damn sure I didn't actually say anything about it at all. In fact, it became so clear that her underlings were on alert to catch me in any kind of a compromising situation that I watched virtually everything I did or said so that nothing could be misconstrued as an inappropriate invitation, innuendo or suggestion.

After a couple of weeks successfully weathering the low level stuff, I was exposed to a series of full on frontal assaults.

The first came when I was grabbing a late sandwich in the lunch room by myself. One of the secretaries, a very pretty young brunette with sparkling eyes and a plump, but very well developed body, sat next to me and started eating an ice cream cone.

Only she wasn't eating it so much as making love to it. She was licking the heaped up vanilla like it was an erect phallus and when she took an occasional bite, she did it with her lips only, like she was half kissing, half sucking the ice cream. I had a general idea of was coming next, but I was curious to what her approach would be.

"Mmm, this is really, really good." She purred with a sort of lascivious grin, a bit of vanilla ice cream forming a large, creamy white drop on her lower lip.

"Yes, well, you do seem to be enjoying it." I said, stating the obvious as dispassionately as possible. She smiled more broadly.

"My name is Kim Johnson and I'm kind of new here. Aren't you Grant Simmons?"

"Yep."

"Would you like a lick?" She asked, offering the cone to me while leaning forward herself until her face was less than a foot from mine. "It's really, really good. I promise you'll like it."

I almost laughed at that point. This was the kind of invitation that any unattached, and most attached, red blooded American men dreamed about, but I saw it for what it was. I leaned in fairly close and in a low voice whispered back.

"You know what you should do with that ice cream?"

"What?"

"Give some of the cone to Teri for safekeeping; she's cold enough to keep it from melting even if she held it in her mouth." I pulled back, smiled at her and walked out of the lunch room, waving to the security camera as I left.

A couple of weeks after that I was leaving the office after closing up late when I noticed one of the secretaries still at her desk, long after everyone else had gone. She was quietly weeping, her head buried in her arm that was folded across her desk.

I was going to give her some privacy and slip out quietly, but she seemed so upset that I felt compelled to ask what was wrong. She jumped a little at my voice and raised her head, revealing tear tracks and bloodshot eyes. She shook her head when I asked if I could help, but she was so distraught that I sat down and tried to find out what was wrong and cheer her up.

She seemed completely broken hearted and reluctant to talk through her sobs, but gradually she calmed down and warmed up a little and I slowly got the story out of her. Her boyfriend, a guy she thought she was going to marry, turned out to be an asshole who'd abruptly left her and said some pretty nasty things on the way out to hook up with a 'better piece of ass', just that morning. Evidently he'd never been a particularly nice guy and some of the things she related about him seemed almost over-the-top cruel and I kept feeling worse and worse for her.

Almost an hour into this conversation she was still weeping and borderline inconsolable and I found myself reaching to give her a hug. She didn't resist at all and essentially melted into my arms, laying her head on my shoulder. Her body was full and soft and I could feel her breath on my neck, coming in quiet little gasps. Her vulnerability was nearly palpable and I felt myself responding to it by pulling her closer.

But, as I held her, she settled into my arms and moved herself against my body in a subtly sensuous way that caused a distant alarm to go off, pricking my memory of something my grandfather, a family practice physician, had told me about being careful with female patients.

"Nothing," he had said, "is more seductive than a woman's tears."

The memory caused me to stiffen and I reconsidered the odd coincidence that I would find myself alone with an attractive, disconsolate girl whose vulnerability had resulted in close physical contact and brought me dangerously close to a violation of workplace rules at a suspiciously inopportune time. Suddenly I knew I was being set up again and firmly pushed her back away from me and looked carefully at her face. She bit her lip anxiously and sniffed while I smiled and nodded to her.