[Everard]

Gwendolyn was acutely conscious of the fact that she wasn’t that attractive.

She was very short (less than 5 foot), had unruly dirty-blonde hair and was only just pretty enough not to be plain. Her tits had nice nipples, in her boyfriend’s opinion, but she herself didn’t like the way they drooped. And her ass wasn’t as small and trim as she would have liked. Also, due to her height or rather lack of it, she had dumpy little legs. All in all she was somewhat dissatisfied.

Her boyfriend, Eric, however, was perfectly happy with her. They had been together for over a year and he was utterly devoted to her. He thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Gwen thought he must be crazy but, if he carries on being this crazy, she thought, then it’s fine. And their sex life was absolutely perfect; neither of them had any complaints about that.

So Wendy decided it didn’t matter what she thought of herself. If someone else appreciated her, then life was good.

And indeed it was. That is, until the day that Eric met … Christabel.

Eric and Gwen worked for the same company, but in different departments. They were on the same floor and if they both craned their necks could just about see one another. He worked in Accounts Receivable and she in Accounts Payable so they never had any interaction, but one day they had sat at the same table in the canteen at lunchtime, had struck up a conversation and that was that. He asked her out less than a week later, and within a month they were planning a weekend away. That weekend was an absolute revelation for both of them. Neither of them had met anyone before with whom they were so sexually compatible, and now they had … each other.

The next year was total bliss. Then the AR department took on a new filing clerk. Christabel was tall, willowy, dark-haired, dark-eyed and possessed a dark beauty which enthralled everyone who saw her. Every man in the company wanted to take her out, and most of them asked. But she rejected them all – because she had eyes for Eric, and none other, and her campaign to get him began in earnest.

It started with the occasional exchange of glances over the partition separating her desk from his, next she would ask him for assistance so that he would come round and stand behind her while she displayed some figures on her screen for his approval, then she would stand behind him to watch his screen, her hand resting gently on his shoulder while she lowered her head to whisper some question in his ear. Soon she progressed to wrapping her entire arm round him and placing her face so close to his that had he turned through even the slightest angle, their lips would have met.

Furthermore, her advances were verbal as well as physical; she never missed an opportunity to let him know how helpful he was, how sympathetic and how … well, she never completed that particular sentence, but the body language made it fairly obvious. Of course, being a normal healthy adult heterosexual human male, Eric appreciated the attention. And not being the sharpest knife in the box, he failed to notice how blatant it was.

The day it all came to a head, Eric was sitting concentrating on a thorny problem when Christabel spoke up.

“Have you got a Cottingham Construction invoice there from March?” she asked. “I think someone’s fouled up and charged them for the same parts twice.” As she said this, she rose up to peer over the partition at him, thus ensuring he got a good view of her low-cut top, and the 36C breasts that it wasn’t making a very good job of containing. Eric’s underwear began to have a little containment problem too.

“Normally they only order these once every couple of months, yet here they are on two invoices less than two weeks apart.” She might as well have been talking Latin, as Eric had ceased to listen the moment she stood up; his attention was firmly elsewhere. And ‘firmly’ was quickly becoming the operative word.

“Hang on, I’ll come round.” She started to move round the desk, but had failed to notice some fool had left a used printer cartridge sticking out of her waste bin and went straight into it.

“Dammit!”

“You OK?”

“Think so.” She arrived at Eric’s side of the desk, hobbling rather than gliding elegantly as she’d hoped to. “I think I snagged my tights on that stupid thing.”

She stopped next to Eric, put one foot up on his desk, and inspected the inside of her left thigh, a little unnecessarily as it had been the outside of her right calf that had caught the cartridge.

Eric couldn’t help getting an eyeful. “No, I think it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” mused Chris. She turned slightly towards him, thus ensuring an uninterrupted view of the skimpiest pink thong in her wardrobe.

“Well I suppose you could be right,” she said, reluctantly dropping her foot to the floor and smoothing her micro skirt over her magnificently slender legs.

She bent down so that their eyes were level. “Can you bring that up on your screen? I reckon someone just raised the same invoice twice.” She had regained her usual pose, arm casually round his shoulders and right cheek virtually touching his left.

So it was just another ordinary day at Mercurial Metals Limited – except that on that particular Thursday, the Accounts Payable department had just finished taking a collection for Marion Murphy, who would be retiring the next day, and the staff member in charge of the celebrations for the morrow, was just returning from a shopping trip to buy a suitable leaving present. So after leaving the gift with the Head Of Department for safekeeping, the route back to Gwendoyn’s desk took her near enough to Eric’s side of the office to witness this sordid spectacle.

“What the bloody hell is going on here?”


TO BE CONTINUED …