Flaying Flame
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2. Illawarra Flame Ch. 01-03 free porn video
CHAPTER ONE
Maya knew immediately that she had worn the wrong shoes. She could have gotten away with the business suit if she had have worn a pair of flats or a low heel, but the shiny patent leather high heels with the pointy toes that she’d chosen just screamed ‘New York elite’ when this office was clearly anything but elite. What she should be going for here was ‘friendly and approachable’.
Shit. First impressions make a huge difference to your chances of success in taking over an office like this. Most people believe that business is business, and a manager’s work ethic and philosophy determine their success, but Maya knew better.
Business is people. It was the motto that her dad had drilled into her since she was accepted into business school after she finished high school. It was the motto that had seen her quickly rise to the top at CommuTec. She knew very little about computers, but she knew how to manage people, and that is why at the tender age of just 26 she was standing in front of her very own brand new office full of employees. Well, to be exact it wasn’t a new office and they weren’t new employees, but it was all new to her.
When she’d threatened to leave the company if she wasn’t relocated away from New York there was a flurry of activity and finally an offer to take over the Denver office. She’d taken it in a heartbeat. She had never been to Denver before but the need to leave New York was becoming dire, her in-laws were driving her nuts.
‘This is Donna, our receptionist. Donna this is Maya Chandrasekhar, the new office manager,’ said Phil, the exiting office manager.
‘Nice to meet you Ms. Chandrasekhar,’ Donna said, smiling nervously as she mispronounced her name. She was a rounded girl, pretty, with dimples in her plump cheeks when she smiled.
‘Very nice to meet you Donna, please call me Maya,’ Maya responded as she reached out and shook her hand.
Phil led her through the reception area and back to the workspace itself.
‘This is your office back here,’ said Phil as he guided her past a row of cubicles to a glass box at the back of the open plan room.
‘Your boxes arrived yesterday and I had them put in here for you,’ he told her.
‘Oh good,’ she replied as she looked over the dozen or so boxes of her stuff. ‘Do you mind if I go through them for a minute before meeting the staff?’ She should have a box of shoes in here somewhere.
‘Not at all, just come back out when you are ready.’
He closed the door behind him. She considered closing the shutters but decided against it, she knew that people would be sticking their heads up over their cubicles to get a look at her and she thought it better to let them see.
She started rummaging through boxes, slicing the packaging tape open with the key to her rental car. Of course the box full of shoes was the second to last one. Thank god, she thought as she pulled out the options. She settled on a pair of sensible round-toed black flats and kicked off her heels. She had no idea what had possessed her to wear those ridiculous shoes, she was in Denver for Christ’s sake, not Paris. It’s not like she needed the extra height either, at 5 ft 10 inches she was taller than about half of the men that she met, and men tended to feel threatened by women who were taller than them.
She sat on the floor below the level of the frosted glass and pulled a mirror and tissues out of her purse, this was something that she didn’t want her employees to see. She rubbed the lipstick off her fat round lips and replaced it with sheer gloss. Thank god she had decided not to wear eyeliner, even with the flat shoes and little makeup she was still way over dressed for this office.
She snapped the mirror shut and got up, removing her suit coat and throwing it over her desk chair before exiting the glass box. It was already a mess in there but she didn’t care, there were more important things than keeping your workspace tidy.
Phil was leaning on a cubicle divider about half way down the row, his legs crossed casually at the ankle, his demeanor pompous. His suit jacket was open revealing a fat gut that bulged over his cowboy style belt buckle. He threw his head back as he laughed loudly at something the man in the cubicle had said. It didn’t take a genius to recognize that Phil was a large part of the reason this office was underperforming.
Maya surveyed the office, there were 18 technical and 3 administrative staff stationed here. They occupied the western side of the eighth floor of one of the more prestigious office buildings in downtown Denver. From the western side of the building, the side her office was on, there was a view of the Rocky Mountains. The cubicles on this side of the office would be for the more favored employees, no doubt the man Phil was laughing with was his right hand man.
Phil saw her standing there and motioned for her to come over.
‘This is Graham, he knows how things work around here so you can ask him any questions you might have once I’m gone.’ Phil was grinning as he introduced her. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be asking any advice from Graham.
Maya shook Graham’s hand, ‘Nice to meet you Graham,’ she said.
‘And you Maya,’ he responded with a nod. She didn’t miss the casual use of her first name even though she was his superior.
Phil took her around the office and introduced her to everyone in turn. She made mental notes on each person, memorizing names and work tasks, and especially noting the way Phil interacted with them. He had a handful of favorites, all men, but that wasn’t surprising seeing that the office was dominated by men, as was usual for the information technology industry.
The last cubicle, the one farthest from the window, was occupied by a large sleeping man. Maya was shocked, she’d never seen anyone blatantly asleep at their desk before.
‘Tyler… Tyler!’ Phil shouted as he snapped his fingers beside the sleeping man’s ear.
He jerked awake and looked instinctively at his expensive wristwatch, then relaxed his massive shoulders as he seemed to realize where he was. His business shirt was crinkled and he had a post-it note stuck to the side of his face. Phil rolled his eyes.
‘Tyler, this is your new boss, Maya Chandrasekhar.’ He didn’t bother to conceal the contempt in his voice as he spoke.
‘Hi,’ Tyler said as he stuck his had out and gave her a grin that she supposed would melt most women. Fortunately she wasn’t most women. He had dark brown hair that was long enough to curl softly, fair skin with freckles and hazel eyes that were cloaked by long dark eyelashes. His mouth was just a bit too big for his face, which is why his smile came off as goofy rather than sophisticated. Of course it would be hard to interpret any smile as sophisticated when the wearer of it had a post-it note stuck to his face.
‘Hello,’ she responded as she shook his big warm hand. She gave a perfunctory smile, she wasn’t impressed by this man. She leaned over and pulled the post-it note off his face, it had a phone number on it, probably belonging to the reason he was asleep at work. He was probably up all night screwing some poor girl. She handed him the phone number.
‘Well, that’s everyone. I have a few things to tie up at admin., I’ll see you both at the lunch party,’ said Phil as he turned and walked away.
‘Lunch party?’ She asked Tyler.
‘Yeah, going away party… He organized it himself.’ Tyler’s eyes were locked on hers, he was completely deadpan as he talked. He was wearing a green tie that made the jade speckles in his eyes shine.
Maya couldn’t help but smile as she nodded. Of course Phil was the sort of manager who would need to organize a going away party for himself.
‘Okay, I guess I’ll see you then,’ she said.
The minute she dismissed him he turned around and started doing something on one of the three compute
rs in his workspace, what she couldn’t tell, he must be a programmer.
When she got back to her office she took out her notebook and wrote down everything she could remember about each person she had met. She looked up the office files on each employee.
Despite herself she became fascinated when she got to Tyler. Tyler Alexandrov Gray, USC computer science graduate, high honors. He was indeed a programmer and a poorly paid one at that. He made nowhere near enough for that watch, definitely not with the amount of leave he took. He had taken more unpaid vacation in the three years that he had worked there than most employees took in a lifetime.
He only worked 35 hours a week. Two years ago he had requested to reduce his hours further and take Wednesdays off, Phil had denied him. That was weird. Usually when people want to reduce their hours they ask for Fridays off to give them a long weekend. Maybe he thought he deserved a rest in the middle of the week. Maybe he had a girlfriend who taught a yoga class on Wednesdays.
Trust fund, she thought. His family must be loaded and he’s living off his parents, probably vacationing in Europe in all of those weeks off. Now she was really unimpressed by him. She would probably have to fire him.
She went to the stupid lunch party where everyone milled around and ate the pizza and cake. Phil gave a speech about himself.
She made small talk with a few of the employees, learning about what they did at work, their hobbies, their families. She filed it all away in her brain to write down later. At one point she looked up and saw Tyler sitting at the conference table beside Donna the secretary, smiling and chatting with her. Donna looked admiringly at him. He wasn’t eating the pizza, he had an enormous Tupperware container full of something else that he was shoveling in his mouth.
After lunch she looked through the office productivity log, it listed all of the deliverables that the office had churned out over the past two years. It was decidedly sparse compared to the sister document from the New York office. She was surprised to find ‘T. Gray’ listed beside a large percentage of the products. It seemed that despite his poor attendance Tyler managed to have the highest output of anyone in the office by a long margin.
She was relieved that she wouldn’t have to fire him, but it didn’t make sense. If Tyler was the best worker here what was he doing crammed up the back in the shittiest cubicle, and why did Phil roll his eyes at him and treat him with contempt?
She read his performance reviews, all written by Phil. The first one was non-committal but all of the rest were blatant in their disapproval. ‘Uncooperative,’ ‘disrespectful,’ and ‘not a team player’, were some of the descriptors that stood out. He hadn’t given him a raise since he was hired three years ago, not even the scheduled ones.
She found his extension on the phone list and dialed it.
‘Tyler Gray,’ he answered.
‘It’s Maya, can I see you in my office please?’
‘Sure.’ The line went dead.
She watched out the window as he approached her glass box. He made eye contact with her before he got to the door and entered without knocking.
God, he was enormously tall, she hadn’t appreciated his size when he had been sitting down before. He must have been 6 foot 4 inches at least, maybe taller. He was lanky, but not skinny. Definitely not skinny. She couldn’t quite tell through his business clothes but she suspected from the way that he was holding himself that he was muscular. The luxury of the rich, she thought to herself.
‘Ms. Chandrasekhar?’ At least he had the courtesy to address her properly.
‘Please, Maya,’ she corrected him.
‘Okay, Maya, you wanted to see me?’ He asked.
‘Sit,’ she told him. She hadn’t decided how to approach this yet, she was buying time.
Tyler easily lifted a stack of boxes off the only other chair in her office and set them down on the floor before swinging the chair around. He sat facing her. He looked at her, waiting for her to say something, she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
‘Do you always sleep at work?’ She asked.
His face broke out in an enormous grin. ‘I didn’t make a very good first impression did I?’ He asked.
She didn’t want to, but she found herself smiling back at him, ‘No.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t always sleep at work.’
‘Will it happen again?’ She asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Probably,’ he said.
She was surprised. That wasn’t the right answer. Nobody had ever openly admitted to her that they would probably fall asleep at work before. It annoyed her but he was her best worker, she needed to find a way to not get angry at him.
‘Honesty. I like that. Is your work boring you?’ She asked.
‘No.’
‘What is it then?’
He smiled as he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, ‘I’m tired.’
Okay, this was getting her nowhere, she didn’t care if staying up all night shagging his girlfriend was making him tired at work. She decided to change topics.
‘Why doesn’t Phil like you?’ She asked.
‘Maybe because I sleep at work?’ He said with a sly grin.
She couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Come on Tyler, I’m going to ask Phil the same thing, I’d prefer to get it from you.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I don’t play the game.’
‘What game?’
He looked unsure, ‘You know, the game.’
She shook her head.
He looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t make jokes about women, and especially not about the women in the office.’
Now she was the one who was uncomfortable, she felt her cheeks burning with embarrassment. He was staring at her.
‘How do you like Denver?’ He saved her by changing the topic, she was glad.
‘Oh, it’s nice. Quiet.’
‘I bet it is compared to New York City. You have a kid?’ He asked.
She looked at him quizzically, how could he have known that?
He leaned over and pulled a framed photograph of Nicholas out of the top of the box that he’d moved off his chair. He looked at it for a moment before handing it to her.
‘How old is he?’ He asked.
‘Three,’ she couldn’t help but smile as she looked at the photo, it was from last Christmas, he was out in the snow in his puffy red snowsuit, his dark hair and eyes vibrant against the white snow.
‘I have friends with a three year old, I could introduce you if you like.’
She looked up at him, surprised. She didn’t think he was hitting on her, she guessed he was just trying to be nice.
It was a really generous offer, she would love to meet other parents. Nicholas was being a real little shit lately, his terrible twos were starting to look like they would never go away. God, how she wanted to talk to other parents about it, to get their advice and feel like she wasn’t the only one was verging on the edge of control.
‘Okay, that would be nice.’ She couldn’t believe she was taking him up on the offer.
‘Good, you wont be mad at me then when I tell you that I have to leave early today to baby sit for them.’ He was grinning again, did he ever stop?
‘What time?’ She asked.
‘Four,’ he replied. ‘Why don’t you come with me? They’ll only be gone an hour and then you can talk to them, ask about day care and pediatricians and all that… parent stuff.’ He waved his hand in the air to signify that there was more parent stuff that he either didn’t know about or didn’t care about.
‘I don’t know, I don’t want to impose…’
‘Nonsense, they won’t care,’ he dismissed her.
She regarded him skeptically, this was a bad idea.
He looked back for a moment and then pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and pressed a few buttons.
He looked at the floor as he talked into the phone. ‘I’m bringing someone over with a kid to play with Grace… She. Yes…’
He looked up at her, ‘Do
you have any special dietary needs?’ He asked.
She shook her head.
‘No,’ he said into the phone. ‘Yep, see you then.’ He put the phone back in his pocket.
‘Okay, it’s all sorted. We’ll leave at three thirty,’ he told her brightly.
‘I thought you said four?’
He smiled, ‘I have to baby sit at four, I have to leave here at three thirty.’
‘You tricked me,’ she said incredulously.
‘Yes, I guess I did,’ he admitted, ‘but they’re expecting you now. I have some things to finish before we leave.’ He got up and left.
She didn’t know how she should feel about this. At the beginning of the day she had wanted to fire this guy, and now she was leaving work early to baby sit with him? How did that happen?
It was probably a bad idea, she had always made an effort to separate her work and private life, it made managing people easier. She would just go and meet these people and ask all of the questions she needed answers to and then never see them again. She would ask after them politely but never see them again. That’s what she’d do.
A few minutes before four o’clock she pulled up behind Tyler’s truck in front of a suburban house in the northwestern part of Denver. It was a nice neighborhood, lots of trees. She felt nervous. Why had she agreed to do this again?
She stepped out of the rental car and got Nicholas out of his car seat. Tyler was standing on the cement path that led to the front door, waiting for her. He had taken his tie off and undone the top button of his business shirt, and was holding the Tupperware container from his lunch in one hand. As they approached he squatted down so that he was closer to being level with Nicholas.
‘Hello. My name’s Tyler, what’s yours?’ He asked him.
‘My name’s Nicholas and my mommy says I have to be good,’ Nicholas replied.
Tyler nodded, ‘That’s probably good advice buddy,’ he said as he stood up and walked up the front path.
He knocked on the front door.
A little girl appeared behind the stained glass panel to the left of the door.
‘Daddy, Uncle Tyler’s here!’ she yelled.
‘Okay, let him in,’ replied a deep male voice.
The door handle started to move back and forth. She looked at Tyler, he was watching it, smiling. He glanced at her.
‘She’s really into opening the door lately,’ he said.
Finally the child turned the handle far enough and pulled the door open.
‘Uncle Tyler! Uncle Tyler!’ She jumped up and down with her arms extended skywards towards Tyler. A black and white dog sat beside her, wagging its tail.
‘Gracie my girl,’ he said as he swept her up into his arms, ‘what did you do today?’
‘Um… me and Daddy went to Zach’s school…’
‘Daddy and I,’ Tyler corrected her.
‘Daddy and I,’ she repeated after him.
‘What else?’
‘We went to look at the cows but we had to leave because Amy wouldn’t stop crying… Then we went to the store.’
Tyler nodded, ‘That sounds like a good day,’ he said. ‘This is Maya, and that’s her son Nicholas. Why don’t you take Nicholas to see your toys?’ He said as he put her down.
‘Come on,’ Grace said motioning to Nicholas. Maya was relieved that Nicholas responded to her and followed her into the house.
‘Cassie, come,’ Tyler said to the dog. He was down on one knee as the dog greeted him excitedly, whining and wagging her tail as he scratched her behind the ears.
He got up and walked into the house, she followed him timidly, behind the dog, closing the door behind her. She felt like an intruder in this slice of normal family life. They walked down the hallway and into the kitchen where a large athletic-looking blonde man was sitting on a bar stool cradling a tiny baby in one arm, feeding her with a bottle.
‘Hey,’ said Tyler.
‘Hi,’ he said, looking up. He saw her and smiled. God, he was gorgeous, square jaw, piercing blue eyes, tanned skin, straight teeth. He was dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt. Stay at home dad. She had heard of them but had never met one.
She smiled back at him. ‘Hi,’ she said, ‘I’m Maya.’
He nodded. ‘Sam.’
He put the bottle down and kissed the baby on the head before using both hands to transfer her to Tyler. Tyler settled the baby into the crook of his arm. Sam got up and Tyler took the seat, he reached up and took the burping towel from Sam’s shoulder and slung it over his own. He picked up the bottle and continued feeding the baby.
Kaidence
- 22.03.2020
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