"Thank you for seeing me on such short notice…" Leilana said as David was set down on her desk by Elisabet.

"Do you need me for anything else, ma'am?" Elisabet asked dutifully, before being dismissed with a wave of Leilana's hand.

"No, Elisabet, that will be all, thank you…" Leilana said, adding, "And would you shut the door on your way out?"

As Elisabet slipped out of the office, David noticed a grin on her face as the door latched shut behind her. David suddenly grew worried; standing on Leilana's desk, David paled. Summoned to the boss's office at the end of the day? Door shut behind his escort? A major deadline coming up for the San-Martin account that had been giving David troubles all month? Everything about the situation stank of disciplinary action, and it didn't help that his boss always looked disappointed and angry in equal measure from his three inch vantage point. Suddenly Leilana's glasses glaring down at him held the reflection of every office rumor he'd heard about those employees who failed to meet Leilana's exacting expectations.

He saw the story Jeremiah had told him about Beth-Anne, the process analyst who failed to accurately estimate a client's projected earnings and had spent an entire day of meetings pinned under Leilana's ass for it. Jeremiah had said that Beth-Anne had been returned to her desk at close to two in the morning, dripping with management's sweat and stuck with the ultimatum to 'get it right by eight in the morning' or endure worse.

David blinked and was confronted with Meribah's gossip about how Devon had tried flirting with Leilana, and hadn't taken her rejection well, pestering her with emails and comments until finally Leilana had had enough and after calling Devon into her office, forced him inside her shoe. Meribah said that Devon hadn't ever been fired or quit, and that the company still paid him to the current day, ignorant that his only duties were now to be an insole for Leilana.

David's breath quickened in his chest as one of Leilana's hands rested on the desk next to him, the scent of an earthy and woodsy hand lotion sent him to Pete's story in the break atrium about how Gorge hadn’t been seen in some time, and the last time he was seen when Leilana had been grumbling about forgetting her lunch and took him back to her office to discuss his performance. Pete had speculated in excruciating detail how easy it would have been for Leilana to chew Gorge up, or even, swallow him whole, just to hold her over until dinner, of course.

In her other hand, Leilana held a sheaf of loose papers, clearly printed in small text with each one nearly filled, edge to edge with information. She deftly thumbed through the data, humming and sighing to herself as she did the calculations in her mind. Minutes passed away as Leilana ignored David on her desktop while she read, her fingers on the desktop idly drumming on the polished walnut surface, sending tremors with every impact of her fingernails through David's legs.

“Mr. Garcia…” Leilana said, startling David out of his focus on her tapping, forest green fingernails. “You’re currently working on the projections for the San-Martin account, correct?”

“Y…yes, Ms. Laurent.” David offered, trying to remain professional under the gaze of a woman twenty years his senior and almost fourteen times his height. “Since Davis was removed from the project, I’ve been the only Projections Report Analyst assigned to the account. I can get…”

“I have the projections here, Mr. Garcia…” Leilana noted, gently waving the papers she held. “That’s what we’re here to discuss today.”

“O…oh, I, um, what d…did you need to know?” David stumbled as she leaned over him as he spoke. “I c…can make ad…adjustments to the modeling if you…”

“The formatting is sloppy.” Leilana said, freezing David’s heart.

She set the papers down, and pushed herself up from her desk. David had never grown accustomed to being around larger people, so when she stood, placing her hands on her desk and pushing herself up, David fell back on his ass as the giantess rose up above him on columns rooted in green acrylic paint. If Leilana noticed his fall, she said nothing, instead walking around her desk to the door of her office.

“The data is so wildly out of order it would take an expert in the field of many years to re-collate it and make sense of it.” Leilana said as she threw the deadbolt latch to her office, resulting in both an audible thunk from the metal bolt and a deep gulp from David.

She turned back to him, watching him as she moved over to the windows that lead to the rest of the office. Although she was sequestered in a corner office that was mostly only visible from a hallway, she still took the time to drop the privacy blinds over the windows. The corrugated fabric in dark grey fell from the high ceiling as the blinds closed in abrupt unison.

“There are stark errors in the regulatory citation sections that would cause our firm to be subjected to scrutiny from no less than four federal agencies…” She said as she continued her circuit around her own desk, reaching a cabinet that stood next to the door. “and at least two state ones.”

She opened the cabinet to reveal one half loaded with a dazzling array of drinkware, glasses, tumblers, coupes, flutes, most of it in stark, brilliant glass that almost seemed to shine with its own radiance as even the dim light from the office struck it. She selected a thick bottomed tumbler before turning to the other side, loaded with bottles of liquor that David could scarcely identify. From that section she pulled a green glass bottle and popped the cork. She smelled the aroma that floated up from the bottle, smiling before she poured a few fingers of the smokey dark amber liquid into the glass. She replaced the cork and bottle, and briefly brushed the control pad next to her door, dimming the lights in her office to something closer to the half-set sun outside, before making her way back to her desk.

“You even managed to misspell the client’s name…” Leilana said, now standing as directly overhead as her desk would allow.

In one hand she held her drink, the orange glow from her office lights catching the lines of the glass and liquid inside in a spectacular display of color, while her other hand rested on her hip. David tried to make out her expression, but he felt dizzy from the pounding of his heart, and still hadn’t adjusted to the relatively low light of the office.

He watched, stunned, as she brought the glass to her lips, and still watching him, began to slowly tilt the heavy base back, letting the shining liquid flow over her lips, passed her teeth, and into her mouth. David wanted to run, but aside from the locked door, his position high on her desk, and the notion that every one of her steps, even wearing six inch stilettos, cleared more distance than hundreds of his own, David couldn’t make his legs move.

The liquor seemed to last forever, a river's deluge over a crystalline bed, through her lips, and into the darkness of her mouth and beyond. But it did eventually drain from the glass, Leilana locking her eyes with David's the entire time. When she finished, the empty tumbler came down next to him jarring him out of his stunned silence.

"M…Ms. Laurent, i…if you just give me another chance…" David pleaded, looking around and down in desperate fear. "I w…will work through the weekend to fix…"

David's pleading was silenced when a finger tip the size of his head pressed into his face silencing him. Her finger released him almost immediately, but David had no relief as she turned the finger over and used the point of her almond shaped nail to guide his chin up to look her in the eyes again.

"But the actual projections themselves…" Leilana said through a toothy smile. "Were the best damn numbers I've seen in this company since I got promoted out of Projections seven years ago."

David wanted to cry, from relief and happiness all at once. He wanted to seize her finger tip in his hands and plant thankful, almost worshipful kisses all along it. But more than anything else he wanted to pass out as the tension in his jaw, neck, back, and immobile legs washed out of him, leaving only a painful fatigue in its place.

“Now…” Leilana said, her other hand deftly undoing the clasp that held her wrapped pencil skirt in place.

The garment, no longer secured against her hips, fluttered to the floor revealing what could easily be identified as red lace against her olive skin, bereft of any hosiery or need for David to imagine what smoothly shaven surfaces lay beyond that lace. The tension surged back into David’s limbs, and into another part of him as his heart raced again.

“Let’s see if you can be used for something other than numbers…”