Misbehaviour

The post title does not refer to what happened on my "holiday" (aka unbroadcast episode of Survival), but to the splendiferous Black Lace anthology now available in the UK.

My story Office Sex kicks off the perverse proceedings - a Ronseal title if there ever was one*. The back cover gives a tiny teaser - 'Mr Morrell is hotter than hell and he proves it in the stationery cupboard'. Here is a tiny whetstone for your appetites:

I hear Mr Morrell shut the door, then take a quick breath when I hear a sound like a key turning in a lock.

“Turn around and face me,” he says. He is standing, arms folded, a pinstriped sex god with a key dangling from the fingers of one hand. He puts the key into a pocket, withdraws a Blackberry and, with total deliberation, switches it off before replacing it.

It seems I have become Priority Number One, marked ‘urgent’.

Oh, what on earth is in store for me, in the stores?

“That’s a very short skirt you’re wearing,” he remarks. “I’m not sure it’s entirely appropriate for the workplace.”

“Oh…aren’t you?” My conversational faculties have taken an early coffee-break.

“I’ll give you a choice, Hannah. You can go home, get changed and come back here in a longer skirt. Or…” The pause is just long enough for me to wonder if my heart is still beating. “…You can take it off. Here. Now. Which do you choose?”

Oh, I HATE choices. It takes me half my lunch break to pick a sandwich filling. This, though, is one of the easier decisions I have faced in life. The set of his jaw, the angle of his eyebrow, make it for me.

Fumbling fingers unclip and unzip; the brief strip of charcoal flannel slides over my hips and down to the floor, the nylon lining crackling static against my stockings as it falls.

“Plucky,” he says, smirking slightly. “I like that. I like it a lot.”

Only now does the implication of what I am doing sink in. I am standing in front of Morrell – my boss – in my tarty underwear. In a stationery cupboard. A cold stationery cupboard. My hands reach down to cover my goose-pimpled thighs, but he tuts and shakes his head. He swirls a finger in the air, the circular motion suggesting that I am to give him a twirl.

I remove my hands and perform a slow 360 degree turn. The knickers I am wearing are sheer and black with a red bow on the front. While not as revealing as a thong, they are cut high at the back, the filmy lace shearing away up to my hips so that most of my bottom cheeks elude coverage.

“Good,” he says eventually, then after another excruciating pause, “Shall we make a start then?”

I laugh nervously. “A start?”

“This stock inventory I have in mind. Why don’t you count the scissors in that box and then bring a pair to me.”

This was not what I have been expecting him to say. Wrongfooted, suspecting trickery of some kind, I go over to the box of scissors and count nineteen pairs, conscious all the time of his eyes upon my bum cheeks, taking the nineteenth gleaming pair of stainless steel snippers and handing them to him, nonplussed.

“Didn’t anyone tell you to offer the handle, not the blade?” he tuts. “Stay there. I want to make sure these are in full working order.”

He reaches down to the top button of my white work shirt, tugs on it and then, heartstoppingly, snips it off.

But it isn't just me contributing misbehaving minxes to the collection. You can also find fine fare from: Janine Ashbless ; Gwen Masters ; A D R Forte ; Alegra Verde ; Eva Hore ; Rhiannon Leith ; Portia Da Costa ; Jennie Treverton ; Sommer Marsden ; Chrissie Bentley ; Kimberly Dean and Charlotte Stein.

It's Black Lace's penultimate multi-author anthology, so show it some love - there aren't too many more where that came from.

* Ronseal, for those who might never have seen their advertising campaign, is a range of DIY products that do 'exactly what it says on the tin'.