A booming crash shook the door of his office, and Rufus almost looked up. It happened every so often. Some local big-shot barged in, ranting about a sky-high bill from the Shinra Electric Power Company, as though the throughput meters could somehow have failed for them and them alone. Or maybe they objected to some work disrupting traffic on their street, because everybody likes power grid maintenance until it affects them directly. Or a rare failure occurred, and somebody demanded recompense for their moderate, temporary outage. The reason wasn’t important. He had people to care about the reason for him, people on the lower floors who handled complaints and listened carefully and soothed irate customers. For those people, understanding the source of the issue was a valid and necessary part of the grievance process. For the vice president, not so much.

No, the people who came to his office weren’t actually looking for a solution. They were looking for a problem. They were loud and angry, and they wanted to find somebody who wasn’t allowed to be loud and angry back. They were powerless in the face of their bills and inconvenience, so they had to find somebody powerful and bring them to heel. Rufus Shinra tended to be that somebody, a chore he knew he shouldered only because his father’s office was not on the public directory and he was the next victim in line. He could also hide. He could be like his father, an untouchable entity above meaningless meetings with meaningless people. But he wasn’t his father, and he made himself available, for better or worse. So people tromped in with their noses high and their fists balled, usually with one to four stone-faced, broad-shouldered “personal assistants” who kept their arms crossed or their hands ominously in their pockets. They intended to browbeat him, to intimidate him. From nightclub goons too used to pushing people around in their small ponds to the rich and powerful who knew—knew—Midgar revolved around them, they stomped into his office with a head of steam and a sharpened tongue, fully expecting to have their way with a simple paper-pusher and leave with their dignity intact.

A week ago, they probably would have. Rufus didn’t like it, but it wasn’t good business to pick up customers by the collar and shake them until their dignity fell from their pockets. He would sit and wait, let them vent their frustrations, and promise to assign somebody to look into their problem. If things truly got hairy, he would call in the Turks to gently corral trigger-happy bruisers and return the scene to some vague form of civility. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t efficient, and it left a sour taste in his mouth all day.

Then he got a new secretary, and his days become much, much better. Now he didn’t dread angry customers. In fact, he’d been hoping for one.

Through his office door, the vicious tirade ended in a question. A quiet voice replied. More shouting, then a brief scuffle. An anguished wail ended in a loud thump. The harsh creak of metal past its breaking point. A snap—bone, perhaps. Screams, obviously misogynistic profanities. More thuds. A rhythmic slapping, as somebody tapping their hand on the floor. Gasping, hyperventilating. Groaning, dragging, limping, all growing dimmer and dimmer until they faded away entirely.

Rufus smirked and tamped a small bundle of papers on his desk. He had his head up and his hands folded when the door to his office opened and his secretary walked in, her hands clasped demurely in front of her. She bowed low, though not so low that he couldn’t see her smirk. “I’m afraid I handle to cancel your ten o’clock meeting, sir. It seemed your visitors did not intend to discuss their issue politely.”

He leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the table, barely hiding a smile himself. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did they want to reschedule?”

“I’m not sure. I took the liberty of telling them if they want to come back they should bring either a written apology or more backup.”

He nodded and returned to his papers. “Excellent work, Miss Lockhart.”

“Thank you, sir.” Tifa looked up at him without standing upright, giving him an impressive view. “Is there anything else I can do for you right now?”

“No, thank you.”

“Are you sure? It’s not good to hide stress, you know. Maybe I could help you lose a little tension?”

“Tifa, we—sorry, Miss Lockhart.”

“You can call me Tifa, sir.” She pressed her upper arms against her chest, pushing her bust out even more. “You can call me anything you want.”

Her response exceeded his imagination, and if he hadn’t mentally prepared himself for this specific situation he probably would have taken her up on her offer. “Fine. Tifa, we have a policy in place here. That sort of behavior is prohibited.”

“What behavior, sir? I’m trying to help.” She rose and sashayed toward him on white heels, one foot in front of the other as she crossed the room. Her cheongsam, slit from her ankle to midway up her hips, fluttered around legs wrapped in black lace. The round window drew his eye to full breasts and deep cleavage, and with her dark hair up in buns nothing interrupted his view. Tifa half-sat on his desk, drawing her leg up for examination, and ran a finger over the triangle of skin between her hem and the tops of her stockings. “I’m still adjusting to my role as your personal assistant. I’m willing to take on any position you want to put me in. Just tell me how you want to be serviced and I will happily put in whatever effort you need.”

Rufus almost—almost!—laughed. Her flirtation was so brazen it bordered on clumsy. Yes, sure, it worked; if he hadn’t been behind a desk, she no doubt would have spotted his erection and moved in for the kill. But it wasn’t the sly seduction of a coy gold-digger, nor the understood implications given by a poor girl from the slums who wanted to be swept off her feet. It was the overt charm of a bartender who wanted to tease lonely men so they kept buying, who needed to make her meaning clear through a three-beer haze, who never expected anybody to reciprocate advances in a way a bouncer couldn’t deter. She basically said everything out loud, accentuating her euphemisms as though they veiled anything. In a sense, it wasn’t flirtation at all, not the way he knew it. It was a fiction, how a shy virgin would act if she had only read about sex in books but longed to break out of her shell. It was ham-handed, overly dramatic, dripping in sexuality without a clear understanding of how to wield it as a weapon. Rufus liked it.

But he liked his game more, and he wanted to see how she played it. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to coerce me into violating company policy.”

“Sir, I think we both know how good you are at violating things.” She giggled at him like she was already two drinks deep.

“That’s enough. Behavior like this isn’t appropriate in the workplace.”

Her fist clenched, and for a moment he recalled her previous nature and the skills she used to back it up. At the very least, his desk was in danger of a mahogany-shattering punch. “Oh? So now you’re worried about what’s ‘appropriate’? You didn’t seem to care when you were squeezing my ass during your morning update. Or when you had me feed you your lunch yesterday.”

Rufus coughed. “I asked you not to bring that up again.”

“And I seem to recall a certain vice president bending me over his desk and—“

“Be that as it may, the situation has changed. New directive from the board. No romantic entanglements between employees within the same division. My hands are tied.”

“You mean like mine were when—“

“Tifa!” he barked, and she at least shrank back a little. “From now on, our relationship is strictly professional. I guarantee you won’t have to deal with any further harassment from me.”

“Hmph,” Tifa smirked, and her hand snaked over his desk. It floated on top of his, delicate fingers tracing soft lines on the back of his gloves. “We’ll see about that.” And then she was back on her feet, leaving his office with so much sway in her hips she almost swung her high-slit dress clear of her thighs.

He exhaled when his door closed, forcing relaxation. So far, so good. Her hold over him was stronger than he’d expected, given that it was supposed to be the other way around. She’d almost broken him, teased him until he’d discarded his plan and joined her for another long, vocal lunch. He could blame various things—the dress, the hair, the setting, or the slight disarray she created in all of these whenever she threw out a problematic client—but it was an issue of his own making. He had created his monster, and he needed to make sure it wouldn’t turn on him.

Tifa probably knew how Rufus felt about her. It wasn’t all too different from how every man felt about her, or every straight man with an ounce of taste in women. She spent every day dealing with people who only knew her as “the girl who works at Seventh Heaven, the one with the huge jugs and the slutty skirt.” Male gaze was as much a part of her lifestyle as breathable air. Only a liar or an idiot would pretend her physical assets weren’t the first thing that drew him to her. Even he, when he had started funding Avalanche and become aware of their personnel, had first treated her as eye candy. Then he got to know her, and gradually she became a minor obsession—still eye candy, yes, but something else also. Sometimes she even caught him staring at something above her neck. Sometimes.

He knew it was a lost cause, not unlike Avalanche as a whole. She thought of him as a convenient ally at best and a blight on the planet at worst. There would be no gradual warming-up period where she learned to love him for who he was and abandoned her idealistic battle to join him in his high tower. He would lust after her, she would give him the bare minimum deference necessary to keep her crusade funded, and such was the way of things.

But then, materia. The implausible balls of mako had changed so much, not least of which was giving Shinra a stranglehold on Midgar’s energy production. Once they understood the process behind it, they could create materia for any purpose they wanted. Freezing the very air. Calling monsters from other realms. Changing the physical properties of the carrier. And from there, why not one to affect the mind? And given sufficient growth, why couldn’t tis effect become more powerful? More strongly felt, more deeply held, even permanent? The production of the Eternal Manipulate materia had been his personal project, even more secretive than Shinra’s standard fare, and the sole product of that research sat neat him at all times. He had only used it once, during a one-on-one meeting to which he had invited Tifa under the guise of planning another terrorist act. With a single channel—and, he was convinced, a great deal of luck—she had fallen under his spell, and she had started her new job within the week.

He had, perhaps, succeeded too well. He didn’t know whether the materia was more powerful than he had expected or whether he had simply wielded it inelegantly. He told Tifa to love him, and she did, powerfully. He had emotionally prepared himself for an affair from afar, meeting only in moments they could steal and keeping their relationship quiet for their own sakes. Tifa disagreed. She needed to be at his side, and her only explanation was quiet mutterings about never letting the object of her affections leave again. And instead of the shy introversion he had expected of her, Tifa expressed affection physically. It wasn’t always sexual; sometimes it was a backrub to help him with stress, or fingers linked with his when they knew nobody looked. She vacillated between sedate mothering and flirtation bordering on the comical, never giving him a moment to doubt the intensity of her love for him.

And that was the problem. It was too strong, suspiciously so. It wasn’t that he wanted his space; they were still in the honeymoon period, and if he could spend his every waking moment beside (or inside) her he would consider it a day well spent. But other materia weren’t this strong. What if it was a ruse? What if her fire burned brightly but briefly, and the only reason it held was because of the time they spent in close proximity? He had to know. He had to create some distance, give her a chance to back away of her own volition. The “corporate policy” was a convenient excuse. If she embraced the separation, he would know her devotion wasn’t all it appeared to be. And if she stepped away for a few days and came back just as strong, he could rest a little easier knowing no violent breakup waited in the wings.

It was a good plan, a fair plan, and Tifa clearly hated it. He had accounted for her grumbling, but he thought she would at least attempt to follow the new rules for a few days, maybe a week. Tifa didn’t last five minutes. The next time she walked into his office, the gratuitous spring in her step drew his eye upward, where her breasts shook visibly with each footfall. He saw her plan as easily as he saw the nipples poking through her dress, and his pants grew tight as he thought of the bra she had likely tucked into a desk drawer. He maintained his decorum for the length of the short conversation, some meaningless paperwork mix-up she had discovered solely to show him how she had modified her outfit, and he caught a knowing smirk as she crossed her arms underneath her chest to accentuate the change. He held firm (quite firm, in fact, but she didn’t need to know it), but he doubted she would stop there, and when he was alone against he realized he needed to brace for the inevitable escalation.

Tifa wasted no time testing his resolve. Every time she entered—and she found plenty of flimsy excuses—she flirted with him unabashedly. She personally laid every pertinent notice she could find on his desk, bending over so far he could see through her cleavage window straight to her navel. Under the guise of verifying his signature, she stood next to his chair and pressed her breasts against his arm or laid them on his shoulder while she watched his write his name over and over. When she was on his side of the desk, she “clumsily” dropped a half-dozen pens throughout the day and used his thighs as handholds while she rummaged around for them. Twice during her departure she pretended to fall, suggested her heels were to blame, and shook her ass for a solid minute while she gathered everything she had been carrying. She was a living porn plot, as though the sentence “in my defense, members of the Board, she was asking for it” had gained sapience and done its hair in tight buns. She pushed him right to his limit, and Rufus had never been so happy to leave work that night. As much as he wanted to work with (and just work) Tifa, he needed the separation both for his own mental health and to test her affection for him. He could go back in the morning, rested and ready for whatever she could bring.

So he came in the next morning, met his District Managers in the lobby, took them into his office, and sat down for the weekly status meeting. Based on the snickers, he was the last person to notice the lacy, black, slightly-worn panties laying on his desk—which explained his winking secretary—and restoring order took the better part of five minutes.

The moment his subordinates left for the rest of their day, no doubt with a hell of a story to tell, he called Tifa in. Her audacious swagger, like a model strutting down a runway, only fueled his anger, even more than her coy grin. “You called, sir?”

Rufus snatched the balled panties from his desk drawer and tossed them at her. “Explain this.”

“Oh, I was wondering where those got to,” she gave him a forced little laugh, though he doubted her blush was faked. “I was just straightening up this morning before you came in, and I sat down in your chair, and just got so overwhelmed with your scent, I had to…well, long story short, I guess I forgot to put them back on.”

“Forgot? Do you have any idea what gossip you’ve started? I don’t need a reputation hurting me.”

“It doesn’t hurt your father.”

Rufus didn’t remember jumping to his feet, not until Tifa reeled a step back. “I am not…ahem. The point is, we have an anti-harassment policy now. I cannot have people thinking I’m harassing my own secretary.”

“Just tell them I want to be harassed.”

“You don’t.”

“I do.”

“Miss Lock—“

“No. Look at me.” She came to his desk with purpose, and when she looked at him he saw no smolder of overblown flirtation. He only saw poise, determination, confidence—he saw Tifa, the one he knew from clandestine meetings in the back room of Seventh Heaven. “Sir, I worked in a bar with goons and drunks all day, okay? I know what harassment looks like. So listen to what I’m saying: I want you to harass me.”

“Tifa, I—“

“I want it. All of it. The whole package. Make all the sexist comments you want about how hot I look. Use all sorts of innuendo about my “services” or whatever. Cop a feel when nobody’s looking. Or when everybody’s looking. Hell, I don’t care. Because…because I love—.” Her whole body shook with a sudden cough, and she blushed from her breasts to the roots of her hair. “Th-the point is, I want to be yours. Secretary, bodyguard, lover, mistress, baby-mama, whatever you need. You can do anything to me and I will ask for more, as long as it keeps me by your side.”

Rufus shuddered, processing the shift Tifa proposed. “You’re sure?”

“As I’ve ever been.”

Finally, so was he. Pushing her away hadn’t given her an opportunity to create distance. It had given her incentive to drag herself closer. She was, unquestionably, his. “Then pop your tits out of your dress and get over here.”

“Yes, sir.” She fiddled with the tie, or the clasp, or whatever it was holding the dress tight around her neck. While Rufus fished his stiff cock out of his pants, Tifa tugged her neckline down, pinning her upper arms to her sides but barely easing the tension enough for her to jostle her breasts free with a few sharp bounces. She pushed her chest forward, and he squeezed one of the mounds on display, letting her sharp gasp blow away the last of his anxieties. He grabbed her plump ass and hefted it onto his desk, where she teetered for a moment before he pushed her onto her back. Her tits shook invitingly as she landed and her legs parted, leaving only a wide strip of fabric between them. He tossed it over her thigh and ran two fingers over her pussy, stroking her until she whimpered and rolled her hips. “Please…” she begged, and he broke. With his hands on her waist to hold her closer, he tilted his body until he could slide into her with a few smooth thrusts, and as he loomed over his zealous lover he met her eyes and began to move.

Her wail was unlike any he’d heard before, even from her. Despite her recent bluster, Tifa had not been the most enthusiastic or experienced lover. He liked her that way: natural, pure, a willing victim of his pace and kinks. Her sudden volume was something new, the result of their brief but thorough separation. He resolved to keep it in mind, assuming he could refrain from fucking her for any given two-day stretch in the foreseeable future. For now he enjoyed it, as he enjoyed her fingers grasping the edge of the desk and her legs spread high and wide to funnel him toward her satin pussy. She craned her head to watch his body move, following his dick until it disappeared inside her and came out even wetter and harder than before. Her pout, her whimpers, her hard nipples begging to be sucked dry, her pale shoulders, the single strand of hair halfway to escaping its bun, every little piece of her goaded him to take her harder and faster, to claim her body as he had claimed her mind.

They locked eyes, and he swallowed once to moisten his dry mouth. “I think a change in policy is in order.”

Tifa laughed, which transitioned into a trembling moan. “Y-you’re the boss.”

“I am,” he chuckled, slowly returning to the uncompromising persona he used in the office. “First order of business: new dress code. You are not to wear panties to work again.”

“Yes, sir!” Tifa’s leg slumped, but the other rested on his shoulder. Her stocking-covered thigh pressed against his chest, close enough to bite through the patterned fabric.

“You will be available for me, and only me, all hours of the day. Your schedule is at my discretion, even during nights.”

“Nights? I can—oooooh, yes!” Her thoughts trailed off with her voice, though her twitching pussy gave him all the approval he needed. He racked his brain for more procedures to follow, more ways to control her, but he sank into pleasure for a long moment, squeezing her waist and piercing her deep with his every push. She gritted her teeth and dropped her head for a breathy sigh, then panted “Should I wear a collar?”

Rufus gritted his teeth, picturing Tifa’s long neck broken only by a strip of leather. “If you want.”

“The first time I see you every day, should I drop to my knees and blow you, no matter where we are?”

“You…where are you getting this?”

“I—oh! Oh! Oooh, just giving you ideas, sir.” Her eyes glimmered and her lips turned, a smile laid over an expression of boundless pleasure. He grinned back and slid one hand lower, playing a thumb against her clit. Tifa screamed again—shorter, quieter, but still a scream—and bucked her hips, grinding against the pressure he put on her. Her feet pointed out, dangling her high heel over his shoulder, and her breasts shook as she hyperventilated. Rufus stared at them, mesmerized, until her body seized and her mouth opened wide. Even with so much to see, he never missed her face during her orgasm, unfiltered ecstasy laid bare on his mahogany desk. Her voice sent ripples through his ears and down his spine, and he slammed into her so hard he felt the office move around him. Her pussy milked his seed right out of him, sucking it into her core as they shared a timeless moment of mutual bliss.

He leaned over her, and while his face was buried in her breasts he gave them a kiss. “I hope our new harassment policy makes you feel like a member of the team.”

Tifa snorted and stroked his cheek. “I’m certainly feeling something.”

“Good. Now get back to work.” He pulled out and stuffed his slick, half-erect cock back into his pants. Afterplay could come later, when he didn’t have a mountain of action items to handle.

“Yes, sir.” Tifa stood and fixed her clothes, settling into her heels and pulling up her dress so she could use her arms again. “Though if you plan to work me this hard, I might need more time to wind down.”

“Vacations days are at the discretion of your manager.” Rufus sat in his chair, a long enough pause for him to understand her innuendo. “Unless you meant you want to expand our team…?”

“If you get any busier, I think having an extra secretary or two might help lighten the load. If you’re hiring, I know a few girls who might be interested. If that’s what you want…sir.” She turned toward the door and flipped up the back of her dress. The way she bent over, he could just see his cum beginning to ooze into view, and then the fabric fluttered back down and she escaped back to her desk.