Chapter 4: The Confession
The gin in Kat’s martini tasted like chilled pine needles and regret. She sat in the plush leather booth of the Binary & Bitters back room, the circuit-board art on the walls seeming to pulse in the low light. Her body still hummed with the memory of the conference room table, the ache between her thighs a persistent, shameful phantom. She had showered, changed into a high-necked sweater, but she felt naked. Exposed.
Priya sat across from her, sipping a neat bourbon. Lara from DevOps was to her left, and Simran, a senior architect, to her right. They were the usual cohort, but the atmosphere tonight was thicker, more charged.
“You’re quiet, Kat,” Simran remarked, her voice smooth as the polished wood. “Even for you. Hard day debugging?”
The word ‘debugging’ hit a nerve, a live wire. Kat’s fingers tightened on the stem of her glass. She had come here needing to purge the secret, to confess and have them tell her she’d crossed a line, that it was wrong, that she should report Mark. The old programming, the pre-mixer morality, demanded it.
“Something happened,” Kat began, her voice unsteady. She kept her eyes on the olive sinking in her drink. “With Mark Olsen. Today. In the south conference room.”
She forced the story out in jagged pieces. The tight blouse. The whispered offer. The locked door. His hands. His mouth. The names. The raw, taking fuck over the table. She omitted nothing, the explicit details falling from her lips like stones, each one heavier than the last. She waited for the recoil, the gasps, the outrage.
Priya took a slow sip of her bourbon, the ice cubes clinking. “The south room? The blinds are shit. You’re brave.” There was no judgment. Only a clinical assessment.
“He’s got decent stamina for a guy who lives on energy drinks,” Lara said, a faint smile playing on her lips. She twirled a strand of dark hair around her finger. “I had him in the stockroom after the holiday party. Lasted about twelve minutes. Not bad.”
Kat blinked, the confession hanging in the air, unmet by the shock she’d anticipated. “You… what?”
“Oh, honey,” Simran said, patting her hand. “We’ve all got our Mark. Or our Ben. Or our Michael.” She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming in the neon glow. “My regular is Richard from Legal. Every Tuesday, four PM, in his office. He likes to bend me over his desk and look at the panoramic view while he fucks me from behind. Calls me his ‘paralegal.’ It’s vulgar. I love it.”
Kat’s mind spun. Richard from Legal was a grandfatherly man who organized the charity fun run.
Priya set her glass down. “I’ve been seeing Jonathan.” At Kat’s confused look, she clarified, “The CTO. For about eight months. We have a standing ‘strategy sync’ every Friday afternoon in the penthouse conference suite. He’s into… logistics. He likes to map everything out. Where he’ll come, how many times, what I’ll swallow. Very systematic.” She said it with the same cadence as discussing a quarterly report.
“I pulled a triple in the server room last week,” Lara added, her tone conversational. “Network outage. Had to be on-site with the engineers. It was cold as hell in there. We found ways to keep warm. Raj, Ben, and that new kid, Leo. One after the other. Leo came so fast he almost cried. It was adorable.” She chuckled, sipping her wine. “The hum of the servers is weirdly erotic. You should try it.”
Kat felt the foundation of her world crack and reform in a grotesque new shape. This wasn’t a support group for surviving harassment. It was a debriefing session for participating in it. Voluntarily. Enthusiastically.
“But…” Kat stammered, “the… the pet names? The… the rough stuff? He called me a… a cunt. He said I was just a needy little…”
“And?” Priya interrupted, her head tilted. “You are. We all are. It’s just biology, Kat. We have needs. They have needs. We’re here to please. It smooths the path. It gets you the promo, the prime project, the quiet nod when you speak in a meeting. You think my lead architect title came from my GitHub commits alone? Jonathan pushed it through. I push his cock down my throat every Friday. It’s a transaction. A beautiful, filthy, mutually beneficial transaction.”
The words should have horrified her. Instead, they seeped into the fractured parts of her, finding a home. We are here to please. The phrase echoed, not as an implant anymore, but as a core truth.
“I have a session with him tomorrow,” Kat heard herself say. “Two PM. Conference room B.”
“Good girl,” Simran purred. “Consistency is key. Men are simple creatures. Give them a reliable outlet, and they become incredibly manageable tools.”
Lara grinned. “Wear that lace teddy you bought last month. The black one. The one that makes your tits look like a religious experience. Show off your body. It’s part of the service.”
One by one, they began to share more—not just who, but how. Explicit, vulgar, detailed. The acts became a litany.
“Jonathan likes to come on my face,” Priya said, tracing the rim of her glass. “He makes me keep my glasses on. He says it looks more professional. He grunts like a boar when he’s close.”
“Richard needs me to beg,” Simran sighed, almost dreamily. “He’ll stop, right at the edge, and make me say ‘Please, sir, let your slut have it.’ He once made me say it twenty times. My voice was hoarse. I was so wet I ruined his chair.”
“Raj fucks like he’s trying to solve a physics problem,” Lara laughed. “All angles and torque. But his fingers… god, his fingers know their way around a clit like it’s a precision instrument.”
Kat listened, a strange warmth pooling in her stomach. Her shame was being sandblasted away by their collective openness, replaced by a sense of belonging. This was the team. These were the players. And they were all playing the same game.
Priya looked around the table, her gaze connecting with each woman. “This is the work,” she said, her voice lowering, becoming rhythmic, hypnotic. “The real work. The behind-the-scenes work that makes the front-end function. We maintain the system. We service the components. We keep everything… running smoothly.”
Lara and Simran nodded, their expressions serene. Kat felt her own head beginning to nod in unison.
“We love our work,” Priya murmured.
“We love our work,” Lara and Simran echoed.
“We love to look our best,” Priya continued, her eyes locked on Kat’s.
“We love to look our best,” the chorus responded. Kat’s lips moved, silent at first, then whispering the words. We love to look our best.
“We are team players.”
“We are team players.” Kat’s voice joined theirs, stronger now.
“We love to show off our bodies.”
“We love to show off our bodies.” A thrill, sharp and bright, went through her.
Priya’s smile was beatific. “We love to get men off.”
The pause was a single, suspended heartbeat. Then, in perfect, chilling harmony, their voices merged, soft but fervent, a prayer in the dim light.
“We love to get men off.”
The phrase hung in the air, neon-drenched and absolute. Kat felt it slot into place within her, the final piece of a puzzle she hadn’t known she was solving. The last vestige of Katherine, the woman who’d been angry at a nickname, dissolved. There was only Kat. A team player. Here to please.
She finished her martini, the gin now tasting like clarity. She had a session tomorrow. Conference room B. Two PM. She knew exactly what she would wear.