The Forbidden Gift Card

"Why?" Others can have great sex with whoever they feel like and not end up in tears, a nervous wreck, dressed in shambles; afraid of what felt so incredibly, breathtakingly, wonderful being found out. Afraid someone at work was going to look at them with knowing eyes, a twisted "I know your secrets" smirk. Finding the keys, I climbed into the car but didn't crank it. "Call in sick," I said to myself as I leaned my head on my hands that gripped the steering wheel. "Half the company has hangover flu, what's one more not showing up?"

I reached for my purse to get my phone out to do that very thing when I had a flash of what the day would be like if I did. Like a mouse going back to a trap that had snapped at it once already, I would go back to that escort site. Back to look at...and lust after ... those gorgeous ladies that I could, without a doubt in hell, not afford. Not on what I make. Just how much that single moment of orgasmic bliss with Heather had cost someone must have been staggering. She had been so perfectly skilled at what she did. In her professional hands, I had been a purring, melted puddle that she had played with to her enjoyment.

"No." Shaking my head, I sat back. "I've got to find out who sent it."

That had to be the longest ride to work I had ever taken, since I turned around and started back home twice, before making myself drive all the way there. When I arrived at the office, I had to force my hands to be steady while I put my makeup on in the car. Pulling my sweater tight, I hid the mismatched blouse under it and headed into what, in growing leaps and bounds, was becoming my own personal Hell. I had to stop myself from ducking my head and sneaking my way to my office cubical, sure at any moment the gift-giver was going to appear and point to me and laughingly tell the whole place what I had done.

But that didn't happen.

In fact nothing happened, nothing but a normal day at the office. The same familiar faces all looking the same. No leering, knowing looks. No mysterious smiles that only them and I would know the meaning of. Just happy, in some cases hung-over, people working. Water-cooler-talk about the parties they had been to the night before being the only thing new. No sudden declarations of the fact a closet lesbian was among them. One that had let a prostitute put a toy in her...

Oh, how I squirmed my ass in my office chair, feeling even now the wonderfully sore ache from that toy. Looking around, I brought up my private file and in a futile attempt to get my mind off this, wrote down a summary of what had happened. Then locked back the double hidden private file I used as my personal, read-by-no-one-but-me, blog.

"Fun night?"

I nearly jumped out my skin when one of my coworkers, Cathy, asked that by my arm. Turning, I searched her face. Looking for that hidden sign, it was her... No. Not her, she would never...Oh, what was I thinking coming in here today?

"Didn't do much special," I said my mouth on autopilot. "Normal night, for the most part."

Cathy shook her head with a sad smile. "Honey, you so badly need to get you a man in your life. I know that office romances are frowned upon, but there are several eligible guys here that would love to take you out for a night on the town." She leaned in and whispered. "Pick one, and let him."

We both glanced up as Suzy came walking through, all flouncy hair and jiggling boobs, to stop and smile at Todd two cubicles over. Her inane giggles put my teeth on edge. I gave Cathy a look, then silently mouthed "I'm not going to be like her."

Cathy again shook her head, but nodded and left me to my misery.

Trying to bury myself in my work, I found that I would have to stop and adjust myself on the seat far too often. If not for the low walls surrounding my desk I would have died of embarrassment given how I must have looked like a cat squirming its ass in heat. I tried to sit still and work, but flash memories of Heather would rush in on me when I least expected and set me to rubbing the dull ache on the chair again.

Finally, I gave up and sent a message to Mr. Kendal's secretary asking if I could schedule a meeting with him today. The reply came back at about the same time I was about to give up on it and take the elevator up there to his office to ask.

~ He is going to be extremely busy for the next two days, trying to catch up on missives that came in while he was on vacation. I've tentatively penned you in for Thursday at two. Unless this is extremely urgent? If it is, I might get you in today for a few minutes.

I sent back my negative reply and leaned back into my chair to stew and worry. How would I make it to Thursday without knowing who in this office knew my secrets? How?

** ** ** ** ** ** **

I made lists. Long lists...of everyone in my office, and then cross-checking them by what I knew about them. Personally, financially, hell I even added office gossip rumor mill crap. I posted these to my seen-only-by-me blog/journal. Who? I hunted and hunted day after day. Person after person, marking them down, checking them off for this reason or that. Not the type to do it, not the financial means to give away a gift escort. Then when logic failed I began making all kinds of wild guesses, hunches. Followed silly goose chases about upper management, long departed department head. People I first worked with years ago.

Nothing.

No one seemed right. While there was certainly a few office flirts, like Suzy, but this really wasn't the type of place to hire the kind of person to pull off something like this. I simply had to wait, wait for Thursday and keep myself from squirming in my office chair.

Which would be why, when Thursday rolled around and the office rumor mill brought round the news that Mr. Kendal had left for the California office yesterday afternoon? Pulled off suddenly, for meetings the CEO Mr. Stevens was supposed to attend but had been unable go to due to his wife going into labor. My jaw hit the floor when I heard that. I didn't bother with messaging but went to his office where Sherry, his secretary, was busy enough for two women.

"I'm sorry, but I had to reschedule all of today's meetings till next week. Mr. Kendal won't be back in town till late Sunday night. It may be Monday afternoon before I can even get you a moment on the phone with him. Sorry, it's been a madhouse. His vacation could not have been timed worse it turns out. We got about six clients calling in to..."

I let her ode-of-the-overworked-office-drivel wash past me in a daze. I had to wait another week...another week with my secrets known by someone in this office. Another....

Shaking, I thanked her in a dead tone and walked out. The elevator dropped floor by floor, number flashing past unheeded till I finally looked up and noticed I had hit the wrong button and gone two floors past mine. When the doors opened, I was already pushing the button to take me back up to my office. When I looked up from the lighted numbers and found myself looking Heather in the eyes, my heart stopped.

The door closed on her equally shocked face with me too stunned to do anything but stand there and let them close. I stood blinking at the brushed stainless steel doors and my blurry reflection till the door opened on my own floor.

With a hand that was shaking, I touched the button to take me back down two floors.

One floor.

"What the hell was going on here?" I thought to myself.

Two floors.

"Heather? Here...?" I mumbled the words from lips too numb to speak.

The doors opened to no one. The hallway was empty.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

How I made it back to my desk that morning, I'll never know. How I made it through the day without going floor by floor, tearing the office apart, till I found Heather or found who could tell me "What the hell was going on!" I'll equally never know.

Why was a prostitute here?

From the way she was dressed it looked like she worked here! Did she? Did a prostitute work in the same building as me? For how long? I racked my mind trying to remember just how many times I might have seen Heather here in the building before that New Year's Eve night. What department did she work for? Certainly none of the ones I normally deal with or I would have recognized her that night.

Sitting at my desk, trying not to shake, I pulled up my blog and put it all there. Let the wild manic thoughts spill out into those computer pages, trying desperately to get rid of them, leave them behind me. My mind was filled with conflicting images, the lovely nurse Heather; the somewhat plain woman who had been on the other side of those elevator doors. Had I even seen her? Had that moment even been real? Was I simply projecting the face of sexy Heather onto a girl that looked similar?

Grabbing my purse, I left a message for my supervisor telling her that I was leaving early, female problems. Which, I laughingly considered appropriate.

I was half-way across the office parking lot when I saw that Heather was standing leaned against the car next to mine. She was looking right at me. My steps faltered, leaving me standing about ten feet from her just staring at her. She slowly smiled and stood up straight. Her face was calm, like this kind of thing happened to her every day. I know I must look like a deer in headlights as slowly my feet moved forward, shuffling steps.

"Heather?"

"Sorry, no. It's really Amber." She shrugged. "Ah, I think we need to talk."

I must have looked like a fish gasping for air. "You think?"

"Please, don't get mad till you hear me out. Can we go somewhere more comfortable to talk than the office parking lot?"

Not sure just what I'm feeling I nodded, and without a word step around her. She moved to that black car next to mine and climbed in. I cranked my Kia and trailed her out the parking lot. As I followed her lead through traffic my emotions bounced all over the place. Anger certainly was there. Confusion, though, that had to top the list of what I was feeling.

Four miles from the office I followed her into the parking lot at Coffee Barn. Getting out, I began to say something, but she waved me off.

"We'll talk inside," she said simply. Her rapid steps took her away from my questions before I could even ask them.

Wanting to cuss, I followed and stood in a slow seethe as the waitress took our orders. I didn't really want coffee, but I hoped it might at least quiet the butterflies in my stomach. When the waitress left to get the coffee, Heather/Amber spreads her hand out on the table between us, I noticed that her nails were still painted the same color as they had been that night.

"Well..." she began then faltered.

"Heather...Amber...whatever your name is, what the hell is going on?" I had to quiet my tone as the heat of my words attracted attention. "Who the hell are you?"

"Amber Gibson. I work in the IT department...I'm one of the company's computer software repair specialists."

"When you're not moonlighting as an escort?" I failed at keeping the ire from my tone. The hurt rage I was feeling. "So who paid for that gift card?"

She shook her head and was about to speak when the waitress returned with our coffee. I nodded my thanks to the pleasant smile the young girl offered, and wrapped my hands around the cup, feeling the heat even through the thicker cardboard cover. Needing it. Needing even the burning pain that soon began. Amber thanked the girl and nodded that we didn't need anything else.

"I'm not an escort," she said shaking her head. "No one paid me for what I did New Year's Eve."

"What?" I looked at her awestruck. "What about that gift card from the escort site? I cashed it in! Did they just let you just play with me for free?"

"Yeah... ah, there is no escort site." She took a deep breath and then an apologetic not-quite-smile, brushed her lips. "I'm not explaining this very well. Sorry. Can I please start at the beginning before I confuse you further?"

"That might be a very good idea...Amber." I shook my head and an angry huff came out between my lips "Very good! "

She let out a long sigh.

"I found your file. I was doing updates on your computer, one night after the office was closed. Just my normal monthly check and there it was. A hidden, double-layer password, encrypted data file? On one of my computers! Did you know that? That to the people in the IT department think every computer in the company is ours. You work on them, but we work with them." She looked up at my face and gave a shrug. "To me that file was an insult, a challenge. Something that should-not-be-there, not...on...my...computer. So...I hacked it."

My mouth dropped open. All of my secrets are on that file. Every one of them! Who I liked in the company, who I hated. Dreams ... desires...even my most naughty of secrets.

She slowly nodded.

"Yeah, I read it. I made me a copy and closed everything back up just like you had it. I left an alert there on watch, so that when you updated it I would know." She looked down and I swear blushed a little. "I've become the most devoted fan of your blog."

"I...I never intended anyone to ever see that."

"Oh, I know," said Amber quickly, a ghost of a smile dusting her lips and a soft half-heard laugh. "There is a lot of stuff on there that the upper management would not find at all amusing to hear said about them." If not for that hint of a chuckle I might have thought she was going to use that stuff to blackmail me. But she seemed more amused than anything. Then she let out a sigh. "It was the sex stuff that got to me, though."

I turned redder than the roof of the Coffee Barn.

Amber saw that, smiled and blushed a bit herself.

"Yeah, well the more I read the more I got to liking this office girl I had never seen, posting such wild stuff to a private file that only she could see." She grinned. "It was hot. Got me hot."

I looked down, completely interested in the steam coming from my coffee cup. I bit my lip and asked the question I had needed to have an answer to for weeks. "The gift card?"

Amber nodded. "I'm getting to that. See, I read more and more of your blog, and then when I finished the backlog, I read the updates as you posted them. And it felt like the more I did the more I got to know you...you in a way I don't think anyone else has ever known. I wasn't stalking you, I just read till...well, till I began to think about asking you out." She bit her bottom lip. "But how to do that?"

"You could have just asked," I said not looking up at her.

"Could I have? How would I have explained just how I knew? You're not out, not in the least. If you had a sham 'boyfriend' it would be completely hidden that you're a lesbian. No one in the company knows, that's for sure. Every guy there wants to get in your pants."

"What?" I asked

She gave me a look. "I also have to do virus scans on intercompany e-mails. I read more than a few of them, mostly garbage, but there is an underground post that a few of the guys use, upper and middle management, to talk about the women in the company. By the way, you are so very right in some of your comments about them. They are pigs."

"Amber if you don't stop dithering and tell me about that damn gift card I'm walking out." Where I found the courage to say that to her I don't know, but it probably had its roots in the warm angry pit that was boiling the coffee in my stomach.

"I'm not dithering, I'm getting there; it's just a long story. "

"Well, make it a short long story," I said irritated.

"Fine. I gave you the gift card."

I just looked at her for a moment. "And the escort service? How did you get them to let you.."

"There is no them." Amber shook her head. "There is no escort company, I made it all up."

"What?"

"I made it all up. The gift card, the website, the whole thing was just...me."

I could manage nothing more than just staring at her in blank-faced shock, till my head began to slowly shake side to side. "No. No, not possible. There are more than eight other girls on that site."

"All me." She grimaced. "Just different hairstyles, makeup, clothes, and a bit of Photoshop to make minor changes, like nipple color and size."

"I don't believe you. Amy and Judy were kissing! I saw the pictures!"

"I know you did. That website is a VPN. I've monitored every move you made on the site I set up. You and I had the only access to it, and my presence was hidden from you. I could see what pictures you went to, where your interest was, who you liked."

She stopped talking at the adamant shaking of my head.

"They were kissing! It was two girls in that picture.

"It. Was. Just. Me," She insisted. "I took two separate pictures while I was kissing a green balloon. I digitally took the balloon out and merged the two pictures into the one you saw. I'm good at that kind of thing." She smiled at me. "I have to say you teased the hell out of me, you know that right? Every time you entered your fantasy, and then typed in that code, I was frantically getting myself ready. Then you would erase it and I would start cussing."

Unable to find the words I just sat there looking at her. Amber...who was also my Heather, who was also all the other girls I had fantasized over, who was the mystery gift card giver that had been my bane for every waking hour since Christmas night. She...

"I need air."

Getting up, I fled the coffee shop, seeking in the cold parking lot what refuge I could from the flooding memories of the night where every fantasy I have ever thought to have had come true. Shockingly true, in moments of magical shatteringly-orgasmic bliss, only to see them too have now been a lie, with an even greater fabricated lie.

"Wait...please wait!" Her shoes clattered on the payment behind me. "Please let me explain."

"Oh, you explained, Amber! It was some sick twisted joke to make me...make me..."

"I didn't make you do anything." She walked to stand between me and my car. "I gave you a gift, one like I've never given to anyone before. Your fantasy come true, for a Christmas present. Who the hell ever got something that good at an office party? I didn't know you would recognize me; there was that wig and all the contouring makeup I wore to make me look like Heather. I figured it would always be my personal secret that I had given you that."

"You...you tricked me!"

"No." Amber shook her head. "If you had never seen me by the elevator door would you have ever known that you had not been with a prostitute on New Year's? Would that memory be any less than you getting the exact fantasy you wanted? I did nothing to trick you."

Looking down at my shoes, I shook my head feeling the tears hanging ready to fall. I hated myself at that moment. I could feel my guts rolling in agony at what seemed a betrayal, and yet at the same time my mind kept flashing back to the moment when my body surrendered to the toy that...Heather ... had been so determined was going inside me. That moment when I had arched my back like a cat and screamed in orgasmic ecstasy. An orgasm so powerful I felt the tremors of it through my sleep all that night and had awoken slick and more than ready for more.

Walking around her, I went to my car and left Amber...Heather, Emily and all the rest of the women I had so desired standing in the cold.

I couldn't look at her. I couldn't speak.

There were no words for what I felt.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

How to describe the total monotony of my office now that the question had been answered? I went through the motions the next day. Often wanting to write down my thoughts in my blog but not daring to do that knowing she would see them.

When I had a moment I had opened my hidden file, to erase it, only to find a simple ~"I'm Sorry."~ waiting for me. The ultimate proof that she had indeed read everything I had ever put there. My finger hovered over the "Enter" key to send the contents of three years whining's and sexual fantasies into the trash but I couldn't. What would be the point anyway? If Amber wanted to blackmail me she had already told me she had made a copy.