Page 5 of Trained at the Office
“Hello,” I said, and my voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.NMB. The worst meetings were about NMB. New Modesty Blue: Selecta’s own curated porn channel, its ‘stories’ drawn from the lives of young couples in New Modesty town.
Stuart’s mouth curved into something that was technically a smile. “Welcome to Selecta, Anne.”
The woman beside him leaned forward and extended her hand across the table before I’d even fully sat down. She too was tall—I could tell even with her seated—with dark hair that fell past her shoulders and sharp, intelligent brown eyes that held none of Stuart’s calculated appraisal. Where he radiated control, she radiated energy, the barely contained kind that suggested she was always three steps ahead of whatever conversation she was in and impatient for everyone else to catch up.
“Melissa Mitropoulos,” she said. Her handshake was firm, almost aggressive. “I’m the head of HSG.”
Stuart laughed. “Melissa is thecreatorof HSG, she means to say.”
I looked over at Penelope, mystified but frightened to ask. To my relief, my boss smiled.
“Her Secret Garden,” she explained. “It’s the fastest growing stream on NMB. Geared toward repressed young women with submissive tendencies.”
I tried not to react, but I couldn’t help the hard swallow or the crease in my brow. Surely I’d imagined that Penelope had left an ellipsis at the end of her sentence, one that contained the two wordslike you.
Thankfully Melissa picked up the flow of the discussion smoothly, so I could look back across the table at her without showing how uncomfortable I had started to feel. What she said, though, didn’t help much.
“You’re going to hear some things in this meeting that will probably make your eyes go wide, so I apologize in advance. Or maybe I don’t. Depends on how it goes.”
She flashed a grin that was equal parts charm and challenge, and I found myself liking her immediately, which confused me, because I also found her terrifying.
“Melissa has a proposal,” Penelope said, settling into her chair with the composed grace I’d come to recognize as her default state. She opened a slim leather portfolio and uncapped her pen. “Stuart and I are here to evaluate it. You’re here to take notesand look pretty.” She glanced at me sideways, and I couldn’t tell if she was joking. “The second part you’ve already got covered.”
I opened my laptop. My cheeks had gotten very warm.
Melissa stood, even though the room was small enough that standing seemed unnecessary, and clicked a remote. The screen on the wall lit up with a single image: a woman’s torso, probably computer-generated to judge from its perfection, photographed from collarbone to mid-thigh, wearing a bra-and-panty set that stopped my breath in a way I immediately resented.
It was black. Not the plain, functional black of everyday underwear, but a deep, liquid black that seemed to absorb light. The bra was structured but sheer, with delicate lace panels that revealed more than they concealed—the shadow of nipples visible through the fabric like something glimpsed through fog. The panties sat much lower on the hips than the training intimates I’d seen in the previous presentations, cut to suggest rather than cover, with a lace waistband that dipped in a provocative V below the navel.
But it wasn’t just beautiful. There was something about the construction—the way the fabric hugged the body, the strategic placement of seams, the subtle reinforcement at the gusset—that told me, with the product literacy I’d unwillingly developed over eight weeks of meetings, that this was not ordinary lingerie.
“What you’re looking at,” Melissa said, her voice carrying the confident clarity of someone who had rehearsed this but didn’t need to, “is one of the prototypes for what I’m calling the Surrender Line.”
She clicked to the next slide. A new torso appeared on the screen—the same flawless computer-generated body, but this timewearing a baby doll nightgown that made the black bra-and-panty set look almost conservative by comparison.
The fabric was a pale champagne silk, gossamer-thin, falling from a gathered empire waist to a hemline that barely grazed the tops of the thighs. Through it, every contour of the body beneath was visible—the curve of breasts, the shadow of the navel, the faint suggestion of hipbones—as if the garment existed not to cover but to frame. Beneath it, matching panties in the same champagne silk, so sheer they might as well have been made of light. I could see everything through them. The smoothness that on a real young woman would have to come from shaving or waxing. The little cleft. Everything.
“The Surrender Baby Doll,” Melissa said. “Same feedback technology as the current training intimates, but integrated into fabric that a husband actually wants to see on his wife. The awareness panels are woven directly into the silk at the gusset—she won’t feel them as a separate element, but they’re there, maintaining that low-level contact with the clitoris and perineum. These don’t have the sensors or the vibration modules of the newest line, but they don’t need them. The difference is context. This isn’t underwear she puts on under her clothes in the morning. This is what she puts on at night, for him, because he’s told her to be ready to serve his pleasure.”
I typedbaby doll—feedback—silk—night contextand tried to ignore the fact that my mouth had gone dry.
Melissa clicked again. A teddy appeared—deep burgundy, cut high on the thighs, with a plunging neckline that extended nearly to the navel and thin straps that crossed over the back in an intricate pattern I recognized, with a lurch in my stomach, as vaguely reminiscent of rope. The fabric clung to the computer-generated body like a second skin, and the construction at thegusset—I could see it even in the mock-up—featured the same reinforced fabric, the same subtle architecture of stimulation hidden beneath the beauty.
“The Surrender Teddy,” Melissa said. “This one’s designed for a wife who’s learned a little more about what it means to belong to her husband. The cross-back detailing isn’t just aesthetic—each strap has a micro-tension feedback structure that keeps her thinking about discipline. When she moves, when she arches her back, when she pulls against the straps—she remembers.”
Click.
A bustier. Ivory satin with black lace overlay, boned and structured, cinching the waist and lifting the breasts into a presentation that was—I searched for a word that wasn’tobsceneand couldn’t find one that was more accurate. The cups were half-cups, really, the kind that supported from below while leaving the nipples and upper swell of breast exposed, and the boning ran in vertical lines down to a point just above the hips, where garter tabs dangled, waiting to be attached to stockings that weren’t shown but were powerfully implied.
“The Surrender Bustier,” Melissa said. “This is the premium piece. Full friction-feedback suite in the boning itself. When she puts this on, she doesn’t just feel constricted”—she gestured at the cinched waist—“she feelsheld, contained. Our focus groups tell us that it activates the same neurological pathways as being physically restrained. She feels owned even when he’s not touching her.”
I was blushing so deeply by now that I could feel the heat in my ears. I kept my eyes fixed on my laptop screen, but the images from the presentation burned in my peripheral vision like afterimages from staring at the sun. My fingers moved overthe keys in what I hoped looked like diligent transcription, but half of what I typed was nonsense—fragments and misspellings I’d have to clean up later, if I could bring myself to open this document ever again.
The warmth between my legs had come roaring back. Not faint this time. Not subtle. It was a steady, spreading heat that pulsed with each new image Melissa put on the screen, and I hated it—hated it with a ferocity that did nothing whatsoever to make it stop.
Click.
A garter belt set. Black lace, sitting low on the hips, with four wide straps descending to hold sheer black stockings that shimmered in the mock-up lighting. The panties that accompanied it were barely there—a wisp of lace connected by thin satin ribbons at each hip, designed to be untied. The model’s thighs, long and smooth and computer-perfect, seemed to glow against the dark lace.
