This story is written from 2 different perspectives, first, from the employers side! Secondly, (further down is her side).

Your New Secretary (His Side)

HR sent her up on a Monday. The email said "temporary executive support" and gave a name, Silver, and nothing else. I had a meeting at nine. I did not make it.

She filled the doorway before she was in it. Not tall, that was the first strange thing. Her head came to the frame the way anyone's would. It was the width that stopped me. The grey blazer sat across her shoulders like a tarp thrown over a car, and the lapels could not meet at the front, not because she had left them open, but because there was too much of her for them to close around. Where a shirt should have been there was skin. A deep shining line of it, running from her collarbone down between two slopes of chest that pushed the blazer apart and kept pushing, all the way down to where a pencil skirt fought for its life around her hips.

"Morning," she said. "I'm Silver. They said you needed a hand."

Her voice was soft. That was the second strange thing. A quiet, pleasant, slightly amused voice, coming out of a frame that would have made a linebacker step aside. Her hair was cut short and silver-white, swept back off a face that was all small, neat features: grey eyes, a straight nose, a mouth that was already smiling at me, because I had not said anything yet.

"You're staring," she said.

"I'm staring."

"Good." She came in and shut the door behind her with one hand, without looking, and the frosted glass shivered in its runner. "I'd be insulted if you didn't."

She did the work. I want that on the record. For three days she ran my calendar, fixed the printer by lifting it off the floor with one arm and shaking it, and carried a box of archive files up four flights because the lift was slow. She did it all in the blazer and the skirt and nothing under either, and every time she bent to pick something up the seams at her back made a sound like a rope under load.

On the Thursday she came in, set a coffee on my desk, and did not leave.

"You keep looking at my chest," she said.

"I keep looking at all of you."

"But the chest most." She put her hands on her hips, and her shoulders went back, and the blazer lost the argument it had been having all week. The upper slopes of her pecs rose out of the lapels, two broad, hard, shining shelves of muscle, split by that deep centre line. She was not posing yet. This was her standing still. "Say it. You're allowed."

"They're incredible."

"Pecs," she said, like she was correcting a child. "Not breasts. Well. Both. But that part you can't stop looking at, that's muscle." She rolled one shoulder forward and the slab on that side bunched, thickened, and lifted a visible half inch toward her chin before it settled. "That's for you. Watch."

She did it again with the other side. Then both together, a slow, heavy roll that made the whole front of her swell and tighten, veins surfacing across the top like roots lifting a path, and the blazer slid an inch further off each shoulder with a whisper of lining.

"Come here," I said.

"No." Her smile got wider. "You come here."

So I got up and went around the desk. Standing in front of her, I understood the width properly for the first time. Her shoulders went past mine on both sides. Her neck ran into her traps in one long slope. When I put my hand flat on her chest the heat of her came up through my palm, and under it the muscle was not soft at all. It was dense and warm and faintly ridged, like something carved and then polished, and when she tensed under my hand it went harder still and pushed back.

"Squeeze," she said. "You won't dent it."

I squeezed. She flexed into it, and I watched the striations fan out from the centre line under my fingers, and she laughed, low, because my face must have done something.

"Here," she said, and took my wrist, and moved my hand down.

The abs were worse. Better. I don't know the word. A wall of them, each one its own hard knot, the gaps between them deep enough to lose a fingertip in, and the whole wall flared out at the top into the ribs of her sides, thick interlocking fingers of muscle that moved when she breathed. Her waist was absurd. I could almost have closed my hands around it, and above and below it she was twice as wide as me.

"The skirt," I said.

"Is in the way?"

"Yes."

She did not take it off. She just turned around, slowly, and bent forward with her hands flat on my desk, and the skirt gave up on its own. The back seam went with a sound like tearing paper, from the hem to the waistband, and under it her glutes were two great round shelves of muscle that shifted and squared off as she leaned, with the deep-cut sweep of her hamstrings running down into thighs that had more separation than I had ever seen on a leg. She looked back at me over her shoulder.

"That was a good skirt," she said. "You owe me a skirt."

"I'll buy you ten."

"You'll buy me none. I like it when a skirt gives out."

She stayed on the Friday. And the Monday after. By then the blazer was a formality she put on in the mornings for the walk through reception and took off, with great ceremony, the moment the office door shut. She would kneel on the carpet in front of my chair, sitting back on her heels, her hands resting on her thighs, and look up at me, and from above her she was all chest. Two great shining slopes of it, rising out of her shoulders, the centre line a canyon, her small bright face looking up over the top of it all like someone peering over a wall she had built herself.

"Tell me what you want to see," she would say.

And I would tell her. A single arm, and she would raise it and close her fist and the biceps would climb into a peak with a vein running over the top like a river on a map. The back, and she would turn and spread her lats until she blotted out the window. The legs, and she would stand and set one foot on the desk and let me watch the quads fire, one teardrop at a time, as she drove down through her heel.

"You know why I like this job," she said one evening. The building was empty. She was on her knees again, and I had my hand on the top of her chest, and she was flexing in slow pulses under it, letting me feel each one build and hold and let go.

"Tell me."

"Everywhere else, they want me to make myself small." She pushed up into my palm. "You want me to make myself big."

Your New Secretary (Her Side)

The blazer is a size they do not make, so I had it made. Grey, single-breasted, the shoulders cut wide enough that I can lift my arms without the back splitting on the first day. The front was never going to close. I knew that when I ordered it. I told the tailor to leave the buttons on anyway, for decoration, and he looked at my chest and then at the floor and said yes, madam.

I do not wear a shirt under it. There is no shirt.

Reception looked at me the way reception always looks at me. The woman behind the desk stood up a little, the way people do when something large comes in, as if being taller would help. I smiled at her. I have a nice smile. People tell me that with a sort of relief, as though they were afraid I would not. I said my name and the floor I wanted, and I kept my hands loose at my sides and let her look. The lapels had slid apart on the walk from the car. The top of my chest was out in the air, two wide slopes of it, and I felt the cool of the lobby settle on the skin between them.

Four flights up, I found his door and stood in it.

He was on the phone. He stopped talking. He did not hang up, he just stopped, and the voice on the other end went on for a while and then stopped too. I watched his eyes go up to my face, and down, and stay down, and I waited for them to come back. They took their time.

"Morning," I said. "I'm Silver."

He said something. I do not remember what. I remember the look.

Here is a thing I know about myself. When a man looks at me like that, every muscle I own wakes up. It is not a decision. The chest comes forward on its own, the shoulders roll back, the lats flare a quarter inch under the jacket, and the blazer creaks, and all of it is involuntary, the way a cat arches into a hand. I have had the body a long time. I have never had the look enough.

I did his work. I am good at the work. The printer was jammed, so I picked it up and shook it, and he watched my forearm do that from across the room and forgot the sentence he was in. The archive boxes were on the ground floor, so I carried them up, two at a time, one under each arm, and when I set them down on his desk the sleeve seam at my right shoulder let go with a small polite pop. I did not fix it. I let the loose thread hang there all afternoon, and I caught him looking at it every time I came in.

On the Thursday I decided we had both waited long enough.

I put his coffee down. I put my hands on my hips. That is all it takes, with this jacket. The shoulders go back, the chest lifts, and the lapels slide off the slopes of my pecs like a sheet sliding off a bed, and there I am. I rolled one side up for him, slow, feeling it bunch and climb and thicken, the skin going tight and bright over it. Then the other. Then both, a long hard squeeze that I held until I could feel the veins stand up across the top and the lining of the jacket start to slip off my shoulders by itself.

"Say it," I told him. "You're allowed."

He said it. He said it badly, with the wrong word, and I corrected him, because I like to be accurate about my body. Pecs. Then I made him get up and come to me.

His hand was cool. I was not. When his palm landed flat on my chest I pushed up into it, just a little, to feel the weight of him against the weight of me, and then I flexed properly, and I watched his face while the muscle under his hand went from warm and dense to warm and like stone. He squeezed. It was like being squeezed by a bird. I laughed at him and he did not mind.

I took his wrist and moved his hand down over the abs, because that is the part I am proudest of, the deep ridged wall of it and the way the obliques lace into the ribs on either side, and then I turned around and put my hands on his desk and bent forward and let the skirt do what it had been wanting to do since nine in the morning. The seam went from hem to waist in one long tear. I felt the air hit my glutes and I squared them off for him on purpose, one cheek and then the other, the hamstrings pulling tight into the backs of my thighs, and I looked back at him over my shoulder.

"That was a good skirt," I said. "You owe me a skirt."

He offered me ten. I told him none. I like it when a skirt gives out.

I came back on the Friday with a new one and a plan, and the plan was to spend as much of the day on my knees in front of his chair as the calendar allowed.

I like it down there. I like that from where he sits, I am all chest. I like sitting back on my heels with my hands on my thighs and tipping my chin up at him and knowing what he is seeing, the two great slopes of it rising out of my shoulders, the centre line he keeps running his thumb into, my face looking up at him over the top of all that muscle like a girl looking over a fence. It makes me feel enormous. It makes me feel seen.

"What do you want?" I ask him, every time. And every time he tells me.

An arm. I raise it, close my fist, and let the biceps climb, slow, so he can watch the peak form and the vein ride up over the top of it. My back. I turn, and I open my lats until the window behind me goes dark, and I hold it until I hear him breathe out. My legs. I stand and set one bare foot up on his desk and drive my heel down into the wood until the quads split into their separate heads, and I hold that, too, and the ache is the good ache.

Then I kneel back down and let him put his hand on the top of my chest again, and I flex for him in slow pulses, build and hold and release, build and hold and release, and I feel each one land in his palm.

He asked me one evening why I liked the job. Everyone else was gone. The building had that late hum. I pushed up into his hand and told him the truth.

Everywhere else, they want me to make myself small.

He wants me to make myself big.