"Marion! You're late this morning. What are you doing out here among the workers?" Phil loomed over me, his immaculate image of pinstripe suit and silk tie marred by thinning hair combed across an expanse of pink scalp.

"Hi, Phil. The bastards re-assigned my office to a team developing software to market dog food." I was long past being resentful of the vagaries of my management.

"We need to talk. Come into my office."

"You've moved up market. I could get my whole team in here." The big office had windows looking out on the car park. I prowled around, noting the squalid carpet and the damp stains on the window sills. The walls were marred by Blu-Tac stains

"There's a panic on. This is my war-room." Phil was smug, satisfied that this second-rate office shored up his status.

"War-room? The war's already happened in my head. I had a bad night. I can't remember..."

"Someone hacked Sainfield's website last night."

"They probably improved it. Those bloody supermarket sites are crap. I don't know why we tried so hard to get the business."

"Come and have a look." Phil invited me to sit in front of his laptop. "This is a copy. The guys repaired the on-line website."

"The Woman's Page. You think I'm so old that I need knitting patterns?"

"Look in the bottom right hand corner - story of the day."

"'Slap of Leather' - what!" I recognised the piece.

"Marion, it's sado-masochism - not very appropriate for the Woman's Page."

"Shut up. I'm reading... This piece needs some editorial work but it's much better than the usual stuff that Sainfield's put up."

"One of their senior managers spotted it at three am." Phil hovered over me as I read the story.

"What's their management team doing, reading the women's pages at three am?" I muttered, distracted.

"This is serious. Our client executive spent months winning this account from JCN Corporation. He spent a fortune. And one of the big selling points was our ability to keep their website from being hacked."

"Yeah. I wrote the bullshit in the bid. But this is Sainfield's content. We're not accountable if they post unsuitable material."

"It wasn't them."

"So who did? Their website can't be hacked by Internet wierdos. I spent weeks on the design."

"Marion, you posted it."

"Me?"

"That's what the technical guys say. The logs say you put it up at eleven last night. Have you got an alibi?"

"Eleven last night?" My memory was hazy, and my hangover hurt enough to stop me trying to remember.

"Where were you?" He taunted me.

"Phil, give me a moment. I can't remember..."

"A bed...?"

"Oh shit. It's coming back. Your wife..."

"...came home early. You were sneaking out the back way at eleven. I hope you didn't drive home."

"I don't think so. Did I get off before we were interrupted?"

"You were far too drunk."

"Did you?"

"Eventually. It's very detumescing when you complain about how dull our sex life is."

"Even adultery gets boring in the end. Anyway, it's an alibi."

"Of a sort - you were shagging the security director. And my alibi?"

"You were shagging the technical leader. Sounds like conspiracy. Why didn't you call me in?"

"I did. There was no response. You were so drunk, I didn't expect much help"

"Sorry. I'll go and see what I can dig up. Is there a coffee machine working?"

"No, they're all broken."

The system logs told me which terminal had been used to hack the website. I went to it and stood behind the slim chit of a girl. Sunlight emphasised tender fur on slender arms below a white silk blouse.

"Chrissy, are you into erotic stories? And working late at night?"

She smiled up at me. Her face wasn't pretty - her teeth were far too big and her nose was squashed upwards making her look a little like a pig. But her blonde hair trailed over her shoulders, and her innocence and fragile body had captivated me for months.

"I'm wearing a silk blouse. I bought it specially for you."

"You always wear silk blouses."

"Usually I can only afford cotton. But I read what you wrote about liking tender fur on slender arms below a white silk blouse."

"You read what?"

"On a website - a forum called 'The Piranha Pool'. It's a notorious haunt of Internet erotic fiction writers."

People around us were beginning to listen. "Not here," I hissed. My hangover was not improving. I no longer wanted coffee - a good big whisky was my only hope. I looked round hopelessly for somewhere private.

"It's nearly lunchtime," Chrissy stood up and ran slender fingers across the lapel of my jacket. "We could go out somewhere - more secluded."

The Porsche was parked in a prime spot close to the building's entrance. The seat absorbed me and I closed my eyes.

"Will this help?" Chrissy offered a leather covered hip flask. I sniffed, and identified an Islay malt.

Chrissy stopped the car at the end of a farm track. "We can talk here." Her large eyes were soft and sympathetic.

The whisky had dissolved my headache and cleared my brain.

"You posted 'Slap of Leather' on Sainfield's website? It's a story about two women. One of them annoys the other. The annoyed one gets the other to beat her. In a toilet stall. With a leather belt. Very erotic. You didn't even acknowledge the author!"

"I chose it because you posted a comment that the story made you think about the fuzz on my tender arms." She ran her fingers beneath the sleeve of her jacket, emphasising the thinness of her wrist.

"How did you know I meant you?"

"You stare at me sometimes. No one else looks at me like that. It makes me shiver."

"How did you know I'd posted the comment?"

"Your net-name is in the file where you keep all your account details and passwords."

"There's no way you can get access to that!"

"I guessed the password."

"How?" My hangover was coming back and I took another swig.

"It's my name and the year I was born. It didn't take me long."

She took the flask from me and drank delicately.

"You're driving," I told her.

"There's no rush to go anywhere," she said.

I opened the window. The sun shone on bright pink campion straggling among the brambles. Forget-me-nots and stitchwort were fresh among the grass. Small birds courted noisily in the trees that screened us from the world.

I followed Chrissy when she got out and picked an early rose from a rambling briar. She threaded it through the buttonhole in my lapel, sucking a finger where a thorn had pricked.

"You haven't told me why you hacked the website."

She flung her arms out to enfold the spring countryside and smiled shyly.

"It made you notice. How else could I have got you out here with me?"

"Why me? I'm old enough to be your mother."

She peeped from beneath pale lashes. "You make me feel secure. And you like me, don't you? Men think I'm boring - no tits or hips. They only want to use me like a hosepipe."

"Chrissy!" Her crudeness was shocking.

"It's true. Once they've finished, they forget about me. But you understand what I need, don't you?"

Her trousers snaked down round her ankles and she pushed her scrap of panties after them. As she bent across the bonnet of the car, her vulva parted, seeming to split her narrow loins in two. Sunlight picked out pale hair and glistened on the moist pink tenderness.

"The story isn't quite appropriate" She looked back at me. "I want you to punish me for what I did."

"Punish you?" My voice was uneven.

"On the shelf in the car..." She wriggled her bottom at me.

There was a paper bag.

"You can't! It won't!" I struggled to tear the cellophane from the biggest dildo I'd ever seen. It was a hideous shade of blue and the swollen knob caricatured the end of a penis. The bulging ribs on the shaft reminded me of the Michelin man. It seemed long enough to reach her shoulder blades.

"It'll kill you!"

"Marion! Please," she moaned and reached back to pull her buttocks apart. Her little buns blushed bright pink with excitement.

I trembled as the vast blue knob distended her vagina. Chrissy moaned and wriggled, forcing herself back onto the dildo. She howled as each rib strained past her tender membranes.

I kept on pushing until only a couple of inches remained.

"Wait!" The car's bonnet drummed as she pounded with whitened knuckles. Tears dripped onto the paintwork. I pulled a couple of ribs out of her and she howled again.

"Put it back. It's OK."

I stood panting, my loins on fire, wondering what to do next. Chrissy lay impaled, flattened against the black metal, writhing slowly.

"My handbag strap comes off."

I'd though her silly to have a broad, long strap on such a small bag, but now I understood. Folded in two, the soft leather reeked of punishment and power.

Chrissy screamed.

"I'm sorry!" I bent to kiss the bright red weal. "Your bum's so small it's difficult to hit it with the flat."

"Go on. It's perfect. I like to scream." Her bottom wriggled again in invitation.

I stopped counting after eight. Chrissy's screams changed to howls as she pounded the Porsche's paintwork in her orgasm. Three or four strokes later, my vision dimmed and my knees gave way.

"I haven't come like that for years," I murmured into Chrissy's vulva as I knelt against her, smelling sweet sex and feeling wetness beneath my lips.

"I haven't come like that ever," she murmured dreamily. "There's a blanket in the back of the car."

Chrissy undressed me as we lay in the sun.

"I'm supposed to be tracking down the villainous hacker."

"I think you've found her. All you have to do is make the punishment fit the crime."

"It did fit. I'd never have believed it. Are you sore?"

"Not yet."

"It's a bloody good photograph." I clicked the mouse to zoom in on the dildo.

"Ghastly colour." Phil was leaning over my shoulder and I could feel his arousal - smell it too.

"It was all they had in stock, apparently."

"Her bottom's so small I'm surprised it holds her legs together. Wielding that strap, you look like something out of 'Die Walkure'. At least she had the decency to pixellate your face."

"Little minx! I made damn sure she couldn't hack Sainfield's website, so she posted this on Somerbury's last night."

"She's got a sense of balance, anyway. Have you made sure she can't get at TesMart and WalCo?"

"Of course. I wonder who took the photograph?"

"Interesting. What are you going to do, Marion?"

"I'm in an awkward position. Maybe you should have a fatherly heart-to-heart with our villainous little hacker."

"Can't we just sack her?"

"No. She's not vicious, just devious. I have a feeling that our great rivals, JCN Corporation are behind this somewhere. I want to get to the bottom of it."

"I thought you already did!"

"Ha. Ha."

"The resolution is amazing." I zoomed in on Chrissy, splayed face down over the bonnet of the Porsche. "You bugger, Phil!" I could see the detail now. "You've got it in her bum!"

Phil blushed. "With that dildo in her cunt, there was nowhere else. Anyway, I've always wanted to try anal sex. You never let me."

"It aggravates my piles. I told you that. Isn't your wife accommodating?"

"You're joking! Lorna lets me fuck her once a month if I do the washing up. And then it's in the dark with her nightie on. I doubt she knows where her anus is. If she ever has an orgasm, she's too polite to mention it."

"Why do you put up with it?"

"I don't. I fuck you, whenever you're sober enough."

"Adultery simply avoids the problem. You ought to give her a damn good hiding. Then if she won't knuckle down to her duties, divorce her."

"Unfortunately, my daughters side with their mother. They'd leave with her."

He doted on his daughters - pitiful fool.

I studied the photograph. "You took her round the other side of the car. Were you hoping to avoid the photographer?"

"I didn't fancy a picture appearing as Exhibit A in the divorce court, or the criminal court - Chrissy looks about thirteen."

"Chrissy and her helper fooled you. She's done a clever photo-editing job to give you a gorilla mask."

"It wasn't an editing job." Phil was shamefaced. "Stop laughing, you bitch!"

I wiped tears from my eyes. "What did Chrissy tell you in your heart-to-heart?"

"She's lonely and always fancied men like me. She does the hacking to get attention. That reminds me - I thought you'd stopped her getting at the websites. She put this picture up on WalCo's. On the Mother And Baby page."

"She used your account."

"Mine! Oh shit! I wonder what else she found."

"Are you going out with her tonight?" I felt a pang of jealousy.

"She said she was busy. I thought she must be going out with you."

"She told me the same. I wonder what the little minx is up to." I ran a finger across Phil's neck. "Phil - if you're not going out with Chrissy, would you like..."

He swallowed hard and looked at me lasciviously. "Your place?" he croaked.

"I promise to stay off the booze. Dinner at eight?" I slapped him on the back.

Phil hunched over, gasping. "Are you all right?" I asked.

"My back's a bit sore."

"Careful, Marion!" Phil bent forward, his arms braced against the wall. He was naked except for the bright blue dildo in his anus.

"I don't know whether it's pain or pleasure." He moaned each time another rib distended his sphincter.

"Definitely pleasure. I'm enjoying this." It was nice to turn the tables. For forty years, men had stuck things into me without asking if I wanted them. "More?"

"Hang on. My eyes are watering." He looked over his shoulder at me. "I've never seen you with your hair done up like that. It suits you."

"I don't normally. It makes me so bloody tall it puts men off. It seemed appropriate tonight."

"Your dress is a bit severe - you look like a prison warder."

"That was the plan." I raised the skirt until bare thigh showed above pale stockings.

Phil licked his lips and swallowed. "What are you wearing...?"

"A corset - silk covered. Laced up the back."

He moaned. "Wonderful. Marion, let me see!"

"You'll have to earn it."

"How?"

"I think you'll have to suffer." I pushed the dildo in another notch and unbuckled the belt from my dress. "Chrissy's given me a taste for it."

"Be careful with that thing," Phil eyed the swinging belt nervously. "It took Chrissy a while to get the hang of laying it on flat. She drew blood."

"I can see. She's left-handed. I could try for a herring-bone effect if you like."

"Go easy. I'm bloody sore."

"I can just see the advert - 'squeamish masochist seeks gentle sadist'. Do you want me to take my dress off?"

"Yes! Are you going to wear high heels?"

"If I must. I'll risk the vertigo."

...

"Stop turning round. I can't hit you properly."

"You look fabulous. Just like a porn film. Ow!"

Phil's hands slid down the wall with every slap and his penis swelled each time. I was off balance when he fell to his knees. I hung over him fascinated as he squeezed his penis. The purple head might have been the model for the dildo. The first flood of semen ran across his fingers; the next spurt hit the wall and the remainder sprayed across the floor as he collapsed in a writhing, moaning heap.

"Marion," he complained as I sponged the carpet. "I've just had one of the best orgasms in my life, and you worry about your carpet."

"Silk stains dreadfully."

...

"You really look the part in a corset." Phil unlaced me with trembling fingers.

"I might need a job in a porn film, unless we sort this hacking business out. There's a client review on Friday. There'll be blood, not semen on the carpet, unless we find a way out. Chrissy has enough to blackmail us for years. Any suggestions?"

"Open your legs."

"I'm making progress." I sat down opposite Phil. "I've been bonding with my team - back slapping and all that."

"Not your usual scene."

"I pretended I'd had a good lunch."

"I can smell your lunch from here. What did you find out?"

"Ramila flinched when I put my arm around her shoulders."

"Ramila!"

"Skin like black silk - plump as a partridge."

"I know who you mean. She's working on account administration."

"Now you know how your password leaked out. Don't you vet the staff?" I teased him.

"There's nothing wrong with Ramila."

"I sacked her husband two months ago. He went to work for JCN Corporation."

"Shit!"

"And Chrissy's Porsche..." I hinted.

"I'm worried about that. I've checked her file. There's no way she could afford that car."

"It belongs to Ramila's husband."

Phil was aghast. "Even JCN can't afford to give Porsche's as company cars."

"They might give cash to someone prepared to do the dirty on us."

"Good God! You're right. If we lost those supermarket accounts, it would be worth a few Porsche's. And Ramila's got a sore back..."

"I'll see if I can teach Chrissy to hit straight. By the way, Ramila's in the Photographic Society. She's a keen bird photographer."

"What are we going to do?"

"I'm not sure. If we had evidence that JCN had bribed our staff to hack the websites, we could turn the tables. I'll take Chrissy out to dinner. She needs feeding up."

"How did you get this?" Phil was astounded as he read the printout.

"Chrissy got it. I think she beat it out of Ramila."

"Is it genuine?"

"Yep. An Email from JCN's Director of Marketing to Ramila's husband offering him cash if we lose the accounts."

"The man must be a dumbo, putting this in writing. Can he claim we forged it?"

"No. All the headers are genuine."

Phil rubbed his hands. "If I forward this to the IT Directors in the supermarkets, it'll set JCN back by months."

"Phil! What are you doing in here?"

"Buying a suit while the sale's on."

"That's pretty snappy." I admired the pale, lightweight two-piece he was paying for. "Bit light for English weather, isn't it."

"I'm going to Florida."

"I hadn't heard."

"It's a holiday. A second honeymoon."

"Who with?"

"Lorna, of course." Phil grinned like an idiot.

"I thought you barely talked - let alone did what people do on honeymoon."

"Things have changed. I took your advice."

I vaguely remembered that we'd talked about his marriage. "I told you to divorce her."

"You told me to give her a good hiding!"

"Phil! I wasn't serious!" We moved behind a rack of coats. "Tell me."

"We were going to bed and she was complaining. It pissed me off, and I was just unbuckling my trousers. I flipped. Ripped off her nightdress; flung her down on the bed and beat her with the belt until she screamed. I thought I'd hurt her, but she dragged me onto the bed and raped me. I couldn't stop her. I had to take two days off work."

"So that's why you've been avoiding me."

"I thought I'd give things a chance with Lorna," he said sheepishly. "It's exciting, finding that my boring wife of twenty years is a sex maniac. Have you seen much of Chrissy? I'm still worried about those photographs. Does she have them?"

"I haven't found out yet. I tried to beat the truth out of her and Ramila. It was a mistake - they ganged up on me."

Phil looked at me. "Both of them?"

"Yes." I avoided his eye. "I'm looking for a present for Chrissy. You and I got a bonus for wrecking the plans of the evil JCN Corporation. She didn't get anything."

"The only thing she deserved was a good hiding."

"She got that." I dragged him over to a rack and held up a trouser suit.

Phil looked at the tag and whistled. "When you're as small as Chrissy, the price per square inch is frightening. It's nice though. You'll enjoy taking it off."

"I will indeed. Now, what can I get for Ramila? She's lonely since her husband's been sent for training in South Africa."

Phil followed me as I prowled the dress racks.

"Are you a threesome?" There was a glint in his eye.

I nodded, warily. "My sex life isn't boring anymore."

"Have you still got that corset?"

"They wouldn't take it back because of the stains."