To say that the flight to Japan was tedious in the extreme would be to completely understate it. My poor colleagues had more than the awful flight to put up with though. They had to put up with an awful fright too. Me. From the very beginning I behaved, although a supposedly mature woman of twenty-two, like a spoilt brat. I complained to and bossed the stewardesses even more than I threw my shapely 115 pounds around with my colleagues.

Kate was, as ever, patience itself. However, she was to tell me much later that it had almost begun to be more for her proud memory of and respect for my late father that she had indulged me, than for love of me and our long-time friendship. She could have walked out on us at any time. She could have got a better-paid job almost anywhere. We would have sunk without trace if it were not for her talents. And yet I began to tell her, before one of the men skilfully steered me away from the subject, that I considered that as she was now just my secretary, we needed to discuss a downward adjustment of her pay. That, I opined, would be a start to keeping the company out of the red.

On the day of the meeting I flounced into the boardroom at N as if it were the N Corporation I owned and not, what for N , was a hitherto well respected but minor contractor whose only real asset was the brains of its engineers and the skill of its manageress, Kate, in delivering to time and quality a product more advanced than the competition in the electronics market.

I had dressed the part. Power dressing they call it: slate-grey with darker pinstripe jacket over white silk blouse, jacket-matching pinstriped mini-skirt only six-inches below my firm pert butt when I stood, and black extra-long self-support stockings. I topped this rig out with three-inch black stilettos.

Underneath I was all in black: brassier to go with the stockings, I also wore what were then new to the market: garter panties. They consisted of abundantly frilly black garters, one for each leg, with bright red ribbon interwoven and a black stretch gusset between them. Essentially a pair of garters joined together in their middle. They were exciting and daring for a girl to wear. They were worn high up the thighs just below and touching one' s butt cheeks. One's butt was entirely bare.

The garters assisted in holding up my extra-long black stockings. They were also there as a secret thrill for me as the wearer. Their gusset did not really cover anything. Somehow the failure of the gusset to hide one's sex made one feel more naked than if the gusset were not there at all. I was a sexy girl and I was taking no prisoners. I was a girl with a knockout face, body, and awesome legs, and I was going to kick them dead.

I was for none of this polite bowing and spoke loudly of my suspicion that although all present from N spoke only in Japanese they were perfectly fluent in English. Kate knew that with some of them that was indeed the case, but appreciated that they thought it better tactics to have us at the disadvantage of needing an interpreter. All was fair in love and war. If it were not that we were the juniors in this negotiation, she would have arranged the same in reverse.

As we finally sat around the table, I was very annoyed that even after I had been introduced all round the twenty N representatives as the new owner and managing director of our company, all eyes on the N side of the board turned to Kate for the opening of discussions. I was even more annoyed when Kate began to talk away in Japanese and was being respectfully and very carefully listened to by N .

My anger grew and I tapped my foot impatiently until there was a gap in Kate's flow of speech and N 's president was about to answer her. I brooked no nonsense and ordered Kate to tell him that we had come here to quadruple the price of our product and were not going to leave until they agreed.

"We can't tell them that", said Kate to me, "Its crazy. Our price is already higher than our three main competitors. We win out on quality. The gap is narrowing on that too". I told Kate to shut up and tell them precisely what I had said.

I never considered that I had already been heard and understood by the N men who spoke English even though they were not letting on that they did. Kate heard them passing on what I had said, to their colleagues in Japanese.

She was brilliant. She took up in Japanese again and told them I was unwell,

being under medical treatment that the air flight had exacerbated the side affects of. Please would they be forgiving and indulge us with a break till tomorrow. Politeness itself, the N president called his colleagues to attention bowed courteously and said, in Japanese, that he hoped I would be better for the next day at 10.00.

Spoilt brat that I was, in our hotel afterwards I had blazing rows with Kate, with lots of how dare shes and damned this and damned that. If it had not been for the same astute man, who had steered me from my stupidity in talking wage cuts on the plane, intervening timely again, I would have told Kate she was fired.

He could also see that Kate's patience was growing thin and that she might beat me to the draw by resigning there and then. He poured the only oil I had made available for the troubled waters, and put it to Kate that what I had proposed was worth a try. He didn't mean it. But, to his surprise Kate agreed. She did not really agree either, but could see that it was the only way to save the firm and her colleagues, and me come to that. After all, it would be taken as something of a joke or a surprise opening gambit leading to the real and sensible bargain we were seeking to reach.

Even though Kate was to end up working for N a couple of years later, I am sure she had nothing whatsoever to do with what was to happen the next day.

The meeting at N began at 10.00 sharp. I was in more reflective mood now than on the day before. I had even gone as far as I ever would as of then toward telling Kate I was sorry and that she should take back the lead in the talks. That was at breakfast in the hotel. Kate had sensed what I was wanting to say and saved my injured pride by telling me she would be honoured to take my advice and that I had come up with a brilliant opening move. As I stood to leave the table, I kissed her cheek in gratitude.

I made no attempt to intervene at the meeting this time, as Kate began to tell them what I had yesterday ordered her to tell N . Indeed I sat well back from the table in full view of the N men, in what I judged to be a strategic suggestion of the strong general able to leave the trivia up to her minions. Their president raising a firm hand silenced Kate even before she had really started. Then he said something at length, in Japanese of course, as ever, that made Kate blush visibly.

He pushed across the table a document I recognised. It bore my witnessed signature. Kate looked aghast: "She's already signed the contract", she moaned to no one in particular, "she signed already for reduced prices!" The N president continued to talk. Kate blushed deeper.

Still blushing, she turned round to me with a look of total despair at the situation I had put us in. By signing that paper, I had already defeated the objective of our negotiations. Trying to cover for the shocking awareness of how stupid I had been, I merely asked Kate what the N chief had said latterly.

"What did he say?" I asked. She clearly was not going to tell me. The silly temper I had inherited from my mother was beginning to rise again. "Tell me what he said Kate, I want to know what he said".

"You don't" Kate replied. "Tell me and tell me now!" I demanded. The N men sat as inscrutable of face as is the clich for all oriental gentlemen. "Okay" said Kate, "if you really want to know, he said that he knew you have been foolish and he was before, and still is, prepared to tear up what you signed, but now, after your behaviour yesterday, he absolutely insists on one, just one condition before he will do it. He also said you have beautiful legs and asked if you are wearing any panties".

My look of total shock and my deep scarlet blushing from hairline to neckline told the N president that his message had been conveyed. He began to talk to Kate again and at some length, as I crossed by superbly shapely black-stockinged legs, thereby displaying even more of my gorgeous thighs, and looked at the shamed embarrassed hanging heads of my male fellow board members at the table in front of where I sat.

When the N president had finished speaking, Kate turned to me and told me she was under instruction to give me a message and did I really want to hear what that message was. I was all too aware of the Japanese fascination with my legs as I sat now very self-consciously. With the last vestige of my broken pride, so, as if I didn't really care, though of course I did, I just said, "Tell me, I might as well be knowing what these pigs have to say".

Kate swallowed hard. The Japanese sat silent looking at my face as Kate passed the message. Kate made several false and hesitant starts, which was not like her at all. The sum of what she said can be drawn together thus, although it does not fully convey the roundabout and embarrassed and apologetic way in which she felt forced to put it to me: "He says Sabrina my love, he says, the president of N says that is, that the only price at which they will give us a contract and tear up the one you signed, is; . the only contract we'll get is; is, is .They will only renew our contract if you agree to be whipped".

I was totally and absolutely stunned shocked and astounded. After endless hesitation, blushing deep deep scarlet, my head hanging in shame because I could feel a wetness in my sex as the masturbatory fantasies I had indulged as a girl flashed through my mind, I stammered: "Tell them to go to hell.Tell them they disgust me and that they are pigs to talk to me or even about me that way!"

Then suddenly I said, "No; don't tell them that".

Their president was talking again. Kate turned to me with tears welling in her loving eyes. I had effectively signed away the company, daddy's company, granddaddy's company, and they were using it as blackmail for their perverted ends.

"He says you are a beautiful girl and that we get no contract unless you submit to being whipped by geishas in what he calls 'a deflowering way'. I cannot quite interpret that last bit" she apologised. "It will be done in this boardroom this afternoon in front of all of us here now, starting at 14.00. It must begin by your returning to this boardroom totally nude. You will then step up onto the board table and walk around on it so that they can admire you fully naked and humiliated. Finally, you will be bound and whipped on your bare body."

Why I said it I will never know, it can only have been the chance for fulfilment of my fantasies with the overcoming of my horrendously stupid blunder secondary. I had soaked my garter-panty gusset with my girl-juice as I listened, and was bright crimson and perspiring in a scolding hot flush. With but a moment's hesitation I told Kate to: "Tell them 'yes', tell them I agree provided they quadruple our price as I asked through you before, and tear up the agreement I signed."

To her credit Kate told them just that. "It's a deal," she told me straight afterwards. "If you confirm right here and now that you will go through with it, it's a deal".

"Okay; okay; I'll do it" I said, "I'll do what they want".

Kate conveyed this to the N president.

The meeting was over. As he rose and then bowed the N president told me with a smile, in the clearest of American accented English: "You are as brave as you are beautiful".