"I don't really think that was good enough, do you?" Sue asked, "Try it my way. Say Sorry Mistress, this slack mouthed whore apologizes for her stupid fat mouth."

"S.sorry Mistress, t.th.his slack mouthed whore ap.apologizes for her stupid fat mouth," Mary Anne somehow stuttered.

Sue smiled. "You see, didn't I tell you that was so much better?" Sue asked sweetly.

"Much as I'd like to chit chat Mary, I'm just afraid that gossipy, nasty little mouth of yours would get in the way." Sue dropped a large red ball gag on Mary's desk. "Let's try this on for now?" she suggested, "it was the biggest ball we could find, figure it will fit a big mouth nicely."

She took a step back allowing the trembling woman to force the huge ball into her mouth and tighten down the strap. It was a tight fit, Mary's jaw started to ache within seconds.

"Now Mary, bring the Swiss accounts up for me," Sue insisted.

"Umpphhh?" Mary Anne grunted shaking her head.

"Please don't be coy," Sue said, "I know all about them. Make me punch them up and you will be sorry."

Mary Anne sighed and punched some keys. Soon the balances of three Swiss bank accounts displayed on the screen.

"Humm," Sue said, "quite a haul Mary. Not a bad rate of pay for a years work? Now put your hands behind your back."

Sobbing Mary did as she was told and Sue locked them in a pair of police issue cuffs. It was only then that she spun Mary round.

It took the bound woman a moment to recognize her attacker, the new Sue was leaner and more athletic than before, and the old Sue would not have worn so much leather to the office.

"Like the look Mary?" she asked, seeing the woman's wide eyes, "I call it the dead-and-on-the-run look. Could be big in Milan next year."

"Ummmfff," Mary said.

"Glad you think so," Sue smiled, "I am the ghost of Christmas past, here to bring back memories of last Christmas, the Christmas you hired a professional hit man to kill me. Remember that?"

Mary shook her head.

"Yes you're right," Sue said, "the ambience is just so wrong. Perhaps it we took a few things back to the way they were last year it would jog your memory. Let's see. Well being bound and gagged in front of the computer is definitely evocative of MY last Christmas but."

Sue brightened. "I know, you really didn't have all this money in Zurich last year did you Mary?" she nodded at the computer screen. Mary's eyes widened. As she watched the balances started falling. Startled the woman struggled with the cuffs, trying to reach the keyboard. In front of her the totals reached zero.

"There," Sue smiled, "this was just about where we were last year when you realized that if you wanted to REALLY embezzle some money it wasn't enough to be financial controller, you really needed access to poor little Sue's job too. You tried all the traditional ways to remove me, you started your fair share of water cooler whispers, you rubbished me with my boss but in the end people here liked me more than they liked you. It was then you decided you needed a more .forceful way to make a vacancy."

Sue sat back on the desk opposite. "Must admit that that had us stumped for months. Who would pay to kill a girl that works for a charity? Doesn't make sense, I mean what can you gain? The answer of course is nothing while she is there but once I was gone YOU where a hero. You stepped in offering to do my job as well as your own, take up the slack while they found a replacement. Of course they agreed, they even gave you the job of hiring my permanent replacement once the police said they believed I was dead. Gosh darn it you tried so hard to find a replacement too, pity there were no suitable applicants, what a martyr you were to struggle on alone."

She looked at the screen. "Of course what they didn't know was that I handled all the really big private contributors, the ones whose "gifts" don't have to be individually declared in the financial report. You know the ones we thank personally in the opening pages? The people that only the fundraiser and the financial controller know if they had donated fifty thousand, or just fifteen? And of course with the markets down a bad year for contributions is to be expected. Right?"

Sue smiled.

"Yeah thinking that through took a while. In case you are wondering the money is back in the charity accounts. Tomorrow that cute Eliott Spitzer will have the details delivered to him by FedEx. Tonight." she paused, "I thought I'd put up my decorations."

- -;

Bistro Maxine was on the 22nd floor of the Mariott Towers hotel. The party had booked a table near the window. The gentleman arrived early, read the menu and in a dark honey laced voice ordered for both himself and his date. He was shown to the table at eight. She joined him a moment after eight fifteen as agreed.

He stroked her face with the back of his hand. "Did it go well my little one?"

She shivered as the warmth of his voice rippled up her spine then she nodded happily. "Yes Sir and thank you again for trusting me to do it for myself."

"It was never a question of trust," he said, "merely of safety. Please try the wine. I believe the first course will be arriving shortly."

They looked down the busy street towards the building that had once been Sue's office. Sue raised her kid gloved hand and checked the time on her new watch. This was her Christmas present from Him. Back home she knew only one time, the time to serve him, the watch was a token that the real world was now open to her as well.

She looked at the building and at the picture window on the seventeenth floor. She reached into her purse and passed him a pair of opera glasses. Smiling he looked at the window.

Sue cleared her throat and as if at her signal a light went on on the seventeenth floor. There in the window a naked woman was displayed. She was bound open in a tight X, suspended over the window in such a way that her recently slaved sex was clearly visible. Two lines of clothes pins were fastened down each side of her pussy lips with a larger pin, this one painted red, clamped firmly over her clit. A cardboard sign hung from binder clips fastened to the woman's nipples. On it was the word "Embezzler" in large black letters. Fairy lights had been would around the woman's outstretched limbs and where turning on and off in series, an effect that only served to draw more attention to her predicament. Sue swelled with pride as she watched her Master's interest in the helpless woman's recently shaved crotch. Even from here it was easy to see that her cunt wasn't empty and that the thing that filled it was connected in some way to the string of lights on her left leg. When the lights came on the woman twitched and writhed in her tight bondage. He smiled as he saw her eyes widen and her mouth fight fitfully with the mass of silver tape that covered her mouth.

"Interesting tableau," he commented as they started their soups, "I assume the clothes pins."

".Are attached via a very long string to the door? Yes Sir," Sue nodded, "She is in for quite a shock when they burst in to rescue her." She grinned. "I have a poem," she said clearing her throat again.

"Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring not even the Rat,

"She had been bound in the window with care, displayed 'till the cops and the firemen got there,

And as for the girl whose revenge played a part, she smiles at her Sir and she gives him her heart;"

He smiled and kissed her hand. "Thank you, little one," he said, " next year though, I'd like a tie."

Smiling he glanced out of the window again. Unfortunately the seventeenth floor window wasn't turned anywhere near a long busy street. Mary Anne could go unnoticed until morning.

He smiled. "And now my dear you must forgive me but an artist needs the adoration of her audience."

He glanced out the window again, looked shocked and then in his deep baritone that carried to every corner of the restaurant said. "My word, isn't that a NAKED woman?"

People started to flock to the windows. Comments where made, Sue saw cell phones being used.

And the city lit up like a Christmas Tree.