#paying double taxes

[overheard-on-base]

Check in! How are you guys doing.

One of my coworkers just walked up to me and said "Clem says hi, I saw him at Goth-Con" I do not know this colleague's name and yet somehow they know my brother is my brother

What's worse is that apparently he wAS VENDING THERE! AND I DIDN'T KNOW. THAT LITTLE MOTHER FUCKER KNEW I WANTED TO BUY SOME OF HIS PRINTS AND HE SPECIFICALLY CHOSE THE ONE CON THAT'D BE ON WHILE I'M WORKING

Uh anyway everyone else is fine, other than the Boss who keeps building new dangerous things so I presume he's going through something but it's not bad enough to warrant intervention and if you're lucky you get a cool new weapon so it's kinda just par for the course

[b-blushes]

also earlier i got a letter to tax my car in the post and i did it WITHIN 20 minutes of receiving it can u even believe it

[murakumo2008]

When I want to buy Chrono Phantasma but I remember the economy of my country is bullshit, so even at half price is expensive

[catboyolli]

my only rant about BC is that their shop charges me, a citizen from a non EU country, VAT tax 🙃

[binch-i-might-be]

man . I think I need to see oppenheimer

[the-acid-pear]

Brooo why da hell is The Stanley Parable the only game that didn't get affected by the obscene price changes??? That thang is still less than $500 omfg.

[today-i-am-thinking-about]

counties

[dungeon-apprentice]

Is there really no one within the EU who makes funky custom dice :'( If you do, or know someone who does, please link their shop or tag them!!

[lavenite]

i could theoretically get my nan to drop me off

[niconiconwo]

Ngl I hate that I'm expected to give people vet discounts or discounts for being a cop. EMTs and fire response I'm slightly less against but fuck me man I hate the special snowflake syndrome most of these asshats have.

I had a cop flash me his badge to get a discount and god if I wouldn't get fired for it I'd have told him to get out of my store. I did dig in and ask him if his badge was real and for his badge number. Not getting a discount for nothing loser.

[noireservoir]

I cant wait to quit this job <3

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Retiring the US debt would retire the US dollar

THIS WEDNESDAY (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

One of the most consequential series of investigative journalism of this decade was the Propublica series that Jesse Eisinger helmed, in which Eisinger and colleagues analyzed a trove of leaked IRS tax returns for the richest people in America:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files

The Secret IRS Files revealed the fact that many of America's oligarchs pay no tax at all. Some of them even get subsidies intended for poor families, like Jeff Bezos, whose tax affairs are so scammy that he was able to claim to be among the working poor and receive a federal Child Tax Credit, a $4,000 gift from the American public to one of the richest men who ever lived:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

As important as the numbers revealed by the Secret IRS Files were, I found the explanations even more interesting. The 99.9999% of us who never make contact with the secretive elite wealth management and tax cheating industry know, in the abstract, that there's something scammy going on in those esoteric cults of wealth accumulation, but we're pretty vague on the details. When I pondered the "tax loopholes" that the rich were exploiting, I pictured, you know, long lists of equations salted with Greek symbols, completely beyond my ken.

But when Propublica's series laid these secret tactics out, I learned that they were incredibly stupid ruses, tricks so thin that the only way they could possibly fool the IRS is if the IRS just didn't give a shit (and they truly didn't – after decades of cuts and attacks, the IRS was far more likely to audit a family earning less than $30k/year than a billionaire).

This has become a somewhat familiar experience. If you read the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, Luxleaks, Swissleaks, or any of the other spectacular leaks from the oligarch-industrial complex, you'll have seen the same thing: the rich employ the most tissue-thin ruses, and the tax authorities gobble them up. It's like the tax collectors don't want to fight with these ultrawealthy monsters whose net worth is larger than most nations, and merely require some excuse to allow them to cheat, anything they can scribble in the box explaining why they are worth billions and paying little, or nothing, or even entitled to free public money from programs intended to lift hungry children out of poverty.

It was this experience that fueled my interest in forensic accounting, which led to my bestselling techno-crime-thriller series starring the two-fisted, scambusting forensic accountant Martin Hench, who made his debut in 2022's Red Team Blues:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

The double outrage of finding out how badly the powerful are ripping off the rest of us, and how stupid and transparent their accounting tricks are, is at the center of Chokepoint Capitalism, the book about how tech and entertainment companies steal from creative workers (and how to stop them) that Rebecca Giblin and I co-authored, which also came out in 2022:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Now that I've written four novels and a nonfiction book about finance scams, I think I can safely call myself a oligarch ripoff hobbyist. I find this stuff endlessly fascinating, enraging, and, most importantly, energizing. So naturally, when PJ Vogt devoted two episodes of his excellent Search Engine podcast to the subject last week, I gobbled them up:

https://www.searchengine.show/listen/search-engine-1/why-is-it-so-hard-to-tax-billionaires-part-1

I love the way Vogt unpacks complex subjects. Maybe you've had the experience of following a commentator and admiring their knowledge of subjects you're unfamiliar with, only have them cover something you're an expert in and find them making a bunch of errors (this is basically the experience of using an LLM, which can give you authoritative seeming answers when the subject is one you're unfamiliar with, but which reveals itself to be a Bullshit Machine as soon as you ask it about something whose lore you know backwards and forwards).

Well, Vogt has covered many subjects that I am an expert in, and I had the opposite experience, finding that even when he covers my own specialist topics, I still learn something. I don't always agree with him, but always find those disagreements productive in that they make me clarify my own interests. (Full disclosure: I was one of Vogt's experts on his previous podcast, Reply All, talking about the inkjet printerization of everything:)

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brho54

Vogt's series on taxing billionaires was no exception. His interview subjects (including Eisinger) were very good, and he got into a lot of great detail on the leaker himself, Charles Littlejohn, who plead guilty and was sentenced to five years:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/charles-littlejohn-irs-whistleblower-pro-publica-tax-evasion-prosecution

Vogt also delved into the history of the federal income tax, how it was sold to the American public, and a rather hilarious story of Republican Congressional gamesmanship that backfired spectacularly. I'd never encountered this stuff before and boy was it interesting.

But then Vogt got into the nature of taxation, and its relationship to the federal debt, another subject I've written about extensively, and that's where one of those productive disagreements emerged. Yesterday, I set out to write him a brief note unpacking this objection and ended up writing a giant essay (sorry, PJ!), and this morning I found myself still thinking about it. So I thought, why not clean up the email a little and publish it here?

As much as I enjoyed these episodes, I took serious exception to one – fairly important! – aspect of your analysis: the relationship of taxes to the national debt.

There's two ways of approaching this question, which I think of as akin to classical vs quantum physics. In the orthodox, classical telling, the government taxes us to pay for programs. This is crudely true at 10,000 feet and as a rule of thumb, it's fine in many cases. But on the ground – at the quantum level, in this analogy – the opposite is actually going on.

There is only one source of US dollars: the US Treasury (you can try and make your own dollars, but they'll put you in prison for a long-ass time if they catch you.).

If dollars can only originate with the US government, then it follows that:

a) The US government doesn't need our taxes to get US dollars (for the same reason Apple doesn't need us to redeem our iTunes cards to get more iTunes gift codes);

b) All the dollars in circulation start with spending by the US government (taxes can't be paid until dollars are first spent by their issuer, the US government); and

c) That spending must happen before anyone has been taxed, because the way dollars enter circulation is through spending.

You've probably heard people say, "Government spending isn't like household spending." That is obviously true: households are currency users while governments are currency issuers.

But the implications of this are very interesting.

First, the total dollars in circulation are:

a) All the dollars the government has ever spent into existence funding programs, transferring to the states, and paying its own employees, minus

b) All the dollars that the government has taxed away from us, and subsequently annihilated.

(Because governments spend money into existence and tax money out of existence.)

The net of dollars the government spends in a given year minus the dollars the government taxes out of existence that year is called "the national deficit." The total of all those national deficits is called "the national debt." All the dollars in circulation today are the result of this national debt. If the US government didn't have a debt, there would be no dollars in circulation.

The only way to eliminate the national debt is to tax every dollar in circulation out of existence. Because the national debt is "all the dollars the government has ever spent," minus "all the dollars the government has ever taxed." In accounting terms, "The US deficit is the public's credit."

When billionaires like Warren Buffet tell Jesse Eisinger that he doesn't pay tax because "he thinks his money is better spent on charitable works rather than contributing to an insignificant reduction of the deficit," he is, at best, technically wrong about why we tax, and at worst, he's telling a self-serving lie. The US government doesn't need to eliminate its debt. Doing so would be catastrophic. "Retiring the US debt" is the same thing as "retiring the US dollar."

So if the USG isn't taxing to retire its debts, why does it tax? Because when the USG – or any other currency issuer – creates a token, that token is, on its face, useless. If I offered to sell you some "Corycoins," you would quite rightly say that Corycoins have no value and thus you don't need any of them.

For a token to be liquid – for it to be redeemable for valuable things, like labor, goods and services – there needs to be something that someone desires that can be purchased with that token. Remember when Disney issued "Disney dollars" that you could only spend at Disney theme parks? They traded more or less at face value, even outside of Disney parks, because everyone knew someone who was planning a Disney vacation and could make use of those Disney tokens.

But if you go down to a local carny and play skeeball and win a fistful of tickets, you'll find it hard to trade those with anyone outside of the skeeball counter, especially once you leave the carny. There's two reasons for this:

1) The things you can get at the skeeball counter are pretty crappy so most people don't desire them; and ' 2) Most people aren't planning on visiting the carny, so there's no way for them to redeem the skeeball tickets even if they want the stuff behind the counter (this is also why it's hard to sell your Iranian rials if you bring them back to the US – there's not much you can buy in Iran, and even someone you wanted to buy something there, it's really hard for US citizens to get to Iran).

But when a sovereign currency issuer – one with the power of the law behind it – demands a tax denominated in its own currency, they create demand for that token. Everyone desires USD because almost everyone in the USA has to pay taxes in USD to the government every year, or they will go to prison. That fact is why there is such a liquid market for USD. Far more people want USD to pay their taxes than will ever want Disney dollars to spend on Dole Whips, and even if you are hoping to buy a Dole Whip in Fantasyland, that desire is far less important to you than your desire not to go to prison for dodging your taxes.

Even if you're not paying taxes, you know someone who is. The underlying liquidity of the USD is inextricably tied to taxation, and that's the first reason we tax. By issuing a token – the USD – and then laying on a tax that can only be paid in that token (you cannot pay federal income tax in anything except USD – not crypto, not euros, not rials – only USD), the US government creates demand for that token.

And because the US government is the only source of dollars, the US government can purchase anything that is within its sovereign territory. Anything denominated in US dollars is available to the US government: the labor of every US-residing person, the land and resources in US territory, and the goods produced within the US borders. The US doesn't need to tax us to buy these things (remember, it makes new money by typing numbers into a spreadsheet at the Federal Reserve). But it does tax us, and if the taxes it levies don't equal the spending it's making, it also sells us T-bills to make up the shortfall.

So the US government kinda acts like classical physics is true, that is, like it is a household and thus a currency user, and not a currency issuer. If it spends more than it taxes, it "borrows" (issues T-bills) to make up the difference. Why does it do this? To fight inflation.

The US government has no monetary constraints, it can make as many dollars as it cares to (by typing numbers into a spreadsheet). But the US government is fiscally constrained, because it can only buy things that are denominated in US dollars (this is why it's such a big deal that global oil is priced in USD – it means the US government can buy oil from anywhere, not only the USA, just by typing numbers into a spreadsheet).

The supply of dollars is infinite, but the supply of labor and goods denominated in US dollars is finite, and, what's more, the people inside the USA expect to use that labor and goods for their own needs. If the US government issues so many dollars that it can outbid every private construction company for the labor of electricians, bricklayers, crane drivers, etc, and puts them all to work building federal buildings, there will be no private construction.

Indeed, every time the US government bids against the private sector for anything – labor, resources, land, finished goods – the price of that thing goes up. That's one way to get inflation (and it's why inflation hawks are so horny for slashing government spending – to get government bidders out of the auction for goods, services and labor).

But while the supply of goods for sale in US dollars is finite, it's not fixed. If the US government takes away some of the private sector's productive capacity in order to build interstates, train skilled professionals, treat sick people so they can go to work (or at least not burden their working-age relations), etc, then the supply of goods and services denominated in USD goes up, and that makes more fiscal space, meaning the government and the private sector can both consume more of those goods and services and still not bid against one another, thus creating no inflationary pressure.

Thus, taxes create liquidity for US dollars, but they do something else that's really important: they reduce the spending power of the private sector. If the US only ever spent money into existence and never taxed it out of existence, that would create incredible inflation, because the supply of dollars would go up and up and up, while the supply of goods and services you could buy with dollars would grow much more slowly, because the US government wouldn't have the looming threat of taxes with which to coerce us into doing the work to build highways, care for the sick, or teach people how to be doctors, engineers, etc.

Taxes coercively reduce the purchasing power of the private sector (they're a stick). T-bills do the same thing, but voluntarily (they the carrot).

A T-bill is a bargain offered by the US government: "Voluntarily park your money instead of spending it. That will create fiscal space for us to buy things without bidding against you, because it removes your money from circulation temporarily. That means we, the US government, can buy more stuff and use it to increase the amount of goods and services you can buy with your money when the bond matures, while keeping the supply of dollars and the supply of dollar-denominated stuff in rough equilibrium."

So a bond isn't a debt – it's more like a savings account. When you move money from your checking to your savings, you reduce its liquidity, meaning the bank can treat it as a reserve without worrying quite so much about you spending it. In exchange, the bank gives you some interest, as a carrot.

I know, I know, this is a big-ass wall of text. Congrats if you made it this far! But here's the upshot. We should tax billionaires, because it will reduce their economic power and thus their political power.

But we absolutely don't need to tax billionaires to have nice things. For example: the US government could hire every single unemployed person without creating inflationary pressure on wages, because inflation only happens when the US government tries to buy something that the private sector is also trying to buy, bidding up the price. To be "unemployed" is to have labor that the private sector isn't trying to buy. They're synonyms. By definition, the feds could put every unemployed person to work (say, training one another to be teachers, construction workers, etc – and then going out and taking care of the sick, addressing the housing crisis, etc etc) without buying any labor that the private sector is also trying to buy.

What's even more true than this is that our taxes are not going to reduce the national debt. That guest you had who said, "Even if we tax billionaires, we will never pay off the national debt,"" was 100% right, because the national debt equals all the money in circulation.

Which is why that guest was also very, very wrong when she said, "We will have to tax normal people too in order to pay off the debt." We don't have to pay off the debt. We shouldn't pay off the debt. We can't pay off the debt. Paying off the debt is another way of saying "eliminating the dollar."

Taxation isn't a way for the government to pay for things. Taxation is a way to create demand for US dollars, to convince people to sell goods and services to the US government, and to constrain private sector spending, which creates fiscal space for the US government to buy goods and services without bidding up their prices.

And in a "classical physics" sense, all of the preceding is kinda a way of saying, "Taxes pay for government spending." As a rough approximation, you can think of taxes like this and generally not get into trouble.

But when you start to make policy – when you contemplate when, whether, and how much to tax billionaires – you leave behind the crude, high-level approximation and descend into the nitty-gritty world of things as they are, and you need to jettison the convenience of the easy-to-grasp approximation.

If you're interested in learning more about this, you can tune into this TED Talk by Stephanie Kelton, formerly formerly advisor to the Senate Budget Committee chair, now back teaching and researching econ at University of Missouri at Kansas City:

https://www.ted.com/talks/stephanie_kelton_the_big_myth_of_government_deficits?subtitle=en

Stephanie has written a great book about this, The Deficit Myth:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/14/everybody-poops/#deficit-myth

There's a really good feature length doc about it too, called "Finding the Money":

https://findingmoneyfilm.com/

If you'd like to read more of my own work on this, here's a column I wrote about the nature of currency in light of Web3, crypto, etc:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/21/we-can-have-nice-things/#public-funds-not-taxpayer-dollars

[assignedmale]

I'm on the verge of quitting everything. I've been crying all day. I'm tired of putting up a candid face when social media is scr*wing over trans creators or only showing my art to anti-trans suicide-baiters. Even though this has been my most productive year ever, in terms of online content, I get comments practically every day about how rarely people get to see my posts in their feed.

Since last winter's natural disaster, we haven't been able to afford groceries. We haven't had hot water since March. I've been late on student loans and car payments for months. Orders are late and I feel like I'm failing everyone.

On top of that, I'm still regularizing my situation in this country, and in that context, I just received a letter telling me that as a self-employed artist, I'm obligated to put a monthly $700 in a private retirement fund (and pay the 21 months backlog since I officially started paying taxes here). The only other options are to quit art or go back to Canada.

I've talked in the past few months about the necessity for the survival of this project to double the amount of subscribers on patreon. Each time, social media killed the reach of these posts. I'm not expecting this one to do better. However, it has never been more urgent. There needs to be about 200 new subs or I might be forced to shut it all down. I'm really scared and I wish this wasn't the only way.

You got some choices, although they are being updated more or less regularly - keeping Assigned Male Comics free and easily available on social media remains my priority : Assigned Male Comics patreon A Frog in the Bog (foraging and DIY) patreon Pastel Sexy Times (nsfw) patreon Candycore Comics patreon

Paypal : @assignedmale

I'm sure you all got so much on your plate, and you could do without the series of woes that have afflicted our family this year. Thank you for reading through this and for your constant support, even if it's just through leaving comments - it does help. It's my privilege to create these comics, and I hope to do it as long as you will allow me.

xx Sophie

[hikingofthenoldor]

Got a copy/pasted reply that I have to call.

I am sacred again.

Wrote an email to a therapist who specialised on transgender people. Well, she is probably super busy. But I did a thing.

And it's super hard to find a professional that I can reach with public transport in under 1,5h. And well. I found one to begin with.

And I wrote a sacry email.

[bekkathyst]

hey friends, some really frustrating news here, but my phone randomly decided to get a blinding white screen and just stop working literally right after i made my last post

as a self employed person with an online shop, my entire income is tied to my ability to use my phone

this truly couldn't happen at a worse time as tax season is now and I have big bills to pay from back when things were going much better

so if you want to treat yourself to some rocks and help me either fix my phone or buy a used one, i will be doing double value mystery boxes again!

if you buy a crystal mystery box in our shop, i'll use the clearance items we posted on tumblr a couple weeks ago to to make your box double the value you pay

also I still have some higher end crystals available in my new collection

thanks everyone, I hate to post stuff like this because I know things are difficult for everyone right now but I'd really appreciate if you shared this. thank you <3

[p0orbaby]

Mission Impossible

summary: you’re an agent at the top of your game, until a certain footballer distracts you

warnings: SMUT 18+, semi public (car), fingering, top!leah, dirty talk?

a/n: thanks for the request ! this was super fun to write

word count: 2.2k

-

“Remember to mute yourself if you go to the toilet, yeah?” your new technician's voice crackles through the earpiece you’d pay your life’s savings not to have to wear.

“You do know who you’re talking to, right?”

“Of course! The female version of double oh seven, duh. This is like, super cool that I’ve been assigned to you, by the way”

You roll your eyes and tap your fingers impatiently against the steering wheel of your car. “It’s my pleasure”

“But seriously, not to tell you what to do or anything but, please mute if you need to go potty. It’s just that I’ve got PTSD from the last agent because they-“

“Can you reroute me? This traffic is starting to piss me off and I’ve got a finite amount of time to, you know, do my job”

“Right, right,” he stammers. You hear the rapid clicking of keys over the comms. “Okay, take the next left and then a right at the lights. Should get you there faster”

“Thanks.” You sigh, flicking on your turn signal. The city lights blur past as you navigate the winding roads, every rev of your engine a reminder of the ticking clock. Or was that your indicator? Who knows, who cares?

“You nervous?” the technician, Mikey? asks, trying to make small talk. “I mean, it’s a big deal, right? Going undercover at something like this?”

“Nervous? No. Anxious to get out of this car? Absolutely,” you reply. The GPS recalculates, leading you into a quieter, more upscale part of the city. The kind of place where people hide secrets behind perfectly manicured lawns and pristine facades.

“Just remember,” he continues, his tone growing serious, “we’re here if you need anything. But you’ve got this. You always do”

“Thanks for the pep talk, Coach,” you say dryly, but there’s a hint of a smile on your lips at his compliment. “I’m pulling up now. Keep the channel clear unless it’s an emergency”

“Roger that. Good luck”

-

You hated places like this. Sure it’s probably the attendees' tax contributions who pay the bulk of your wages, but still. Everything is always so uptight, stiff, dry as hell.

“Tell me again why I had to wear a fucking dress” you say to yourself really, but you get a response because of you damn earpiece.

“Because as progressive as the world has become, a woman in a suit doesn’t really slide in environments like this”

You scoff, readjusting the strap of your gown. “I might put in a formal complaint. Undue distress in the workplace,” you mutter, weaving through the crowd. The air is thick with the scent of expensive perfume and the low hum of forced laughter.

“Just focus on the task at hand,” Mark? reminds you. “You’re looking for a woman in a blue dress, diamond necklace. Shouldn’t be hard to miss”

“Got it,” you reply, scanning the room. You catch glimpses of the high-profile guests, all engaged in their own worlds, oblivious to the undercurrents of deception that flow just beneath the surface.

You make your way to the bar, figuring it’s as good a place as any to start. You signal the bartender for a drink, something that will keep your hands busy without dulling your senses. As you wait, you let your eyes roam, taking in every detail, every potential threat.

“Remember,” Martins’? voice buzzes in your ear, “you’re just here to observe and gather intel. No heroics”

“Yeah, yeah,” you murmur, taking a sip of your drink. “Not my first rodeo, Champ”

What was with this kid?

A flash of blue catches your eye from across the room. You spot her, the woman you’re supposed to meet, gliding through the crowd with a grace that seems almost practiced. She pauses, scanning the room much like you did, and for a moment, her eyes meet yours.

You offer a slight nod, the briefest acknowledgment, before turning your attention back to your drink. No need to rush things. Timing is everything when it comes to these types of things.

“You look as bored as I feel”

A voice, smooth and unexpectedly unpretentious, cuts through your thoughts. You turn to find someone standing next to you, not in a dress, but in a sharp, tailored gray suit that makes her stand out in the sea of gowns and black tuxedos.

You muster a wry smile. “Is it that obvious?”

The blonde laughs softly, the sound genuine and easy. “Maybe just a little”. It’s her turn to gesture to the bartender. What gets placed in front of her is a tumbler of whiskey, dark and golden and a stark contrast to the champagne all the other women seem to be sipping on. “I’m Leah, by the way”

“Olivia,” you reply, shaking the confident hand she has extended for you. “First time at one of these?”

Leah shrugs, a casual gesture that is not encouraged at finishing school. She doesn’t belong here, you deduce. “Not quite. They get less and less interesting every time. You?”

“I’ve been to a few here and there,” you say, taking a sip of your drink. “But really it’s a bit of a social experiment for me”

Leah grins, leaning against the bar. “A social experiment, huh? Sounds like you’re a people-watcher”

“You could say that,” you reply, glancing over the room again. Your blue woman is nowhere to be seen. “You can learn a lot about someone by how they navigate a room like this”

“True enough,” Leah says, her eyes raking over the crowd. “But mostly, you just learn who’s got the best bullshit and who can fake a smile the longest”

You laugh over the rim of your own glass. You’ve gone for vodka on the rocks. Clear liquids are recommended. “You’ve got a point there”

“I’m not just a pretty face”

Maybe she wasn’t, but she did in fact have a pretty face, that much was obvious. Those blue eyes. No, green eyes? Wait, was she talking to you? No, but she is smirking. Smirking at you like she knew all your deepest darkest secrets. Perhaps she did. Perhaps she can see right through you as you stand here staring at her like she’s the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen.

“Y/N, focus”. Your conscience is talking to you again. “You haven’t got all night, remember”

You clear your throat, down your drink and ask for another.

“So, what does Leah do other than being a frequent goer of boring events, and a smart ass?”

She laughs and you feel it fizz through your body. “Oh, you know, a bit of this, a bit of that. Mostly kick a ball across some grass and hope it hits the target”

“Football?”

She nods. “Looks like you’re not just a pretty face either”

You’re about to respond, unsure of what you’re actually going to say as your brain has shortcurited, when a butter knife is tapped against the side of a glass.

“Looks like dinner’s ready” Leah whispers in your ear. “Where are you sitting?”

“Table four” you respond as you watch everyone start to move around the room.

“Well, unfortunately for you you can’t be rid of me just yet”

-

This doesn’t happen.

You don’t do this.

You’re a professional, the best in the field, so why are you half naked in the back of your car?

“Look at you, look at how wet you are” Leah sighs as she cocks her head, looking at how you’ve exposed yourself to her.

Your mind is gone. Off into the stratosphere never to return. Partly because you broke your very stringent rule of not drinking too much on the job, and partly because you need her to touch you. Now. Which she is not granting you the pleasure of doing.

You whimper pathetically when her palms splay on the inners of your thighs. Warm and large and calloused. She’s not a keeper, you've found out, so you only suspect the coarseness of her skin if from when she grips around weights in the gym.

If her forearms are anything to go by, your suspicions would be correct.

“Leah, please”

“What do you want, hm?” She asks, cocky in a way that heats your skin. “Tell me what you want and I might just give it to you”

She leans forward and presses tortured kisses against your jaw. Bruising you, no doubt. But that is a problem you will deal with later.

“You” you say, strained and desperate as her breath tickles you and forces goosebumps to ripple over your skin.

“You can do better than that” she teases.

Sighing, you muster the strength to speak more than one word at a time. “I want your fingers”

“Fuck, sweetheart” is all she says before she’s peeling herself off of you, rolling her sleeves up further past her elbows, and to your shock, sticking her fingers in her mouth.

The first touch almost has you combusting on the spot. She knows what she’s fucking doing. The suit should’ve been a giveaway. The whiskey a second chance for you to catch on. But you had a job to do, your mind was elsewhere, until it wasn’t.

You did in fact get your intel, and now you’re getting your reward.

Leah works painfully slow. Her experienced fingers rubbing lazy circles against your clit. She’s testing you, or she is making the most of your time together. Whatever she’s doing it’s making you that impatient that your hips buck involuntarily in response.

“You like that? You like it when I touch you?”

“Leah, for the love of god, hurry up”

She laughs then. Soft and sweet as if she’s not got your dress tucked up under your chin, or that a film of her saliva is covering the most intimate parts of you.

“You ready, baby?”

So fucking ready.

You nod, and she smirks again. Smug cow.

Her left hand finds your leg once more, but this time she wraps her fingers around the underside of your knee and pushes. Opening you up and keeping you where she wants you. It’s her right hand that gets to work between your thighs.

She pushes a solitary index finger in first. With little resistance with your own doing and her spit making the job easy enough.

“Oh fuck” you whine. “Jesus fucking Christ”

“Saying the lord's name in vain? I must be doing a good job” she snickers.

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up and make me cum already”

To Leah’s credit, she is very good at fulfilling instructions. At least after a time. You think she’s had enough of toying with you and is actually looking forward to having her way with you now. Which you couldn’t be happier about if you tried.

Her finger slips in and out of you at a pace that has you teetering on the edge. Not quite enough to push you off. Which she must realise by the way your nails dig into the skin of those amazing forearms of hers. She is quick to change tactics.

Two fingers now, and you feel deliciously full. She has perfect fingers, you think behind the haze of your lust. Just the right length to hit that spot within you that has you reeling.

“Keep going” you beg, rolling your hips to meet each thrust. “I’m close”

“Yeah? You gonna cum for me, pretty girl?”

“Uh huh” you breathe, nodding as you feel your insides tense up, the line ready to snap.

Which it does when her thumb finds your neglected clit. And the rest is history.

Your whole body goes up in flames. Seeing stars as your legs shake and the coil in your belly snaps at last.

“You’re so pretty,” Leah says. You think. The sound of blood rushing past your ears makes it hard to distinguish your moans from anything else. “Look at you, does that feel good?”

You can’t nod, you can’t speak. But fuck yes it does. And she knows it because even as you start to come down from the highest of highs, she leans down to capture your cries with her mouth. Keeping them for herself and her fingers curl gently inside you to ease you back to reality.

“You’re amazing,” she whispers, her voice a calming balm in the aftermath of everything. She shifts slightly, withdrawing her fingers carefully and wipes them on the leg of her suit trousers. Just breathe,” she murmurs, her breath tickling your ear. “I’ve got you”

You close your eyes, letting the remnants of your climax pulse through your body as you try to regain your composure. Something that you don’t misplace often.

“That was-“

“Better than the cheese boards they were going to force down our necks? I agree” she finishes for you as she leans back, finds her discarded shout jacket, and uses it to wipe you clean.

“Something like that” you say, your voice rough around the edges.

Leah straightens up, her eyes twinkling with something you can’t quite place. “So, do I get your number, or do I have to crash another shitty event to see you again?”

You chuckle, stretching over to the glovebox. You pull out a sleek, plain business card with just a number printed on it and hand it to her. “Here. Use it wisely”

Leah takes the card, a satisfied grin spreading across her face. She leans in, pressing a dirty, lingering kiss against your lips. “Until next time, Olivia,” she murmurs against your mouth before pulling away and stepping out of the car.

As you watch her walk away, a crackle sounds through straight into your brain, followed by Mitch’s! disgusted voice. “Oh my God, I told you to turn off your fucking earpiece!”