Groomed by my manger

I started as Rajesh’s intern six months ago. He was in his late thirties, married, two kids at home, and he controlled the regional sales numbers and my final evaluation. The first weeks were ordinary reports and client calls. Then the outstation trips started—one day, then overnight, then three days in a smaller city. On those trips the talk changed.

He claimed he had slept with around sixty-seven women. He sorted them like inventory: virgins, previous interns, married women whose husbands travelled, girls from old companies. I nodded and kept my answers short. I told myself it was just the way some older men talk when they are away from home. I still tried to be careful. I stopped sitting too close in the car. I answered his late messages only about work.

What stayed with me longer than the numbers was the way he spoke about the women already in our office. He would watch one of the analysts walk past his cabin and then say, low, “She acts strict in meetings but I know that type. One proper drink and she stops pretending.” He guessed cup sizes, commented on how certain girls sat, and ranked who would “understand the situation” on a trip. I laughed the first couple of times because everyone else seemed to. Later the laugh stuck in my throat. I started keeping other people in the room whenever I could.

The story that changed the tone for me came on the second night of a two-day trip. We were in the hotel restaurant. He had already had two drinks. He said he once called an old friend from college. The friend’s younger sister answered the phone. She was home alone. They talked for ten or fifteen minutes. He made her laugh. She asked why he was calling so late. He said he was just checking on her brother and then stayed on the line. A few days later he arranged to meet her. He told me he took her to a hotel room he had already booked.

He described it without lowering his voice. He said she was nervous at first, kept saying she had never done this. He kept talking, kept touching her arm, told her it was normal, that her brother would never know. He said he put her on her knees. While she was going down on him he dialled her brother’s number and put the call on speaker, volume low. The brother picked up. Rajesh talked to him normally—“How’s work, when are you free this weekend”—while her mouth was still on him. He said he had one hand on the back of her head so she couldn’t pull away and make a sound. The brother asked if everything was okay because the line sounded odd. Rajesh said he was in a noisy place and hung up after another minute. He finished in her mouth. He told me she cried a little afterwards but stayed. He laughed when he reached that part, like the phone call had been the clever bit.

I sat with my plate untouched. My ears felt hot. He moved straight to the next story—a married woman who used to message him after her husband left for night shifts. He said he would go to her flat, fuck her on the sofa, and sometimes answer his own wife’s call while he was still inside her, keeping his voice steady. I don’t remember the rest of the meal. I remember the sound of the cutlery and the way he kept eating as if he had only been talking about traffic.

That night in my own room I could not stop replaying the phone-call detail. I lay on the bed with the lights off and the image kept forming: the sister on her knees, the brother’s voice coming through the speaker, Rajesh’s hand holding her head. I felt sick. At the same time my body reacted. I got hard. I turned onto my side and pressed against the mattress, trying to make it stop. It didn’t. The more I told myself it was disgusting, the clearer the picture became—her mouth, the low volume of the call, the way he had described finishing. I ended up touching myself. When I came I felt a sharp drop of shame that stayed in my chest for hours. I got up, washed my hands twice, and stood under the shower until the water ran cold. The thoughts did not leave.

The next morning he acted normal. He asked if I had slept well and handed me the client file. I answered about the numbers. My hands were steady on the outside. Inside I kept hearing the brother’s voice from the story and feeling the same unwanted heat. I hated that my body had responded to something I knew was wrong. I told myself it was only because he had forced the details into my head for so long. The explanation did not remove the reaction.

A few weeks later, back in the office, he asked about my sister. We were alone in his cabin. He closed the laptop and said, “You mentioned you have a sister. How old is she now?” I had said once, months earlier, that she was twenty and studying in another city. He smiled and asked whether she looked like me or more like our mother, whether she was “modern or still traditional.” Then he said, “You should introduce us sometime. Family matters.” He laughed and opened the laptop again.

That night the thoughts returned stronger. I was in my room. I tried to read. Instead I saw Rajesh asking my sister the same questions he had asked the friend’s sister. I saw him putting her on the phone with me while she was on her knees, my own voice coming through the speaker while his hand held her head. The image made my stomach turn and made me hard at the same time. I sat on the edge of the bed with my fists clenched. I did not want to touch myself to it. I did anyway. I came quickly and then sat there shaking. I kept thinking of my sister’s actual face—the way she laughs on video calls, the way she complains about college food—and the invented scene kept sliding over it. I felt like I had dirtied something that belonged only to her.

The pattern repeated. On the next outstation drive he asked if my sister had a boyfriend. I said I didn’t know. He said girls that age get curious and that I should “keep an eye, or someone else will.” Then he told a shorter version of the married-woman story, this time adding that he had once answered his friend’s call while the woman was under the table at a restaurant, her mouth on him, the friend talking about weekend plans. I stared at the highway. My cock was hard against my thigh the whole time he spoke. I shifted in the seat so he wouldn’t notice. When we reached the hotel I went straight to my room and jerked off in the shower, angry at myself, picturing my sister in the place of the woman under the table. Afterwards I sat on the bathroom floor with the water still running and cried without sound.

I have not given him her number. I have not shown him any photo. When he mentions her now I say she is busy with exams or that our parents are strict. He has not pushed past that yet, but he watches my face when he says her name. I still go on the trips I cannot avoid. I drink less. I keep the hotel-room door locked and the phone on silent. At night the thoughts still come. Sometimes they start with the friend’s sister on the call, the brother’s voice, the hand on her head. Then my sister’s face replaces hers. I feel the same heat and the same disgust. I have started timing how long I can go without touching myself to those images. The longest so far is three days. On the fourth day I usually give in, then spend the next morning unable to look at my sister’s messages.

I know Rajesh is my manager. I know the stories he tells are about real women he says he slept with, including someone’s sister and women who did not know a call was happening. I know I felt wrong the moment he asked about my own sister. I also know my body keeps reacting to the pictures he put in my head and to the ones my mind makes afterwards. That split is what I cannot settle by myself. I have not told anyone at the office. I have not told my family. I am writing the sequence exactly as it happened, including the parts that make me ashamed, so I can say all of it out loud without leaving the worst pieces out.