Wentworth Governor Joan Ferguson straightened the fourth, yellow, perfectly sharpened pencil on her desk so it was exactly aligned with numbers one through three. Her small white case of business cards was moved seven degrees (counter clockwise) and her visitor's chair she shifted slightly left, approximately 12.5cm. One couldn't tell precisely without a ruler, but Ferguson was fairly sure she was close.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. 6.27pm. Her deputy should be gracing her presence momentarily for the drinks she'd casually suggested. Well, the suggestion for drinks was casual; the planning behind them was nothing of the sort.

Satisfied her office met appropriate standards she sunk back into her black leather chair and curled her fingers around cold chrome arm rests. She eyed the clock again. Infuriatingly it had not shifted so she moved her eyes to the windows to her left.

Shafts of the final rays of sun slunk moodily through the window, glinting off the curled razor wire surrounding the exercise yard. In the distance she could hear a freight train near, the dull clanging as boom gates descended, and the usual white noise of the far-off traffic, its drone lessening faintly as peak hour gradually gave way.

Her eyes shifted back to the clock. 6.28pm. She valued punctuality. Whether Vera Bennett did too remained to be seen in about 120 seconds' time.

She contemplated her deputy for a moment. Compact, petite framed, brown thick hair, pinned back in a prison-office approved bun, wide, earnest doe-eyes and a shrunken posture that said she placed no value on herself. That she was no one worth knowing.

Vera was, to most, passingly attractive at best, veering towards pleasingly plain. To Ferguson though, Vera had something unique. Something the Governor found so personally gratifying to encounter that she had found herself unwilling to let the young woman out of her sight for the first three days on the job. It was as if she needed to reassure herself she wasn't imagining things.

She was most definitely not.

Certainly the world would dismiss Vera - probably in much the same way the ineffectual young creature dismissed herself - but she exuded from her every pore one trait that was that most impossible and rare and desirous of all things to Joan Ferguson. Something she only rarely brushed against in her line of work: Vera Bennett was an innocent.

The Governor absently licked her lips, tasting the faintly cloying slash of scarlet lipstick that was her signature feature. It drew curious eyes away from her pale oval face, grim eyebrows and austere, ferociously pulled dark bun of hair which had grey streaks above her ears. No, all eyes, friend or foe, always were pulled to her twitching mouth as it issued orders, snarls and smirks. Which was precisely as she wanted it.

If those she encountered focused on what she was saying, the growls and threats, the snide comments and sly doubled-edged comments, then that was half the battle with the inhabitants. The inmates. The riff-raff whose predilection for crime and filth and debasing their bodies and minds with drugs or self-abuse or violence beggared belief.

She narrowed her eyes. Some bleeding hearts wailed about their treatment, the dehumanising aspects of correctional facilities - conveniently forgetting the vile deeds committed to earn them their sentences. She had no time for bleeding hearts.

Innocents, on the other hand ...

Oh how she loved playing with the innocents.

Ferguson gave a small cat-like smile as she considered her trembling quarry this evening. She'd already gone through Vera's file. As a master of profiling, Ferguson had decided that the young woman was most likely hen-pecked, miserable and desperate to feel something, anything. Her job was her lifeline, her reason for existing. On that score they understood each other. They would find common ground, she would make sure of it.

Her eyes flicked up. The clock now read 6.30pm. Ferguson frowned. Was it too much to ask for punctuali...

The door vibrated with a tentative knock and Vera Bennett's head poked around it. "Oh, Governor. You mentioned getting drinks? I hope I'm not late?"

Almost, Ferguson really wanted to say as the clocked ticked to 6.31pm. Instead she smiled.

"Not at all," she purred. She rose and indicated the chair. "I thought we might stay in. A perfectly stocked bar fridge is one of the perks of the job. What would you like?"

As she spoke she walked towards a small alcove and bent down, opening the stainless steel fridge. Not exactly company issue, she brought it whenever she moved prisons. Just for little sessions like this one.

"I can offer spirits, white wine, no beer I'm afraid..." She paused, well aware from just looking at her deputy that she had probably never touched a beer in her life. Well not beyond a shandy, probably drowning in lemonade. Or perhaps she'd tried a beer once as a teenager and vomited all over some school friend's shoes. She paused. No, Vera Bennett likely didn't have school friends.

"Oh that's f-fine, Governor. I don't like beer," came a voice from the visitor's chair.

Shocker.

Ferguson bit back the smile and waited for the inevitable request for white wine.

"I'll have a white wine if it's not too much trouble? I mean if you're opening the bottle anyway? Or... well, I don't... I mean whatever you're having if that's easier."

The Governor rose and pulled the green bottle from the fridge and expertly dispensed with the cap. She poured a glass for her companion and then lifted a refrigerated bottled water out. She poured her glass three quarters full and then topped it up with a bare splash of gin.

She knew it was best to keep her wits about her if she was drilling for oil. Or information as the case was.

She handed the full wine glass wordlessly to Vera and came around to the front of the desk, sitting in the spare visitor's chair beside her.

"Cheers," she drawled and clinked glasses, watching the other woman with a predatory gleam.

Vera's wine went down quickly. The first, second and third glasses.

By the fourth she was giggling and had helplessly admitted an ill-fated one-night stand with a fellow prison officer. The odious brutish bully who thought himself Ferguson's equal. Matthew Fletcher. Oh Ferguson had looked him up, too. He was one of those misogynist entitled asses who loathes answering to a woman and believed he deserved the Governor job.

He'd keep.

The only surprise was that mousy Vera had gone there at all.

"Why?" she'd found herself wondering softly after the deputy's giggled revelation, her delightfully soft cheeks aflame. Ferguson wasn't entirely sure she'd said it out loud until Vera flapped her hand airily and admitted cheerfully: "He thinks I'm beautiful."

Ah. Of course.

She watched out of the corner of her eye as Vera finally dispensed with her navy blue jacket, slinging it over the back of the chair, her warm cheeks showing how overheated she now was.

Ferguson considered the young woman's comment, rolling it around her mind like the weak gin that was coating her tongue.

Lord help women desperate for approval.

"Well of course you are, my dear," she responded in her most reassuring, benevolent tone as if it was as self-evident as breathing. "You hardly need Officer Fletcher to point that out. You are aware, though, he has no neck?" She paused with a droll expression and waited for the inevitable burst of giggles at her joke. She was not disappointed.

"I am now. God, yeah no neck at ALL. Never, ever going there again. Once is more than enough. That ruined it for me for life."

Ferguson paused and wondered if the 'it' was sex in general and the painfully inept pawing session with the neckless oaf was the young woman's first time, ever. She mentally flicked through what she knew about the woman. She'd lay good money on it. There was an absence of knowingness about her.

The mere thought of her innocence in certain other areas - areas and ways the odious Fletcher would lack the imagination or finesse to even think of exploring, made her tingle pleasantly. She hestitated at the unexpected sensation and blinked at Vera. How was this slip of a girl causing her to react like this? So effortlessly?

She was usually so much better focused. She forced her mind back to the point of proceedings.

"Top up?" She didn't wait for a response and poured. They both watched the nectar slosh into the glass.

Ferguson could feel the warmth of the younger woman's breath against her neck and was suddenly aware of the hitch she heard softly near her right ear.

How interesting.

Vera wouldn't be the first acolyte Ferguson had ever had find the power the Governor exuded alluring. She would, however, be the first acolyte that Ferguson had ever found to be more than a mere distraction. And wasn't that unexpected? It was all that innocence - it could not be bought. It was as rare as a sunflower in the middle of a scorched grey field.

Well.

She let her own breath linger over Vera's neck for a moment before righting the wine bottle and straightening. "Bottoms up," she said slowly, allowing the double entendre to soak the room.

Vera's eyes shot to Ferguson's and she gave a little wide-eyed gasp. The Governor merely smiled slowly and watched as the other woman swallowed the last of her wine hastily and then put the glass on the desk. Very much like someone not only about to leave, but flee. In Vera's haste, however, she knocked over the business cards holder, spraying cardboard rectangles across the desk.

Ferguson's nostrils flared at the disarray. She counted silently to ten and had to force herself to not react. She was aware of the worried glance being shot at her and exhaled and gave a genial smile - or her version of it. She suspected she looked largely pained.

Vera was now leaning over the desk, corralling the cards shakily back into the holder, fingers flying everywhere. In measured movements, Ferguson slowly stood, placed her own glass down squarely on the desk and turned to her deputy.

"Leave it," she said quietly, her eyes burning darkly. "Your fingers are giving me a headache just watching them."

"Oh," Vera said and paused to look at the fingers in question and then gave them a nervous wiggle before curling them into a fist. "Sorry. When I get flustered or a little bit drunk or ... um ... I don't drink much and ... Well... I fidget." She looked at her hands again and shook them out as though alien growths were protruding from the ends and she was unsure what to do with them. She added helplessly, still peering at her fingers, "Honestly, what would you prefer them to do?"

She froze. The innuendo, although not deliberate, was inescapable.

Ferguson's mouth twitched and she sought out the panicked enormous eyes opposite. So much innocence. Something between her legs clenched.

"My dear," she said with a provocative, slowly curling smile, watching as Vera's throat convulsed into a swallow, "I haven't had such a tempting offer in years."

TBC