PETER RUBS HIS chin as a faraway look glazes his eyes. 'What's the word?' the 30-something stockbroker muses. 'Frisson? Yeah, frisson. There was just this unbelievable frisson involved with coming to work every day.'
It was five years ago and Peter (not his real name) was a thrusting young broker from Australia in a hurry to get among Hong Kong's big bucks. His immediate superior, five years his senior, was a cute American-born Chinese with a gym-honed body, a fiery temper and a win-at-all-costs attitude. She was also very married.
'It started on the office computer system,' says Peter. 'I began to notice subtle things in her messages, things that seemed to go a little beyond the professional. At first, I thought, 'Nah, she's married, I'm imagining it'. Although I have to confess, I had the hots for her.'
He started flirting back, timorously at first, then gradually gaining confidence until their steamy, innuendo-laden missives were zipping back and forth through the ether in an almost continuous stream.
'The sexual tension was unbelievable,' he recalls. 'I couldn't wait to get to work each day. It felt so flattering. I mean, here's this gorgeous boss, telling me what a cute butt I had, how she loved my long eyelashes and dreamed about me tickling her with them, stuff like that.
'Finally, we were out entertaining some clients and she took me aside in the corridor of this restaurant and kissed me. We said goodbye to the clients and she virtually dragged me off to this short-time hotel.'
It was fantastic for a while, Peter says; fast, frantic bouts of illicit sex in seedy hotels punctuated by long, lascivious and occasionally X-rated e-mails. 'Did my work suffer? How could it not? All I could think about was the next time we'd meet,' Peter says.