Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (61 page)

“Please,” she moaned.
 
“I…I want you.”

He tugged more insistently on her
hair.
 
“It’s not so simple,” he
warned.

“I don’t care.
 
I don’t care,” she said.
 
She was dizzy and hot and in need.

“If you agree to this relationship,” he
whispered, “there’s no going back.
 
Walk out now and I won’t do a thing.
 
I won’t pick up that phone, nobody will
know a thing.
 
You can get a job
somewhere else, be a nice little worker bee at a safe, boring little
advertising firm.”

“No,” she said.
 
“I want this.”

I
want you.
 
I want all of you inside
me.

“You think you want this,” he said, again
tugging her hair.
 
This time, there
was some pain in her scalp.
 
She
hissed.
 
He released the pressure
and brushed his lips against her neck, so briefly she wasn’t sure it had even
happened.
 
“But I’m a difficult man
to please.
 
Do you want to please
me?”

“Yes.”

Another pull of her hair, harder this
time.
 
“Yes
sir
.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tonight, you’ll go home and write me an
essay.
 
You’ll tell me in detail how
you intend to please me.”

“I’m not sure what you want me
to—“

This time his other hand gripped her
neck.
 
“I gave you an order.
 
Didn’t I?”

“Yes.
 
Yes, sir.”

“Then do as I command.”

“Yes, sir.”
 
He released her completely and moved
quickly away.
 
She wished he would
return.
 
She wanted to feel his
hands everywhere on her body.
 
Even
the pain when he pulled her hair was sensual, and she wanted more of that too.
 
If she could just feel those lips
against her neck for even one more moment, it would all be worth it.

“You can turn around now,” he said as he
sat back down at his desk.

Nicole turned, seeing him as if for the
first time.
 
In the last few
minutes, it seemed as if her entire life had changed.
 
Like she was a different person, a
package that had been unwrapped for the very first time.
 
She was raw, naked, vulnerable.
 
If he asked her to, she’d take off her
pants, her blouse, her panties.
 
She’d stand in front of him nude, play with herself, show him how wet
she was.
 
If that’s what he desired.

“Should I leave, sir?”

“I don’t want to cause you any harm,” he
said softly.
 
“That’s why I didn’t
want to hire you.
 
I know myself
well enough to know that our relationship can only be difficult.
 
Difficult, complicated, and ultimately
destructive…You deserve more than that.”

“I’ll do anything you need,” she
said.
 
“Anything, sir.”

“Yes,” he nodded, lost in thought.
 
“I just hope you’ll feel the same way
when it’s all over.”

“I will, sir.”

He nodded again but his expression was
troubled.
 
“Go home, Nicole.”

And she did.

***

The next day was awful.

She’d been up all night writing the essay
Red had assigned, fearing that Danielle would barge in her room at any moment
and tear the paper out of her grasp, read it and laugh and laugh.
 
Call their mutual friends and read it
aloud to them as well.

Writing it had been excruciating.
 
She wanted to turn him on, wanted more
than anything to please him.
 
This
was Red Jameson, after all, the man who could have any woman he wanted.
 
He’d been seen with starlets, models,
the most famous and beautiful girls on the planet.
 

And now, inexplicably, impossibly, he
wanted her.
 
And worst of all, he
wanted her to tell him how she would please him.

What did that even mean?
 
It was a riddle.

That was part of the anxiety of it
all.
 
She couldn’t know what he
really wanted her to write because he hadn’t been clear in his
instructions.
  

Eyes bleary, she woke at six-thirty after
only a couple of hours of fitful sleep and sat down with the paper in front of
her.
 
She had smudges of blue ink on
her fingers.
 

She looked at the three pages in front of
her, filled with line after line of neatly handwritten script.
 
There were other pages in the
wastebasket, crumpled up because she’d needed to cross something out or change
a word.
 
She refused to let Red see
anything resembling a mistake.

At first, she’d started writing the essay
on her computer, but it hadn’t felt intimate enough.
 
She convinced herself that it should be
more like a letter than a book report.

Now she reread her work with growing
horror.

I
will make it my duty to show you my devotion.

Another line further down the page.

Pleasing
you in every way will be my greatest accomplishment, I will dedicate myself to
the task night and day.
 
Every
waking moment will be spent thinking only of your needs.

And on the next page…

My
body is yours.
 
My mind is
yours.
 
My soul is yours.
 
Do with me as you please.

She recoiled from the words as she read
them. They were utter garbage, and Red would be disgusted when he saw what
she’d come up with.
 
He’d want
nothing more to do with her, knowing the vapid quality of her thoughts, the
sheer banality of her creativity.

But then she told herself that the
quality of her writing wasn’t what counted in this task he’d given her.
 
What counted was how well she was able
to communicate her willingness to please him.
 
And from that perspective, she’d
certainly succeeded.

At least, that’s what she told herself.

Nicole folded up her three-page essay and
put it at the very bottom of her purse, then went to the bathroom for a quick
shower.
 
She dressed in another
skirt, this one baby blue, with a white sleeveless blouse that had a low-cut
neckline.
 
She also wore a necklace
that she hoped would draw Red’s eye to her cleavage, letting him know that both
his gaze and his hands were welcome there if he saw fit.

She was wet again, which seemed to be a
permanent situation since meeting Red Jameson.
 
Last night when she’d undressed, her
panties had been soaked and the scent of her sex had been so strong she’d had
an uneasy moment where she wondered if Red had actually
smelled
her in his office.

Now, after just getting dressed for the
day, she was already getting wet again.
 
It was like a disease, an affliction.
 
She wanted to touch herself, wanted that
orgasm, but she also wanted to savor this wanting him.
 

And so she went to work, hoping and
waiting for him to call her to his office.
 
Nicole sat down at her desk, wondering if his request would take the
form of a phone call, an email—would he possibly even swing by her desk?

The morning dragged on.
 
Nobody gave her any work to do, so she
continued to page through the stupid binder and read useless company
policies.
 
She laughed a little when
she came to the sexual harassment policy.
 
How easy it would be for her to turn
Red’s overtures into a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

But she had no real thought of doing
that.
 
She wanted his touch far more
than any amount of money

By the time eleven-thirty rolled around,
she was anxious and bored.
 
She
thought to herself that perhaps he might be in the cafeteria again, so she
walked to Remi’s office and knocked on the outside of the doorframe.
 

The door was ajar, and Remi was peering
through her funky glasses at her computer.
 
Then she saw Nicole and a look of surprise crossed her face.
 
“Oh.
 
Hi there.”

“Are you going to lunch?”

Remi thought for a moment.
 
“I lost track of time.
 
I guess I should go.”

“Cool.”

She took off her glasses and laid them on
her desk.
 
“Aren’t you the punctual
one?”

“Not really.
 
Just hungry.”

Remi smiled.
 
“Sure.
 
And besides, you never know who you
might run into at this hour.”

Nicole ignored that comment.
 
Inside, she was burning with humiliation
that her actions had been so transparent, but outwardly she just smiled in
return and the two of them went to the cafeteria.

There were a few more people waiting in
line than yesterday, but the room was still mostly empty.
 
Plenty of tables to choose from.
 
Remi and Nicole sat once again by the
window overlooking midtown.
 

Remi had pasta like yesterday, while
Nicole had a simple garden salad.

“That’s all you’re having?” Remi asked,
shoveling a large portion of ziti into her mouth and chewing.

“Not very hungry,” Nicole said.

“Hmmm.”
 
Remi looked at her with concern.
 
“You seem stressed, and nobody’s even
given you anything to do yet.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

“I’ve got work for you.”
 
Remi took a long swallow of water.
 
“When we’re done, I want you to go to
the research library on the third floor and look for images of dancing
cowboys.”

“Dancing cowboys?”

Remi nodded.
 
“Don’t ask why, it’s this horrible
magazine spread I’m working on.
 
But
it’s what I need and since you’ve apparently got nothing to do but look like a
scared little rabbit…” she shrugged.

Nicole nodded and tried to look
enthused.
 
After all, it was the
first real task she’d been given.
 
“I’m going to find the best dancing cowboy you’ve ever seen.”

“Just find one decent image,” she said,
“and I’ll be happy.”

They continued eating, with Remi mostly
talking about this new client that was making her life miserable.
 
She also mentioned Edward a lot, there
seemed to be some friction between the two of them.

Nicole didn’t care.
 
She wanted to care and normally she
would have.
 
Her friends had always
told her she was a great listener.
 
But all she could do was wonder when Red would contact her and tell her
to bring the essay to him.
 

When Remi was finished eating, Nicole
tried to think of an excuse to stick around the cafeteria without the older
woman seeing right through it.
 
“I
need to go to the bathroom,” Nicole said.

“I’ll come with,” Remi said.

She was like glue.
 
Nicole seethed inwardly.

Finally they went back down together and
Nicole stopped at her cubicle to check her email and office phone for
voicemails.
 
Nothing.
 
As of now she only had a total of two
work emails, one of which was an automated welcome email, another of which was
Glen emailing her to ask if she would bring him a copy of her signed
nondisclosure agreement.

Her spirits sank further.

She knew Red Jameson was a very busy man,
a CEO of an enormous corporation.
 
But still, she wanted just the tiniest reassurance that would had
happened between them yesterday was real.

She was starting to think maybe she’d
imagined the entire thing.

The day wore on.

She spent the better part of it in the
enormous research library, which occupied the entire third floor.
 
The place was filled with books and
magazines and microfilm and microfiche, stuff that the company apparently owned
and could use in their ad campaigns.
 
A lot of it was older and she’d never worked with the technology
before.
 
So the crabby old librarian
had to show her how to use it all.