by Shen, LJ
Problem was, Judith also had a mouth. And it talked back. Always. It annoyed and delighted me in equal measure. Part of me wanted to screw her, the other to spank her. Those two didn’t necessarily contradict one another. But I wasn’t the type of asshole to sleep with an employee.
My father, however, didn’t seem to share my moral standards—or any morals, for that matter.
“We’ll make do without her,” I snapped. “Even after the intern cut.”
“She’ll make for pretty decoration in the newsroom.” He ignored me, sitting back and eyeing her. My father had an office over fifty floors up, on the sixtieth floor. However, he was here a lot, and he couldn’t exactly fire his own secretary and replace her with Judith. Mainly because he already had a reputation.
“She’s not a vase.” I refused to spare her another look.
My dad shrugged. “Both have holes.”
My eyelid ticked. Your face can have one, too, if you don’t shut the hell up.
I gathered the paperwork for the morning’s rundown and stood up. “Out of curiosity, are you moving her here because you want to fuck her or because you think I will?”
He’d obviously filled in the gaps yesterday when we’d made the Couture announcement. Mathias threw his hands sideways with a smile. “Why not both? This could go in so many interesting directions.”
“No. It won’t. You won’t touch her, and neither will I.”
“Because…?”
My father still hadn’t received the memo that he was well into his sixties, and that the only reason young women weren’t slapping him into unconsciousness was because he had more money than he could spend in six lifetimes and a name that was synonymous with power.
“Because she’s an employee.”
He raised an eyebrow, silently reminding me that when he set his eyes on a woman, he liked her small, dependent, and very much unemployed. If it was up to him, he would saunter over to Judith right now and whisk her to the same suite we’d shared at the Laurent Towers Hotel next door. If she proved to be good in the sack—which she would, I knew that, because I’d been balls deep in her not even a month ago—he would lock her in a golden cage and provide her with a luxurious life of imprisonment: an apartment, a private driver, a credit card with an outrageous cap—all to keep her happy and available until he got bored with her.
I pointed the stack of documents in his face. “Move her ass back to the fifth floor before the end of the day.”
He smirked. “May I remind you who is the boss around here?”
I pushed my door open, throwing him a glare soaked with repulsion. “The boss is the asshole who makes your show worth something, Father. You’re just the fucking purse.”
I ended up ignoring Judith for the rest of the day.
It wasn’t intentional, but satisfactory all the same. I didn’t even bother to show her to her desk. I wasn’t entirely sure what my father wanted her to do here, but I knew after the faceoff this morning I’d better keep her, or he’d find another way to sabotage my show.
She was probably a wannabe fashionista who thought working at Couture was an honor akin to receiving the Nobel Prize. I needed to get creative with giving her a task she could perform well that would still put some distance between us.
After lunching with James and his agent, I had to do a final rundown before the show. James was having a meltdown two floors below because the makeup artist didn’t have his shade of foundation and he was afraid he’d look like an Oompa Loompa, and an interviewee had been involved in a car accident on his way to the show.
Since Judith didn’t have a desk, a computer, or anyone to talk to, she sat on a chair by the door and wrote furiously in a thick notebook. I imagined her diary to be filled with her latest thoughts about Shawn Mendes and anal bleaching.
By the time I had a minute to spare, it was seven-thirty. Everyone had already left for the day. I grabbed a chair and plopped down next to her, folding my arms over my chest. She looked up from her notebook, uncrossing her legs and tucking her Chucked feet under her chair. She looked like a newswoman like I looked like a fucking clown. The mere acknowledgement of her existence here was spit in my precious time’s face.
“This wasn’t my idea,” I clarified, rubbing my face tiredly.
She broke into a smile—not fake, not calculated, and also not constructive to my twitching dick. “Good show.”
“I know.”
“But I thought your interview with Faceworld’s CEO could have gone differently.”
“Next time I’ll make sure he wears Hermes when he talks about the Russian hacker threats.”
“Or maybe next time make sure he’s not blowing smoke up your anchor’s ass, excuse my French.” If nothing else, her dig was kind of funny. “Seeing as your main competition ran a story tonight about how said CEO is now accused of being an avid user of Cotton Way, a darknet website where you can buy heroin and guns for competitive prices.” She handed me her phone.
It was the main item on their website now. Fuck.
“This place look like TMZ to you?” I motioned around the room with my finger.
“There’s nothing sleazy about this item, and you know it. I came here to make the news. To keep the masses informed, and to serve my country.”
She surprised me, her eyes shooting daggers at mine. Why did her words surprise me? Because she was gorgeous, and young, and fuckable to a fault. But didn’t that make me the misogynistic, judgmental bastard my father was?
“Your station.” I stood up and cleared my throat, sauntering to the middle of the room. I’d deliberately put her somewhere I couldn’t see clearly from my office. I knew my dick better than to trust it around Miss Chucks. “See this?”
She slid into the chair in front of the monitor. “Reuters.”
We have a genius on our hands.
“Your job is to stare at this screen all day and sort through the relevant news items on this site. Yellow items go to Steve, our junior reporter—well, slightly less junior than you. Orange items go to Jessica, our in-house reporter, and red items go straight to Kate, my associate producer.”
I scribbled their emails on a Post-It note and slapped it on her monitor.
“And what happens when I see a yellow with the potential to become a red?”
Your yellow hair would look nice on my thighs as you suck me off and I make your ass red with the spanking you clearly deserve.
“Fat chance.” I straightened up so I wouldn’t have to smell her vanilla and warm ginger scent. My dick didn’t need this kind of negativity in his life.
“It could, though.”
I turned around, facing her again. “And what are your credentials to make such assumptions?”
She stared at me flippantly. “BA from Columbia Journalism School.”
Fuck-hot.
Smiths enthusiast.
Well-educated.
And a lying thief.
I needed to stay away from her, send her ass packing and relocate her to our Chicago branch. For now, though, I was mainly interested in why a Columbia graduate had stolen my goddamn change and condoms.
“Before you ask, full scholarship. I have no money.”
She was a mind reader, too.
I stroked my chin. “Didn’t ask; don’t care. You’ll also be my assistant’s assistant.”
“Your assistant has an assistant?” She swiveled in her chair, eyes widening.
“She does now.” I smirked.
“You disgust me,” she said.
“You have a weird way of showing it.”
“Weren’t you the one who gave me a twenty-minute lecture about never mentioning that night again?” She darted up and stomped her foot, her hands balled into fists.
I would pity her if I didn’t remember how I’d felt when I’d realized my wallet was missing. She actually thought we were playing by the same rules. We were toe-to-toe now, and even though the room was empty save for her and me, I could feel it burning up with our ange
r. I liked her hot and bothered, but that didn’t mean I was going to dip my dick into her again. I didn’t break my rules for anyone.
Let alone an employee.
That didn’t interfere with the fact that my balls tightened, though. My muscles tensed, too, with the frustration of not being able to remind her that she might hate me outside of bed, but inside it, she’d been purring like a kitten.
“Judith.” I clasped her chin between my fingers, angling her face to meet my gaze.
“Jude,” she corrected.
She wanted me to be like everyone else. That ship had fucking sailed the minute I’d spotted her in the bar, and all I could see were her pink-Chuck-clad feet wrapped around my shoulders as I drilled into her.
“Let me be clear about one thing: my title may be news director, but sometime in the next five years, I will be the president of this company. Better yet, I will be the owner of every single floor in this sixty-story building, top to bottom, staplers and coffee machines included. The rules do not apply to me. You have laws, but I operate in my own little dictatorship. As long as it’s legal and does not cross the employer-employee relationship, I can say whatever I fucking want to you. Since I have a rich legal background—Harvard Law, in case you were wondering—I know where the line is drawn, and I intend to walk it like a tightrope if you cross me.”
Her breath caught in her throat, a caged, helpless animal, and my eyes focused on her big, russet hazels, knowing that if they drifted downward, to her cleavage, I was liable to rip her clothes off and fuck her against the desk.
“Ambition,” she whispered, running her hand along my dress shirt.
What?
“I wore the black Chucks because black represents ambition. Motivation. I want to work here. I want to prove myself. I have a lot to offer, in and out of the newsroom.”
What the fuck was she doing? Touching me in the office? She wasn’t exactly trying to seduce me, but she wasn’t not-trying to, either. Turned out two could walk that tightrope.
“You’re playing with fire,” I warned.
Her hand crawled up, touching my mouth, her thumb hovering over my lower lip, tracing the seams, reminding me of three weeks ago. “Maybe I want to get burned.”
I grabbed her wrist and lowered her hand, as gently as I possibly could without pressing it against my raging hard-on. “I don’t shit where I eat.”
“Give yourself some credit.” She licked her rosebud lips. “You weren’t that bad.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. Say what you want about this girl, she had balls the size of watermelons.
“You can join my ship.” I grabbed my new wallet and phone, tucking them in my back pocket. “As long as you realize I’m your captain, and that there will be no more fucking around, literally or figuratively.”
Instead of giving her the pleasure of formulating a response, I turned around and walked away, muttering under my breath. “Just don’t expect me to help you when you drown.”
Things got progressively and methodically worse in the week following my move (Grayson: “deportation!”) from Couture to the newsroom.
The place was a zoo made out of silver chrome desks glued together in a wave pattern, circling huge monitors that broadcast different news channels from all over the world.
The newsroom was round, with glass walls. Nearby was another conference room—made of glass as well—in which fresh pastries and fruit sat in fancy baskets and elegant glass water bottles were lined together neatly. There were hundreds of monitors, switchboard phones, keyboards, and cables running from side to side. There was a stairway to the seventh floor that led to a door with a plaque plastered on it: Magic Happens Here
This referred to the actual studio, where the prime-time news show was recorded.
But I couldn’t feel the fairy dust on my skin, because I was too busy trying to survive my life as I knew it.
Milton was the first to kill my mojo.
My cheating ex had decided that the fact he’d been boning his editor was not, in fact, grounds for a breakup. First came the flowers and text messages. When those were ignored or given to the lonely, attractive neighbor upstairs (the flowers, of course. Forty-something-year-old widow Mrs. Hawthorne didn’t need to read the douchecanoe’s apologies for dipping his sausage into a different ketchup tub first thing after coming back from a grueling shift as a nurse), Milton started asking our mutual friends to be mediators. Said friends, who were neck deep in kissing his ass for landing a job at a prestigious magazine, explained that Milton was the one. My one. That we had something special going on, and it would be insane to throw it away because of one mistake.
“He was going to help you pay your debt,” one of our friends, Joe, even added. “Consider that, too.”
I told Joe and the others that if they were going to plead the case of a cheater who’d decided to throw our five years down the drain, they might as well delete my number. I was in an anxiety-filled headspace, consisting of a sick father, a new job, and a stack of bills that remained impressive even in my employed state. Acting diplomatically was not high on my list of priorities.
Then there was work.
Célian Laurent was the biggest jerk to ever walk on planet Earth, and he carried that title like a badge of honor. The only silver lining was that I now knew it wasn’t personal. He was just a dick—a dick who did a phenomenal job making news and surpassed every single talented newsman I’d ever learned from, but a dick nonetheless. And speaking of penises, contrary to my impression from our last encounter, he’d kept his tucked firmly inside his slacks all throughout the week. Not that we had any chance of working one-on-one in a busy newsroom, but when he did acknowledge my existence (albeit reluctantly), he remained cold, aloof, and professional.
And me? I tried to forget the moment of weakness during which I’d touched him.
I didn’t know why I was looking for a connection with him. Maybe I recognized how similar we were. He was bitter, and I was angry. He wanted casual, and I… I didn’t think I could afford anything else with everything that went on in my life. But I couldn’t forget how it felt when he touched me.
When his mouth was on mine.
When his hands pinned me to the wall.
When he made me forget about my sick father, piling bills, and unemployment.
True to his word, Célian had put me in charge of Reuters. The only qualification I needed for the job was the ability to distinguish between yellow, orange, and red. Most reporters—even junior ones like me—had plenty of tasks. I had just the one, to rot in front of the monitor.
Oh, and help his assistant, Brianna Shaw.
Célian’s PA was the definition of candy sweet. Unfortunately, she was also a ticking time bomb. Célian was such a tyrant, she spent the majority of the day running after him, taking orders, or sobbing softly in the restroom. Today was the third time I’d found her doing that—on a Friday, of all days, a second before everyone in New York poured into fancy bars and hole-in-the-wall pubs to celebrate the weekend freedom—and I silently slid a box of tissues and a mini-bottle of whiskey into her stall.
She’d been too scared to ask for my help, and I didn’t know how to broach the subject without making her feel weak. But that third time in the restroom broke me. To hell with my boss and his deep blue eyes, his pouty lips, dirty mouth, and Zac Efron body.
“Hey.” I squatted down, my butt hovering over the floor. My Chucks were gray today. Moody and depressed. “You need a break…and a drink. Let me help you. I have plenty of free time.” And I did. My job was as challenging as tying one’s shoes. Brianna hiccupped from the other side of the stall, unscrewing the bottle and taking a sip. “I…” she started. “He…” I strained my ears to listen. “He needs to have his suits cleaned.”
“I’ll drop them off in half an hour. Just give me their address,” I said.
“N-no. He demands that you stay at the dry cleaners and watch them clean his clothes.”
What?
“You mean make sure to take the receipt?” Maybe he had a favorite person cleaning his clothes. What a diva. Rich people had ridiculous whims. In Célian’s case, he was picky about who cleaned his suits, but was perfectly content with eating a stranger’s ass.
Brianna hiccupped again. “No, I mean he makes me sit there and look at them as they do it.”
“Why?” I gasped.
“Because they sometimes steal his clothes.”
“Why are you still working here?” I would have stabbed him in the face through the power of telepathy by now had he done that to me.
“Because he’s smart, pays well, and…I mean…” She downed the entire drink. I heard her gulping it. “He’s seriously handsome. But of course, I know he’d never look at me. He once said my legs are awfully short because I need to run to catch up with his pace. He probably thinks I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
I’d had enough.
Enough of him treating Brianna like a pest.
Enough of him allowing everyone else in the newsroom to overlook me. (I hadn’t been introduced to one person. The associate producer, Kate, asked me once where my parents were.)
Enough of sneaking to the fifth floor every lunch break to spend time with Grayson and Ava, because Célian invited everyone in the newsroom to the conference room to eat lunch every day. Every. One. But. Me.
I darted out of the restroom. My eyes found him like that’s what they’d been trained to do. He was in his office, the door thrown open, typing away and ignoring the hustle and bustle in the hallway. I knocked on his door loudly, my anger climbing up my throat and balling into a scream. I walked in without permission.
“Yes?” he said without looking up.
“I need to talk to you.” I was surprised at how heated and cross my voice sounded, like liquid lava slithering between my lips.