The Intern: An MM Office Romance

by Akeroyd , Serena

  Only one thing had gone right, and even that came with strings attached.

  Tired of the bullshit from the board, from Mandelson’s inability to find anything on Rhode, I’d asked a friend from school who worked for MI6 now to get involved, to do a little nosing around her life.

  The initial findings more than made it worth my while for bombing that favor owed me, but it wasn’t exactly admissible in court. Knowing what Rhode was capable of, and that she’d filmed several of her attacks and stored them on her home computer, he’d recommended someone in the States who could break into Robert’s laptop.

  That was the good news—even if Robert had never kept anything on there, at least we’d be able to find out and could hopefully access his personal email account and messages as no one in his family had managed to get into his iPhone either.

  I was praying he might have mentioned something about her in his DMs or text messages that we could use in a court case to trigger reasonable doubt. It was a long shot, but I was getting desperate.

  The bad was that nearly half my staff had been decimated by that goddamn stomach bug that Micah and I had been hit with, which meant every single one of my PAs apart from Paul hadn’t been at work. Even Sadie had been a no-show.

  With everything taking five times as long, it had been like running a marathon while wading through porridge.

  Slaking a hand through my hair, I shook off my fatigue with thoughts of the coming night. No, I wouldn’t be fucking Micah’s brains out, but it’d be such a nicer way to fall asleep when we were together than to be on my own and feeling like crap heated up on a bonfire.

  There was something about him that made me act like another person around him. It was like, with him, I let out the real Devlin. Beneath all the Astley bullshit, the Viscount nonsense, he saw me because, for whatever reason, I let him.

  That was the most perplexing thing of all.

  As was the hard truth that I was probably going to push him away. It was inevitable. These feelings he inspired in me weren’t healthy. I’d learned time and time again that transactions were the way forward, but how did you buy a man who’d once had everything and had been taught that money was a weapon?

  It wasn’t like the way to his fucking heart was sandwiches and cronuts. It was a token of my esteem, a small one, but it wasn’t enough for him to put up with me—I knew it. Accepted it.

  Something about me was inherently unlovable.

  And I was okay with that, but it just made me want to appreciate Micah for the time I had him. He was young, still had all his twenties ahead of him. Why the fuck would he want to get tangled up with a businessman who lived at the office? Who didn’t have much of a life?

  Christ, I was a multi-millionaire and where had I taken him on a date?

  My apartment.

  “Jesus,” I muttered under my breath as the elevator rolled to Micah’s floor.

  But where could I take him? It wasn’t like we could be seen together in public. I had an image to maintain—which made me feel like shit. On top of the shit from before, as well. I probably deserved that though.

  Grimacing at the thought, I headed out onto Micah’s floor and started strolling down the corridor as I pondered where I could take him that would show him I cared, without making him think I was trying to buy him.

  Each floor of Astley Publishing was split into four, with the elevator shooting a person out into the middle. Each quarter housed forty to eighty people, and within those segments, there were corridors that separated upper management from members of staff.

  Micah, as the intern to the EA of the Marketing VP, was in the top quadrant, so I headed to the end of the corridor where Rhode’s office was situated.

  We’d tried to lessen the corporate vibe, and while the walls were homey, bookshelves lining them that housed every single one of our titles—prioritized with release date in mind because we had a back catalogue of thirteen thousand books—but there was still that weird smell in the air on the lower levels. That strange carpet/vacuum cleaner scent that made me crinkle my nose with distaste.

  Making it to the doorway, I peered over the floor. This part was set up so that, if she wanted, Rhode could see over every single desk in her department.

  I looked over the sea of computers, spied that it was empty, before I peered at Micah’s cubicle, which he wasn’t seated at. Reckoning that he was in the bathroom, I cast a glance at Rhode’s office.

  The light wasn’t on, even if her screen was glaring the bluelight into the empty room, which pissed me off. How much electricity we wasted by idiots not turning off their units every night was something that’d give me a nightmare if I thought about it.

  Half-tempted to wait for Micah to finish up in the restroom by sneaking into her office and seeing if she had something in the desk drawers—which would be the height of stupidity, but I hated the bitch, and needed her gone even more now that I knew what she was capable of—a slight groan caught me unawares.

  With my briefcase in hand, I twisted to find the noise, and then when I heard it again, definitely coming from the direction of the department and not in the vicinity of the bathrooms, concern hit me that Micah had been struck with the stomach flu again.

  Darting over to his cubicle, the second I got a close look at the floor, I nearly had a heart attack.

  Frozen for a couple of seconds too long, I could only process what my eyes were telling me, but even that didn’t make sense.

  His head was in the entranceway to the cubicle, his body flat out on the gray carpet, with his hands at his sides, the tender palms face up to the ceiling. His eyelids moved slowly, blinking in a way that made me think he was in a trance, but that wasn’t even the half of it.

  Rhode was on top of him.

  I saw her pussy, saw that he was inside her, and then Micah made that moan again.

  It was distressed.

  Agonized—

  Jesus.

  It broke my shameful stasis, and I dropped my briefcase to the floor with a solid thunk, before I ran over to the bitch and dragged her off my man. My hands bit into her arms as I threw her against the desk, uncaring if it brought the fucking cubicle down around us as I snarled, “What the hell did you do to him?”

  Not waiting for her to answer as she screamed obscenities at me, I reached for my cellphone and even though it pained me, took a quick photo of her and him. Then, I hit my cell for Rachel on reception.

  “Send Security to Marketing, and call the cops as well as the EMTs. Advise Security to detain Rhode until the police arrive, and inform them she is never to be allowed back onto the premises again.”

  “You can’t do that!” Rhode snarled, and it came as no surprise that she reached out, hurling a stapler at me as she did so.

  My phone fell from my fingers as the stapler collided with my temple, prompting me to stagger backward, and as blood spurted from the wound and my already aching head exploded with pain, I somehow managed to deflect her when she came for me, nails curled into claws as she attacked.

  “Yes, sir!” Rachel hollered down the line as I raised my hands to grab Rhode’s arms.

  “What did you do to him, you crazy bitch?” I snarled, as I twisted her wrists behind her back to try to contain her aggression by trapping her into staying still. She continued to struggle, and though it fucking pained me to give her any of my attention when Micah so clearly needed me, I dragged her over to the doorway, wanting Security to get her from there, and not see Micah like that.

  “Nothing! Christ, he was so into it. Couldn’t you tell?”

  My eyes bugged. “He was laying there like he was dead.”

  She shrieked at me, twisting this way and that to evade my hold as she snarled, “He came onto me.”

  I wasn’t sure what world she lived in, but it was one I didn’t like inhabiting too. When Security stormed over, their eyes wide at the sight of her half-dressed and me with a bloody cut on my head, they took custody of her.

  I sagged back against t
he door and reached for my handkerchief to press it to my forehead. Blood was getting in my eyes as I snapped, “Are the EMTs on their way?”

  “Yes, sir,” one of them confirmed, grunting as Rhode kicked him in the shin. She forced her knee high, aiming for the family jewels, but the other guard stopped her in time.

  I watched as she writhed in their arms like some kind of belly dancer on meth as I ordered, “Send them up here right away. They’ll need a gurney.”

  “Sir?”

  “She attacked Micah Nygard. He’s unconscious.” At least, he looked that way to me. Even if his eyes were open.

  “Everything was consensual, you prick,” she screamed, and my mind, on the run after thoughts like those, triggered something that was so unlike me that I’d be incredulous later...

  My hand snapped out of its own accord.

  I’d never hurt a woman in my life—not physically anyway—but this wasn’t a woman. Rhode was a lowlife. Pond scum. She used her family name, their position in society here as a shield, to hide the fact she was a rapist.

  But as I was inches from connecting with her, Security saved my ass by dragging her back and away from me. I wanted to lay into her, and if she’d been a man, I would have. I totally would have ripped her a new one while rearranging her fucking face.

  “He’s lying on the floor like a zombie. You date-raped him, you evil bitch.” I spun on my heel, unable to deal with her shit. “Take her away. You’re fired, Rhode. No notice, no fucking anything. Once your arse is out of here, that’s it. You’re done.”

  “I’ll see you in court!” she snarled.

  I cut her a look over my shoulder. “I look forward to it.”

  Her eyes were wild as she took in how calm I was right then. At no other point had I been. But now, the litigation that I’d been avoiding for months didn’t matter. I felt like shit for prolonging this where Lizzie was concerned. Robert had killed himself but it was my lover who prompted me to shove two fingers in the face of caution and to throw Rhode’s ass to the curb.

  Granted, I had a criminal suit to back me up, but still...

  She snarled more abuse at me, hissing and shrieking, forcing the guards to grunt and groan as they dragged her to the elevator, but I ignored her. Instead, I rushed over to Micah, and dropped to my knees.

  His dick was hard, throbbing, and a bright, bright red that seemed unnatural. Especially without any stimuli. I reached down, and though it felt wrong, I tucked him away and fastened his zipper, but his cock remained a prominent bulge.

  Throughout my shielding him, he moaned, a long, low groan that reminded me of the noise I’d heard him make that one time he puked in my presence, which was the reason we’d both taken an extra day off to make sure we weren’t contagious anymore. Without these past few days together, I might have thought he was aroused, but he wasn’t.

  His eyes were dazed, his face oddly slack from the drugs, so I figured the moan might be a warning. The only problem was that, from his position, I knew if he vomited, he’d end up choking on it. Quickly, I grabbed the waste paper basket and popped it between his slightly spread legs.

  With that done, I shuffled him around, and propped him up so he was resting against my knees before helping him sit up slightly. When he wasn’t flat on his back anymore, but his body was like one big portion of ramen noodles, I twisted him so that he was leaning forward and over the trashcan.

  Seconds later, he was sick. Hoping that would help lessen the grip of the drugs she’d forced on him, I held him tightly, pressing my face into his throat after I quickly kissed the crown of his head. I wanted him to know he was safe. More than anything, that was all that mattered.

  That he was safe now.

  That he’d always be safe if I had my way.

  Regrets would come later—for now, he was my focus. Exactly as he should be.

  Twenty-Three

  Micah

  He was there.

  Throughout the endless sessions of me puking up whatever she doped my coffee with. When I had blood drawn, and was given a rape kit—they tried to make him leave the room, but he wouldn’t.

  And I was glad.

  Even as my brain wasn’t working, even as I was dazed and confused—sucked into an oblivion that felt endless, that made my brain churn and my stomach heave, that made me question whether I was asleep or awake and whether this was a night- or a daymare—he was there.

  In those moments, where my mind didn’t belong to me, he was the one thing I registered.

  That chocolate-churros’ scent was there. Comforting me. Protecting me. Loving me.

  It was, in fact, how I woke up.

  Not in a hospital room like I’d almost dreaded, but in bed. His bed. That was why it scented so strongly of him.

  For a moment, all I could remember was cleaning up Devlin’s puke when he’d been sick, and I thought that was what had happened. Even though it wasn’t the first time I’d awakened, because I’d been momentarily aware during the rape kit, enough to give my consent to the entire thing, but it was the first I had a chance to think. Rather than experience unpleasant things.

  I wasn’t puking. My head hurt but it wasn’t banging enough to want to puke again. People weren’t touching me, needles weren’t pricking my skin. Inside my mind, there wasn’t an endless scream...

  I blinked again, wondering why my eyes felt like they’d been rolled in salt, then his soft, husky voice murmured from somewhere in the room. “Would you like some tea?”

  Head too heavy for my neck, I rolled it on the pillow and found him standing in the doorway. He had some paper stitches on his temple and a black eye—when the hell had that happened?

  Frowning with confusion, I rasped, “I’d prefer coffee.”

  “You Americans and your coffee,” he chided, the low tenor was infinitely soothing. I figured he could lull me to sleep if he wanted to. “Tea will cleanse your palate.”

  I noticed he had a mug in his hand, and as he walked toward me, wearing a pair of gray sweats and a baggy navy hoodie, it was, I recognized, the most dressed down I’d ever seen him.

  Had I triple-jumped into a parallel universe?

  He propped himself on the bed beside me, making it jostle, even as the scent of him wafted toward me. Warm. Comforting. I didn’t think I’d ever associate the smell of him with anything but.

  I just wasn’t sure why.

  Even as I was.

  Which was confusing.

  I knew, but my mind wouldn’t register the facts.

  He placed a half empty cup on the nightstand before he leaned over and helped me sit up. It was only the fact that it was half empty, that it was his cup that made me say, “I’ll have some tea.”

  He arched a brow but passed me the mug, then turned it in his palm so I could grip the handle.

  Whenever Chelsea drank anything, she left behind the faintest sheen on her cup. Be it lipstick or gloss. There was no such mark where Devlin had drunk from it, and that irked me enough to peer at the rim with addled eyes.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked quietly.

  “Your lip marks.”

  His gaze softened, but he reached for the mug, took a sip, then pointed to it. “There. A kiss via tea.”

  Even though I still felt groggy, I smiled at him and drank from that exact spot. “You make everything taste of chocolate.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible. And the drugs are supposed to be out of your system by now, so I don’t know if you’re just being romantic.” His brow waggled. “Didn’t I tell you Astleys weren’t romantic?”

  “You also told me Astleys don’t stick around.”

  He blinked. “Well, maybe I’m not as much of an Astley as I feared.”

  I reached for his hand. “What happened? It’s all a daze.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he muttered gruffly as he twisted our fingers together, making knots I felt not just in my knuckles but in my soul.

  I needed those knots.

  More than he
could know.

  “What do you remember?”

  “Having my dick handled by a nurse. Being asked lots of questions. Getting blood taken, my mouth swabbed—” I shook my head. “I remember why, just not who.”

  His mouth tightened. “I went to your office and found Rhode on top of you. She’d drugged you.”

  “I think I remember that.” My brow puckered. “I remember the coffee tasting vile, and I remember waking up in the hospital and being prodded, then, it’s just one big blur.”

  “She gave you something called a Roofagra.” His lips twisted, and a malevolent gleam appeared in his eyes that made my heart stutter. “A Roofie and Viagra combined. She’s no longer working for the company and is fighting the criminal charges.” He gritted his teeth. “There’s more, but you’re too tired to handle this.”

  I wanted answers, but he was right. I was tired.

  Really tired.

  I’d just woken up but it still wasn’t enough.

  It felt like I’d closed my eyes for a snapshot of time, only to be woken up again a minute later, but I knew that wasn’t possible.

  I remembered Rhode giving me that coffee late at night, just as the sky was getting moody with twilight. Reds and oranges shot with purple as the day began to die.

  But now, it had to be past noon. So high up in his building, there was no hiding from the many windows that revealed it was at least twelve hours since Rhode had doped me up.

  “You probably feel worse because of the stomach flu,” he said softly, and I turned to him with sleepy eyes, focusing as he got to his feet, shrugged out of the hoodie as he walked around the bed to make it to the side where he usually slept—the left.

  Beneath the hoodie, he wore a plain white tee which he also removed, then he clambered in beside me. Well, not beside me. He might as well have been across the room with how big the California King was. Except, he didn’t stay there. He moved closer to the center, edging nearer to me like he thought I had sharp fangs and would bite.