by Hannah Ford
Finally, they opened the door to one of the rooms and dropped me onto the floor. The room was pitch black, and I felt hands pulling at me, taking the handcuffs off, removing the gag, grabbing roughly my breasts before they left. The sound of laughter permeated the room, and from somewhere far away, I thought I could hear a woman screaming. It was so dark I couldn’t see anything, not even my hand right in front of me.
“Hello?” I called out. “Is anyone there?”
I started to feel my way around in the dark, and was just about to scream when the door opened.
Dim light flooded into the room, and a man stood in the hallway, illuminated by the light behind him.
He was tall, at least six foot three, and huge. He was dressed in dirty jeans and a black tank top, his muscular arms filled with a sleeve of tattoos. I recognized him immediately from the pictures I’d seen online.
Audi James.
He smiled at me, showing a row of perfectly straight teeth.
“Here to play?” he asked jovially. As he shut the door behind him, something metal glinted in his hand.
I took in a huge breath.
And then I screamed.
END OF BOOK SEVEN
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For His Pleasure by Kelly Favor
For His Pleasure (For His Pleasure, Book One)
Monday came too soon for Nicole Masters.
The most important day of her life, and she felt ill prepared.
Nicole hadn’t slept the night before. Instead, she’d spent hours laying out different outfits, going through possible interview questions. Her stomach churning, she’d taken six or eight Tums, read article after article about Jameson International on the Internet, and of course, she’d also researched Red Jameson, the high profile CEO and founder of the advertising agency. At only age thirty-two, the man was already a legend in the advertising world and a heartthrob in the rest of the world.
While playing around online, she’d even run across a web forum seemingly devoted to discussing Red’s every relationship, both real and imagined. The forum participants gossiped endlessly about celebrity women he’d been spotted with, and then discussed (in great detail) what they would do if they had five minutes alone with him.
Red Jameson had been featured on the cover of both Forbes and Rolling Stone. He was just that cool.
Finally, around five-thirty a.m., when the darkness was starting to give way to a gray and foggy morning, Nicole began drifting to sleep.
Her alarm woke her just half an hour later. She groaned and sat up, feeling like she’d spent the previous night drinking tequila. Or maybe bashing herself in the head with a hammer.
Either way, she had to pull herself together. She ran to the bathroom and started the lengthy process of getting ready for the day. Shaving her legs in the bath, washing and conditioning her hair. As she rinsed the soap out of her eyes, images of Red Jameson flashed in her mind. He was staring at her and his expression was one of disapproval. He shook his head.
No. You can’t have the internship, Nicole. You aren’t ready for the real world. Maybe you should have gone to grad school instead.
When she opened her eyes, her heart was pounding. Think positive thoughts, she admonished herself.
This interview is going to go wonderfully. I deserve this internship. I’ve got all the skills they require and that’s why I’ve made it this far.
Nicole nodded, heartened by her own propaganda, and applied moisturizer to her skin. Her skin was smooth, silky, and pale. It was one of her attributes that seemed to get the most comments from men and women alike. She rarely had a blemish on her face, or any kind of acne.
Other than her nearly perfect skin, Nicole had always considered herself rather average. She wasn’t too tall or too short. She wasn’t too skinny or too fat. She had breasts but not the kind that men tended to stare at like salivating dogs. She liked to run two or three times a week, so she had some muscle tone, but wasn’t ripped like some of the girls around town.
Her hair was brown and she usually wore it back in a simple ponytail.
Today Nicole needed to be sophisticated, though. Jameson International was a cutting-edge ad agency, and she couldn’t come in like some hick with hay in her teeth.
So she was dressing up way beyond anything she felt comfortable in.
She’d even gone into credit card debt yesterday at Prada, buying a full ensemble: high heels, skirt, blouse, purse. The entire thing had come to just under two thousand dollars. She’d spread it across two cards.
TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS.
More than she’d spent on clothes all of last year.
But this wasn’t for just any old internship. Nicole had beaten the odds just getting this interview, and now she needed to knock it out of the park. She needed to look global, she needed to look rich and worldly or she didn’t stand a chance.
Out the door and on the train, she tried to stay calm. Focused on a little breathing meditation she’d learned from a hippie ex-boyfriend. He’d taught her to meditate and he’d also tried to convince her to give him a rim job, which Nicole had politely declined.
They’d ended soon after that.
A short walk from the train to midtown and she was suddenly there. The large glass building that stretched almost to the sky. Jameson International. It looked like a block of onyx.
Nicole’s breath caught in her chest.
She shook in her heels for a moment.
And then she went inside.
The main entrance was huge, with immense marble floors and a fountain. Men and women in suits with perfect hair were filing through the doors and waiting for elevators. At the large security desk in the center of the room, three black men were checking in guests.
Nicole approached them with a smile. None of them smiled back.
“Name please?” One bald man asked. He glared at her like she might be a potential terrorist.
Her voice came out so low that she needed to start over. Nicole cleared her throat. “I’m Nicole Masters? Here for an interview at eight-thirty?”
The man nodded and turned to his computer. He typed quickly. Nodded. “Sign in please.” He tapped a clipboard next to her on the desk and she quickly wrote her name and the time and date.
“Look over here please,” he said, and when she looked at him, there was a sudden flash in her eyes.
“Just a moment.” Seconds later he’d printed out a picture of her and made a laminated badge, which he handed to her. “Please wear this at all times while you’re in the building, Ms. Masters.”
She glanced at the badge. In the picture, she looked like a cross-eyed Japanese woman. “I wish you’d at least told me to smile,” she joked.
He reacted as if she’d never spoken. “Take the elevators on your left up to the fifteenth floor. You’ll be meeting with Glen Goldman.”
“Thanks,” she whispered.
Her stomach was churning, anxious. She dug in her purse and grabbed a couple of Tums, chewed them as she crammed into the elevator with the perfect employees of Jameson International.
She disembarked on the fifteenth floor as instructed, into a wide hallway with black marble floors. To the right was a closed oak door. To the left was a set of glass double doors, and behind them, a waiting room of sorts.
She walked through the doors.
There was a striking, tall blond woman behind an immaculate desk. She wore a Bluetooth headset and sat in front of a computer. “Can I help you?”
She told her she was here to interview with Glen Goldman.
“Absolutely.” The blond woman smiled in the most perfunctory way possible. “Please take a seat, he’ll be with you momentarily.”
Nicole took a seat in one of the black leather waiting chairs. It felt gorgeous and sleek and glossy, like something out of a four-star hotel room. There was a glass table near
by, with magazines carefully fanned out across it.
They were advertising industry magazines. Two of them had Red Jameson on the cover. On one, he was holding a golden CLIO statue. In another, he was holding a cigar in each hand and grinning. Beneath his picture it said, How One Man Can Have Too Much of Everything and Still Not Enough.
It was hard for her to tell if Red was smolderingly sexy because he was good looking and photogenic, or if it was because Nicole happened to know how smart and innovative and powerful he was. Maybe it was all of the above. His looks were interesting. He was supposedly of Irish and German descent, but he looked more Italian or Persian. His skin was dark, almost coffee colored. His eyes were hooded. His hair was slightly curly, black and wiry. His nose was long and a little hooked at the end, and he possessed a strong, chiseled jaw, surprisingly thick neck and broad shoulders.
In his slick gray and black suits he sometimes looked more like an athlete dressed up as a businessman, rather than someone who belonged in neckties and wingtips.
“Miss Masters?”
The blonde receptionist’s voice startled Nicole out of her reverie. She realized she had just been staring at the magazine with Red’s picture on it.
She stood up too quickly and nearly lost her balance.
The blonde smiled as if embarrassed for her. “I’ll bring you to your interview with Mr. Goldman now.”
***
The interviews turned out to be surprisingly pleasant, if exhausting.
Glen Goldman was older, thin and balding. He reminded Nicole of her Uncle Regis, who used to always pretend to find quarters in her ear when she was little. Glen asked her about college, he seemed genuinely happy for her that she was so excited about advertising.
“It’s a young persons game now,” he said, blinking. “If you don’t mind working sixty or seventy hours a week minimum, you’ll be fine.”
“I can’t wait to work,” she said, truthfully. “I’ve always enjoyed hard work.”
Blinking ferociously, he nodded and smiled. “I like your attitude.
After Glen, a middle aged severe woman named Remi Danvers came in. Remi was an art director at the agency. She had short brown hair, enormous golden earrings and an even more enormous golden necklace. Her white button down shirt was unbuttoned far enough to reveal her nonexistent cleavage. Remi fired off questions about Nicole’s resume, almost as if trying to catch her in a lie.
After fielding twenty or thirty rapid-fire questions about her previous work experience, Nicole had waited for Remi to move on to some other topic. But the woman didn’t do any such thing. She simply smiled briskly, stood up and left the room.
Next, the creative director entered. His name was Edward Lane and he was stocky, grinning, with a thin red beard. He had a phone at his side that constantly buzzed as he studiously ignored it. Nicole tried to talk without being distracted by the incessant buzzing sound.
Edward was also friendly, although his blue eyes were watchful and perceptive. At one point he asked her how she handled conflict, and she said that she typically avoided it.
“You won’t be able to avoid it here,” he said softly. His eyes watched her intently.
She took a breath. “I look forward to learning, and if conflict is part of that, I welcome the challenge.”
“You may find yourself under a great deal of mental and emotional pressure. The strain can be enormous. Working for Red is never easy.”
She swallowed. “You mean Mr. Jameson?”
He nodded. “He’s also very egalitarian and likes to meet everyone. That’s why he interviews all prospective employees.”
Nicole gulped audibly. “He interviews everyone?”
“Yes, if we think the candidate is appropriate Jameson International material. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ll be meeting him very soon,” he grinned.
Nicole licked her lips and tried to still her shaking hands. “It must be overwhelming for someone with Mr. Jameson’s schedule and responsibilities to meet with everyone.”
Edward laughed heartily. “We’ve been trying to get him to stop for years, but he won’t. That’s how seriously he takes his business. And he expects that dedication and intensity from every one of his employees.”
“I find that refreshing,” she lied. Actually she found it horrifying. She wasn’t ready to come face to face with the man she’d been studying from afar.
Edward sat back and looked at her anew. “Working for Red can be particularly challenging for female employees.”
“It can?” She didn’t know exactly what Edward meant, but her arms broke into gooseflesh anyway. She thought back to the things she’d seen on those online forums. Women who worked here probably fought tooth and nail to gain his approval and notice.
Edward tapped the table lightly with his hand. “In any case, you’re a great candidate, and everyone speaks highly of you. I’m going to recommend that Red meet with you today.”
She felt woozy from all of this. “You’re hiring me for the internship position?”
Edward sighed. “Pending Red’s approval. But that’s why I’m trying to give you fair warning. This is a tough business, but for someone like yourself it could be positively torturous.”
“Torturous?”
“Just…be prepared, Nicole. If you can do this job, you’ll go very far in this business. But if you’re a wilting flower—it won’t be a pretty sight. I’ve seen the ones who crack and it can get ugly.”
“I won’t crack,” she said, suddenly sitting up straighter. She didn’t like his implication that she was a wilting flower. Maybe she was fresh out of college, but she’d never failed at anything in her life. In high school, she’d been debate champion three years running and when she was even younger she’d won chess tournaments playing against kids twice her age.
Edward seemed to take stock of her and find what he’d wanted to see. He smiled, stood up and shook her hand. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of one another in the future, Nicole. Just hang tight for a minute.”
And then he left her alone in the small conference room.
She was suddenly aware of being incredibly thirsty. Checking her phone, she realized she’d been in here for nearly an hour and a half now. It hadn’t felt nearly that long, but time had flown in the midst of her anxiety, and the endless questions and trying to make a good impression.
Well, apparently she’d done it. Now she just had to make a good impression on him.
As if to confirm this, the blonde receptionist opened the door to the conference room. “Miss Masters? Please come with me.”
She wanted to get a drink of water, but the receptionist was already walking ahead of her, striding confidently, elegantly. Nicole was too intimidated to ask for a cup of water. Instead she followed her to a different set of elevators.
When the doors opened, the inside was opulent. It looked like an old fashioned elevator from some nineteenth century mansion. A man dressed in a dark blue uniform smiled at them. “Top floor?” he asked with a delicate smile.
“Yes,” the blonde replied, barely looking at him.
Nicole tried to smile and thank him. He pressed the button for the fifty-fifth floor and put his hands behind his back. When the elevator pinged and stopped, he held out his hand and tilted his head gently toward the hallway.
The blond receptionist didn’t leave the elevator. “Red’s expecting you,” she said with an enigmatic look in her eye.
Nicole suddenly didn’t want to leave. Her feet felt rooted to the floor. But she forced herself to move and then she was in the hallway and the elevator doors had closed behind her.
The top floor felt like a different world entirely from the rest of the building. More like a penthouse apartment. The walls were dark and there was lush red carpeting. The hallway hooked abruptly to the left and then she came to a set of heavy wooden doors.
Next to the doors was a rolling table with a tray of food on top of it. The food was just some fruit and a half eaten sand
wich. Somehow the sight of wilted lettuce calmed her. It was only food after all. This was just a hallway in a building. Yes, he was rich beyond her wildest dreams, but he was also just a man who ate fruit and sandwiches with old lettuce sometimes. He hadn’t even finished his meal.
She knocked on the wooden doors.
“Come in,” he said from the other side. His voice was slightly muffled but distinctly his. She’d watched hours of interviews and footage of him on YouTube, after all.
She opened the doors and strode into his office as confidently as possible.
When she entered, she was still shocked by the enormity of the room. It was bigger than three of her apartments put together. There was a full-length pool table on one side, a fully stocked bar near that. On the other side of the room was a set of leather furniture facing a television screen that took up an entire wall.
Red was sitting at his desk. It was a monstrosity; old, ornate, it must have weighed a ton. Behind him was a floor to ceiling picture window that overlooked the entire city. However, he’d lowered one of the curtains, which blocked most of the light. She could still see the city filtering through the semi-opaque material.
“Don’t be intimidated,” he said, standing and walking around his desk. He was wearing one of his typical gray suits. It was almost reflective. His tie was purple and thin. In person he was larger than she expected, and his magnetism was stunning. She found herself star struck and nearly speechless.
“Hello,” she murmured.
He continued to close in on her. His presence was so intense that she didn’t know what to do. Literally. She was frozen in place and he just kept moving until he was no more than six inches from her. He was like a movie star stepping off the big screen and smiling at her. His eyes were so confident, his manner was so strong and powerful. No boy or man she’d ever met could come close to projecting his sex appeal or his intelligence.
“I’m Red Jameson, founder and CEO of Jameson International.” He held out his large hand to her.