by Loki Renard
The Billionaire’s Pet
By
Loki Renard
Copyright © 2016 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard
Copyright © 2016 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.
www.StormyNightPublications.com
Renard, Loki
The Billionaire’s Pet
Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson
Images by Period Images and Bigstock/golden pen
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.
Chapter One
“Stacy! Where’s my latte!”
Ellie Jones’ usually pretty features contorted to create an expression of extreme petulance as she pushed back from a vast glass desk overlooking New York City from sixty stories up. Thin wisps of clouds played past the floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed her an unparalleled view over her domain as her high heels clattered swiftly over the marble floor toward the great tinted glass doors that separated her inner sanctum from the outer office where several secretaries and assistants, Stacy first among them, attended to her needs and whims alike.
Expression aside, Ellie was a picture of professionalism. She wore a neat black bespoke suit, the skirt cut directly at the knee, the flare of the blazer neatly meeting the curve of her hips. Her makeup was flawless, her round face powdered, her lips a professional but dramatic shade of red, her dark naturally long lashes setting off her hazel green eyes. Ice blond hair was cut harshly but stylishly around her chin, framing her face. From a distance, one would have mistaken her for any number of high-powered businesswomen. It was only when one got up close that it became obvious that Ellie was not quite typical. Light freckling over her nose, almost hidden by foundation, but not quite, and a softness to her features revealed that she was still in her twenties, the youngest CEO the company had ever seen, and more than deserving of the fearsome reputation she had gained in her relatively short but stellar career.
“Stacy!” Ellie stormed out of her office—and into an expensively clad wall, which turned out to be the chest of a stranger who had somehow made his way into her outer sanctum. Usually nobody got past Stacy, but he had thanks to the receptionist’s absence. The entire upper floor was surprisingly quiet, entirely devoid of any of her support staff. Strange.
“You’re not Stacy,” she observed toward the chest that was still blocking her way. “Where’s Stacy?”
“I imagine she’s getting you a latte, if she knows what’s good for her,” the human mountain rumbled, taking a step back before extending his hand toward her. “I’m Daniel Treville.”
Daniel Treville. It couldn’t be. As a large hand enveloped her own, Ellie looked up and saw that it really was him. A man so rich he could have given half of his wealth away and still been richer than the next richest man in the USA. Meeting Daniel Treville was like running into the pope of the financial world—and Ellie had just done it face first. There was a smear of lipstick right in the middle of his chest, his white linen shirt sullied by her clumsiness.
He looked exactly like he did in the pictures. Tall, broad-shouldered, classic clean-cut good looks. His jawline would have made a catalog model cry, and she could have cut herself on his cheekbones. His forehead was intelligent and his jaw was strong. He had dark wavy hair, cut in a not-too-short style, graying ever so slightly at the temples, a sign of his mature years.
Ellie knew a great deal about Daniel Treville, though she’d never met him. She knew his net worth, his corporate portfolio, and more personal details too. He was forty-four years old, seventeen years older than Ellie. He was from money, his family had been French nobility before the revolution and had gone to America after a couple of generations in the UK. The Treville family owned land spanning the globe, but Daniel alone had taken what could have been nothing but another old crumbling dynasty and turned it into a modern business empire.
She could have written an essay on the man, but what she hadn’t known until that moment, and what none of the many pictures that had been taken of him had captured was how bright his piercing aristocratic sea-blue gaze was. How it seemed to encapsulate her, wrap her up and simultaneously deconstruct her. He took her measure in an instant—just as she took his.
A thrill of excitement ran through her as she realized he must be standing in her office for a reason. A profitable reason. She straightened her blazer and flashed a professional smile up at him. The difference in their heights was almost as stark as the difference in their ages, but she was not one to be easily intimidated, and even if she was, she wasn’t one to show it.
“To what do I owe the honor, Mr. Treville?”
“I’m conducting an inspection of my latest acquisition,” he said, his eyes lifting from her face to sweep over the office and the view beyond the windows.
Excitement drained away, replaced with a cold chill spearing through Ellie’s chest. “Your latest acquisition?”
“I just bought this company,” Daniel revealed with a rakish smile. “More or less.”
“No, you didn’t,” Ellie corrected him. “I’m the CEO. I would know if the company were for sale.”
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you,” Daniel said, his smile broadening to reveal white teeth and impish dimples. “However, you’d be wrong. I just purchased shares from three of your largest stakeholders—fifty-nine percent in total. That makes me the controlling shareholder, and therefore, the owner in spirit.”
Before Ellie could react to that piece of news, her phone rang. She held her finger up to Daniel, returned to the safety of her desk and answered it, glad to have a moment to think.
“Ellie!” A panicked voice came down the line, belonging to the CFO Tag Coleman. “There’s been a buyout!”
“I know.”
“Some asshole has gone and convinced Lehman and Spitzman and Flugler to…”
“I know,” she tried again. It was useless. Tag wasn’t listening to anything that didn’t come out of his own mouth.
“…sell up and take the money to retire.”
“I know,” Ellie said for the third time. “Daniel Treville is in my office eying up my potted plants as we speak.”
A panicked gasp came down the line. “Daniel Treville! Be careful, Ellie. He has a reputation for cleaning house.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Tag,” she replied. “I’ll talk to you later.”
She hung up the phone and turned her attention to Daniel, who by that time was lounging in one of the chairs opposite her desk designed to make the people sitting opposite her look and feel smaller and less consequential. It was a good foot lower than hers and incredibly uncomfortable. Somehow, he still dominated the room, catlike in his ability to look composed.
“Well,” she said, sitting down in her much taller, more comfortable seat that elevated her less-than-extensive stature to CEO height. “Will this be my last day on the job?”
“Oh, I hope not,” Daniel smiled. “You’re far too valuable for that. I wanted to discuss the new direction I have in mind for the company.”
“New direction?” She smiled politely, though internally she was rolling her eyes. There was always some new direction. People like Daniel liked to leave their mark on places, usually by making cosmetic changes to the company’s stationery. Would this be a simple rebranding? Or did he have something more disruptive in mind?
/> “The products we produce are toxic,” he said in the sort of disapproving tone Ellie had become used to among people who thought that a little lead was a bad thing. The company had a budget for dealing with concerns of the nature Daniel was raising, though most of it was dedicated to keeping various senators and spokespeople paid. Not entirely ethical, but completely legal.
“The products we produce are not toxic,” she replied smoothly. “It would be illegal to sell toxic products to consumers. The byproducts are somewhat toxic, but they’re sold to companies who deal with them.”
“And by ‘deal with them’ you mean ‘find somewhere to bury them.’”
“They might bury them, they might recycle them into mittens for kittens,” Ellie said with a carefree wave of her hand. “Besides, anything can be toxic in large amounts.”
“We produce large amounts of substances that are toxic in small amounts,” he clarified. “I want to change the direction of the company. I want to make sure each and every one of our products is entirely eco-friendly. I want the byproducts to be recycled in-house. I want us to take responsibility along every step of the way, from where we source our materials, to where we dispose of them.”
“No punching polar bears, got it,” Ellie nodded. “Vertical integration for the rainforest.”
Daniel did not seem impressed by her glibness.
“This is a direction all companies are going to have to go in eventually,” he said. “If nothing else, the carbon taxes alone could eventually cripple us. If we get ahead of the curve, develop products for the next era, this company could be in business long past the end of fossil fuels and plastics. Our current position at the head of the market gives us the ability to make these changes now, before the consequences bite.”
“I’ve never been overly concerned with consequences,” Ellie replied. “And the company is not showing any significant losses from any of the issues.”
“Yet.” He ground the word out like a promise.
“Mr. Treville,” she said formally, assuming her serious tone of voice. “While, naturally, we are all concerned for environmental issues, one can’t just wave a wand and change the chemical nature of the task we face. Forthright produces everything from soap to cellphones. It’s not as simple as changing all the old bulbs to eco ones and declaring the planet saved.”
“But that would be a start,” he said. “You have no policies in place anywhere in the company to conserve energy.”
“Conservation of energy is a universal law; I don’t think it falls within my purview.”
“Cute,” he said grimly, not so much of a flicker of amusement registering at her physics-based joke. “I can see you’re going to require some persuading, Ms. Jones.”
“I have a board to answer to, and a series of shareholders who aren’t you,” she replied. “You cannot simply walk into my office and expect the company to change in an instant.”
“Ah, but I can,” he said with maddening calmness. “I know it won’t happen overnight, but I can make it clear to you what I expect to happen—and that I expect you to do as you’re told.”
Do as you’re told. The words whipped across Ellie’s ego and left welts. Her eyes narrowed a fraction, and her smile became harder. At any other time, those signs would have heralded a verbal evisceration, but she said nothing, letting the moment of his hubris stretch out. He was, after all, Daniel Treville. Though she was tempted to have him thrown out of her office, it was a bad idea to get on the wrong side of a billionaire in the first five minutes of knowing him. Ellie hadn’t gotten where she was by making enemies of people—at least, not until she’d gotten what she needed. That didn’t mean she was going to let him use her as a doormat either though. Before he left, he’d know who was really in charge.
“Well, Mr. Treville, that’s all very interesting,” she said calmly. “We’ll run some numbers and see how things shake out.”
“Ellie,” he said, his voice a soft purr. “I really do mean what I said. If I discover my measures have not been implemented, there will be consequences.”
Ellie picked up a pen and proceeded to run the numbers in the roughest of ways. A few quickly scribbled sums on her desk pad revealed the estimated cost of even the most simple changes to be in the millions. That would shave half a percentage off the quarterly numbers. Daniel was mad if he thought she was going to do that. Ellie had never presided over negative growth, and she wasn’t going to change that for any philanthropic billionaire with a fetish for kinder, softer business.
“I’ll get my best people on it right away,” she lied through her teeth.
“I want you on it,” he maintained.
“You want me to personally change every light bulb in this building and all our branches, stores, and warehouses?” She kept a pleasant demeanor while essentially mocking him.
“I want you to personally ensure that it’s done,” he clarified. “I don’t want this getting lost in a memo. I’ll expect personal progress reports daily.”
“Well,” Ellie said, reaching for her desk lamp. “Let’s get started with this initiative right now, so you can see the effects of your ideas in practice.” Under his watchful eye, she unscrewed the bulb and put it on the desk before looking him dead in the eye with a frankly rebellious stare. “How many penguins do you think that helped?”
“Ellie…”
“Oh, there’s another few up there,” she noted, pointing at the light fixture on the ceiling. “If you lift me up on your shoulders, we can get them all out. Better still, we could go down to the basement and turn the power off to the building entirely. That would be much more environmentally friendly.”
Daniel’s thick brows rose slowly at her and quite suddenly, Ellie felt the impulse to squirm.
“I do not expect flippancy in this matter,” he growled, his friendly demeanor sliding away to be replaced with a raw authoritarian presence. “I have a controlling share in this company, Ms. Jones.”
“You may in some sense own the company,” she said pertly. “But you do not own me, and I am still in control of the operations of this company as per my role. If you have a problem with me or my position, you are absolutely free to take it up with the board of directors.”
“I think I’ll take you over my knee instead,” he drawled. “And give you the spanking you seem to have missed out on in the only position you deserve to be in right now.”
Ellie’s jaw dropped as hot shock flashed through her body. The threat was as intimate as it was immediate. “You can’t speak to me that way.”
“I can speak to you that way, and I can make good on that promise too,” he said with a casual confidence that made her feel fundamentally uncertain. The rules of common society seemed to warp and bend around Daniel. She was used to arrogant rich men; they were everywhere and usually she found them boorish and boring. There was something different about Daniel Treville. Perhaps it was because he did not seem so much arrogant as certain, or perhaps it was because his gaze held a keen intellect that made her feel instinctively wary. Ellie had reached her position by being able to read and outmaneuver people. In Daniel, she sensed a more than worthy opponent.
“You’re risking a harassment lawsuit.”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “You know as well as I do that a female CEO who launches a harassment lawsuit against her own company may as well set fire to every copy of her resume, because she’s never going to be hired again.”
He was right, of course. Harassment lawsuits worked for people further down the food chain. At Ellie’s level of employment, lawsuits were an absolute last resort, a sayonara to one’s career.
There was silence following his statement as she tried to catch up and get ahead of him. He was wily, with a mind like a viper. He’d already pressed his advantage and made his position clear. The ball was in her court and she had to do something with it. This would be the defining point in their relationship. If she showed fear, if she let him know that he was rattling her, it would all be over.
“Fantasies aside, Mr. Treville, I run this company,” she said in steely tones. “Your ownership means very little at this juncture. Fortunately the charter is structured in such a way as to be somewhat immune from the whims of shareholders.”
“You mean the charter you instituted approximately one week after being hired,” Daniel said, his eyes glinting at her. “The one you slipped through at the AGM with barely anyone noticing what they were signing. That was impressive, but I’m going to have it overturned—and I’m also going to turn you over my knee, young lady.”
Playing the age card was hardly fair. Daniel Treville wasn’t exactly old, but the way he said the words ‘young lady’ made her quiver. She was able to maintain composure only through the sense of outrage that swept through her upon hearing that Daniel was planning on restructuring the company to suit him. There would be some push back, sure, but Daniel had a reputation for being effective and relentless. He probably already had several of the board members on his side just by merit of his name alone.
“Well,” she said with a small smile. “I’ll put in a companywide order for tallow candles. Much more effective than electricity. Imagine all the money we’ll save. Better still, we could get rid of the computer systems and hire small rodents to carry messages. Gainful employment for endangered animals.”
“Cute,” he said, without so much as a hint of a smile. “I take this seriously, Ellie, and you will too.”
Perfect. Her little jokes and jibes were getting under his skin. Ellie felt a growing sense of triumph and control. Daniel Treville might be good, but he wasn’t nearly as good as she was.
“I don’t have time to pander to the regrets of a middle-aged man,” she said, her tone going from playfully sarcastic to cutting. “If you have some guilt complex about the state of the world, go buy laptops for orphans. Don’t destroy a multinational company. People rely on our decisions for their livelihoods. There are thousands of people relying on me to make sure the ship stays afloat—and I don’t intend on letting them down.”