by Pippa Grant
I’d like to dunk myself in the Hudson for wondering if he’s at all turned on by the sight of me. Is that bulge natural, or do billionaires shop at special bulge-enhancing jeans shops?
It’s natural, and you know it, Ambrosia May Berger. The man has a personal endowment for the arts in his pants.
“Are you on birth control?” he asks.
Mrs. Byrony pokes her head out. She’s approximately a century and a half old, her apartment smells like cinnamon and mouthwash, and her dog is the cutest thing on two legs. “If you two are talking about sex, take it inside. I just got dumped by a retired trash collector and I’m in no mood for love.”
The door slams. Even from outside, I can tell Hogzilla and Wonder Boy are at it upstairs again. The squeaking is softer out here, but once you hear it, you can never unhear it. I push my key into the lock and open the door.
“Yes,” I say. I don’t add Get lost, dickhead, but only because I’m trying to be the better person. And partly because I’m wondering if he’s asking because he wants round two.
I’m highly ashamed. Mortified. My vagina has lost its mind.
I step in my apartment and force the door closed, because I’m trying to think with my brain tonight.
I almost make it.
His foot is pretty solid. Sort of like his long, twisted, hard—
Argh.
“What do you want?” I say. Nicely. Or at least nicely enough to appease my mother during forced apologies after fighting with my brothers. I’ve mastered riding that line.
A fact that Chase apparently doesn’t appreciate, because he looks like he’d rather dip his dick in cow dung and go wading through mosquito territory than be here with me. “How much do you know about management?”
Now I see why he’s the billionaire and I’m stuck in low-level management. While I’m contemplating his dick, he’s doing the hard businessman stuff.
Heh. Hard.
Not tonight, buddy.
I fling the door open and let him catch it himself. “Piss me off and I’ll throw you out the window.”
“Debating throwing myself out the window,” he mutters.
“At least we’re on the same page.”
My apartment is your typical single-girl New York apartment. One room with kitchenette, living area, and bed—hidden behind a screen, because you can take the girl out of Minnesota, but you can’t take Minnesota out of the girl—with a postage stamp bathroom fed by pipes that serve the dual purpose of water delivery and ghost housing. The way those things groan sometimes would honestly make Ares cry. He’s terrified of ghosts.
Not that I’m allowed to say that out loud. Zeus would kick my ass.
Anyway, back to the apartment. I have exactly zero chairs and one couch, so I flop down and stretch out on it.
What? I’m tired, and it’s his fault.
He gives me the eyeball of Grow up, Bro and takes a seat on my secondhand coffee table. It wobbles, but it doesn’t give.
“What about management?” I ask. The sooner we’re done, the sooner I’m going to bed.
Alone.
Squeaky-squeaky-squeaky-squeeeeeeeak.
Seriously, I’m writing her a note. First thing tomorrow. Try the elevator.
Sheesh, it’s hot in here.
Chase clears his throat. “It’s all male.”
I blink, and it takes me a minute to realize he’s talking about management and not his penis.
Which I’m well aware is all-male.
“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” I say. About management. “No, wait… Yeah. Yeah, we’re still here.”
“Why?”
“Do I really need to explain this to you?”
“You have the most productive department in the building.”
Did he just compliment me? I squint at him. “Are you really Chase Jett, or do you have a secret evil twin?”
“Cut the shit, Bro. You wouldn’t have stayed at Crunchy if it were a terrible place to work. Your department is top-notch, but upper management is all cocksucking dickheads.”
“I have a criminal record. I work where I can work.”
He rolls his eyes so hard I’m surprised they don’t get stuck in the back of his head. “Quit hiding behind that old bullshit.”
“You told me to drive.”
“I told you to get out of there.”
“Ketchup, catsup.”
Hogzilla lets loose with her mating call, and apparently she has a new Wonder Boy tonight, because an elephant trumpet answers her.
Chase blinks at the ceiling. “The mating hogs,” he mutters to himself.
“Welcome to the broke New York life.”
“You live under a fucking zoo.”
He says it not like I live under a stupid zoo or a crazy zoo, but like I live under a zoo specially designed for fucking. He might be right. I should ask the building super how closely they check references. And species.
“You want to know about management, call Heidi Rumple. She’s responsible for the cool marketing office, and she was on the fast track up the ladder when she quit to take a nanny job in Hoboken. Now go away. I can’t sell bok choy if I can’t sleep.”
Squeaky…squeaky…squeaky…
A wild grunt that’s more bearish than hoggish drifts through the ceiling. She’s apparently having an animal orgy tonight. Maybe Willow’s couch is open.
I could crash at my brothers’ hotel, but I grew up with them, and I know how badly they can smell.
“We don’t have to be like this,” Chase says quietly.
“You didn’t have to rig paintballs to rain down on me when I left the house for my first day of high school either, but you did.”
“That was fifteen fucking years ago. And if you hadn’t told my mother I jerked off in the cafeteria, I probably wouldn’t have. You were thirteen. You shouldn’t have even known the word jerk off.”
“Then you shouldn’t have taught it to me.” And now I’m picturing him stroking his thick, bent penis, and I’m getting seriously wound up down south. I grit my teeth in frustration. This man is not good for me. Not as my brothers’ best friend, not as my boss, and not as…whatever this is between us. “Seriously, why are you here? What do you want from me?”
His jaw is flexing and ticking, and I can’t decide if he’s also turned on, or if he’s just pissed off.
Such a fine line between us, it seems.
“Information,” he grits out.
“So you can destroy one more thing in my life?”
“Yes, Bro, I bought a whole fucking grocery store just so I could lay ruin to it and leave you without a job. You’ve found me out.”
When he puts it like that, I sound like a spoiled brat.
But I wasn’t the one who thought popping my Barbies’ heads off and hanging them upside down in the fridge with ketchup dripping off them was a good way to make friends. Forgive me if I have a few trust issues.
“Everyone at Crunchy is there because we believe in the cause,” I tell him. “What we don’t know is if you do. You have a problem with management, it’s just that. Your problem. You bought us. You want to fix what’s broken, great. But don’t you dare touch my team, because we’re good, and you wouldn’t have had a company to buy without us.”
He stands, his hands fisted, elbows drawn in like he’s trying not to punch something.
Probably because he knows I’m right.
And I know how much he hates that.
Which might possibly mean he’s just as turned on as I’m trying to pretend not to be.
“Heidi Rumple. Thank you. Enjoy your mood music.”
The door slams behind him.
I get ready for bed, but I’m hyped up on hormones and something else I don’t want to identify—something that might be a niggling worry that Chase Jett just tried to come into my apartment and act human—and I can’t sleep.
So I do the only thing guaranteed to put me out like a light. I climb under my covers, wriggle out of my panties, and s
lip my hand between my legs, rubbing myself and giving in to the ache that’s been growing all night. Images of Chase in the elevator dance behind my eyes, and I picture him back in my living room, telling me my pussy is as rotten as moldy canned baloney, and I’d reply that his dick could be a case study for the Centers for Disease Control. He’d attack my mouth with his tongue, cup my pussy in his hands, shove his fingers—no, his whole hand—deep inside me, and now I’m picturing us on his desk in his office, my legs splayed while he licks my pussy and the whole office watches, and oh yes, I’d buck and writhe and scream and I’m wet and horny and my fingers aren’t as big as his, I can’t get as deep as he was last night, so I flick at my clit and grit my teeth and try to give Chase a different face while that slow, deep spiral builds in my core.
My fingers go faster, and I picture Chase and his crooked dick ramming into me, driving me wild, pounding hard and deep and full with his magnificent wonder cock, then Chase getting me off with his fingers again, him sucking on my pussy with that wicked tongue, nipping at my clit with his teeth—
I arch back in my bed as the orgasm rolls through me, but it’s not enough.
It’s not enough, and I’m pissed that it’s not enough, because Chase Jett is somehow ruining masturbation. I reach into my nightstand for Bob and treat myself to a double header.
But it’s still well past midnight before I finally fall asleep, and my subconscious is just as much of a traitor as my vagina.
9
Chase
I open my front door Thursday morning expecting to see the car I ordered to take me to Crunchy, and instead find myself facing the blond-haired, blue-eyed Berger brothers. In a lot of ways, the family resemblance between them and Bro is strong. Norwegian coloring, the same mouth—though Bro’s might be bigger—and they all piss me off by just breathing.
My stairs flare out to the ground until they’re wide as the brownstone, but these two yahoos are completely blocking the sidewalk. I ate at their house as often as I ate at my own growing up, but whatever Mrs. Berger fed me couldn’t have come from the same stock as what she fed her own boys.
Ares cracks his knuckles.
“You got a thing for Ambrosia?” Zeus asks.
If by thing, he means a confounding, raging hatred combined with a reluctantly growing amount of respect and an uncontrollable hard-on every time she opens her fucking mouth, possibly.
But I also still have a thing for breathing.
“If I say yes, are you going to pound me into the sidewalk?” I will not be a pansy-ass billionaire who needs a personal bodyguard. I won’t.
Zeus studies me. “No.”
“If I say no, are you going to pound me into the sidewalk?”
“What’s wrong with her?” Ares growls.
Zeus puts a hand to his chest and keeps him from charging up the stairs. “We were talking. Got to remembering all the pranks we pulled on her. How half of them were your idea.”
“Sunny said you like her,” Ares says.
I don’t know who Sunny is, but based on the way they both smell faintly of whiskey and Ares’s hair is standing on end, I’m going to guess they had a good time with her last night. And look at that, another two-syllable word.
“And considering how many times you’ve slept with her…” Zeus lifts a brow, asking me silently to give him a number.
Except there’s a problem.
There’s no sleeping where Bro and I are concerned.
Nope, that’s all fucking. We’ve never even been close to a bed. No pillows. No sheets or blankets either.
Which I can’t say to her brothers if I want to stay intimately acquainted with my pulse.
“What do you want me to say?” I ask.
“We miss you,” Ares grunts.
I open my jaw, but no words come out.
“Used to have fun,” Zeus says. “World’s a lot more fun now. But it’s missing something.”
“Bro—Ambrosia doesn’t like me,” I say carefully.
These guys don’t have guns for arms, they have Navy-issue, long-range cannons, and they simultaneously fold them over their barrel chests. Because I’ve just told these men their sister is fucking me despite her aversion to me, which more or less translates to me calling her a whore in bro-speak.
“Like that,” I add quickly. “She doesn’t like me like that.” Bro’s a lot of things, but she’s not…that.
Their eyebrows simultaneously lower, and I realize I am not making this better.
“Yet?” I add.
For all I know, these two had a threesome with some random chick named Sunny last night. They’re the it boys of the National Hockey League. If they’re not getting laid regularly by puck bunnies, I’ll suck my own dick.
But I can’t have a night or two of mind-blowing sex?
Zeus breaks first. He drops his arms, but he’s still giving me the big brother I will tear your limbs off, starting with your dick, and make you eat them before I extract your teeth with a pair of rusty pliers glare. “Got four tickets to see the Yankees tonight. Gates open at six. Be there.”
Four tickets could mean one of two things. Either the two of them are squishing into three seats and leaving me the fourth, or Bro’s coming too.
She might have a point about there being other organic grocery stores I could invest in. Unfortunately, this one is best suited for my long-range plans. I made my money in tech with the sole purpose of getting here. Coding is easy. It’s logical. And—thanks, Dad—I have an intimate working knowledge of the psychological power of gaming addictions, which made Frenemy Crush a game I could’ve coded in my sleep.
My experience in the food industry, on the other hand, is limited to watching my mother almost kill herself working at the baloney factory. But I know logic, and I know social media, and between the in-house greens and the fucking amazing social media campaigns Crunchy runs, there’s not another grocery store on the planet that I could’ve bought to position myself to change the world.
I salute the Berger brothers. “Looking forward to the game.”
Ares snickers. Zeus grins. “Got some glitter in your fingernails, dude.”
“Suck my dick.”
They both snort like we’re best buds again and amble down the street.
The Bro part is messy, but Zeus and Ares were my brothers. I spent the better part of the last decade getting to this level of professional success, and now that I have the world at my feet, I’ve realized I have very few friends I can trust implicitly.
My childhood buddies are successful in their own right. They don’t need my cash. They don’t need my connections. They don’t need anything from me.
But they’re willing to give me a chance.
I start to smile as I make my way to the car. As the driver holds the door for me, my phone rings.
Mom.
She knows.
I don’t have to pick up the phone to know she knows. Her cruise ship has internet. The Mediterranean, the South Pole, hell, she could be on the International Space Station and the gossip would still reach her.
And I thought dealing with the Berger brothers would be tough.
How am I going to explain this to my mother?
10
Ambrosia
Because my brothers are my brothers, they emailed me before I ever rolled out of bed to let me know they’d gotten a box at Yankee Stadium for the game tonight. I shoot them back a note telling them to un-invite their puck bunnies, because Eloise would kill for box seats to a game, and if I’m bringing Eloise, I’m bringing Willow and Parker too.
Willow really needs a break from wedding planning, and I owe Parker more than I can ever repay for her sticking by my side at work the last two days.
Especially this morning.
Because my workplace is a normal, healthy workplace—in other words, a gossip factory—and because Chase Jett lives to make my life miserable, everyone’s whispering about his company-wide memo announcing a change to employee handbook policies,
effectively declaring anyone can sleep with whoever they’d like, preferably off company time and grounds, provided that it doesn’t interfere with the work getting done. Also, people caught gossiping will be subject to violations ranging from having points docked off annual performance reviews to suspensions without pay, with the possibility of termination if the behavior doesn’t cease.
I reply to his email after having Parker remove all references to him being a dick.
If your goal is to destroy office morale and turn us against each other, congratulations, you’ve just done in forty-eight hours what the entire executive board couldn’t do in ten years.
He responded with another company-wide memo thirty minutes later announcing that the entire executive board had been sacked, and he’d be looking internally first for replacements.
He didn’t add now quit gossiping and get back to work, but he might as well have.
We would’ve ignored a direct order far more efficiently.
Madison is supposed to be scheduling our series of posts for the Choy Joy ad campaign, but she’s whispering to April, and unfortunately for Madison, her whisper voice is about as subtle as my brothers’ whisper voices.
“I just don’t get why she gets to stay,” she says. “I mean, she had sex in the elevator.”
Right. Not my best moment.
But the whole room has heard, and I have to say something. I climb out of the beanbag chair and face my coworkers and the people who report to me. “Look, we all have sex. Some of us might like to pretend we don’t, but it’s a natural biological function. It’s necessary for the continuation of our whole entire fu—freaking species. There’s only shame in sex if we choose to let there be shame in it. We work for an organic grocery store chain, for god’s sake. We’re Crunchy. You ask me, we should have dedicated sex rooms on every floor. Embrace your sexuality. Love yourself. And then get back to work.”
A slow clap starts from the doorway. Chase and three young-ish suits I don’t recognize are all standing there with their faces twitching. The three of them looking up, anyway. Two are women. The last guy is staring at his shoes, but I can tell his face is beet red.