ROMANCE: The Surprise That Rocked Me

by Linda Wright

  “You took my spot” said a female voice as the owner of it sat on the seat next to mine

  “Pardon?”

  “I usually sit by that window” she smiled, showing me that she wasn’t too bothered by the turns of events.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” I didn’t need to explain my ignorance to her, it was clear to everyone in the bus that I was a newcomer.

  “It’s no problem, first day eh?”

  “Yup”

  “Nervous?”

  “Definitely”

  She nodded “I can relate to that” she started

  “I remember my first day in this company. I was so scared, it was my second job working as an airline manager. I worked a small job at “Lufthansa” it was very boring. I was essentially airport help, yuck”

  I smiled at her “What do you do here?” I asked

  “Oh I just help schedule flights and manage what air hostess goes on what plane, it’s more interesting. I get to actually go on the airplanes a lot too. I’m in charge of making sure new models or regulations are also being taken care of properly”

  “Sounds fun”

  She nodded her agreement.

  “What position are you taking? “She asked me “I wasn’t aware we had any vacancies”

  “I’m going to be Mr. Knight’s personal secretary” I blushed slightly, remembering how the thought of that had made me feel last night.

  “Oh, I suppose he could use some help” I didn’t expect that reaction

  “Have you worked in any other airlines before?” she probed

  “Not exactly”

  “What’s your work experience” she had a judgmental tone that hadn’t been there before.

  “I was a manager of a small business in town” it was only a half lie. Manager, bartender, potato potahto.

  “Interesting! I’m Sarah by the way” she said clearly buying my lie

  “I’m Jessica, but please, call me Jess”

  “What made you part ways with your last business Jess?”

  “I knew Mr. Knight from elsewhere and we were friends” I kept lying “He offered me a job once I was made redundant”

  “That does sound like our Mr. Knight” she smiled “He’s a very kind man”

  “Indeed”

  “Not surprised to see him get a secretary, to be fair. He must have a lot of work to get done; I hear he works 24/7 nonstop”

  That sounded odd. I’d been hanging with John for a while and he never seemed to be overly busy.

  I kept these thoughts to myself and continued to make small with Sarah as the bus began to drive towards our office. I quite enjoyed her company as having someone to speak to that wasn’t my own brain was very refreshing. It allowed me to forget all the worries that I had been harboring. The fifteen minutes long drive went by in a tenth of that. Sarah offered to show me to where I’d likely have to begin my day.

  Not actually having received any orders from John, beyond “get on the company bus that departs at 6:45” I accepted. As we stepped into the main building John stood by the front desk, clearly awaiting my arrival.

  “Sarah, pleasure to see you again as always” He nodded politely towards my companion.

  “Mr. Knight” Sarah nodded back, clearly deferring to him as her superior.

  “I see you’ve met my new assistant” He said looking pointedly at me.

  “Yes, we shared a very pleasant bus ride together” She smiled at me

  I smiled back remaining silent

  “Well, I’ve not got a lot of time and I need to show her the ropes so if you’ll excuse us Sarah, we’ll be on our way” He looked at me to follow him.

  We started walking in a different direction to where the crowd that had been in the bus was headed to. Clearly we were heading into a more ‘VIP’ zone. Offices seemed grander; the age of the people surrounding us went up significantly. It made sense for me to not have shared a bus with these people; they all probably either had their own personal driver or just drove a Ferrari themselves.

  As we progressed on our way to what I assume would be my workstation, I couldn’t help but think of how different John’s demeanor had been when addressing Sarah and I. He was so much more confident, direct and borderline aggressive, almost like Sarah was a hyena trying to scavenge the prey of the alpha lion.

  We kept walking in silence until we stepped into an elevator. There John silently took my hand and kissed me whilst whispering good morning.

  My heart, over-reacting as usual, skipped a beat and I struggled to get out my answering good morning.

  He smiled warmly at me before his face shifted into a different expression.

  “We need to talk before getting into how and what you will be doing for your job Ms. Stones”

  I noticed multiple things on just that one sentence; he’d never referred to me as ‘Ms.’ before. He’d also never addressed me by my surname specifically. It went beyond that though; his body language suddenly became more… dominant, leader of the pack speaking to one of his subordinates.

  I nodded my understanding to encourage him to continue.

  “In this building we aren’t the couple John & Jess. We are Mr. Knight and Ms. Stones, that’s the first point”

  “Secondly, you will not address me unless I address you or you are delivering a message from someone higher up in the hierarchy of the company.”

  “Yes, Mr. Knight”

  “You can refer to me as ‘sir’ to avoid the mouthful’ he smiled

  “Yes, sir”

  “Thirdly, you will fulfill my requests without question for so long as you are working for me, you can trust me to not abuse that” he continued

  The thought of obeying all his requests brought flashbacks throughout my body to the events of last night. Not thinking he could realistically abuse me, I gave my consent.

  “Yes sir” I said submissively

  “Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into the more technical stuff”

  He spend the rest of the morning explaining to me who was considered high in the hierarchy, whose message I didn’t need to deliver until he asked me to deliver messages (If someone high in the hierarchy needed a message delivered I could bother Mr. Knight to deliver it).

  He showed me my desk where my PC and a buzzer where he could call me if he needed a file or other such items delivered. He took me to a coffee machine where I was welcome to help myself to some as often as I wanted and where I could make some for him if he so requested. He left me at the IT department where I would get a company login and password so I could log in to the file system.

  After I was done setting up my work profile as well as introducing myself to the names that Mr. Knight had given me (people I would be interacting with on a regular basis it seemed like) I returned to my desk to wait for my next task. I remembered the different people I had met, the nerdy stereotypical IT crew (Jake, Mitchel and Tom) all young and all clearly lacking in the girlfriend department, if I had to guess from the looks they were giving me

  Mr. Blue and Mr. Richardson, old men that had given me perverted stares and not bothered to hide it, neither the stares nor the rings in their finger.

  The list went on without any other standouts; most people simply gave me their greetings and wished me luck.

  “Ms. Stones if you could come into my office please” Said Mr. Knight’s voice through the buzzer.

  “At once sir” was my reply.

  Chapter 6

  “How was your day love?” John asked me as we drove back in his personal yellow Lamborghini, through the highway towards the city after my first day at work.

  “It was interesting. Mr. Blue and Richardson gave me the creeps. They kept leering at me when they thought I wasn’t paying attention. The guys over at IT are cute in a geeky way” I told him about Jake spilling coffee all over him when we met at the coffee machine.

  We shared a laugh and he reassured me that there was nothing wrong with Mr. Blue and Mr. Richardson aside from old age.r />
  This John was different from Mr. Knight; it was night and day, similar to a Jekyll and Hyde scenario. In the office Mr. Knight was intimidating, confidence, a leader to look up to. Outside he was my sweet loving John, the man who had originally stolen my heart.

  I told John about how I had enjoyed working for him and how impressed I had been by the building, the atmosphere and everyone, eventually I decided to ask him about his transformation from John to Mr. Knight.

  “Of course I notice that I am different at the office love” He began

  “I have to be, the business world is a cruel horrible aspect of human society. ‘Every man for himself’ doesn’t touch the tip of the iceberg. Everyone at this level of the business world is greedy, looking for more. Even those that have already made it big just want to get bigger. Being on the top 20 billionaire list of the world isn’t enough for this people. That saying that goes around is very true in that regard, ‘to make money you need money’ and once you’ve got billions, well, let’s just say that making billion is addictive in on itself. Especially the first time, usually is really hard to get to ‘billionaire status’ but once you do it, using billions to make more billions? piece of cake.

  “But why treat me different?” I asked

  “It isn’t about you, it’s about the person I am when I’m at work” he explained

  “I kind of like it when you are Mr. Knight”

  “You do, do you?” he gave me an evil smile

  “It’s kind of a turn on” I admitted whilst slightly blushing.

  “A turn on?” he stared at me confused

  “I don’t know, I’ve never explored my sexuality much Ali. I was always busy trying to get the best grades at high school, I did have boyfriends but I never did anything beyond what would be considered vanilla sex. Then you being so alpha and dominant it made me feel: vulnerable and I quite enjoyed it.” The words came out in a rush, it was silly and juvenile but I definitely felt some degree of embarrassment talking about my sex life in this manner.

  “That’s interesting. I did… experiment more in my younger days” he admitted

  “I have to be completely honest with you in that regard”

  “Oh no… don’t tell me you have an STD?” I grimaced

  He snorted and began laughing loudly

  “What? Heaven’s sake of course not silly” He reassured me “Why’d you think I’d have an STD? I’m not all that bad am I?”

  “Well, is just that you seemed too good to be true” I smiled at him to let him know I was joking. Well half joking, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are a billionaire that randomly picked me up at a bar I was working part time at” I explained “what are the chances of that?”

  He nodded

  “I wasn’t looking for you, not really when I met you” he said “I was having a few disagreements with a business partner, millions of dollars on the line”

  My eyes widened, well that would certainly be something to be upset about I thought.

  “I went to The Hearth to get things off my mind, it’s a nice quiet little tavern The Hearth is” he continued “That’s when I saw you” He smiled “It was a pretty busy night so I knew you hadn’t noticed me much but you throw a few jokes my way and it cheered me up. I’ll admit I stared at you a lot, I was surprised by how beautiful you were” I blushed at that

  “Then I overheard you talking about money issues with your boss and maybe it was the alcohol in me but I figured giving you some money and a phone number wouldn’t hurt anybody and well, here we are”

  We traded smiles and lovey eyes and continued the drive silently for a while.

  “What were you going to say before?” I asked

  He looked at me questioningly

  “You know before I interrupted you with the whole STD joke”

  “That was a joke?”

  “Of course it was, don’t change the subject! I’m curious” I said

  “Well, I just wanted to say that, unlike you, I’ve had the privilege of exploring my sexual desires and whatnot a lot, and I guess is time I tell you that I have quite a… kinky fetish”

  “Oh that’s not nearly as bad as I feared” I smiled at him reassuringly; everyone is ashamed of their sexual desires for some reason. We all like things that society consider ‘dirty’ or ‘inappropriate’. I didn’t want John to think I was grossed out or anything.

  He smiled back at me

  “What is it?” I asked

  He began slowly

  “Well… I’ve got a thing for dominating women”

  My eyes narrowed

  “Dominating women?”

  “Yeah, like some light bondage, you know handcuffs rope. Being in charge and having a women be submissive towards me” he went on “ All those things turn me on quite a lot. So I have to admit I was quite hot and bothered when I was asking you to become my secretary, naturally I spent all of today daydreaming of you”

  I nodded towards him whilst I absorbed all this new information. It intrigued me; I didn’t want to admit to him what I had done last night. It had felt so forbidden and embarrassing, yet it seemed to be on the exact same page that John was describing.

  We drove in silence for a while, both of us engaged in our own thoughts. Feeling like I should say something I began saying

  “It doesn’t sound too weird at all, I mean we could try something like that at some point” I said softly

  “I’d like that” he looked at me “When we are both ready “ he said warmly

  “Yeah” I smiled at him

  We were now driving up to the street where my apartment was. Today I had worked a full day at the office which meant tomorrow I’d have a half day, I still needed time to finish my studies. I kissed John goodbye and made my way to my apartment.

  “Where you been all day?” Amy looked at me angrily.

  “What do you mean”

  “Jess! I was looking for you today. You woke me up when you left this morning. It was so early! I thought you were going to buy something or whatever but then when you didn’t turn up before I left I figured that you’d be busy for a while. Then I come to The Hearth to see if you’re around and Billy tells me you quit? What the hell Jess. I know John’s a great guy and all but you can’t abuse him like some kind of whore-y gold digger!”

  I interrupted her before Amy went on her typical Amy rants

  “Sweetie, calm down! I got a new job that’s all.” I soothed her

  “A new job? Where ? is it another part time gig? I didn’t think you’d fine one that could pay better than what Billy was giving you” she started

  “Well. It’s a job at John’s office”

  “Oh. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  I made a face at her.

  “What?” she looked at me curiously

  “Aren’t you going to make fun of me? You know for all the crap I always give you about how I refuse to use my looks to get ahead or whatever” I said exasperated

  “No? Jess, you’re a smart girl. If I met a billionaire at a bar he’d probably have a one night stand with me and never see me again. If he offered you a job is probably because you are more than capable of handling it” she said

  My heart warmed up at that. I felt bad for not telling her about my plans sooner. Amy’s my best friend for a reason and I hadn’t been treating her like she was for a while.

  “What’s the job?”

  “I’m officially his personal secretary”

  “Ooh, that explains the fancy outfit. You look great in it by the way”

  “Thanks”

  “ How was it?”

  “Easier than I thought it would be actually”

  I ran her through the mundane tasks and menial jobs I had to do during the day. She showed a polite amount of interest during the whole ordeal. I think Amy realized her teasing had been over the top lately and she was probably a bit hurt that I hadn’t kept her up to date with everyth
ing because I was afraid of her jokes.

  I decided that I should speak to Amy about something more interesting for her, since she seemed to be trying to be extra nice today.

  “John and I had a more interesting conversation on our drive back”

  “I thought you took the bus there”

  “He drove me back, he said he didn’t want to arrive with me as it could potentially hurt his image”

  “That seems… rude, he sounds like he’s going to be an ass to you whilst at work” she looked angry

  “Well it kind of goes in line with the next part of the story”

  That piqued her interest

  “When we were driving back in his car, I asked him about why he was acting so differently and all. He said it’s because in the business world you have to keep up an imagine since everyone is out to get your money”

  “Bad excuse” she didn’t seem to buy it

  “Let me continue, we started talking about his whole behavior and that’s when he told me that dominating women is a fetish of his”

  “Ohh Kinky” she gave me a sexually smile “What does his fetish actually imply?”

  “I’m not sure, he said he was into handcuffs and rope and dominating women, that’s all he said about it”

  “Fun! I had a boyfriend that was into that kind of stuff 2 years ago. It was some of the best sex I ever had”

  I blushed at her directness

  “Amy!”

  “Jess, we are both adults will you stop being such a prude?” she looked amused

  “There’s a difference between being a prude and being a slut”