“I appreciate that,” I offer stoically. Deep down, I’m so nervous about the London meeting that I could piss my pants, but it’s not my job to be vulnerable. It’s my job to spend hundreds of millions of dollars wisely—and I intend to do just that.
At the exact moment that my contribution to the conversation ends, my phone buzzes in my pocket. Out of habit, I slide it out and place it on the table.
New Message from Olivia Nolan
Startled, I immediately flip the phone over and hope that my father didn’t notice. Luckily, when I glance in his direction, I see that he’s listening raptly to whatever Gregory is saying—i.e. doing exactly what I should be.
But now that I know that I have a message from Olivia, I can’t stop thinking about it. Three minutes pass and my focus continues to drift to the back of my phone, wondering what the message says.
Is she mad at me? Does she hate me? Does she have a question about work? Is she trying to break our contract? Does she still miss me?
Another two minutes pass and my list of potential topics has grown increasingly longer and more irrational. Is she in trouble? Does she want to ask for my pancake recipe? Did another intern hit on her? Hell, did another executive hit on her?
Somehow, that’s the thing that pushes me over the edge—the thought of an older man hitting on her. I know that she dated her professor back in college, but that was different. Now, I’m in the picture and there’s absolutely nothing that an older guy at Davenport-Ridgeway could possibly give her that I couldn’t.
Screw this meeting, I decide as I unlock my phone to read the text. But instead of a text where Olivia tells me that some dickhead named Chester or something else old-fashioned and annoying has hit on her, I find the still image of a video—a video that Olivia has just sent to me. From the still, it’s unmistakable that she’s naked in my office again: legs spread and her nice breasts bare. But this time, her face is on camera—and she’s smiling.
Basically on the verge of a coronary, I fumble to flip the phone facedown and quickly look around to see if anyone else in the room just saw me jump out of my skin. To my relief, they’re talking about next fiscal year’s targets.
Jesus, fuck.
I spend the next forty-three minutes and seventeen seconds nodding like I’m paying attention and chiming in sporadically, but my mind is in a completely different place. The moment that the meeting ends, I excuse myself as fast as possible and make a beeline for the bathroom.
With the door locked behind me, I take my phone out of my pocket and swipe over to the video. For a few seconds, I swear at myself for not grabbing my earbuds from my briefcase, but that still image of Olivia taunts me as if to say, “You’re going to risk it all, aren’t you?”
Yeah. Yeah, I am.
I press play on the video and it begins with Olivia fully naked and seated in my chair. The creaminess of her skin still makes my stomach spin no matter how many times I’ve seen her like this. Touchable, so goddamn soft and touchable. The fact that I’ve kissed every inch of that skin might just be the greatest pride I have.
Her free hand, the one not holding her phone to record the video, starts at her breast and massages it before pulling back to toy with the nipple. She hardens her bud to a peak and pinches it a couple of times, which I make a mental note to do more often when I see her inhale sharply at the sensation.
“How’s Boston?” she asks breathily before her hand skims lower, down to her stomach, and then to cover her mound.
Carefully, she parts her lips to show me the piercing. The one that I asked for. The one that I paid for. She doesn’t touch it, but just a glimpse of it has me pressing painfully against my pants. The piercing is a small, silver bar, slightly curved with two petite ball ends. One day soon, she’s going to let me replace it with something more expensive. Something decadent and over the top that only I will ever see. She just doesn’t know it yet.
She orients the camera back upwards and gives it a smug, seductive look before she says, “Davis, you should be working.”
The video ends after that.
The bathroom is eerily quiet, almost like I’m coming to post-nut clarity. But the only clarity that I have is the knowledge that I’m absolutely not in control of the situation anymore. She is. She’s winning a game that she doesn’t even know she’s playing, and I’m paying her tens of thousands of dollars to do it.
I’m left dumbfounded, staring at my phone like an idiot, wondering how I’m going to make it through another meeting when I’m rock hard and dying to hear her voice. Somehow, against all odds. I compose myself.
I begin to head out, but first take one last look in the mirror. The man in the reflection looks happier than he has in years.