When I get back to the apartment that I stay in whenever I’m in Boston, I video call Olivia as soon as I’ve put down my briefcase. She answers the phone immediately, her smiling face instantly easing the stresses of the long day. It’s fucking dangerous, I know. I know I shouldn’t let her have that much power over me—if any at all. But if there’s anything I’ve come to realize about this woman in the last eight years, it’s that it’s exceptionally easy to underestimate her.
I set a stern expression on my own face. “Do you know where I was when you sent that video, Olivia?”
“Hopefully at the biggest and most important board meeting of the week,” she answers smartly as she settles back against the headboard behind her.
“I was, in fact, sitting with five executives, including the CEO of Davenport-Ridgeway; as well as my father, who just so happens to be the Chairman of the Board; and the Chief Financial Officer—the guy whose job I want in twenty years.”
Her wry grin doesn’t subside. “Did they notice?”
“Did they notice me turning bright red and then getting hard underneath the table? I hope not.”
Olivia practically beams and settles down onto a plush, white pillow. I’ve never been in the corporate housing apartment where she’s spending the summer, but I can tell that she’s in bed. Her auburn hair fans out around her face as she stares up at the camera, and she looks so gorgeous that I can’t believe she’s real.
“So, you miss me?” I can’t help but ask, despite knowing that this goes against everything I’d intended.
“Seems like you miss me too,” she answers, allowing her voice to dip into this low, sultry tone that I’ve heard before, but still drives me wild.
I let out a breath. Keep it about sex, Davis.
“I miss your sweet, slutty pussy, Olivia. That’s it.”
She raises an eyebrow before she shifts onto her side, putting her cheek against the pillow. “You haven’t even fucked me yet.”
“Sure I have.” I place my phone on a dresser and prop it up against the wall behind it. “Back in Amsterdam. If I remember correctly—and I do—you couldn’t get enough of it. It was almost as though you had a pay-for-sex kink, based on how much you seemed to like it.”
“How do you know I wasn’t pretending?”
“I know,” I reply, even though I don’t know that for sure.
Olivia lets out a sigh at my response, letting her wanton expression finally fade. “So you don’t miss me?” There’s a tinge of dissatisfaction in her tone that I know is another weapon in her arsenal.
“Stop trying to make this conversation tense.”
“Is that your way of saying no?”
“It’s my way of reminding you that you’re being paid. You shouldn’t miss me.”
She lets out another disappointed sigh. That sigh is enough to make me want to cut the shit and apologize to her. I don’t though. I can’t.
“I’ll be back next weekend,” I remind her. “Then you won’t have to worry about missing me because I expect you in my apartment within an hour of my return.”
“We’ll see.”
“It’s a given. A certainty, Olivia. Then you can have your fill and prepare yourself for another week without me.”
“Another?” she questions. “Since when?”
“I’m going to London to visit FundRight or TruEarn,” I explain, sharing the outcome of one of my meetings today. “You know, the thing that we’re working on together. The thing that the company is paying you to do.”
“Oh.”
The crestfallen expression that crosses her face pulls at me even harder. God, this woman is under my skin. “Olivia…” I begin, allowing my confusion to push through. “Are you genuinely upset about this, or are you putting on an act to flatter me? Because flattery is absolutely not what I pay you for.”
“Is this what being with you is like?” is her quick response. She delivers the question without any playful intonation and without elaborating. She’s serious, I realize.
I’m quiet as the weight of the question bears down on me. It takes me a beat to even begin to come up with a response, and still nothing seems quite right. “Lonely, you mean?” I finally offer.
“Yes,” she agrees.
“I’m not sure. I’ve never been in a relationship—not that you’re asking to be in a relationship with me, I know. I know you were just…” I trail off because I’m rambling like a twenty-year-old again. “Like I said a few weeks ago: I work a lot. I travel for work. I schedule everything in advance. I pay people to do things for me that I don’t have time to do myself. So, maybe this is what it’s like being with me.”
Olivia looks away from the phone and shifts her attention to the ceiling, which I know holds nothing interesting. Her mind is turning so quickly that I can practically see it in the way that she brings her thumbnail up to her teeth and bites down on the very tip.
“I’ll still pay you for that time,” I remind her, assuming that’s what she’s contemplating. “Even if you’re not…if we’re not—”
“Get over yourself. You think I’m upset because I was hoping for another ten grand out of you? I don’t just care about the money.”
“The alternative is that you’re going to miss me again,” I respond, hoping to lighten the mood. “We can’t have that.”
“Fine,” she says, clearly forcing herself to be cold. “You keep me at arm’s length, and I’ll just let you have your way with me. Let you degrade me. That’s all that this is, right?”
Good girl. That’s perfect—she doesn’t miss me; it’s the way I handle her body that she misses.
Because that’s all this can be. Just sex. If it turns into more, and I’ve paid this woman to fall for me, then I’ve really screwed myself over.
“You get it,” I say, trying to ignore the tight expression she wears.
“Apparently I do. But you know what? Thing that I don’t get is you,” she finally blurts out as she shakes her head at me.
“What’s not to get?”