Hold On

One

Marshall

I SWEAR I CAN STILL smell the sweet scent of her pussy.

From three hundred fucking miles away.

Jesus, what’s happening to me?

“Marshall.”

I hear the sound of my name, along with the click of snapping fingers, sounding much farther away than from across the conference table.

“Marshall. Fuck, are you with me, man?” My partner, Connor Craig, glares at me across the papers and file folders, open laptops that are in front of us, and I try to drag myself back to the moment.

“What?” I snap, adjusting myself because my misbehaving cock has a new, single-minded focus, and it’s not on the multi-million-dollar deal I’m trying to close.

He grabs the top of his head with both hands then raises them upward. “What?” His exasperation warranted. “We’re seeing the board of Newral AI in…” He checks his watch, a Vacheron Constantin that costs so much they don’t even tell you the price. “Less than an hour. And I still don’t know what the fuck they even do that’s different from the rest, let alone how we can get a big share of the pie if they go global.”

“When they go global, not if. A healthy share of Newral is going to make us another hundred million, conservative estimate.” I press the heels of my hands to my forehead. “Sorry. I’m focused, I swear.”

“You’re the magic deal maker, man. I can’t do this without you.”

He looks nervous, and I don’t blame him. The deal we’re about to make is potentially huge. We’ll be investing a lot, and they’ll be trying to leave without giving up too much control of their firm.

It’s a game of who blinks first, and I’m the champion player. Our firm will be taking a risk, as always, but Newral knows as well as I do, they have something that’s going to change the world. A few hours ago, this deal was all I could think about.

But that all changed when Emmy showed up at my door and turned my well-ordered world upside down.

She’s from the Ruff & Purr agency I use whenever I have to go away: house-sitting and pet care for my dog. They called last night to tell me my regular, Hank, was out with the flu, and they had to send someone new. I’m a hard-ass in the boardroom—shit, in most of my life—but when it comes to taking care of my dog, I spare no expense and take no chances.

Hank has been with me for years, coming to the house almost daily to walk and care for Buddha when I can’t be there. Which is most of the time. My schedule is busy as fuck, but I refuse to let my dog suffer because of my choices.

So, when the agency told me Hank was out on the eve of me going out of town, I was pissed. No way did I want someone new who I didn’t know and didn’t trust coming in at the eleventh hour. Besides, probably due to his rough start before he came to me, Buddha hates everyone. He tolerates Hank and likes me but doesn’t respect me, so finding a replacement that he wouldn’t rip to shreds at the last minute felt impossible.

I don’t like disorder, and I didn’t want to have to worry that someone new was screwing up the routine or not taking care of Buddha up to my standards, but given the circumstances I didn’t have much of a choice, so I told them to send over their best replacement early this morning so I’d have time to vet them in case it was a no-go and they needed to send someone else.

Well.

Fuck me running.

When I opened the door and saw that little redhead standing there with her hair in two long braids as she applied her cherry lip gloss, I nearly had a heart attack. For a second, I blinked thinking she was a Girl Scout about to fleece me for a hundred boxes of Thin Mints. She was barely up to my chest but I knew from buzzing her through the gate who she was but it took me a few breaths to get my shit together.

“Hi.” She waved at me and crinkled her nose, and my cock was instantly hard. “Sure is hot out today, isn’t it?” She said, standing there in the sunlight, and I felt like a monster…because she’s young.

Too young.

But I didn’t care. My dick sure didn’t care, either. And all I could think was, Jesus, I hope she’s legal.

Through gritted teeth, I invited her in, watching her ass moving under her white shorts and her tits filling out her tank top, stretching the service’s corporate logo out over them, making my mouth water.

Her stature reminded me of a little forest fairy but with curves that belong to the golden age of Hollywood.

“I’m Emmy,” she said—but not to me—in this little chirpy, sexy voice.