“Why? In case you already have your filthy hand down your pants over sweet little Faith Martin?” she snapped right back.
I stared over at my delightful office manager, wondering yet again why I still put up with her ceaseless bitching after all these years.
“I haven’t got my hand down my pants over Faith Martin,” I grunted, and turned my attention back to my monitor screen. “Give me some fucking credit at least.”
“Like there’s any credit due,” she hissed and dropped a fresh pile of paperwork in front of me. More invoices to sign off.
I shoved them aside. “And what do you have her doing on her first day? Something worthwhile, yes?”
She leaned over the desk with a raised eyebrow. “None of your business since she’s my trainee.”
I grabbed her wrist before she pulled away. “It’s every bit my fucking business, Erica, considering she’s Faith Martin. You’d best not have her in the fucking filing room.”
She tugged her arm free. “Everyone starts with the filing in life, Miles. She’s not some special princess just because you read her bedtime stories way back when and her daddy works for the company.”
I took a breath. “You get her out of the filing room now. I mean it.”
“No,” she snapped. “She’ll be out of the filing room when I deem she’s shown enough application to deserve it.”
“I mean it,” I said again, but she was already on her heel like the bitch she was. She flipped me the finger before slamming the door closed behind her.
How we ever managed this shitter of a setup I’ll never know. Hard work and a lot of deep fucking breaths, I suppose. That and a whole load of fake smiles in other people’s professional company.
Once upon a very long time ago, Erica Tate and I had made some semblance of a decent partnership. A decent pairing of headstrong personalities, both in the office and in the bedroom. Never so much over the dining room table, but you can’t win ’em fucking all. These days we were nothing but a counterbalance to our opposing bullishness and an acceptance of each other’s shitty qualities.
She was still here, in the business, because she was good at her job. No arguing that. She was capable, certainly, but there was more to it than professional competence.
Erica was my office manager because her raised eyebrow and bitter scowl kept me in line where my morals didn’t. She was my office manager because she knew enough of my filthy ways to buffer me out of interviews and sieve out all the pretty little sweethearts before hiring.
There were always so many temptations to shield from me. So many fluttering eyelashes and cute little smiles calling out to feel my filth. So many innocent little ladies just begging for corruption.
Yet never, in all my years battling the bait, had there ever been a temptation so potent as my little Faith on her sixteenth birthday, dressed up so pretty in pink with her dainty fingers strumming so softly, so fucking sweetly, so fucking quickly between her legs.
My stomach lurched at the thought, even as my dick pulsed.
And now little Faith was older. Just enough older that those sweet curves had matured, turning her even further into a little blonde siren.
Fucking hell, she was a little blonde siren today.
I tried to turn my attention to the pile of invoices, occupying my wrist with the flourish of my signature as opposed to a round of jerking under the desk, but my mind was firmly engaged on the girl.
For almost two full years I’d been keeping my distance from the Martin household, avoiding the little angel who’d come to mean so much to me as I watched her grow. Her young school days with her so eager to learn her arithmetic. Her ditsy little performances in the yearly nativity play. Her little face lighting up when I’d presented her with the fluffy little stinker of a kitten she’d been wanting so hard for months.
That day in her backyard it was me she’d wanted so hard.
There was no denying it. No skirting it. No amount of lying to myself that would undo the knowing.
I’d seen it in that mischievous little pant of hers. The shame in her eyes, knowing what a naughty girl she was for wanting her daddy’s filthy, dirty boss inside her tight little pussy.
She was such a naughty little girl. Such a naughty little girl who needed to learn her lesson.
Hell, there were plenty of lessons I wanted to show her.
I pushed myself back in my seat and gritted my teeth. I wasn’t doing it. Not this time.
I wasn’t going to give into my own filthy fucking nature and corrupt that little girl, not for anything.
When Colin had approached me about Faith doing her summer training job here, in our antiques and salerooms side of the business, I’d initially said I didn’t have the capacity for it. I said we were busy. Unable to offer her the value she deserved from a placement.