The Boss (The Boss 1)

I shook my head. “Mr. Elwood seems pretty smart. I mean, he’s run all those other magazines—”

Jake cut me off with a condescending laugh. His teeth were so straight and white. He was like a snake wearing dentures. “Yeah, car magazines? Housewife stuff, tabloids. He doesn’t know the first thing about what he’s gotten into here, and he’s already pissed off a lot of the makeup artists doing the shoots for February’s issue. They have to use only cruelty free products.”

“Same edict for the beauty department, too,” I pointed out. “So, you think it’s his daughter behind all this?”

“Oh, most definitely.” We’d come to a stand still in traffic, and he looked out his window, as if he would be able to see the cause of the hold up ahead. Distractedly, he added, “Oh, you’ll like this. His business partner, Valerie Stern? Emma’s mother. Apparently, Elwood can’t keep it in his pants at work and has to give out companies like hard candy to cover up his mistakes. But seriously, you didn’t hear all this from me.”

I hadn’t, so it was easy to cross my heart and promise, “You didn’t tell me any of this.”

My phone vibrated again. “Hang on, maybe it can’t really wait.”

I pretended to look concerned while I read: If we were alone together right now, I would push you over my desk, wrap that cute little ponytail around my fist, and pull your hair while I fucked you.

I cleared my throat and checked out the window. The traffic was still snarled. I eyed the sidewalk on the other side of the street. “Um. I guess it’s kind of an emergency. I should get back.”

“In beauty?” I was beginning to really hate Jake’s derisive laugh. “Do you guys even have emergencies there?”

“When lip gloss calls,” I offered apologetically. I wasn’t running back to the office to have sex with Neil. That just wasn’t a smart idea, and the last time we’d done anything there it had been a disaster. But I couldn’t sit and listen to Jake’s bullshit for another second without screaming and ripping out my hair. “I can’t screw this up right now. You understand, right? Here, let me give you ten for the cab—”

“No way, no way,” Jake said. Never once, in our entire office friendship, had he let me pay my share of anything. Because female dollars are apparently worth less than male dollars. “Go get your eye shadow emergency under control.”

Ignoring the driver’s protest, I got out of the cab on the left when the opposing traffic let up, and darted across the lanes to the sidewalk. I hurried back in the direction of our building, and when I knew I was out of Jake’s line of sight, I ducked into a Starbucks and ordered a skim-milk latte and one of their plastic-wrapped sandwiches. While I waited, I checked my phone and considered Neil’s last message.

Even though what he was saying to me was pretty tame compared to what we had been getting up to in private, seeing those words on my phone’s screen had the same effect on me as if he’d whispered them in my ear. My pulse pounded in my clit, and I knew my panties would be sopping if I kept thinking about this. Still, I thought I should probably say something back.

And then I would get on my knees and suck the taste of my pussy off your cock, I typed, hoping none of the other customers would peek at my screen. I mean, if they did, it was their own fault if they got a shock. They shouldn’t be reading over a stranger’s shoulder, anyway.

I hit send, then grinned to myself and started a new message: I’d suck you off until you exploded, then I’d swallow your cum. Maybe I would use your little platinum friend on you while I did it.

There, that should have done it.

I got my order and headed back to the office. I figured my cover story was safe, since the department had been on the edge of crisis ever since my very first day. I walked through reception, shooting a casual glance at the glass doors to Neil’s office. Rats. He wasn’t where I could see him. Deja looked up, and I waved with the three fingers I could spare while still carrying my lunch.

I’d just settled in at my desk— okay, not my desk, a corner of a worktable that had been designated as my desk— when a new text came in. I grinned to myself. It was just one word: Jesus.

* * * *

At around nine o’clock that night, my phone rang. It was Neil.

Shamefully, I had given him his own ringtone, Feist’s “Leisure Suite.” The sexy bossa nova beat purred from my phone’s speaker, and I scrambled to answer it, moving from the living room to my bedroom and closing the door behind me.