Jesus, what a dream.
I’d never had one that vivid before, or where I’d come like a damn freight train, or come at all for that matter.
I needed that.
Wanted desperately to have the real thing.
Blinking at my bedside clock, I frowned at the glowing blue numbers staring back at me. A little past three a.m. It was a bizarre time to send an email to human resources, but I didn’t want to wait another minute. Grabbing my cell, I blasted off a reply to the letter HR had sent me, a yes, and promised that I’d be in the office tomorrow to do all the paperwork. Considering I was exhausted from the most intense wet dream of my life and thoughts of Brandon from earlier, I hoped that I hadn’t sent off something full of typos. When Brandon Duncan entered the equation, I couldn’t even think straight.
Maybe I didn’t want to.
And that was the scariest and most thrilling part of it all.
Chapter Four
Brandon
I knew she’d be back.
There wasn’t a woman on Earth who’d turned me down yet. Granted, things had gone to hell with Melanie, my first wife, but she’d said yes in college eagerly to our first date. I had women with wet panties the moment I entered the room. Hell, sometimes I had them ready to drop them the moment I whispered in their ears. I liked it that way; craved it. So, when Selena came back to the publishing house the next day, I was far from shocked. But I also had a plan. I wanted to get to know her better. Yes, it was a dick move to date my daughter’s friend. Yes, I’d worked hard to rebuild my relationship with Tammy. At the same time, I hadn’t stopped thinking about Selena, about her tongue tangling with mine, in three days. Sometimes, I needed to explore things for myself.
Besides, it wouldn’t hurt Tammy if she never found out.
Yes, I knew I was a selfish bastard, but that had been my brand for over twenty years. Being a prick had gotten me this far in life, and it was bound to get me more of what I wanted in the future. Right now, what I desired was one Selena Cole, and I was going to have her too.
For the first day or so, I’d let her have space. Becky, one of Swagger’s top editors, was nominally her boss. However, I’d arranged for something special today. Even if she were an intern, serving a slot intended for coffee runs and other assistant work no one usually wanted, I’d pulled strings to get her a front row seat covering a Vera Wang dress show. It would be a great start to her bylines as a fashion writer but, of course, she’d have to be appropriately dressed for the part.
That was what my personal assistant, Gina, was supposed to be doing. I took the elevator down a few floors and snaked my way through Swagger’s offices until I came to the samples room. We received a lot of additional merchandise and test items in the hopes we’d be written up. Beside the samples’ area was a set of dressing rooms set aside for when one of the staff had to write an evaluation of a product and try it on for themselves first.
It wasn’t exactly filled with free giveaway items now. Oh no. I’d called in a personal favor from Vera and had a collection of her newest line sent over. If I was going to take Selena tonight to the show, then the intern needed to look the part. Besides, I knew how to get any woman to open up to me. She hadn’t come by my office or tried to speak to me since the interview. I knew I was worming myself into her good graces at least somewhat, or she never would have taken the job. But I still had to get through all those good girl defenses, and I intended to do that right now.
As I strode into the room, Gina glanced up at me. “Boss, what are you doing here? I thought you had work to do to prep for the Orbit merger.”
“Even I need a break sometimes, Gina.”
She frowned. “Since when?”
“Since I decided that life is too short, and I’ve been ignoring some of the needs of Swagger lately. Now, how’s Miss Cole doing trying on her outfits? Were they sufficient to her needs for the runway show tonight?”
“She’s trying them on now so yes, they seem to work,” Gina said, regarding me with a probing glance.
I straightened my shoulders and stood taller. “That’s good then. You can leave us now.”
She eyed the corner where the small cubicles were arranged like any fitting room store in a mall. “Do I want to know?”
“I pay you to be discreet so you can guess, but you never have to know.”
She snorted but headed to the door. “You’re right; it’s better if I don’t.”
“That plausible deniability is a wonderful thing,” I conceded.
When Gina was gone, I made my way over to the fitting space furthest to the right of the three set up. It was the only one with drawn curtains; ones that tended to move as Selena shifted behind them. I slid in behind the curtains. She was only in her underwear, a dark lace bra and panties set that already had my dick hard and blood rushing anywhere that wasn’t my brain. When I stepped through, she jumped back, pinning herself against the mirror.
“What are you doing in here, Mr. Duncan?”
I grinned; a slow, controlled gesture—the same look I gave CEOs in the boardroom before I bought out their companies. Before I owned them utterly.
“It’s Brandon. I think we don’t need to rely on formality between us, do we?”