Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 78249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Another email notification made me jump. This time it was from Orion:
Miss Hartwell,
I trust you made it home safely. While reviewing some files, I found myself thinking about our conversation on the terrace.
Regards,
O. Foster
I bit my lip, heart racing. Even his most innocent emails carried weight now. But before I could reply, my phone started ringing.
Cole.
I stared at his name on my screen, remembering how he'd looked at me at the gala. There had been something predatory in his eyes, something that said he knew exactly what game I was playing.
"Enough," I whispered, then blocked his number.
It wouldn't solve anything. He'd find other ways to contact me. But for tonight, I just wanted to reply to Orion's email and pretend, just for a little while, that everything was simple.
That I deserved the way he looked at me.
That I wasn't going to end up hurting people I cared about.
I opened my laptop and started typing:
Mr. Foster,
I've been thinking about our conversation too. There's something I need to tell you. Maybe tomorrow?
-E
P.S. Davenport wants to meet tomorrow. I think something's happening.
I hit send before I could overthink it, then got up to change. As I unzipped my dress, I caught my reflection in the mirror—cheeks flushed, eyes bright, lips slightly swollen from biting them too much.
I looked like a woman in love.
"Well, shit," I told my reflection. "That wasn't supposed to happen."
My laptop chimed again. Another email from Orion. This one was a different flavor entirely.
Miss Hartwell,
While I appreciate your reply, I'm not sure you understood the assignment presented by my previous email. Please reply as soon as you've completed the task.
Regards,
O. Foster
I smiled to myself. Maybe things were far more complicated than they needed to be. Maybe I had a mess to untangle... But I did know exactly what this email meant and what he wanted from me.
I noticed Catman watching me and made a shoo gesture. "Look away, Catman."
I could have sworn he rolled his eye at me before strolling over to his food bowl to noisily eat.
With one more look at Orion's email, I slipped under the blankets on my couch. I didn't want to disappoint my boss, so with my dress still pooled on the floor and wearing nothing but my underwear, I reached between my legs and got to work for Orion.
I really did love this job in more ways than one.
25
ORION
"Sir? The quarterly projections you asked for."
I looked up to find my assistant hovering nervously in my doorway, clutching a folder. Behind him, I could see Ember at her desk, laughing at something on her phone. Her head was tilted back, exposing the elegant line of her throat. An irrational, stupid part of me wanted to kiss her there—to know if she would moan softly and arch into the gesture, or if she would thread her fingers through my hair, pulling me in.
I forced my attention back to the nervous man before me. "Thank you, Daniel."
"You remembered my name, Sir," he said, smiling brightly.
"Uh, of course I did... You've been my assistant for weeks."
"Right," he said, still looking immensely pleased with himself as he slipped out of my office.
I had a nearly photographic memory and never forgot a name or a face, but I may have been guilty of making employees believe I didn't know who they were. It was a tactic to make them want to earn my approval and also let them know they were on thin ice to start.
The practice had never struck me as immoral or cruel, but now…
I closed my desk drawer a little harder than necessary and straightened my tie.
Now I found myself thinking about how Daniel had photos of three cats on his desk or how happy it seemed to make him when he thought I had finally learned his name. I couldn’t help wondering if this was all part of the virus of… feelings Ember seemed to be infecting me with. As soon as I admitted to myself I may have enjoyed aspects of our relationship—if that was the right word—it was like the floodgates had opened.
Things I wouldn’t have batted an eye at were standing out to me as mean or unfair. Most inconvenient of all, perhaps, was that my employees had started to seem more like people to me. Tools were easy to manipulate, use, abuse, or forget about entirely if necessary. People, though?
Not so much.
This was all Ember’s doing, and I couldn’t even fully convince myself the changes were negative. Yes, it was harder to be objective about what was purely best for the bottom line with this kind of thinking, but it wasn’t entirely without benefit. Just the other day, I had made a comment to a woman named Lilian. I noticed she seemed frustrated on my way to my office.
Instead of mentally noting the negative mental state and subsequent lack of productivity, I stopped by her desk and saw she was struggling with a simple feature in our custom spreadsheet software. I was able to show her how to fix her problem in less than a minute, and I had to admit it had felt… good. What was more, she had gone on to have a highly productive day. I even noticed her brightening other people’s moods throughout the day.