Daddy: A Billionaire Baby Romance Page 3

  He held my stare for a long time, but I couldn’t read anything on his face before he spoke. “You know that list I gave you was for the whole week. Well, what I thought you’d last of it.”

  “Good,” I said far more bravely than I felt. “Then we’re ahead of schedule. This will just give us more time to prepare for the coming corner.” He was still staring at me and I didn’t know if I wanted to run, or hide, or slug him in the face. “So, shall I head down to the meeting now, or might I have a break until then?”

  He blinked at me and that’s when I figured it out. He was surprised! I had really managed to take him off guard. That was definitely something else. I wasn’t used to being able to shock a man who ran his own empire.

  “You may have a break.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” I said, tipping my head before walking out.

  But as I did exit, I did so with squared shoulders. It was hard not to feel like the cat that got the canary, satisfaction running through my veins. Because I knew that I had been able to do what no one had in quite possibly a long, long while.

  I’d gotten him off center. And business guys like that, whose entire lives depending on them being in control… well, it made me feel powerful. Like I was his equal instead of just some little underling that fetched his coffee and organized his life.

  Still, I knew I was playing a dangerous game. With men like him, it was better to fly under the radar, yet I had just challenged him straight to his face.

  I guess I just had to hope he didn’t hold it against me.

  Fitz

  My new assistant was something else.

  That was the thought that kept swirling through my head every day, almost every hour I was at work. We were at the start of our third week together and she was far and away the best assistant that I could have ever asked for.

  No matter what I asked her to do, she did it promptly and efficiently. She never huffed, she never whined, apparently, she didn’t even complain to other workers. She just looked forward with those determined eyes of her and then boom, the task was done.

  I knew that I was pushing her a bit harder than any other assistant, but it didn’t even seem to ruffle her. And I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I so desperately wanted to see her ruffled. To see that tense, impenetrable way she held herself crumble and break until whatever was hiding under it was revealed.

  I guess I was too used to seeing through people, to having them posture or break in my presence. But with her… to her I just seemed like another stimuli that didn’t affect her day beyond setting her schedule.

  “Sir, did you want me to organize these by date, price or client?”

  Her voice, low and a bit raspy, like a jazz singer in some sort of smoky lounge, called my attention back to her. Not that it had strayed at all, but I had been forcing myself to stare at my computer instead of at her.

  Because God, did she make a vision at the moment.

  She was sitting on a small stool in front of my drafting table, receipts spread all across the flat surface. The circumference of her seat wasn’t anywhere big enough for her round, lush ass, so most of her was hanging off in that plaid pencil skirt she was wearing. I could easily imagine myself grabbing all that excess with both my hands, my fingers sinking into that sinful softness until there wasn’t anymore left. Leaving red marks, maybe a light bruise or two. Nothing to hurt, just little marks that were proof I had been there.

  “Make a separate spreadsheet for each one then forward it to budgeting.”

  In truth, I didn’t need her to all three. Any order would have sufficed. But the fact that she even thought to ask proved she was so much different than any of the other ones.

  And if it kept her in my office a bit longer, then oh well.

  That was another development as of late.

  Her first week I had her running so ragged I normally only ever saw her at the beginning and end of each day. It wasn’t until her second week, when she had retorted back to me when I least expected it that I started to have her do chores that kept her around. If she noticed, she said nothing. But then again, she rarely said anything unless it was directly pertaining to the job.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ah. And there was that again. Sir. It was just an honorific, sure. But not the way she said it. The way those full lips curled around the word should have been a sin. The first time she’d let it drop from her lips I’d been tempted to turn right there and press my mouth to those tempting lips before they could utter anything else.

  But that wouldn’t be appropriate, and I hadn’t spent my life building up my own empire just to lose it to some nobody assistant. I was probably just hard up. I’d been so busy with the next phase of my plan for GSME that I hadn’t even had time for a one-night stand lately. And now… well, it just didn’t seem like that satisfying of an idea.

  “Sir?”

  Her voice again. She was speaking without being asked something, a rarity. For a moment my mind hoped that something wanton would tumble from her mouth, but instead it was just more questions.

  “This receipt right here, it was for a steak house.”

  “Yes?” I said flatly. I had learned not to question whenever she spoke out of turn. For having a voice that could convince Dionysus to go sober, she certainly kept her tongue pressed to her cheek.

  “According to your log, this was for a creative team you were trying to woo. The Squib-Squad?”

  “Yes. They’re a popular stunt-”

  “I know who they are,” she said quickly, cutting me off. I raised my eyebrow at that, but she wasn’t facing me. I did see her shoulders raise, no doubt sensing that she had done wrong. I liked that about her. That she stuck so firmly to the rules that even such a little infraction like interrupting me made her feel like she had done something wrong.

  If that had her tensing, what would bending her over my desk, telling her all the things I could do for her…

  “One of their members is vegetarian, and the other is Indian. They talk a lot about their backgrounds in their behind the scenes video.”

  I continued to stare at her a moment, distracted by that glorious ass. At my silence, she turned slowly, looking at me like she couldn’t understand what I wasn’t getting.

  “Sir, you took a vegetarian and a practicing Hindu to a restaurant where the only thing they could eat was a side. Is it any wonder they declined any further communications?”

  Oh.

  My eyes went wide at that. How could my talent division have let that slip by? Sure, I picked out who I thought would be profitable to court and bring into our media empire, but they were the ones who were supposed to gather the intel and make the arrangements. Things like allergies, diet restrictions and religious choices were all supposed to be taken into consideration.

  “I can’t believe you caught that,” I said, unable to think of anything else at the moment.

  Because I really was gobsmacked. It happened so rarely, but this girl was just… something else.

  She met my challenges like no one else. Challenges that I didn’t even know I was setting. All I had asked her to do was organize some receipts, so she could be eye candy in my presence and she was spotting one of the major disappointing losses we’d had last quarter. She was so… relentless.

  I’d never met someone with a work ethic and drive to match mine. She was like a monolith, or a train that couldn’t be stopped. She just kept going, and going, smashing anything that dared to stand in her path.

  And dear Lord, I wanted to conquer her.

  I’d had women -and some men- fall over me my entire life. Sure, some employed different tactics like playing hard to get, or other games, but none of them had interested me beyond the occasional roll in the hay.

  But this woman, she was something else entirely.

  She was strength, and she was beautiful, and she so clearly didn’t seem to care about my existence at all. I wasn’t used to being ignored. To being treated like nothing more than a check po
int for her next task, and it made me burn with the urge to make her notice me.

  “I’m going to cross reference these with the files we have on acquisitions that didn’t go through,” she said, standing. “See if there are any other missed opportunities.”

  But as she stood, her momentum caused a few of the receipts to gently lilt to the floor, like little autumn leaves covered in ink and bribery.

  She let out the tiniest little huff, one I could barely hear, then bent over and snatched them up. But the sight of her doubled over, those perfect cheeks straining against the fabric of her bottom, had my body reacting viscerally.

  I grabbed onto the armrest of my chair, my dick practically leaping to life as my eyes drank all of her in. So soft, so abundant. She was everything I loved about the feminine form but dialed up to eleven.

  She stood, turning towards the door and I whipped my body back towards my computer. What the hell was wrong with me? She was just a peon -sure, a great peon, but a peon nonetheless. There were literally millions of women who didn’t work for me, so why was I allowing myself to practically pine over an assistant?

  If she had any hint of my state, she didn’t indicate it. She simply crossed the room to grab her laptop from her bag that she had left on the coat hanger by the door. Despite her measured, practice steps, my peripheral vision didn’t miss the slight jiggle that passed along her thighs, middle and then breasts as she moved.

  Suddenly it was all too much. Standing while her back was still turned, I strode to my private bathroom in a couple of easy strides.

  “I’m craving Mexican for lunch,” I said safely from behind the door. “Go pick up my usual order then come back for the receipts.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Of course, she didn’t object that she had no idea what my usual order was. And I had no doubt that she would somehow find out. I just listened for the sound of her leaving then let out a long breath.

  She had suddenly been too much, too present for me and I wasn’t used to that sensation. I wasn’t the type of guy who had to leave a room because of someone else, but that was exactly what had happened. And even with her gone, my lower half was still reacting to her like she was Aphrodite herself.

  “Dammit, down boy,” I hissed at my insistent length. It was starting to get uncomfortable with how hard it was pressing into the zipper of my pants, the friction reminding me of what I wanted but not strong or slick enough to provide any relief. I breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth, thinking of business and acquisitions and even traffic, but nothing was working.

  Probably because no matter what my mind tried to flick to, my assistant was there in the background. What would it look like if I pulled that raven hair out of its perfect bun that she always kept it in? Kissed her so hard that her cheeks colored pink with breathlessness? Let my fingers trail along that pale, porcelain skin until I mapped out every single bit of her?

  Acknowledging those thoughts made me groan and I pressed the palm of my hand against myself, searching for some sort of pressure to get some relief. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing seemed like enough, and the next thing I knew, I was undressing and heading straight towards the shower.

  There were perks to being the owner of a successful media company, and one of them was having a full, luxurious bathroom to my own adjacent to my office. While I had never been poor, my family always having been at least upper middle class, I’d always had to share a bathroom with all of my brothers. All of us going through puberty right after the other had certainly been a trial, so now I was more than a little appreciative of my own space.

  I wouldn’t allow myself to grip my hard on like I wanted. I was determined to just take a cold shower and forget about my momentary loss of control. It was just because it had been so long since I’d taken time for myself to enjoy the company of someone else and I was a little hard up.

  Yeah, that was it.

  But instead of flipping it to the coldest setting, my traitor body turned the dial to its usual spot and warm, comforting water washed over me.

  Control was everything to me. It was what let me build my empire. Let me tackle surprises and pitfalls as they came. If I didn’t have control, then it would be oh, so easy for everything to spin away from me in a mess of release dates, talent acquisition and spreadsheets.

  Despite knowing all that, despite the irritation I felt running through me, my thick fingers were soon wrapped around myself, applying pressure and shuttling back and forth.

  God, it felt good. My tip was already leaking, and it was all too easy to imagine that the hand wasn’t my own. No, it was my assistant’s, with her burgundy painted nails and small, talented fingers. I could see her so easily, kneeling in the shower, the water pouring down her thick, dark hair, those green eyes staring up at me all wide and innocent instead of calculated and measured.

  The thought was intoxicating, rolling over me until I was thoroughly drunk on the idea. My imagination cooked up what kind of sounds she would make, trying each one on like a different outfit.

  Would she moan outright? No, I would have to work hard to get that kind of sound out of her. Would she whimper, her mouth so full of me that only plaintive little whines came out?

  I throbbed in my own hand with that thought.

  “Yeah, we’ll go with that,” I gasped to no one but the shower hand.

  I’d never been so enraptured by a fantasy, focusing on every detail of her that my mind could conjure up. I was so deep in it, I didn’t realize how close I was until I spilled all over my own hand, leaving me gasping and leaning back against the shower wall.

  Shit.

  I stood there, breathless and boneless, shaken by the intensity of what I had just felt. Somehow, I managed to turn off the rush of water, but my hands felt like they belonged to someone else. Someone who hadn’t just masturbated their soul out of their dick. What the hell was wrong with me?

  I stared at the wall, trying to bring my brain back to business. How long had I even been in the shower, fantasizing about an employee like an idiot?

  “Sir? Mr. Fitzgerald?” Speak of the devil, it was my assistant’s voice coming from the other side. “I have your lunch. Would you like me to place it on your desk?”

  Just hearing her voice was enough to put me back on edge. Suddenly I was very done being the coward. We were in my office and she was in my space. I wouldn’t let her chase me out of it like I was scared of cooties.

  Wrapping a towel around my waist, I strode to the bathroom door and opened it. She clearly heard me, turning to the sound, but the look of shock on her face as she saw me was everything I hoped for and more.

  I was perfectly covered from the waist down. Nothing improper, unless shins were suddenly an erogenous zone I hadn’t heard about. But one wouldn’t have been able to guess that by her expression. Those green eyes went wide, and her cheeks flushed red, giving my masturbatory fantasy real world details to fill in the blank.

  “Do me a favor and set it all out for me. They always have it way too hot at first to make sure it doesn’t get cold and soggy on the trip.”

  I watched as her eyes roved over me, categorizing every single detail about me the same way I had seen her deconstruct so many other things. It was like her brain was sorting me, storing away enough stimuli to make the red in her cheeks spread to the rest of her face.

  “I didn’t know there was a full bathroom in there,” she said finally, that small, pink tongue of hers coming out to run along her lower lip with nerves.

  That alone almost was my undoing and I flashed her a smile. “There are a lot of things about GSME I’m sure you don’t know,” I said before closing the door once again.

  Sure, a shower in the middle of the day was strange, but it had certainly revealed some interesting things. Such as that my assistant was indeed human and wasn’t impervious to my presence. She was just very good at keeping all of that behind her professional mask.

  I couldn’t help but smile
as I went about fully drying myself. I’d been so caught up in reveling in how she kept rising to all my challenges that I had missed the greater picture in front of me. Which was exactly how much she could be a challenge for me.

  It could be a bit like a game of chess between the two of us, always watching, always figuring out the best move or strategy. I could see the game stretching out before us in a long, twisting and entirely too fun test.

  But that in turn just made me wonder how much I could get away with before she even realized what kind of game she was playing.

  Beverly

  “Morning, Bev!”

  “Morning, Sharon!” I called back to the front receptionist as I headed towards the elevator that would take me up to Mr. Fitzgerald’s office.

  Somehow, we were reaching the end of my third week with the CEO and I was feeling fairly confident that I was going to hit my one-month mark. Even though things had gotten a little… weird.

  I hit the call button for the elevator, relaxed as it took its time descending. I always arrived at work twenty minutes early so I could miss the lift-madness as everyone tried to get up to their floors. After my first two days in the office I had learned that waking up a little earlier was worth it if it meant missing out on the stressful crush. Avoiding stress before I sat at my desk was key to having an efficient day.

  “Oh, hey there, Bev. You’re here early.”

  I looked up to see Chris and another mid-level manager, both of them holding bagels that looked absolutely delicious. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten breakfast, but I had a cereal bar in my purse that could be eaten once I had my agenda for the day.

  “I’m always here at this time,” I said casually. “You’re the ones that are early.”