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“Um… well… it wasn’t so much he was good at it… he was just… intense. He was overwhelmingly intense. I don’t even know if I find him sexually attractive—I could never get past the look in his eyes.” Giggling a little in discomfort, I twirled a lock of my hair as all three of my sisters leaned into almost claustrophobic distance.
“I honestly can’t really answer. It wasn’t like he was the one that tied me up. But he was very dominating and stuff—which I don’t usually like, you know? But he didn’t make it feel bad.”
“And you guys didn’t talk a lot… like, get to know each other? That seems really awkward. What happened when you were done?” It was pretty crazy the kind of things I shared with my sisters and vice versa, and I shook my head slightly.
“He told me he’d get a cab to the airport the next morning and left. There was nothing else—he just put his pants back on and walked out.”
“What the Hell—he didn’t even take all of his clothes off?” Shock trickled from Kelly’s tone, and I nodded quietly as she stared at me under deeply furrowed brows. “Maybe he got scared? I mean, you said on the phone that you were in rough shape. Maybe he thought he went too far, you know? After all, you two don’t know each other, and that’s important, right?”
“Yeah, it is… I don’t know. Maybe.” My own thoughtfulness leaked into my voice, and I sighed heavily as my mind almost desperately tried to reconstruct Anthony’s expression.
But all I could find were blurred lines and fuzzy colors.
Chapter 8
Anthony
Swiping my palm down my face, I held back a groan as I leaned in my chair, and a sigh burst from my throat to billow up to the ceiling. The silence of my office rang in my ears, and I couldn’t fucking stand it.
“You looked stressed and unhappy…” Hailey’s phantom words trilled in my head, and I sucked in a sharp breath that whistled in the quiet. “I wasn’t judging you or anything…”
“You should judge me—” Murmuring to myself, I held my breath and closed my eyes to picture Hailey’s sweaty, rope-burn red body. Even now, two weeks after leaving, I could still picture the exact curve of bright red lines that marred her skin; I could see the glistening of her sweat beading down her thighs as sharply as if she was right in front of me.
If you knew the true extent of how much I hated myself, you would judge me.
“Mr. Richards, I’m going home for the night.” Popping his head in the door, Bryce offered me a wave as I nodded dully. If he noticed the dark cloud hanging above my head, he didn’t say anything before disappearing. He was always the last to leave, and I listened to his retreating footfall with a growing sense of roiling annoyance and hardening heartbeats.
A soft ping caught my attention, and I reached to snatch my phone off the glass desktop with a deep frown. Ophelia’s face popped up, and my frown twisted into a grimace as I scanned her text through narrowed eyes.
Ophelia: Do you want to come over? Relieve some stress from a long work week?
She was irritatingly persistent, and I didn’t bother replying to her message as I had all the others. Ophelia had her eye on me ever since my father dropped his lifelong success in my lap, but I had never found her even remotely attractive. She talked too much, had a primp, inflated sense of self, and she wore too much makeup most of the time.
Exactly the opposite of Hailey.
Groaning softly at the comparison, I flopped forward to turn off my computer using the Power Button and grabbing my briefcase off the floor under the desk. Pushing myself from my chair, my legs carried me stiffly out of my office and towards the elevator. Jabbing the ‘down’ button with my thumb, I glanced back at the rows and rows of cubicles that sat abandoned for the weekend. Yearning slithered around my heart, and I leaned on the wall as my thoughts ran wild.
Memories of college, of my internship at a realty group that covered the country, filled my mind’s eye. Once, I had been the one in the cube farm, answering to a boss I felt was a little too strict. At one point, I was the unpaid intern that raced around doing menial, sometimes degrading tasks that no one else wanted to do.
And my father absolutely despised me for choosing the path I had.
More than once, my dad had barged into my boss’s office to demand I be paid more—have more reasonable realtor responsibilities—do something other than get coffee and fetch shit from the printer. ‘Do you know who I am’ he’d asked, going on and on about how he had so-and-so connections and being an all-around asshole.
My boss at the time told my father to go fuck himself, and my 21 year old self was in total awe.
Now, especially, I was glad for those four years during college and two after graduating that my boss had been such a hardass on me. I couldn’t even remember his name, but his lessons were branded deep into my brain.
Don’t make someone do something just because.
Always prove your gratitude.
Don’t fuck with your employee’s personal lives.
When in doubt, fire, fire, fire.
Those rules applied to life in general, and my entire work ethic revolved around them. They were the exact opposite standards my father held me to; he thought that paying people meant he owned them. He thought that his wealth and power made him invincible, and everyone should bow to his will.
“You look unhappy.” Blinking hard at that recurring thought, I turned back to the elevator just as the doors gave a loud clunk before rolling open. Stepping into the box, my muscles tightened at the almost claustrophobic sensation that washed over me. My thoughts scrawled across the mirrored walls of the elevator, and I pressed the ‘GF’ button with a grimace twisting my lips.
