Page 59 of Take Her

His words traveled over my skin like electricity, burning everywhere they touched, making me shiver and clench. “Understood,” I softly agreed.

He straightened back up with a nod. “Sounds like I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, then. Don’t wear any underwear,” he said, and walked off.

I masturbated like a fiend that night, because I was fucking turned on, but also in the hopes that I would get it all out of my system. I wanted to pretend to be sane at work the next day, and it was going to be hard. I knew I couldn’t just waltz into Rhaim’s office and expect to be fucked senseless...except...maybe? I laughed at myself after my fifth orgasm and stared at my ceiling, illuminated by my many gentle nightlights. I was breathless and sweaty, and I’d just about convinced myself to set my toys aside when my phone beeped.

Maybe Rhaim had figured out my phone number too...

Except it was another number I didn’t recognize.

We got off on the wrong foot.

We should go out for drinks sometime and get caught up.

I blinked and sobered, all the good my multiple-Os had done me washed away in a moment of panic before I realized that while it was still from an unknown number, it must’ve been from Freddie Junior.

And I would have drinks with him when hell froze over.

I decided to ignore the messages, and turned back to the business at hand, which was me, figuring out which setting on my Thunder 3000 would feel most like Rhaim plundering me.

25

RHAIM

Ionly had to glance at Lia once in the morning to know she’d done as she’d been told. Not because I could see any of her below her waist—she was already sitting behind her desk when I walked in—but by the way she sat a little straighter and her cheeks pinked.

She was a good girl—currently my good girl—and I needed to figure out the best course of action for keeping her.

I wasn’t exactly a campground individual, leaving people better than when I met them, but I had enough sense of self-preservation to know I ought to tread lightly. At least while we were starting this thing, especially with her history.

Only she didn’t really seem crazy to me, and I didn’t like that word besides—if killing people for money and occasionally for fun didn’t make me certifiable, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But I knew something had happened to her. It was written in the bones of her body and how she held herself, for anyone out there in the world like me to read.

And even if my plans to keep her for myself didn’t come to fruition, and I still had to give her to a fucking St. Clair—I had to do something about that, for her sake.

I didn’t want her to change who she was around me—I needed her to feel safe enough to tell me the truth at all times—but she wouldn’t last five minutes in a boardroom with the way her expressions flickered across her face like candlelight.

She was like one of those fancy pieces of fractured Japanese ceramics that were glued back together with gold to show how beautiful the imperfections could be.

Except I couldn’t use a precious metal with her—I needed to break her down into her component parts and rebuild her with steel. The way I desired. Give her space to be weak around me and only me, and create a creature capable of swimming in the depths of the ocean otherwise.

So the first thing I did in the morning once I reached my desk was open up several more drives for her to access and shot her a note to do a historical review of Corvo’s cashflow for generalized IPO audit-prep.

If I had an intern, I might as well make good use of her.

All of her.

Not just the parts of her beneath the tight gray pencil skirt—known to me now that I was in my office and could watch her moving about via my camera—that I lusted after.

I spent my whole day in there, trying to figure out our best plan of attack—and trying to figure out how I could determine which analyst at the New York Stock Exchange I could threaten or bribe into looking the other way when they were listing us. Corvo could handle its books being looked at for the past ten years. Prior to that...fuck Nero for ever thinking going public was a good idea.

Sometime during the day Lia put herself on my afternoon calendar as an appointment, and I groaned a little. We were going to have to talk about her propensity for doing that.

And at 4 p.m.—the exact same moment a calendar reminder hopped up onto my monitor—there was a knock on my office door.

“Come in,” I said, looking over.

She opened the door, but she didn’t cross the line between our offices, intentionally.

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