Page 2 of A Billionaire Dom

Davin

I ignored the “for lease”designation and pulled up the property information. One of the first things my grandfather had taught me about the family business was that just because something wasn’t listed as being for sale didn’t mean a negotiation couldn’t change things. Sometimes, it didn’t take much to convince an owner that selling was a better bargain than renting, but it was always best to go into all situations prepared for things to be difficult.

As the CFO of Holden Enterprises, the company’s money was my business. Eventually, I’d replace my father as the CEO, but having had accounting as my minor when I went to Columbia for my MBA meant that being installed as the Chief Financial Officer after Grandad retired had just made sense. More sense than Dad being in charge of the company’s finances.

I loved my father, but our relationship was…complicated. I knew my brothers thought Dad and I were close, but I sometimes wondered if Dad was ever close with anyone. Damon and Deklin saw only that our father and I worked long hours at the same business, not that we rarely talked about anything other than business

Even as a kid, one way or another, it’d always been about business. The grades I would need, the skills I had to master, the degree I was expected to earn. For as far back as I could remember, each time report cards came out, my brothers and I had been sat down with our parents to go over our grades and discuss the areas we might need help.

Mom had always been the one to work with my brothers while Dad had assigned himself to me. By the time I’d gotten to junior high, I’d pushed myself hard enough that Dad had let me stop our extra study and homework sections – as long as my grades hadn’t slipped.

I shook thoughts of the past out of my head. There was no point in dwelling on the past. I usually didn’t have a problem keeping my focus on the here and now, but for the last couple weeks, I’d found myself drawn back there, wondering at the path my life had taken and what would have been different if I’d stepped out of line at some point instead of always doing what was expected of me.

I’d deliberately made each decision that had led me to this point in my life, and I’d done it all with my eyes wide open. I wasn’t a weak person, manipulated into things I didn’t want to do. This was the life I’d chosen, no matter how I’d been groomed to take over the family business.

It wasn’t regret, exactly, that had me thinking about the past. Over the last few weeks, both of my brothers had completely turned their lives upside-down. The baby brother who’d only ever wanted to be a part of Holden Enterprises had defied our father’s wishes for a marriage to the daughter of a wealthy family friend and instead chosen a former Vegas showgirl with a four-year-old son as his fiancée. Going against Dad’s strict religious views, Deklin was moving Sofi and Dallas here to Houston to live with him before he and Sofi married.

Then there was Damon. He’d always done his own thing, pursuing a career in music even when Dad hadn’t approved, and eventually forming Holden, one of the biggest country bands in the last few years. Now, Holden was gone, having been dissolved after a car accident had left one band member dead and others injured. In the middle of all that, he’d met Jae Knox, a woman who’d made him re-evaluate everything.

That reminded me. I needed to talk to the PR department. Damon had called me this morning to tell me about a story that was in the process of breaking. Jae’s ex had attacked her at the store where she worked, and then he’d come after her at her apartment.

Damon had assured me that everyone was okay and that it was a clear-cut case of self-defense, but the paparazzi didn’t always like the truth if they could come up with a more sensational lie. Either way, the PR department needed to prepare a statement.

If we pretended nothing happened, chances were that someone would decide that meant we had something to hide. I’d intended to take care of it at lunch, but I’d gotten caught up in an article regarding new pricing trend predictions.

I picked up the phone and pulled out the notepad where I’d written down the information Damon had given me. Half the time, PR’s job was to correct misinformation since fact-checking stories before going to print seemed to have gone out the window nowadays.

I wasn’t even thirty yet, and I sounded like an old man, I realized.

At least the people Grandad had hired for public relations knew how to do their job and do it well. Less than fifteen minutes later, I was off the phone and satisfied that whatever the media threw at us, we could handle.

With that out of the way, I went back to my research regarding the commercial property I was going to recommend the company make an offer on. Rumor had it that a massive online retailer was looking for a new place to house their corporate offices, and Houston was on the shortlist.

The building had only a handful of companies already renting space, and I believed that a little rearranging would allow me to pitch a large enough portion of the building to accommodate the retailer. The current renters might be opposed to the idea at first, but I was confident I could put together an incentive package for each one that would eliminate any objections.

Someone knocked on my door, and I answered without looking their way. “Come in.”

I finished the last word in the sentence I’d been reading just as my door closed. Annoyed, I turned toward my visitor, ready with a reprimand regarding making assumptions about whether or not I wanted my door open…a reprimand that fell away when I realized the person standing in my office wasn’t an employee.

Willa Ross. Tall and slender, with short copper curls and light blue eyes, she was exquisite. She had flawless skin, with a peaches and cream complexion that I enjoyed leaving a mark on. A true masochist, she always begged for more.

But she had absolutely no right to be in my office.

“I thought you would like a surprise, Master.” Her voice was sultry. A voice that could make a man hard with just a few words.

I was too pissed at the impudence she demonstrated, coming here without my permission, to have any thought of arousal yet. She’d have to do better than that. I stood up and came around my desk to tower over her. Her heels put her just under six feet, but I was still taller.

“You decided, on your own, to show up at my place of business?”

She squirmed under my gaze, dropping her head and clasping her hands in front of her like she’d just remembered the proper sub position. Except I knew she hadn’t forgotten. Her training as a sub predated her coming to Euphoria, the BDSM club where we’d met, and I suspected she’d dabbled in the life before she’d even been old enough to get into a club.

Suspicion was all it was, though. I didn’t talk about myself, and I didn’t ask about them other than how it pertained to sex. Knowing they liked bondage or that they’d only been in the lifestyle for a year was important. Knowing that they’d lost their virginity to their high school sweetheart at sixteen was of no interest to me.

“Is my surprise the only present, or do you have something else to offer me?” I let my annoyance seep into every word.

Her hands were shaking as she untied the belt of her wrap-around dress, but I had been with her often enough to know that it was anticipation and desire, not fear, that affected her. As the dress slipped from her shoulders and pooled around her feet, I ran my gaze down her body.

The sheer teddy she had on under her dress revealed that she wore nothing else but her heels and her piercings. Two silver hoops in each ear matched the ones through each nipple and her bellybutton. Though from where I stood, I couldn’t see her clitoris piercing, I assumed it had a silver hoop as well since she usually matched her jewelry precisely.

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