Page 11 of Royal Bosshole

When I was coughing, I didn’t have to answer her.

* * *

JAMES

I turned up the speed on the treadmill, feeling a little bit better when I started sprinting. I liked the way my muscles pulled, stretched, and worked. They burned, but I craved it, wanted that pain. Exercise had always been the best medicine for me for any ailment. Maybe it wouldn’t help me almost losing a country, but it was pretty good for other things.

After my time in the military, I missed exercise like mad. In that rigid, logical structure, there was constant exercise, constant preparation. It definitely worked for my personality. So now, a few years out of the military, I did what I needed to do to keep in shape.

One other thing it also helped with was sexual frustration. I was sexually frustrated, and I didn't know why. I'd never had that problem before. Women were usually easy to charm, I guess. So, if I ever wanted some, I could find it. I just didn’t really have the urge to take it that far.

I knew there was any number of women in my call list who I could text for a booty call if I really wanted one. Especially Sandy. Not that I was ever getting back intothatsituation. Unfortunately, self-righteous, small business-minded Lily stuck in my head. We’d spent the whole day together, and I thought I had spent my time telling her about the office and what her duties would be, but I honestly couldn’t remember. It was like a blur.

I remembered my mouth moving, but my brain had only been thinking about her, especially after the way she’d talked back to me. She wanted to keep her business and her recipe close to the chest. I was okay with that. For now. It just meant she’d be harder to crack than I thought. But I was surprisingly relaxed about the whole thing. During the day, I had been focused on the way her gray eyes flicked over everyone and everything, analyzing, assessing, thinking. Not judging, just sort of scrutinizing. There was so much to one of her looks. I had hardly known her for twenty-four hours, but whenever I looked into her eyes, it was like she had a thousand things in them I couldn’t read. And I thought I was good at reading people.

The way she smelled was still stuck in my nose too. It lasted the whole day since I was the one showing her around. The smell had made me hard, and then our argument had made me even harder. I turned up the speed on the treadmill. Shit, I had to work this one off. I might have been considering seducing Lily for her secret, but I had to be the one in control. Not her.

My phone rang, and I didn’t have time to look at who it was, so I just picked up, slowing my speed down a bit.

“Hello, this is James,” I said.

“Hello, James,” a sultry voice said from the other side of the phone. “You didn’t get back to me the other night.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit times a million. Times a billion!

“Of course not, Sandy,” I said, wishing that I could just keep running through the glass pane of my apartment building window and fall into nothingness. “Why would I write back? I told you already. I’ve told you so many times. It’s over.”

She didn’t react but only made a little moping sound. “You know that you want it, James. I remember how hard you used to come while I was chained to your bed. You loved it, what I let you do to me.”

My mind flitted back to the memory of it. I remembered how I’d liked it, but it held no weight with me anymore. Something else was on my mind now. A feisty woman in an orange dress who smelled like flowers.

“Look, like I said, it’s over. I’d suggest you stop calling.” I was about to hang up when she whispered, “You men think you can up and leave. But you don’t realize that you say all kinds of things when fucking a woman and coming hard. Or when you’re drunk or sleepy, and it’s just us in the bed. Don’t forget that.”

She hung up first, and surprised, I put the phone down and upped the sprinting again. What in the hell was that about? Was she confusing me with another one of her sugar-pimp daddies? We’d ended a month ago, and so she’d likely found someone else, even if she was trying to hook me again. I didn’t remember saying anything to her. We’d gotten drunk many times, but I’d never shared things with anyone. Besides a handful of close friends, maybe. But definitely not Sandy who I actually couldn’t stand outside of the bedroom.

I shrugged, my mind shifting away from Sandy and her jealousy and heading toward a more interesting subject: Lily.

She was coming to work tomorrow to start her first day. I knew that it was all kind of a ruse, but after I spoke with her that day, I also knew that she was going to blow the job out of the water. She looked determined and ready, and clearly, she knew what she wanted when she asked for an advance. I didn’t hesitate. If that was going to make her give me her secret, then I was all about it.

No skin off my nose.

But then, I wondered about tomorrow. Would I think about her ass tomorrow? Would I think about the way her clothes fit over her tits? Would I think about her eyes and the way they sized me up each time they looked at me? Or would I be a professional and get my job done?

I tried to think about the very professional things we would be doing together in the office when I tried to seduce her into trusting me. But that only made me start wondering…

What color will her dress be tomorrow?

CHAPTER5

LILY

When I steppedonto that cold, corporate, linoleum the next day, I wondered if I even still had a job after yesterday. Sure, we’d signed things, and he’d given me the tour, but sometimes it took men a bit of time to realize they’d been offended. To realize they were the ones who should get the last word. I hadn’t been that bad in our argument, but I’d held my own. Most of the time, men didn’t like that. And seeing how James had reacted to me spilling coffee on him made me know that he was definitely one of those kinds of men.

The dream hadn’t come back to visit me last night, thank God. But I still thought about tight asses and green eyes and silver fox vibes as soon as the elevator brought me up to the office, and I saw James just inside.

“Hello,” he said, coming over to greet me.

His tone was cold as were his eyes, but he had sort of a smirk on his face. Something one might call a half-smile. I held my breath, curious why that was even sexier than a full smile, but also wondering if he was going to take me into his office to tell me that I should fuck off and go back to my penniless life.

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