Page 4 of Tamed

The elevator announced we were back on peasant level and the doors opened.

I pushed myself away from the wall and strode out, heading back to my cubicle. God only knew how Caleb had discovered I was a little late, but he had. Perhaps he’d checked the surveillance cameras. I wouldn’t have put it past him. After all, that’s just the kind of guy he was.

Then I spotted Zara, who was in the cubicle next to mine, slip casually into our floor’s kitchenette and I changed direction, heading there instead, because OMG, if someone needed a massive caffeine hit it was me.

I’d made friends with Zara almost as soon as I’d started at Cross. She’d started at the same time, and we were both more or less the same age. She was blonde and beautiful, with the most gorgeous, delicate little tattoos on her arms and wrists, and a sprinkling of stars on her hands. She was also a party girl who was out most weekends, making the rounds of the clubs. She’d invited me along a few times, but despite being a grown woman, Dad was still up in my grille about me doing basically anything that wasn’t coming directly home from work. Of course, I could go out, he’d say. As long as I took some protection with me. Protection being three burly men in black suits all called John.

No, that was a lie. Only two of them were John. The other was Mike.

But still, I wasn’t having John, John and Mike coming along and cramping not only my style, but the style of all of those who happened to be with me.

So no, going out was not happening.

I’d managed to put Zara off with a variety of excuses, not wanting her to know who my father was, which would then mean having to also tell her why I had this job since basically everyone in New York knew Caleb, Atlas and Tennyson, my dad.

Three men who’d come from the mean streets to make it very, very big indeed in the world of business. There were lots of rumors about them, lots of stories. About how Caleb had once been the kingpin of a major crime empire and had disbanded it all to go straight, bringing his two right hand men with him.

That part was lies. Well, not so much about Caleb being an ex-crime lord — that’s exactly what he’d been — but Dad had never been part of that and neither had Atlas. Dad, being encumbered with me at the stupidly young age of eighteen, had been taken off the streets by an elderly philanthropist who’d left him shitloads in his will since he didn’t have a son. From there he’d grown Fox Tech, that while it had its origins in tech, now encompassed a whole lot of other things as well.

Atlas, by contrast, had been born into an aristocratic family who sadly had links with the crime empire that Caleb used to work in. His family money was tainted, and he never touched it. He’d made a fortune in construction and his firm owned most of Manhattan.

So yeah, people knew about them.

Being Tennyson Fox’s daughter was a pain in the ass.

Anyway, Zara, bless her, had already put my mug into the coffee machine and was in the process of pressing the button when I stalked in.

She turned, took one look at my face and her grey eyes widened. “Wow, you look particularly growly today. What happened? His beastliness?”

Everyone in the entire company apparently called Caleb ‘his beastliness’, mainly because he was a ‘sexy beast’. I thought it was a dumb name, but since no one had asked me what I thought, I’d never said.

“Yeah,” I said grumpily. “I was two minutes late this morning. Two minutes! And I got called upstairs.”

Zara picked up her own mug from the counter and grinned at me from over the top of it. “Highway to the danger zone or stairway to heaven?”

I glared at her. “More like highway to hell.”

“Oh, like that is it?” She took a sip of her coffee then waggled her eyebrows at me suggestively. “So, what did he do? Give you a stern talking-to? Turn you over his knee?”

Zara knew about my crush on Caleb and teased me about it unmercifully. It was all in good fun — most of the time — but today I wasn’t in the mood. Mainly because I’d been picturing the same thing in my head, and I very much wished I hadn’t.

Firstly, as if I’d ever let anyone turn me over their knee, and secondly, Caleb doing it? No fucking way.

Except I could feel a little pulse of heat, right down between my legs, an ache I couldn’t quite ignore. The image of him turning me over his powerful thighs and hauling up my skirt…

Zara, seeing my guilty flush, widened her eyes. “Oh my God, did he—”

“No,” I interrupted and reached for my coffee mug. “No, he did not. Jesus, Zara. He’s the boss.” And it was all a little too close to home. Seriously, what was wrong with me that I had a thing for a man twice my age, whose past was shrouded in mystery and extremely dark? Yeah, I didn’t know either.

I blamed an early exposure to Darth Vader at an impressionable age. Though more likely, it was the gala that Dad had dragged me to a couple of years ago. He’d disappeared to talk shop with some colleagues, leaving me alone in the ballroom. It had been my first big social gathering, and I knew no one, and I’d stood there feeling out of place and nervous, then Caleb had found me in the crowd, sweeping me onto the dance floor during the formal waltz.

He’d been in a beautifully tailored tux that had highlighted his incredible physique, the stark black and white accentuating and somehow honing the brutally handsome planes and angles of his face. His black eyes had looked into mine, giving me all his attention, and it had been a heady drug for an impressionable nineteen-year-old.

Four years later and I was still fantasizing about it, because I was clearly a stupid idiot.

“The blush in your cheeks would beg to differ,” Zara pointed out. “Seriously, though. He’s really got it in for you, hasn’t he?”

“Tell me about it.” I leaned back against the kitchenette’s counter, holding my mug between my palms. “And no, before you ask, I have no idea why.”

---