“Half your admin assistants have college degrees, you know,” she goes on even as I smile grimly and begin to kiss her bare neck. “Many of them are doing this part-time as they juggle personal responsibilities like kids, elderly relatives, all kinds of stuff that life throws at you.”

“Well, life’s thrownyouat me,” I mutter as I lean in and start to suck her boobs, making her gasp like she didn’t even realize what I was doing until my mouth closed on her big red nipple. “And I’ve caught you. You’re mine, Angie. There’s no luck involved here. It started as fate, and now it’s the force of will.Mywill.”

“You’re not even listening,” she mutters as I cup her ass with one hand while still gripping her by the hair. “Soarrogant.Soself-centered.So. . . ohmygod, what are you doing, Mister Archer?! What are youdoing?!”

I’ve spread her asscheeks with my strong fingers and placed my thumb firmly on her tight rear pucker, and from the way her eyes go wide I know she’s never been touched there, never been taken there, never been claimed from behind in the most forbidden, most filthy, most dominant way. It’s scaring her, scandalizing her, maybe even disgusting her. But I felt her nipples stiffen in my mouth as I touched her there, and I know that she’s on fire right now, that her entire body is an erogenous zone, her entire body is . . . is mine.

“Are we still fighting?” I whisper after taking one last long, hard suck on her pert nipple and then rising up. Angie’s firmly in my control, held tight by the hair as I massage her asshole with my big thumb and slowly lead her to the dark tinted window overlooking the city. “Still fighting ourselves? Still fighting our instincts? Our deepest needs? Our most secret obsessions? Our darkest desires?”

“Ohmygod, you really are the devil,” she moans, her face red with both embarrassment and need, her body trembling with both fear and arousal, her pussy dripping with both her own juice and my thick semen. “Fightingourselves? What does that even mean?”

“You know what it means, Angie. That bullshit argument wasn’t about admin assistants and hourly workers. You know damned well that although I’m a tough boss, I take care of my people. I pay better than anyone else at that level. I offer benefits to working parents like no other company does. Everyone gets health insurance, even the part-timers. All that venom you spewed . . . that wasn’t directed at me, Angie. It was directed at yourself.”

“Atmyself?” she snorts, her eyelids fluttering as I get her to the window and slowly turn her to face the thick, dark glass. “Talk about deflecting blame from yourself to someone else. I should remind you that you snorted disdainfully and called me a secretary. This isn’t the 1950s, you know. We don’t call ourselvessecretaries.”

“I’ll call you what I fucking want,” I growl against her cheek from behind, grabbing her wrists and placing her palms up against the cool glass of the window. “I should remind you that I’m the boss, the CEO, the goddamn king. Now behold my kingdom before us.”

I reach around and force her to look down at the city sprawled below us. Archer Tower is by far the tallest building in downtown—I made sure of that when I built it. I always wanted to be the biggest, the strongest, the most powerful.

“But there was always something missing,” I whisper as I feel Angie’s breath catch as she looks down on the land from what feels like miles above. I can feel it starting to sink in—the fact that sheisdestined for something bigger, that she was born to be a queen.Myqueen. “I thought I could rise to my peak potential on my own—hell, I thought Ihadreached my potential after Archer Industries became the dominant player in the field. It seemed like there were no new lands to conquer. And then I saw you in my hallways.”

“So now I’m a conquest?” she mutters as I press up against her, my hard cock firmly pressed lengthwise against her rear crack as I massage her breasts. “You’re so full of macho nonsense that I’m actually starting to believe that you’re serious. Oh wait. Nope. Don’t believe it.”

“Life is nothing but a series of conquests,” I say softly. “And not only am I going to conquer you, but you’re going to conquer yourself. Not only am I going to claim you, but I’m going to show you how to claim yourself.”

“OK, you’re talking nonsense again,” she mutters, groaning as I reach around and rub her mound roughly, releasing her strong feminine musk that gets my cock to throb so hard I almost explode all over her ass. “I’m perfectly comfortable with myself.”

“Therein lies the problem, little Miss Angie,” I whisper, grinning as I feel her arch her back and push her ass against my cock. “Being comfortable means you’re settling. You need to be uncomfortable to grow, to reach beyond yourself, to become who you were meant to be, who you werebornto be. You think it’s comfortable for a butterfly to fight its way out of a cocoon, to transform itself from a slug that crawls on the ground to a winged beauty that flies free?”

“Firstly, it’s a caterpillar, not a slug. And secondly, did you just call me a slug?” she says, turning her head halfway, her eyes half closed, lips trembling from the way I’m rubbing her mound and making her drip all over my hand. “That’s body shaming, you know.”

“You aren’t ashamed of your body,” I say with a grin. “I saw how you reacted when you knew the cameras were rolling.”

“Ohmygod, the cameras!” she shrieks, turning her head again, her eyes flicking wide open. But she doesn’t try to push me off, and when I see the color rush to her face even as I sense her arousal spiral upwards, I knew I was right.

“It turned you on, didn’t it? Turned you on in a way that surprised you,” I say, fingering her wet crotch once last time and then bringing my slick fingers to her rear and sliding them into her asshole smooth and deep.

She lets out a moan that’s so deep I know it comes from a place that’s never been reached before, and I feel her come all over the damned floor as I finger her asshole with forceful, dominant strokes.

“We’ll watch the footage when we’re old and gray, with our grown-up kids and our teenage grandkids gathered all around, maybe even the dogs and cats watching in awe,” I whisper with a devilish grin as she snorts, shakes, and then comes again.

“Youarethe devil, aren’t you,” she mutters after a long series of gasps and shudders. “And all this talk about needing to be uncomfortable to grow, about reaching deep within oneself, expanding one’s horizons . . . it’s all just buildup because you want to fuck me in the ass, isn’t it?”

I roar with surprised laughter, and when I feel Angie’s body shake with laughter too, I know she’s opening up to herself, accepting that maybe she isn’t the person she thought she was when she walked into this office.

Nah, she isn’t that woman.

Not anymore.

She’s my woman now.

My queen.

Yeah, she’s my queen . . .

But I’m still the king.

And I still need to conquer and claim.