Things got progressively and methodically worse in the week following my move (Grayson: “deportation!”) from Couture to the newsroom.
The place was a zoo made out of silver chrome desks glued together in a wave pattern, circling huge monitors that broadcast different news channels from all over the world.
The newsroom was round, with glass walls. Nearby was another conference room—made of glass as well—in which fresh pastries and fruit sat in fancy baskets and elegant glass water bottles were lined together neatly. There were hundreds of monitors, switchboard phones, keyboards, and cables running from side to side. There was a stairway to the seventh floor that led to a door with a plaque plastered on it: Magic Happens Here
This referred to the actual studio, where the prime-time news show was recorded.
But I couldn’t feel the fairy dust on my skin, because I was too busy trying to survive my life as I knew it.
Milton was the first to kill my mojo.
My cheating ex had decided that the fact he’d been boning his editor was not, in fact, grounds for a breakup. First came the flowers and text messages. When those were ignored or given to the lonely, attractive neighbor upstairs (the flowers, of course. Forty-something-year-old widow Mrs. Hawthorne didn’t need to read the douchecanoe’s apologies for dipping his sausage into a different ketchup tub first thing after coming back from a grueling shift as a nurse), Milton started asking our mutual friends to be mediators. Said friends, who were neck deep in kissing his ass for landing a job at a prestigious magazine, explained that Milton was the one. My one. That we had something special going on, and it would be insane to throw it away because of one mistake.
“He was going to help you pay your debt,” one of our friends, Joe, even added. “Consider that, too.”
I told Joe and the others that if they were going to plead the case of a cheater who’d decided to throw our five years down the drain, they might as well delete my number. I was in an anxiety-filled headspace, consisting of a sick father, a new job, and a stack of bills that remained impressive even in my employed state. Acting diplomatically was not high on my list of priorities.
Then there was work.
Célian Laurent was the biggest jerk to ever walk on planet Earth, and he carried that title like a badge of honor. The only silver lining was that I now knew it wasn’t personal. He was just a dick—a dick who did a phenomenal job making news and surpassed every single talented newsman I’d ever learned from, but a dick nonetheless. And speaking of penises, contrary to my impression from our last encounter, he’d kept his tucked firmly inside his slacks all throughout the week. Not that we had any chance of working one-on-one in a busy newsroom, but when he did acknowledge my existence (albeit reluctantly), he remained cold, aloof, and professional.
And me? I tried to forget the moment of weakness during which I’d touched him.
I didn’t know why I was looking for a connection with him. Maybe I recognized how similar we were. He was bitter, and I was angry. He wanted casual, and I… I didn’t think I could afford anything else with everything that went on in my life. But I couldn’t forget how it felt when he touched me.
When his mouth was on mine.
When his hands pinned me to the wall.
When he made me forget about my sick father, piling bills, and unemployment.
True to his word, Célian had put me in charge of Reuters. The only qualification I needed for the job was the ability to distinguish between yellow, orange, and red. Most reporters—even junior ones like me—had plenty of tasks. I had just the one, to rot in front of the monitor.
Oh, and help his assistant, Brianna Shaw.
Célian’s PA was the definition of candy sweet. Unfortunately, she was also a ticking time bomb. Célian was such a tyrant, she spent the majority of the day running after him, taking orders, or sobbing softly in the restroom. Today was the third time I’d found her doing that—on a Friday, of all days, a second before everyone in New York poured into fancy bars and hole-in-the-wall pubs to celebrate the weekend freedom—and I silently slid a box of tissues and a mini-bottle of whiskey into her stall.
She’d been too scared to ask for my help, and I didn’t know how to broach the subject without making her feel weak. But that third time in the restroom broke me. To hell with my boss and his deep blue eyes, his pouty lips, dirty mouth, and Zac Efron body.
“Hey.” I squatted down, my butt hovering over the floor. My Chucks were gray today. Moody and depressed. “You need a break…and a drink. Let me help you. I have plenty of free time.” And I did. My job was as challenging as tying one’s shoes. Brianna hiccupped from the other side of the stall, unscrewing the bottle and taking a sip. “I…” she started. “He…” I strained my ears to listen. “He needs to have his suits cleaned.”
“I’ll drop them off in half an hour. Just give me their address,” I said.
“N-no. He demands that you stay at the dry cleaners and watch them clean his clothes.”
What?
“You mean make sure to take the receipt?” Maybe he had a favorite person cleaning his clothes. What a diva. Rich people had ridiculous whims. In Célian’s case, he was picky about who cleaned his suits, but was perfectly content with eating a stranger’s ass.
Brianna hiccupped again. “No, I mean he makes me sit there and look at them as they do it.”
“Why?” I gasped.
“Because they sometimes steal his clothes.”
“Why are you still working here?” I would have stabbed him in the face through the power of telepathy by now had he done that to me.
“Because he’s smart, pays well, and…I mean…” She downed the entire drink. I heard her gulping it. “He’s seriously handsome. But of course, I know he’d never look at me. He once said my legs are awfully short because I need to run to catch up with his pace. He probably thinks I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
I’d had enough.
Enough of him treating Brianna like a pest.
Enough of him allowing everyone else in the newsroom to overlook me. (I hadn’t been introduced to one person. The associate producer, Kate, asked me once where my parents were.)
Enough of sneaking to the fifth floor every lunch break to spend time with Grayson and Ava, because Célian invited everyone in the newsroom to the conference room to eat lunch every day. Every. One. But. Me.
I darted out of the restroom. My eyes found him like that’s what they’d been trained to do. He was in his office, the door thrown open, typing away and ignoring the hustle and bustle in the hallway. I knocked on his door loudly, my anger climbing up my throat and balling into a scream. I walked in without permission.
“Yes?” he said without looking up.
“I need to talk to you.” I was surprised at how heated and cross my voice sounded, like liquid lava slithering between my lips.
“I beg to fucking differ. You’re reporting to Steve, Jessica, and Kate. In that order. Think of this place as a church, Judith. When you make a confession, you go to a priest. You don’t have a direct line to God.”
Did he just…? Surely, he didn’t…
“Did you just compare yourself to God?” I tried to wrap my head around this.
But of course he did. He had his PA monitoring his dry cleaners. The guy was obviously more bananas than a tropical island.
And he was still typing away and staring at the screen. I slammed the door behind me to get his attention. Finally, he looked up. I swallowed the saliva pooling in my mouth. His crisp white dress shirt rolled up his elbows, his tan and muscular forearms with the veins snaking down to his big hands, and the carved, severe expression on his face—so sharp it could nick and make me bleed to death with a glare alone.
“You’re making Brianna sit at your dry cleaner’s for hours on end and watch them clean your clothes?” I seethed.
A toxic grin spread over his face. “I’m guessing by your reaction that you inherited the vexing task.”
“A task I will not do.”
“A task you will do, unless you want to get fired, gray or not.”
“Huh?” I seethed.
His eyes dropped to my Chucks. He noticed.
“Just because you’re in a shitty mood doesn’t mean you get to boss your boss around. Learn your place, Chucks.”
“Chucks?”
His eyes traveled down to my feet, and he raised one lonely eyebrow.
Whatever. I stomped my foot, seething. “You’re being unreasonable! You need to stop walking so fast, too. Brianna is running after you, and her feet are all banged up.”
“Miss Humphry, hell will freeze over before you dictate my movements, in or out of my newsroom.”
I threw my hands up. “I give up. Please transfer me back to Couture. Making news was my life’s ambition, but self-fulfillment is not worth working with you.”
What was I saying? Why was I saying that? I didn’t want to go back to Couture. I loved Ava and Gray, but I wanted to stay here and make news. I just wanted him not to treat me like I didn’t exist and cut Brianna some slack.
“You like the news? Here’s a newsflash for you: you don’t always get what you want. Are we done here?”
No. We were definitely not done. But I couldn’t jeopardize my job, so I turned around and was about to storm straight to Grayson’s office when I crashed into something hard. I looked up. It was Mathias Laurent, and he was smiling back at me like a cunning cat who’d just eaten a canary, a few yellow feathers still sticking out of his mouth.
“Hello,” he said in the same French accent Célian had faked the other day.
Unease slinked down my spine. “Sir.” I nodded, making way for him to enter his son’s office. In my periphery, I caught Célian perking up, drinking the two of us in.
“Mathias Laurent. Please, call me Matt.”
He offered his hand. I shook it. Well, at least Laurent Senior wasn’t a douchebag. I gave him my name, and he took a step toward me, still at the threshold.
“We didn’t get to properly meet last week, Miss Humphry, but I always try my best to get to know everyone in the LBC family, no matter the position.”
“Could have sworn horizontal is your favorite position,” Célian snapped, standing up and grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair.
Mathias continued, ignoring him, “I would love to have you come to my office to discuss what you are seeing and experiencing in my newsroom. Monday at ten?”
I smiled, opening my mouth to accept the invitation, when Célian’s hand locked around my wrist and dragged me out of his office and down the hallway. I stumbled over my own feet. What the hell was his problem? I must have uttered the question out loud, because he let out a frustrated growl more fitting for felines in the wild. He pushed open a door leading to a dim, empty room I’d never been in before and slammed it behind us.
The power room.
I grunted as my back hit rough buttons and cold metal. Célian was pressed so close, I could feel his hot, male presence squeezing the lust out of me, which made a very different groan escape my lips. He took a step back, as if my touch was lethal.
“Stay away from him.” His voice was so low and menacing, I felt it in my stomach.
“Hmm…” I grinned, swiping my tongue across my bottom lip and staring at him through hooded eyes. “I think I just talked to the real God around here, and Jesus got pissed.”
Inwardly, I could hear Jesus rumbling, “Yup. She’s throwing me under the bus again.” I made a mental note to visit my local church on Sunday.
“I’m not in the business of repeating myself,” he seethed, ignoring my jab, and if I knew one thing about Célian, it was that he never passed an opportunity to outwit you once you threw a jab at him. “And I don’t want you near him. His intentions aren’t pure.”
“And yours are?” I huffed. “Look, I can’t—and won’t—ignore my boss. My real boss. The man who pays my salary.”
He bent down to bite my ear. “I’m the man who fucked you senseless and you can’t stop thinking about. I’m the asshole you masturbate to in order to get off. I’m the guy who will destroy my competition, especially when it comes to Mathias Laurent. So, do yourself a favor and keep your pussy—my pussy—as far away from him as possible. Compris?”
His tight chest and hard abs against my soft body. His tall, commanding figure enveloping my small one into submission. He was touching me without really touching me, and I wanted him to swallow me whole, like a Venus flytrap—clamp his jaw and absorb every inch of me.
Touch me.
Fill me.
Drown me in your poisonous kisses.
Let me die from your venom, buried under your sinful skin.
“I hate you.”
“Would you like to test that theory?” He chuckled, forever standoffish, even when it felt like thunder cracked between us in the dark room.
I should have said no, but something else slid from my mouth breathlessly. “Yeah. Fact-checking is your craft, isn’t it?”
Without looking back, he reached behind him, locking us in. My heart pitter-pattered into submission, no longer lonely and resentful. Célian grabbed my jaw and crashed our lips together in an animalistic kiss that somehow started from the middle, with tongues battling, fingers unbuttoning clothes, and hands roaming, searching, squeezing, and twisting every inch of flesh and fabric. I was out of breath before my dress hit the floor, and out of my mind the minute his cock pressed against my stomach.
“Haven’t had the chance to read the employee manual of LBC yet. Is this an official part of our one-on-one meetings?” I laughed, my heart threatening to burst out of my skin and fall at his Italian-loafered feet.
“Am I doing anything you don’t want me to do?”
“You’re doing less than I want you to do,” I admitted.
“Then no talking, Humphry. I like you better that way.”
“Still hate you,” I mumbled into his mouth, clawing at his shirt. He was dressed, so very dressed, and I’d never wanted anyone more naked in my life.
“Still don’t care,” he hissed and hoisted me up against the door, slamming his groin into mine.
“Condom,” I ordered.
No matter how sexy Célian was, he still gave me the vibe of someone who’d been around the block, and this was Manhattan, so there were plenty of dubious blocks to choose from.
“Fuck.” He bit down on my lip punishingly, pulling away from me, plastering his forehead against mine, and rolling it from side to side. “I’m clean.”
“I don’t care.”
“Surely you’re on the pill.” His cock dug between my legs, and it was hard to deny him anything, decapitating me included.
“We’re not at a point in our relationship where we’re having this conversation. I want you to get me off, not get me pregnant. I need to forget.”
Forget that my life is a mess, that my dad is dying, that I’m drowning in bills.
But of course, he didn’t ask. Didn’t care.
He looked down at me. For a second, something passed between us. Despite his perpetually cold exterior, he seemed to understand loss and disappointment—in a fundamental way that tainted your entire perception of life.
He spun me around and slapped my bare knees like a scolding headmaster. It wasn’t the burn, but the shock that made me fall down on all fours. I was blinking away the surprise when I felt him lower to his knees behind me.
His mouth found my hot center from behind, and he licked me slowly, making my thighs quiver with pleasure. The sweet, almost seductive licks became strokes. He parted my butt cheeks with his strong hands, plunging his tongue between my folds, thrashing against my walls. My moans were becoming increasingly loud, and he threw a piece of fabric at me.
“Bite.”
I sunk my teeth into the cloth as his fingers dented my thighs red and blue.
The orgasm ripped through me was like a bucket of hot water. It washed over my body, sudden and violent. I bit so hard into the fabric I thought I was going to rip it apart. I collapsed to the floor, but Célian didn’t give me time to recover. He flipped me over expertly and climbed atop me, naked from the waist down but still wearing his shirt. I didn’t know when that happened, but I was starting to come to terms with the fact that I acted very drunk and very stupid every time he and his mouth entered my general vicinity.
I thought he was going to poke his engorged penis between my legs and was about to protest, but he surprised me by scooting farther up until his ass was aligned with my chest. He plucked the fabric from my mouth and threw it on the floor, guiding his cock into my mouth with his palm. “Still gonna fuck you today, just not the hole I was aiming for.”
“Wait,” I snaked my hand between us, squeezing his girth. Even though he was a control freak, his eyelids slid shut and he let me stroke him back and forth. “If you want me to suck you off, you need to drop the whole dry-cleaning thing. Be in charge of your own dry cleaning. Give them the clothes yourself, and while you’re at it, make an official complaint. That way, they’ll think twice before stealing, because the suit has a face. Agreed?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Disagreed. Fuck that.”
“Apparently so, because it’s not me you’ll be screwing.”
That sobered him up quickly. I wiggled underneath him, pretending to move away, and he sank more weight against me, pressing a playful palm to the base of my neck.
“Are you blackmailing me, Miss Humphry?”
I clasped his penis harder, pressing my thumb against the pearl of pre-cum gathering at his tip, bringing it to my lips and tasting it with a sweet smile. If he was expecting an actual answer with words, he underestimated me. Actions spoke louder, and right now, I had him by the balls. Almost literally.
His nostrils flared, and his mouth pursed into a scowl. “This better be one hell of a BJ.”
With that, he grabbed the back of my head and pushed himself all the way into my mouth, until I could feel his tip at the back of my throat. I wanted to gag, but that involved showing him vulnerability, and I had managed to go without it so far. So I took it all in and even let out a sigh of pleasure. His balls tightened against my chin, and I felt myself dripping on the floor, my thighs spreading involuntarily. He began to thrust into my mouth, and I sucked hungrily, loving his taste. My hand snaked behind him, and I began to play with myself as I sucked him off. He took ahold of my hair, elevated his ass for a better angle, and thrust harder, slapping my hand away.
“My turn.”
But I couldn’t help it. The need to get off prickled between my legs. Plus, I was certain I was going to regret every moment, so I might as well leave this room thoroughly orgasmed. I arched my back, trying to grind against the air and whimpering in frustration around his cock.
“Coming,” he announced, not even asking if it was okay to do what he was about to. Warm, thick liquid swam in my mouth a second later. I swallowed it before it managed to hit my taste buds, holding my breath, as I used to do every time I was on the giving end of oral sex with Milton. Célian pushed off me onto his shins, still holding my hair in his fist. He looked as pissed as he had walking into this place, not even mildly affected by what we’d just done.
I cupped my mouth, realizing a thin river of cum was sliding from the corner of my lips.
“What have I done?” I whispered.
Reality came crashing in on me. I’d done it again. Only this time, it was a thousand times worse. Because now I knew he was my superior. He wasn’t a confident and assertive tourist; he was actually a raging American asshole.
“Your boss, it seems,” he said with his signature jaded tone, standing up and buckling his slacks. He balled my dress and threw it into my arms. It was wet and wrinkled to death. “Can’t really fuck your boss and his father, can you? Guess I made the decision for you.”
Why the hell did he think I’d sleep with Mathias?
“Also, I’d advise against walking out of here in the next hour. You really did a number on your dress,” he smirked and excused himself, sauntering out and closing the door behind him.
I threw an arm over my face and groaned. Bastard.
That evening, Dad wasn’t there when I got home from work.
Panic gripped my throat, squeezing hard. Dad never left the apartment without letting me know. His absence sobered up my Célian-induced haze quickly. I rummaged the house like he might be hiding in the cupboards, then grabbed my keys and roamed our street, shouting his name into the late-spring drizzle. He couldn’t have gone far. We didn’t have a car anymore, and he loathed the subway. The realization that I should call someone—anyone—had settled in, but with it came the recognition that I had no one to turn to.
Usually at this point, I called Milton.
But Milton and I were no longer together.
Our mutual friends were too busy telling me I was naïve and judgmental for not giving him a second chance. Grayson and Ava were great, but I didn’t know them well enough to dump my personal problems on them. And Célian…a bitter chuckle escaped my lips. I would rather die before confiding in him that I needed help.
Forty minutes later, I decided to go back home to recalculate my moves. I went into our building and found Dad sleeping in the aged-wood-scented stairway. His bald head was perched against the bannister, drool leaking from the corner of his mouth. He looked serene and fragile, like a piece of old art.
I shook him awake.
“Where have you been?” I was shouting and shaking, and I didn’t even care that I scared him.
His eyes snapped open and he blinked, startled. Tears of relief began to flood down my cheeks and neck, and I knew there was no point in wiping them just to make room for more. I held onto him like an anchor—both of us sinking down to a lonely, stain-carpeted stair—and buried my head in his neck. The overwhelming notion that sometime in the near future I wouldn’t be able to do this any more squeezed my throat, suffocating me, and I heaved.
My father was going to die.
I was going to be left all alone in this world.
“I’m okay, Jojo. I’m fine. See? Look.” He wiggled his hairless eyebrows, tapping his chest like it was an old TV that coughed out bad signal. “I just went to visit Mrs. Hawthorne. She was under the impression that I’d sent her flowers. Can you believe that?”
I could. Because I was the one who’d left them at her door. Mrs. Hawthorne was fairly new to our building. She’d moved out of her huge Rochester place when her husband died, seeing as her kids were married and out of the house.
“Anyway,” he chuckled. “Must’ve gotten tired on my way down and crashed. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
I was torn between letting myself break down completely front of him and keeping myself together for him. I clutched his cold cheeks and angled his head so we looked at each other. My dad was a big guy. He’d worked as a roofer in Brooklyn his entire life before cancer came barging through our door. But somehow along his journey with the disease, he’d become scrawny. So frail, in fact, that whenever he accompanied me to the supermarket, I was the one supporting him—the man who’d carried me on his shoulders until I was in first grade.
“Excuse me, little girl, did you follow me?” he’d always said when he put me down.
I always laughed. “You carried me, silly!”
“Huh…” He’d stroked his chin. “Whaddaya know? You’re light as a feather.”
I helped Dad into our apartment. No matter the weather outside, it was still subzero, somehow. I was playing chicken with the thermostat, trying to walk the line between a sensible electricity bill and not freezing to death in this particularly chilly spring. It’s like New York had decided to make life even more difficult on us. I wondered how it felt to be Célian, who probably had heated flooring in his bathroom and never had to experience any discomfort.
I pondered what my boss’s apartment might look like as I made Dad chicken soup, sans the chicken. We ended up watching a rerun of SNL under blankets in the living room. Some might call it a sad state of affairs for a woman in her early twenties to be hanging out with her dad on a Friday night, but there was nothing I could think of that would be better. Even though we were both silent, I drank in his presence, so acutely aware of the elephant in the room.
“Milton has been looking for you,” he said when I got up and stretched after the show was over.
My heart missed a beat. Countless times, I had wondered if I should give Milton a heads-up about my father not knowing about our breakup. But since he was seeking me out so actively, I figured talking to him, no matter the capacity, would just encourage his cheating ass.
“Oh?” I hoped it sounded like, Oh, he has? and not Oh, I forgot to tell you. We broke up a month ago because he was screwing his boss while I was tending to my sick dad. But hey! Now I’m screwing mine, too. The circle of life, anyone?
“Called me on my cell. Asked if I could tell you to get back to him. I’m sure you have by now, but I just thought you should know. Will we be seeing him this weekend?”
Dad fingered his empty bowl of soup and sucked on the leftovers. He liked Milton. Every time I asked him why, he said, “Because he is smart enough to love my daughter.”
“Hard to say, Dad. We’re both very busy with work.”
This was tearing me apart. I hated not being honest with my father, but I hated the idea that the truth would hurt him even more.
The minute my head hit my pillow, I started sobbing. Not just crying, but full-blown, so-sorry-for-myself bawling with tears and snot. The whole shebang.
I was not a crier. I’d cried the day my mother died and on a few occasions after that, like the day I’d gotten my period without her there to calm me down and after I’d stolen that wallet. But tonight, it felt like the weight of the world rested squarely on my shoulders, and I wanted to throw it away or let it bury me in the ground.
The thing about crying for hours is, you always end up sleeping like the dead afterward. It happened to me the night after my mother died. (The night she did, I couldn’t sleep a wink—was too afraid the world would collapse if I let my eyes drift shut.) Misery has a way of pulling you down and drowning you in it. It’s sweet and suffocating, like a lullaby, soothing you to sleep.
That night, I slept like a baby.
