by Mandy Rosko
Right. She made her decision. She was going to give Arturo's secretary a quick call.
She grabbed her cell phone. It was one of her more expensive gadgets that she really needed to get a better plan for. She was paying too much and was starting to feel the squeeze of it every month when it came time for her to pay her bills.
She dialed the number for Calendri Corp, letting the computerized voice on the other end guide her until she got to Sylvia.
"Good afternoon, you've reached the office of Calendri Corporation's CEO, Arturo Calendri, may I have your name and you can leave a message?"
She swallowed hard. "Sylvia, hi, it's me, Isla King. I was there yesterday in a meeting with Mr.—with Arturo."
If she was going to let him inside of her, which she still really didn't want to do, then at the very least, she was not going to call him Mr. Calendri. First-name basis or nothing at all.
There was a slight pause on the other end of the line. "I'm sorry, who is speaking?"
What? "Isla king. I was there yesterday."
"Let me check the appointment logs," Sylvia said.
Was she fucking serious? Isla knew some people would have trouble remembering a person if they worked with or happened to see a lot of people, but Sylvia couldn't have seen that many people in just one day.
The girl was jerking her around. She tapped her foot, immediately reminded of why she'd gotten that annoyingly bad vibe from her yesterday.
Was she taking her sweet time looking for those appointments? She was probably checking her nails while leaving her hanging on the phone.
Not impressed. She was so not impressed, and the longer she waited, the angrier she became.
Finally, the girl came back on the line. "Oh! Of course, Isla King, from Baciami?"
"Yes, that would be me." She tried not to make it overly obvious that she was clenching her teeth.
"Of course, of course," Sylvia said. "Are you calling to decline Mr. Calendri's offer?"
Her spine stiffened at that. "No, I'm calling to accept it, after I've looked over his terms, of course."
There was another pause, this one much briefer than the last, and somehow, she got the feeling Sylvia was grinning when she spoke. "I'm sorry, but Mr. Calendri is very specific in the way he does business. You need to be here in person to review any documents he would want you to sign."
"Yes, I know that, but until then, I'm saying that I'm going to accept, and later on I'll come in and sign his papers."
Isla hadn't expected Arturo to want her to sign anything on her iPad and email it back to him.
"I'm afraid there's been something of a misunderstanding," Sylvia said. "You have to sign any paperwork he has for you in person, but you also need to be here to accept his offer. Papers are to be signed before three pm."
"What?" She pulled her phone back and looked at the time before bringing it back to her ear. "It's ten minutes to three! I can't get down there right now."
"I'm sorry, then Mr. Calendri will take your lack of appearance as a decline to his offer."
"But I'm not declining!" Desperation unlike anything else she'd ever felt before in her entire life filled her. She wasn't declining. She wanted to accept the offer and sign the papers, but he… he wanted her in…. "Seriously? He wants me in his office before three? It's impossible for me to get there on time now."
"Then I suggest you hurry and hope he's in a generous mood," Sylvia said.
Then the phone went dead, and Isla was left standing there, horrified.
6
Fortunately, she was able to catch a cab just outside of her building. She needed a cab. Public transportation would double the time it would take for her to get to Calendri Corp, and if she drove, there was no way she wouldn't cause a giant pileup with how much of a hurry she was in.
Thankfully, the cab drivers in this city were all samurai in traffic. She had no doubt this guy would get her to where she needed to go, especially when she said she was in a damned hurry and there was a hundred dollar tip for him if he got her to her destination safely.
He did, but she was still late. Every time she checked her phone, the minutes were ticking by regardless of how much she wanted them to stop. Her body was buzzing with all kinds of energy she couldn't get rid of until she made it to Calendri Corp. That was where she needed to be and nothing else would do. She needed to stand in front of Arturo and tell him she was going to take his deal.
And then probably end up begging him to not turn her away.
She tossed the money at the driver when he pulled up in front of the tall glass building. There was probably more than a hundred dollars there for a tip, which she could ill afford at the moment, but it would be worth it so long as she could convince Arturo to not be an asshole.
Isla ran through the doors, nearly breaking her ankle when she almost slipped, and shocking quite a few men in suits who were coming and going from the building. She also almost knocked over an older businesswoman carrying a briefcase and talking on her phone.
She didn't stop, didn't look back, and didn't apologize like she knew she should have.
No time. No time. No time.
Then, of course, the fucking elevator.
She didn't have to wait for it to open for her. It was already open and teaming with passengers.
She hit the button for the top floor, and of course, the stupid elevator had to stop every second or third floor to let people on and off.
She tapped her phone against her hip, trying to keep her knee from jittering too much. If she started tapping her foot, the shoes she wore would give her away in an instant.
All the same, why couldn't any of these fucking people use the stairs? Some were going up only a flight or two, and yet they waited for the elevator, stalled progress, and made sure that another five minutes went by before she was almost to the top.
"Going to the see the boss, are you?" asked the man standing beside her.
He was well dressed, cute, and had the boy-next-door type of face, but had enough maturity in his eyes and age in his looks to be the sort that she liked to go for.
"Are you late?" He asked that particular question with a smile on his face that normally would have made her melt, especially with those perfectly white teeth and the way he looked at her making it obvious he was interested.
Yeah, there was definitely no melting happening at the moment. She glared at him, and the smile left his face quickly as he turned away.
Not a good time, and she was not in the right mood. A part of her hated that she was acting like a total bitch, but she couldn't help it. The stress inside of her was too big, and it was taking over.
Finally, she was at the top of the building, squeezing through the doors before they were open all the way, and by then, it was a quarter to four. She'd made it in good time, really, but it didn't feel like it. She was out of breath and angry.
Sylvia was behind her marble desk, soft brown hair pulled back into a tight bun on her head, and she had a smile on her face as she watched Isla approach.
"Is he in his office?" she asked, forcing herself to a stop, her knees trembling like she'd just run a mile in the heels she wore.
"He is," Sylvia said, nodding and still smiling.
She didn't wait for an invite or for Sylvia to get out of her seat. She marched over to the doors herself and let herself on in. Sylvia didn't follow or call out for her to stop and wait. Curious, but not curious enough that Isla cared.
Arturo was there, in plain sight this time instead of banging some chick in his back room.
He probably still had a couple of girls back there.
He was jogging.
A treadmill that hadn't been in there yesterday—unless she'd just missed it—was set up and facing the far wall. A projector, which sat in a little compartment in the ceiling, put an image of a park on the enormous white screen, which had been pulled down from its hiding spot in the ceiling.
There were numbers on the screen in the top right corner.
At first, she thought they were stocks, but then realized they weren’t. The program was keeping track of how far he had jogged, and there was a best score beneath it. He’d run whole marathons on this thing. That was incredibly impressive. She’d known he was good looking and kept in shape, but this was actually something of an accomplishment that she hoped to achieve one day.
If she ever got into good enough shape to do more than a half marathon, that is. She had yet to finish one of those.
The image of the park passing by slowed down, and the computerized people Arturo was running with sped on ahead of him.
“You’re late,” he said.
He’d stopped jogging and was simply walking, cooling down.
“I called your secretary, but she told me I couldn’t leave a message. My answer is yes,” she explained.
He grabbed a fresh white towel from the rack next to him and tossed it around his neck. Grabbing his water bottle, he took a pull on it, tilting his head back and exposing the sexy, shining, and strong length of his throat.
He tapped the screen on his treadmill, then pulled it free from the machine as he stopped walking. His tablet had been controlling the program he’d been using. It shut off and the screen on the wall silently pushed its way back up into its compartment in the ceiling. The projector did the same.
“No deal,” he said, stepping off the treadmill.
“What? But I’m here! I’m telling you I’ll do it!”
“I told you twenty-four hours, not twenty-five.”
He started walking away from her, and her sense of panic quadrupled. It multiplied in ways that felt about a thousand times worse than anything she knew, in higher numbers than she could calculate in her head.
“No, don’t do this. I’m only forty minutes late.”
“Forty-eight,” he corrected, moving to his desk and setting his tablet down. He started tapping and swiping, probably playing angry birds for all she knew. He didn’t care one bit how much she needed this, and it showed.
She clenched her fists. “Please, okay? I’m sorry. It was an accident. I thought I could call in and accept the offer.”
Arturo barely spared her a glance. “Kind of a deep and personal offer for you to want to discuss over the phone, don’t you think?”
“Well, you didn’t exactly tell me I couldn’t phone in either,” she snapped, her inner bitch getting prickly.
He lifted a dark brow at her. That was all it took. It was pathetic, but that was all she needed for her to force that inner bitch into a calm, submissive kitten. She needed this, and even if it meant eating a lot of crow and apologizing for something that was most definitely not her fault, she would do it.
She cleared her throat. “I should have asked. I’m sorry.”
He smiled. “All right.”
She waited, but he said nothing else. “All right?”
“I accept your apology.”
It clicked with her what he was doing. He was teasing her. Had they been anything close to friends, she would have smiled and teased back. Hell, if she didn’t know who he was and just thought he was doing a little harmless flirting, then she would have done the same thing.
This was not funny. This was so beyond not funny, but she had to play along.
“Please, accept my apology and allow me to also accept your offer,” she said. There was no way he could purposely misunderstand her now.
He knew what she wanted, and she was fairly certain he was going to give it to her. He just wanted to make her squirm first.
The unimaginable prick.
He heaved a heavy sigh, as though her request was something a little bit more on the inconvenient side than he would have liked. His eyes met hers again. “All right. I accept.”
She blinked, stunned. “You… you’re going to do it?”
She’d figured he would, but she’d also expected him to make her grovel a little more.
He didn’t. He was ending it now before his fun really got a chance to start up.
His smile lit up the damned office, even with sunlight coming in through the floor–to-ceiling windows behind him. Isla shivered, and she just knew a number of women had probably creamed themselves looking at that smile as well.
“Did you think I was going to torture you and make you beg?”
“Well, yes, actually,” she said. Sometimes honesty was the best policy, but not when trying to kiss someone’s ass. That was when lying through her teeth and schmoozing was the best policy. “But I figured you were too good of a man to tease me too long.”
Arturo smiled at her, but not a calm, pleasant sort of smile. It was the wry kind, like he was seeing through her bullshit.
He pulled his tablet closer to him and began some more tapping and swiping. There was a whirring noise, a shuffling of paper, and he leaned down to grab something.
There must have been a printer in a compartment under the expensive and massive looking desk, because he had a stack of papers in his hands.
He tapped them on the desk, straightening them out, took his stapler, and stapled the edges before holding the papers out to her. “This is your contract. Since you already showed up late, I expect you to read this and have it signed and returned to me within the hour, or the deal will be off. No more chances, no begging for forgiveness, and I’ll strip apart your grandfather’s business and send it to the dogs.”
She stared at the man. She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that a guy she didn’t know would be so damned mean and cruel about something when all she’d done was tell him to fuck off.
He stared at her, a hint of impatience in his eyes. “You can go now. Sylvia will find a place for you to sit and get a pen for you to sign.”
He already knew she was going to sign. That was it. He just wanted her to go and do it already, as though her very presence was an annoyance to him.
He tapped on his screen, and the doors to his office opened. Sylvia was right there, looking too damned prim and perfect in her well-fitting business attire as she held the door open.
Isla felt wrinkly and terrible as she turned and left Arturo’s office.
7
The contract wasn’t as long as it looked, and thankfully, she was a fast reader. Her eyes were always good, thanks to her job making the jewelry for her grandfather’s boutique. It required lots of tiny pieces that had to be looked over and put together, which made quickly reading this a snap.
At first, it was basic Business 101. Neither Arturo nor his company were going to be held liable for any physical or emotional damages. She was entering into this agreement for a period of one month to the hour of signing. He would not abuse her physically or degrade her in public, and the contract also made it clear that he was the one who would define what abuse and degradation were.
Isla signed the bottom corner of that page. She was satisfied it meant he wouldn’t take her to a restaurant and force her to eat off the floor or something similar at the very least.
The rest was what he would be expecting of her, what she would need to do to make herself presentable in the one month that he would own her.
There were a lot of details here, more than even she had thought of. It kind of reminded her of Fifty Shades of Grey. She was going to have to ask him if he had any plans of watching her while she slept.
Every day, she was to shower and wear clean clothing and undergarments, or nothing at all—with the preference being nothing. She figured this was to stop her from rebelling against him by smearing herself in dirt and grease to make it so he couldn’t take her out and have people see them together.
She was also to be well prepared for every outing. Her makeup and hair were to be done. He would even provide her with a makeup artist and hair stylist to do those things for her.
Again, she assumed this was to prevent her from dressing like a clown to keep him away from her.
Failure to abide by any of these stipulations, even once, would mean that he could terminate the deal.
She skimmed
through the rest, through all of the things she was expected to do or wear or say to keep from embarrassing him in public. She knew what he wanted already. She had to behave like a lady and not try to humiliate him.
What she wanted to get to was the sex.
Then she found it.
She skimmed that part quickly, and then read over her responsibilities again, slower this time to make sure she got it.
She would be staying with him every night. She would be provided with a room, but if he wanted her in his bed, she had to be there. If he wanted her out of his bed, then she would leave. She also had to participate. That part was in big, bold, black letters. She couldn’t just lie there and act like a corpse apparently. He wanted to fuck someone who was alive and going to contribute, and if he wanted her every night, she would make herself available to him every night. No exceptions.
The list of things he would expect made her blush. Nothing quite so Fifty Shades here. He wasn’t into the whole BDSM thing, which she was grateful for, but she had never seen a list like this before. A list she would be expected to carry out if he wanted her to.
Blow jobs. Hand jobs. Vaginal sex. Anal sex. Cunnilingus. Kissing. Light bondage—which was even specified all the way down to the sort of silk ties he would be using on her. The list went on, but none of it sounded overly scary. Some of it would be a little new, but she could handle it. None of it was anything she would never want to do anyway.
There were some other things in there that she didn’t even know what they were. They were on the second list, the list of things he specifically wouldn’t be doing to her. She had to look up on her phone really quickly to find out what an angry pirate and strawberry shortcake were, and when she saw the definitions, she was glad they were on the not to-do list, even if they made her laugh. There were other things on that list that she didn’t know what they were, but she wasn’t going to look up anymore weird stuff.
Condoms would also be used, since there was no time for her to be tested for STD’s, and as an added precaution, she would also have to be on the pill, starting immediately.
