by Alexis Angel
Not a voice.
Apollo Kane’s voice.
Natalie’s staring at me, and me at her, and I can’t breathe and I’m hyperventilating and as Natalie dives for the phone to turn it off, I’m running and I can hear my skirt tearing, my strides are so long but I don’t care, I fucking don’t care, I have to hide, I have to go into the bathroom and hide and never, ever come out and they’re going to find me, dead, just a pile of bones and cute clothes and say sadly, “There lies Ashley the Associate Editor who literally died of embarrassment,” and my ghost’s cheeks are going to turn red when it hears those words.
As I sit on top of the toilet, snuffling pathetically, my arms wrapped around my knees, I have to wonder what I’d ever done to deserve this. If they ever invent a time machine, the first thing I’m doing is going back to this morning. I’m going to fucking hold the damn door open to the taxi cab and wish Apollo Kane a good day while he’s climbing into it. Because then I wouldn’t have had to apologize to him and he wouldn’t have promised to spank me and I wouldn’t have…
I wouldn’t have heard the plans to fire my fellow co-workers. To fire me.
I drop my head to my knees and stare dully down, eyes unseeing.
No, even a time machine couldn’t help me now. Me and my friends and even my co-workers that I’d secretly give decaf coffee to, just to fuck with their heads…we’re all fucked.
And I don’t have the slightest clue of what to do about it.
147
Apollo
I stretch and roll my head from side to side across my shoulders. Fuck, what a day. It's only 6pm, but it feels like so much later. Usually, I have endless stamina and can work 20 hours a day without missing a beat, but today…
Today has been frustratingly draining and it isn’t hard to know why. You asshole keeps rolling around in my head, reverberating, echoing, but never dying out. Never growing quiet and disappearing like any normal echo would.
Well, Ashley Miller is no normal person. I even caught of glimpse of that while listening to, what she thought was, a private conversation between her and Natalie. She is infuriating and opinionated and not in the least impressed or intimidated by me and…
And sexy as fuck.
I push away from the piece of shit desk and grab my briefcase. It's time to go home, drink a glass of wine, call over Tiffani and four of her naughtiest friends, and fuck my frustrations away. I’d heard about a new BDSM club downtown, maybe I’ll take them all there and—
The elevator door opens with a ding, and there’s Ashley. She looks up at the ding of the door opening and the look on her face when she sees me says that she can’t decide if she wants to fuck me or strangle me.
Welcome to the club, lady.
I step inside and ask, “Ground floor?” She nods once, jerkily, and I punch the button for the ground floor, the descent to the next floor punctuated by Ashley’s heavy breathing. Is she…? I look at her out of the corner of my eye. She’s got her eyes closed and she’s breathing in deeply through her nose and out of her mouth.
It is…
It is the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Who is this Lego cursing, deep breathing, cab-stealing woman? She’s this puzzle that I want to solve, a Gordian knot that I want to untangle, but before I can ask her out, she says simply, “I’m sorry for today.” She opens her eyes and she’s looking right at me, as if she can see through my soul. “I’m sorry for what I said to you, about being an asshole, and I’m sorry for stealing your cab.”
The doors open for the next floor down, but no one is standing there. I push the button to continue our descent, and Ashley keeps talking. “But it’s true, Apollo. You’re being an asshole. I refuse to believe—”
Maddeningly, the door dings open for another floor, but again, no one is there. I make a mental note to have my secretary call the elevator repair company and find out what the fuck is wrong with this elevator.
“I refuse to believe,” she starts again, “that you could’ve met everyone and looked over all of the numbers and really figured out what we do here and who’s important to keep around, after two hours of working here. I know they call you the Wolf of New York, but even you’re not that good.”
The doors, thank god, finally open on the ground floor.
“Stop being the Wolf of New York for a moment, and start feeling some compassion,” she says quietly, with dignity. “All of those numbers you’re chopping out? They’re people. They have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Start acting like it.”
She walks away, her heels clicking on the tile. I notice a small rip up the back side of her skirt and I can’t help but wonder where it came from because it wasn’t there this morning, and then she's gone, out the front doors, the doors swinging shut behind her.
And I step out in the lobby, the quiet of the building echoing loudly in my brain, staring after her.
Fuck it. I need a drink, and it can’t be at home. I need to go to the Soho. Fuck Tiffani and her friends. I can’t do that, not right now. I need to get my head on straight.
I need to figure out what I want.
148
Ashley
Natalie and I meet up at Agave in the Lower East Side for dinner. 8 pm on a Monday night—I know, I know, we’re stupid. The Agave is going to be packed to the gills with every margarita-loving woman out there, and every man who loves women who are drunk on said margaritas.
But when I show up, Natalie is already there (she's annoyingly on time all the time; I guess not everyone is perfect, right?) and has talked the waiter into squeezing us in right away. He takes us back to a far table, a tiny thing that just barely fits the two of us, and disappears with our drink order for two lime margaritas.
“Tell me. Tell me all. You said on the phone that you ran into him again in the elevator. What happened? Did he shove his tongue down your throat? I want all the deets.”
Another waiter, in the Agave uniform of black from head to toe, slips in between us for just a moment to deliver their world-famous chips and salsa and our margaritas, and then disappears again. They’re nothing if not discreet around here.
I take a big sip of my margarita and then try to figure out what to say, what to do. Earlier, in the panic of hearing Apollo’s voice come through the speakerphone, I’m not entirely sure Natalie heard the words coming out of my mouth. How do I tell her that she may not have a job tomorrow? I may not have a job tomorrow.
“Mrs. Sanders interrupted our little—” I wave my hand in the air dismissively, “discussion—” Natalie snorts and I ignore her, “—to remind Mr. Kane that he has to decide which departments to fire before his meeting in 15 minutes."
I continue, “Natalie, we may not have a job tomorrow. How can you fire whole departments at a magazine? Which department are you going to cut? Editorial? Marketing? Or!” My voice is getting a little louder now but I can’t help myself, “Production?”
I dropped my voice and lean forward to whisper, “I think he’s going to take the company apart and try to sell the pieces for a profit.”
She sits back and eyeballs me speculatively, nibbling on her lip as she does. I’m the emotional one out of the two, while she’s the analytical one. She never panics until she has to, and there’s a small—okay, very large—part of me that wants to hear it from her that there’s no reason to panic.
“What else did Mrs. Sanders say?” she asks.
“Nothing.” I take a sip of my drink, enjoying the warmth flowing through me from the liberal amount of alcohol. Something to calm my nerves.
“Is this what you talked about with Apollo after work?”
“Yeah, we both ended up on the same elevator, and I…took the opportunity to chew him out.” I laugh quietly while staring down at my hands. Thinking back on it that was a really stupid thing to do, really. I mean, he is my new boss, however long the job lasts, and certainly chewing his ass wouldn’t prolong my career at Blush.
“His response?” Her voice is just a touch exasperated.
I shrug. “I didn’t exactly give him the chance to give me one. I chewed him out and stormed off.” I’m squirming in my seat now. How is it that Natalie knows me so well? Can’t she just pretend that I’m always right and fuck the rest of the world?
“Well, I say we don’t panic just yet,” Natalie pronounces with an air of authority that, I’ll admit, I love hearing. “It could be that he was simply supposed to look at the departments before the meeting, and Mrs. Sanders misspoke. It could be that he looks at the departments and decides to only cut one or two people. I mean, we really don’t know, right?”
I nod my head miserably, realizing that if Natalie is right, the magazine as a whole will survive, but no matter what, I’m pretty fucked.
Fuck.
“So, let’s just hope that you overreacted, he’s not going to fire anyone, or if he does fire someone, it’s Janice in Accounting—that bitch has had it coming for years—and that he has selective amnesia and will forget that you yelled at him. Twice.”
“Perfect,” I laugh, and we clink our margarita glasses together. “That’s an outcome I can get behind.”
We enjoy our dinner of seafood soup and lots more chips and salsa, and then decide to head over to the SoHo to really get our drink on. I mean, yeah, I spent way too much on the cab this morning and I’m spending way too much on food and drink tonight, but fuck it. My job is going down in flames. If there is ever a time to say, “Fuck you, world, I hate you!” and get blitzed, this is it.
Not that I usually need much of a reason, let’s be honest, but today is giving them to me in spades anyway.
After taking a cab over that Natalie mercifully paid for, we wander into a swanky dimly-lit bar that looks like it attracts the power-suits kind of men that I always find my panties getting wet over. Drinks will be way too expensive, but I don’t care. I’m on a mission—to get buzzed, or to get fucked, and preferably both. Anything to end my six-months-and-one-day losing streak but barring that, at least get fucked until my eyes cross.
We settle into the corner booth to better be able to scope out the guys coming through, and begin sipping our strawberry margaritas.
“Ash, you just need to be honest with him,” Natalie pronounces out of nowhere.
“Honest? With who?” My mind is a little fuzzy around the edges at this point; I’m like three margaritas in and feeling loopy as shit from it, which is exactly the point. Except, it does make it hard to follow conversation topics.
“Apollo. Mr. Kane. Tell him that you’re sorry and that you want to stick your tongue down his throat.” She picks up her drink and sucks on the salt rimming the edge. “I’m pretty sure he’ll figure out how to handle it from there.”
“I already told him I was sorry, and I can’t just tell my boss that I want to stick my tongue down his throat!”
Petulance warning ahead: I’m, like, the worst at saying sorry. No, I’m really, really bad at it. I already swallowed my pride enough to do it once today; I cannot imagine saying it again. I’d rather eat raw caterpillars than say I’m sorry twice. That’d be, like, awful.
Natalie glares her evil, do-what-I-say eyes at me. “Ashley, I know that you’d rather streak naked down Broadway Avenue than tell someone you’re sorry” — she’s right about that — “but in this case, I think it’s necess—”
She gasps and then her eyes cut straight over to mine. “Don’t look over there,” she hisses, her eyes darting back and forth between mine and something over my left shoulder, “but your Mr. Kane is heading our way.”
“What?” I whip my head around, which makes Natalie jerk my shoulder and turn me back toward her again.
“I told you not to look!” she hisses, staring deep into my eyes. “Just look at me. Don’t look around. Just stay calm. Nothing is wrong.”
Which, of course, makes me want to do nothing but look around and panic and freak out, but Natalie’s pinning me to my seat with her eyes so I just stare back, unblinking.
And then, he’s passing us. I can feel him even before I spy him out of the corner of my eye. He’s headed to the adjoining banquet hall. He must be a big man around here because they only use that place for large parties and there aren’t any today. So this guy can pretty much do what he pleases, I guess? Makes sense with a name like the Wolf of New York. The air just gets all electrical and hot and sparkly and I have a hard time breathing and I think that I should take a sip of my margarita, if only to have something to do with my hands while waiting for him to go, get out of ear shot, go somewhere else, which is when I swallow and send the margarita mix down the wrong tube.
Which is how I end up gasping, crying, and Natalie pounding and whacking me on the back as I try to learn how to breathe again.
Thank
Fucking
God
Apollo has already passed and thus missed his opportunity to perform CPR on me.
Or…
I think for a moment, as I’m hacking up a lung, that a mouth-to-mouth session with Apollo might just be worth sucking tequila and ice down into my lungs for.
Finally, when I can breathe again and the daggers of pain in my chest have eased, I grin at Natalie, wiping the tear off my cheek. “You, ma’am, have a full-on disaster area as a best friend. I hope you know that.”
She grins back. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
We suck at our new drinks for a minute—the waiter apparently taking my attempt at Death By Inhalation as being his cue to deliver more yumminess to our table—and then Natalie says, “So, what’s the chances that we run into our brand-new boss here tonight? I’m starting to feel like I’m in the middle of a romance novel.”
“Hmm…” I say contemplatively. Despite the cold of my drink, I’m happily warm and relaxed now. “This can’t be a romance novel; I’m not falling in love with Mr. Kane. I’d rather like to stick my tongue down his throat though, or at least have him spank me like the bad girl I am.”
“So more like one of those super sexy, insta-lust kind of novellas?”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding my head vigorously. “Definitely one of those. Lots and lots and lots of sex.”
Nat and I stare at each other for moment. “What are you still doing here?” she finally says and I stand up quickly, wobbling on my feet as I go.
“The heroine is off to fuck the hero,” I say, snagging my drink from the table and waving it around grandly.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want full deets in the morning.”
“Not a moment left out,” I promise, and then follow Mr. Apollo Kane.
149
Apollo
My fingers drift gently over the ivory keys as the employees of the bar work to clean up. They didn’t have anything here and this room isn’t supposed to generally open to the public. But I’m Apollo Kane. I do what I want.
I ignore the tinkling of the dishes and just let my fingers play the notes of the classical music that my mother spent most of my childhood beating into my brain. While other kids got to run and play and ride bikes, I was stuck inside on the piano bench, the white and black keys my only friends.
I really should hate music because of this but somehow, music became my only refuge instead, from a father who was always gone and a mother who invented the term “helicopter mom.” I may not have grown up to be classical pianist, but I still love Beethoven.
Taking over a new company is always hard, and when employees learn that I am indeed the enemy, no matter how much I lie to them in the beginning, it only gets harder. But today…today was worse than usual.
Ashley made it worse than usual. How does one petite Blush employee do such a total mind fuck on me? Yeah, she’s hot—okay, really fucking hot—and she’s funny as shit; even when she’s chewing me out, I want to laugh, but she isn’t that special, right?
I hear a throat clearing behind me. Tentative, quiet, almost not loud enough for me to hear over the vacuum cleaners and the dishes being stacked and the music spilling from the grand. I pull my hands away from the ivor
y and grab my scotch off the gleaming black surface as I turn to face…
It’s like my thoughts conjured her up. She’s in a different skirt, one that doesn’t appear to be ripped, at least, and a shirt that’d make a blind man drool.
I take a sip of my scotch, cocking my eyebrow at her, waiting for her to speak. I will admit that I was just trying to play her out of my mind right about the same time you'll hear me claim that my cock is three inches long.
She clears her throat again and smiles painfully. “Ummm…I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for earlier.” She pauses for a moment and then clarifies, “All of the earliers.” I feel the corner of my mouth quirk up, despite my best intentions of keeping a straight face. “I shouldn’t have stolen your cab and I shouldn’t have made fun of you when I did and I shouldn’t have broken that vase and I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Twice.”
“Really, I think the vase deserved to be broken,” I say drily.
“That’s probably true.” She flashes me a quick grin. “So, I have to admit, I’ve been curious all day, why were you taking a cab this morning? Can’t you just have your helicopter fly you in or something?”
“Well, after my stretch limo got a flat tire in the middle of morning rush hour traffic, I figured a cab would be easier to catch than for me to have a helicopter hover over Bond Street, extend a rope, and have me hang on as we fly over Manhattan.”
She busts out laughing. “Can you just imagine Mr. Isaouk’s face if you’d made your entrance at the base of a rope ladder hanging off a helicopter?” Her laughter is happy and free and her flushed cheeks tell me that she’s drank a little too much tonight and my cock tightens painfully in my slacks from the sight. She's too damn gorgeous by half, and the predatory side of me, the one that's earned me the nickname the Wolf of New York, roars to life. There's nothing that I want more than to take her and fuck her right here, right now, over this grand piano.
