I’m hoping that my parents will be asleep when I get home, but my dad is still up.
“What were you doing all night, young lady?” he asks me, sipping on his rum and coke.
I look at him a bit disgusted. He used to be my world, my rock. I thought he could do no wrong.
“Nothing, Dad. I was just at my friend Ruby’s from work.”
I used to feel bad about lying to him or doing anything that might disappoint him. But I no longer do. Now I know he’s just a regular human like everyone else. And sometimes a hypocritical one at that.
If the congregation knew he liked to drink by himself at night, I’m sure they’d have some few choice words for him. But like everything else, that’s a secret in our house. We must always pretend to be the perfect Finnegans. Ordained by God to be the pastor and the pastor’s family.
I can’t wait to sneak upstairs to read Leonard Cohen’s poetry and think about everything that just happened with Damien. But my dad just doesn’t want to let me off the hook that easily.
“You seem a bit too happy to have only been hanging out with a girlfriend,” Dad says. “What were you really doing?”
And people— including Damien, earlier tonight— always ask me why I have anxiety, I think. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to be grilled by their father on their every move. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to bear the burden of helping hold up the image of the perfect pastor’s family.
“Dad, I’m old enough to make my own decisions,” I tell him, surprising myself.
I don’t usually speak to my father this way. For too long it’s been engrained in me that he’s always right, no matter what. But I feel emboldened, alive. I don’t want to just return to life as normal, feeling depressed and anxious above my every move, wondering if I’m living up to other peoples’ standards enough.
Something has changed and I want to live my own life for myself.
“Not while you’re still living under my roof, you’re not,” Dad says. “You still have to obey the rules and let me know your whereabouts. What would people say if they knew you were out gallivanting around town, doing who knows what?”
I think about what I was really doing and try hard to suppress a laugh. I’m sure that most people wouldn’t approve. My dad certainly wouldn’t.
But my dad stays in a loveless marriage with a wife he’s cruel to. He puts on a façade every Sunday while drinking himself silly by himself every night.
It’s time to stop living by dad’s standards of happiness and start living by my own.
“Good night,” I tell him, heading up the stairs.
I expect him to get mad or shout up after me—he can have quite a temper, causing my anxiety to flair when I worry about what he’ll do or say to me for no good reason whatsoever. But right now, when I’m being openly defiant, when he has a reason to be mad at me and perhaps yell at me, he doesn’t. He’s surprisingly silent.
I guess I should start standing up for myself more often.
Chapter 15 – Damien
ONE MONTH LATER
“Everything looks like it’s been going well with your case,” Ron tells me, as I start setting up my office at the law firm.
His voice sounds reassuring and comforting but I never trust lawyers.
“So why do I need to practically move into your law firm then, if things are going well?” I demand.
“Your case has been taking up so much time we think it’s best that you’re here at the firm at least part-time, so that we can have contact with you whenever you need,” Ron explains. “As we gear up for the upcoming trial, it will be important that we be able to reach with you and work with you a lot more.”
“Ron,” I tell him, “I have done a lot to make sure we win this case. Please tell me you have this under control. Tell me we’re not going to lose.”
“We’re not going to lose,” he says, a resolute look on his face that actually looks convincing. “That’s why we’re having you work with us here at the office. So, that we too can do everything possible to win this case for you. Which we will. We will win. We always win.”
I sigh. I have no choice but to believe him. I really have done everything possible and now it’s all up to them. A stupid fucking competitor is claiming I stole their designs when I make all my toys and games myself— often specifically for my mother.
Other times, customers call up telling me about their child with special needs or circumstances and I make custom toys just for them and then mass produce them on a larger scale so that other children can enjoy them to. There’s no way this other company can prove that I copy them, because I don’t. They just know I have deep pockets and they want a piece of my empire. But they’re not going to fucking get it.
I’ve honored my promises to Katie because I haven’t wanted anything between her and I to get in the way of my legal team winning this case. I called my IT guy and told him to give up the investigation into Ruby that I had previously requested.
He had assured me that they hadn’t found evidence of any new hacking activity and that they would let me know if anything suspicious arose, but I told him stop the search and drop the investigation entirely. I know that Ruby was just trying to do what was best for Ron and the firm, out of love. I understand that now.
I also haven’t contacted Katie because we had agreed it would be just one date. I’m mad at myself for letting her have so much power over me that I took her to my apartment and took her virginity.
But at the same time, all she would have to do is say the word and I would be with her again. In every sense of the word. I fucking know it.
I haven’t been able to even look at another girl since I’ve met Ruby. She has really done a number on my head. I never should have asked her out. I seem to have lost my mind and all control.
When Ron had called me and asked how I felt about moving my office to the firm for a while so that my patent trial would go as smoothly as possible, my first thought was that I’d be closer to Katie. I remembered how the partners had suggested letting her help on my cases. They had even mentioned that she’d done good work behind the scenes.
But now I worry that she’ll be assigned to work for me directly and that could be really bad. I already let go of a lot of my strict discipline and integrity when I slept with her. To know that I slept with a subordinate— even if she didn’t become my subordinate until after the fact— would be pushing things way too far.
Except I don’t know if I can fucking resist her. I’m already wondering where she’s at.
“Am I going to have a secretary?” I ask Ron, who just chuckles at me.
“Oh, Damien. We men are pathetic when we fall hard, aren’t we?”
“What are you talking about?” I respond, pretending to play dumb, but he’s shaking his head knowingly.
“Katie isn’t here,” he says. “Sorry for that little disappointment.”
“Where is she?” I ask, immediately upset.
“Calm down,” he says. “You’ll see your sweet little young thing again. She just took time off to move.”
“To move?”
“Yeah, she had some personal time saved up and she’s moving to her own place,” he says.
Her own place?
I automatically assume the worst and get jealous. Was she living with a boyfriend? And that’s why she didn’t want me to see where she lived?
I know the idea is ludicrous. She was definitely a virgin until I popped her cherry. I could tell that much— physically and emotionally.
But stranger things than living with a partner you don’t have sex with have happened. In fact, I think that’s exactly what Madilyn’s situation was before she got with Asher. And I don’t think I could bear knowing that Katie is living with someone.
“Apparently, the poor thing still lived with her parents,” Ron says, laughing. “Isn’t that something?”
Her parents?
I suppose those are “someones” that I can bear her living with.
&n
bsp; She’s even more innocent than I thought. I feel a little bit disgusted at myself for taking her virginity now.
But she wanted it. She loved it. I know she did. And I know she wants more.
“Don’t worry, she’ll be at our wedding,” Ron says, with a reassuring smile.
“She will? She’s going all the way to Spain?”
“Of course,” he says. “So, you’ll see her there.”
Spain seems so far away— both geographically and in terms of time until Ron and Ruby’s wedding. It’s only a week away but it might as well be years.
I feel as if I’ll go crazy if I don’t see Katie again soon. I need some reassurance from her that she wants to be with me again the way I want to be with her. Even though I feel guilty for stealing her innocence.
I know that if she becomes my employee in any sense of the word— even an assistant I “borrow” from the law firm— that we have to stop sleeping together. And it’s pretty obvious that that’s what they have in mind to do— make Katie my assistant. So, I want to make sure we can sleep together before that happens.
Just one more time. That’s it. Then it really will be out of my system.
Chapter 16 – Katie
Ruby and Ron’s wedding is beautiful. And so, different from Madilyn and Asher’s. Both are lovely in their own way and of course I’m a little biased towards Ruby’s since she’s my good friend. But her wedding is unique. Like only a Ruby wedding could be.
It’s on a hillside with an old Spanish castle in the backdrop. A single acoustic guitar plays as Ruby walks down the aisle, her purple-streaked hair wrapped on top of her head with some spirals cascading down.
Instead of inviting the entire firm including the Barbies, Ruby and Ron invited only close family members and friends— so I feel particularly honored to be here. They even flew everyone here in Ron’s private jet. (Or most of us. Those who had their own jets— like Asher and Damien— took their own). Talk about a fringe benefit.
Speaking of Damien, he’s been staring at me this entire time. I know he wants what I want. To be close to him again. To smell him. Feel him. Kiss him. Fuck him.
But we’re playing a game of chicken and both of us are too afraid to admit the truth. It’s been far too long since we’ve been together and I want to change that.
Take me, I want to tell him. Fuck me again. Harder. More intimately. More, more, more.
They've told me that I'll be helping him out at work. That means he's going to be my boss now. My boss was only supposed to take me on a date. He wasn't supposed to take my virginity. I wasn't supposed to let him. And I definitely wasn't supposed to like it.
It’s like I can’t get enough. All I can think about, all the time, is him. I thought that focusing on getting my own place and finally moving out from under my parents’ roof would give me the ability to re-focus my energy on myself and my own goals.
But if my plan was to forget him, the experiment failed. I’m glad I’m living on my own and I’m also glad I don’t let my parents and their ridiculously high expectations have as much control over me anymore, but I still think of Damien non-stop. I feel incomplete without him, as pathetic as that might sound.
After the wedding, there’s a small reception and a Spanish band.
I walk over to Ruby to congratulate her.
“Thank you, friend,” she says, throwing her arms around me.
She looks absolutely giddy and I’m so happy for her.
“Guess what I’m wearing underneath my dress,” she tells me.
“There are really some things you should keep private between you and your new husband,” I joke.
But I know what she’s referring to. She holds up her dress and flashes me the garter I’d made her, on which I’d embroidered her new initials.
“I’m glad you like it enough to wear it,” I tell her.
“I love it,” she says. “I never would have guessed you knew how to make one of these, until you told me about your strict parents and boring home life.”
“I’m full of exciting mysteries,” I tell her, and we laugh.
And then I look over at one of the tables where appetizers are laid out and see Damien crook his finger at me, beckoning me to come over to him. Finally.
“Looks like I’m being summoned,” I tell Ruby.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she says.
My heart jumps up into my stomach as I approach Damien. Finally. This is the one thing I’ve been wanting. Thank God for Ruby’s wedding.
“I thought you’d never come say hello,” he says, once I’m standing in front of him. He has obviously been thinking the same thing that I have.
“And I thought the same.”
“Did you have a nice flight?” he asks me.
I nod, realizing that his attempts at small talk leave me with little to say in return. This is the first time I’ve been to Spain. The first time I’ve been out of the country. I feel so inexperienced, but also experienced now in different ways— in the one way that really matters— thanks to Damien.
“Would you like to have another one?”
He raises his eyebrows at me.
“What?”
I let out a little laugh, not sure of what he means.
“I’d like to take you in my private jet, to Ibiza,” he says. “I hear that a lot of women like long walks along the beach at sunset. I thought we could try that. And maybe some other things.”
I full-on laugh now, tilting my head back and looking up at the blue sky. All of the waiting has paid off. He really does want me as much as I’ve been wanting him. And he’s taking me to a Spanish island.
Ruby and Ron come over and Ron elbows Damien.
“Looks like you two are having fun,” he says.
“Katie, did you know that Damien now has an office next to Ron’s? At the law firm?”
I smile.
“I may have heard a little something about that,” I admit.
It may have been the reason I took time off— in addition to needing to move. I was trying to make sure I didn’t do or say anything stupid when Damien first came to the office. But now here we are in Spain and everything seems to be working out, so I don’t know what I was worried about.
“Yeah, I might need Katie’s help around the office,” Damien says.
I look at Ruby and make a face that says “eek.” She nods her head and makes a face back that says, “right on, girlfriend.”
Maybe Damien and I really will have what Ruby and Ron have. And Asher and Madilyn. Perhaps I’ve finally met my match at Sugar Daddy Central.
I try not to laugh out loud at the thought and I make a mental note to tell Damien about my nickname for the firm, later. And a lot of other things as well.
Chapter 17 – Damien
I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day to spend with Katie if I tried. The sand is wet and smooth beneath our feet. The turquoise water laps along the shore. Her hand feels small and soft when wrapped within my own.
“I couldn’t wait to take you here,” I tell her. “We’re going to spend a nice time together before you start working for me.”
“And then what happens then?” she says, a smile lighting up her pretty face. “I turn into a pumpkin?”
I stop and turn to face her, the breeze blowing her hair back.
I can't believe where we started out, compared to where we've ended up right here, right now. It was just a dare, but we got out of hand. I got into her sexy panties and she got into my fucking head. Now both things are all twisted up.
“Katie, we’ll have to see where things stand after my patent trial,” I tell her. “But I can’t be dating a subordinate. It’s not who I am or what I do.”
“I understand,” she tells me, but she looks disappointed. “At least we have Ibiza.”
“Yes,” I agree, glad she is taking it so well.
But part of me doesn’t want her to take it well. Those parts— my ego, my cock— want her to beg me to be with h
er even after I’m her boss.
I had asked Ron to let Katie work for me because I want it to be official. I want to know that I will see her, smell her, be near her every day until my trial is over. But I can’t touch her. Can’t taste her. Can’t kiss her. Can’t fuck her.
There’s something exciting in the forbidden nature of that relationship. Although I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold off. It has to come from Katie. She has to be the one to want me the way I want her to want me.
We’ve walked a long way down the shore and back, and we’re heading over to the resort hotel I reserved us a room in. Katie knows that but what she doesn’t know is that I’ve arranged a special set-up for us.
There’s a cabana tent with a bed in it, and curtains around all sides except the one facing the ocean. I take her hand and lead her inside the structure.
“This is amazing,” she says, squeezing my hand in excitement.
“I thought you might like it,” I tell her. I draw her close to me and kiss her, deeply and passionately. She smells like a mix of the ocean and the wind and the sky. All the best parts of nature.
She presses herself up against me, and I feel my cock rise against her stomach, which is prominently displayed by her bikini top.
“Please,” she says, as I hold the back of her head so I can kiss her more forcefully. “Please take me again. I’ve been wanting you so badly ever since you first did.”
These are exactly the words I’ve been wanting to hear from her. I pull back a bit, teasing her.
“But I’m about to be your boss,” I tell her. “You heard Ron. They’re assigning you to work for me.”
“I know,” she says, leaning her head against my chest in that way that I love because it means I’m protecting her, sheltering her. “But you’re not my boss yet.”
“If I take you again right now, knowing that you’re my employee, I’m going to have to punish you later for it. At the office. Do you understand?”
Sold on Christmas Eve Page 74
