CEO's Christmas Party: A Bad Boy Billionaire Boss Romance

by Cassandra Bloom

  “So what’s the deal with Zima?” she says finally.

  I start laughing. “Zima makes me laugh. She does her job okay, but I keep her around because I like her, and also because she reminds me of something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That I don’t want to be used. Zima’s a user. Just trust me on this one. And I’ll tell you something else. People who are willing to live their lives with someone else’s money don’t know what they could aspire to. It cuts off their ambitions. And I want to see people reach for things they want.”

  The way I reach for her now. Now that we’re out of the clearing, I have no guilt and wrapping my arms around her and kissing her.

  Chapter Sixteen - Maya

  So, it looks like we’re camping. One of his phantom forest elves has set up a tent in yet another clearing ahead. But calling it a tent is like calling the pyramids mere triangles. The tent is the size of a house.

  “Ever been in a yurt?” says Conrad. Of course, he knows the answer, which is no.

  It’s even more impressive inside than out. Except for the round shape, you’d have no idea that it wasn’t a house. The walls are paneled, hiding the poles that support the structure. There’s a firepit in the floor, functional no doubt, and a stove in the corner. No, yurts don’t have corners, but it’s over there against a wall. There’s even a cooler full of drinks.

  “I had them set this up for us,” he says. “I think we’ll be able to do some very good work here.”

  It looks that way.

  One thing I’ve always been sure of is that men are uncomplicated. Exasperating, yes. Infuriating at times, sure. But I’ve always felt like I knew where I stood when it came to whichever guy was next to me. He wanted something from me, and I wanted to believe that he was as interested in getting to know me as getting into my pants.

  Conrad is complicated. You hear that we’re all made of many selves. Angry you, lustful you, petty you, generous you, cruel you, and so on. The light and the dark have to fight for center stage and if you’re lucky your good attributes spend the most time front and center. Conrad seems like he’s got a million sub-modes battling inside him. It feels like he wants me to figure out who he is. Or maybe, who he could be. He said he feels protective of me, but I feel the same way. Is that crazy, feeling protective of a man who has so much money that money has essentially ceased to exist for him? A man with such resources that he has unlimited options? A man with such good looks that he could fill this yurt with a grateful harem at the snap of his fingers.

  I watch him start the fire and it doesn’t seem crazy at all. He knows what he is. He knows what he’s not. He’s curious about who he might become. It’s hard not to respect that. It’s impossible not to want it for him.

  “Is this going to help us fall in love?” I say.

  He looks around the yurt. “Oh yeah. This is kind of like a primitive atom smasher. But in here, instead of atoms, it’s all of those pesky inhibitions that make people put up their walls get destroyed.”

  Once the fire’s going, he sits in a wicker chair and pats his knee. “This is what people do,” he says. “Come sit on my lap. You’ll be overcome with desire and emotion.” He throws back his head and laughs. “Please don’t ever tell anyone I said that. I just had to see how it sounded out loud.”

  I sit on his lap. I put my arms around his neck. He can laugh all he wants, but I’m overcome with desire and emotion. “You know, I think that all of this touching can really confuse the issue.”

  “You might be right. It’s tough to experiment in a vacuum.” He kisses me and I put my hands in his hair. It’s hard to believe that the normal world is only 15 minutes away. By helicopter, that is.

  When we separate I say, “You know, I thought of something that might help. It’s straight of the girl’s guide to falling in love.”

  “Is that a real book?”

  “Probably. And one of the non-negotiables. You’re supposed to meet my friends so I can get their opinion on you. The good news is that right now I really only have one friend, so this will be easy.”

  “If we’ve got two weeks out here, how long would you need for your friend to give me an evaluation?”

  “No more than a night or two.”

  “All right, give her a call. If she says yes, I’ll have someone go get her.”

  Angela screams so loudly into the phone that the yurt nearly collapses. I don’t give her the details; I just present it as an invite. She wants to know when we’ll be getting married. She wants to know if she can marry him. She wants to know what he looks like naked. Conrad can hear the whole thing. He looks like he’s regretting this decision. When I hang up, he says, “We stay here tonight. We’ll bring her up to the house tomorrow afternoon.”

  “And what are we going to do in the meantime?”

  “I need to spend a couple of hours writing. I want you to do the same. Then we need to add another layer to the experiment.”

  “What should I write about?” I say.

  “That’s up to you, Maya. But it might be helpful for you to write about what you want from a man in your life. Then you’ll have a better way to gauge whether I can be that man or not.”

  He delivers this speech like he’s Spock. But I know he’s just trying to appeal to my analytical side. It’s not a bad strategy. I know I said it before, but it bears repeating: when you find a man that encourages your mind, you don’t just throw everything away and worship him just because he’s not fixated on your body, but it’s an uncommon thrill.

  As I put the pen on the paper, it is quickly apparent that I know much more about what I don’t want than what I do. Other than my night with Conrad, the rest of the men in my life haven’t exactly set the cosmos on fire. Let’s see:

  You already know about Ian. Cheating, charming, cowardly.

  Tim had been a waiter with a screenplay in a desk at home. He called him mom three times a week and cried when he couldn’t pay his bills on time.

  Nick had been in the city for a summer before returning to an oil rig somewhere in the ocean. He had been an adorable moron whose T-shirts all had words on them.

  There had been a philosophy professor whose name I couldn’t remember. He used words like “Kantian” at the breakfast table before the sun had come up. He had approached sex like he did his classes: painstakingly, clinically, as if he thought Socrates might show up and judge him.

  Other than them, there had been a few boyfriends when I was a teenager. What I wanted was what they were not. I want ambition. I want stability. I want someone who adores me and challenges me. I want someone independent who has passions of his own. I definitely want someone who had a body, a pair of eyes, and ass like Conrad’s. I’m not proud, I can admit it. The thing I want most of all, I think, is for someone to know everything about me. Not that I’m overflowing with unshared secrets, but I’ve never been in a relationship that passed beyond that guarded stage where you’re not even you, you just send your representative to date in your place.

  Conrad will know me if I let him. But I guess we have to follow the experiment to its end. Good God, this is all so weird and wonderful. Angela is going to lose her shit when she gets here.

  He’s writing. He hasn’t looked up once. Now and then he pulls on his lower lip when he’s trying to concentrate or work through something. He occasionally sighs and I wonder what he’s remembering, or if he just had a flash of insight. Then I’m done wondering because I get so wet that I’m going to die if I don’t deal with it. Slowly, so he can’t hear me approaching, I put down my notebook and crawl towards him. There’s a layer of cushion on the ground, so I’m silent.

  Conrad looks up and notices me at the same time as I’m reaching for his zipper. I push him back against the chair he’s in and his cock is in my mouth before he can protest that I’m interrupting his literary masterpiece. He pulses against my tongue, and I take as much of him in as I can. His hands are in my hair. My hands are on his muscular thighs. Soon he’s
moving his hips to meet me, lifting slightly off of his chair. I’m lost in the moment, dimly aware of myself, more aware of his moans. It’s a delicious sensation, being nothing but body, focused solely on someone else’s pleasure. And maybe I’m being selfish, but part of me knows that if I make this memorable enough, I’m going to get something in return for my efforts. When he comes I make no effort to pull away.

  “Jesus,” he says, finally releasing my hair. He leans back, eyes closed. When they open again, he looks like he’s starving and I’m the first bit of food he has seen in a week. He moves out of the chair and pushes me against the ground. One hand pulls my blouse open, squeezing my breasts, while the other yanks my skirt up. He pushes lightly against me with his palm, grinding slowly. I thought I was wet before, but nothing like this. He slips a finger under the cups of my bra and toys slowly with each nipple, just as he pulls my panties aside and slips another finger inside me. I try to sit up, ready to beg him to put his cock inside me, but he takes his hand out of my bra and softly covers my mouth. “You don’t want the ducks to hear,” he says with a devilish grin, before he disappears, kissing down the length of my body, settling between my legs.

  It’s no surprise to find that he’s a bit of an artist down there. His tongue directs me to arch my back, to grind my teeth, to moan and whimper and I can tell my eyes are rolling back in my head. He slips another finger inside me while he works my clit with his tongue, and now his fingertips are pushing against my ceiling from inside. I come in under a minute, then again. It shakes me so hard that I worry I might not ever come back to reality. Then it gets even better and I worry that this might stop. Reality no longer has any charms for me.

  When he finally lets me go and sits back, smiling down at me, I feel like I’ve been wrung out. I am so deliciously empty and sedated that I feel like I must weigh a thousand pounds.

  I want someone to really know me, inside and out. Conrad certainly knows me better than anyone else ever has. My God, with the way he works my body, it’s like he’s always known me. He’s just been waiting for me to show up.

  “I think you were really inappropriate tonight,” he says. “I’m starting to think the experiment is going to fail. We aren’t sticking to rigid methods. This is kind of all over the place.”

  “Meh,” I say. “Some of the greatest breakthroughs were accidents, right? People who just said fuck it and did what they wanted?”

  “You certainly did what you wanted tonight.”

  He’s right about that. And it wasn’t enough. And I worry that it might never be enough. It’s not the worst problem to have. Conrad stokes the fire and opens a wooden chest. He takes two blankets out and lays them over us. At some point in the night, it begins to rain. I wake with him pressed against me from behind, his hand resting on my hip.

  A shared moment, even though he’s asleep.

  Chapter Seventeen - Conrad

  From the way Maya described her, I figured that Angela was going to be a livewire, but holy shit! She’s a walking case of Red Bull that just did a bunch of speed. We came back up here to the cabin in the early morning. It was a bit of a hike since we were both still feeling wonderfully battered and shattered from what we’d spent the evening doing to each other.

  When we arrive, Angela is walking up the trail, followed by my pilot. She screams and screams and throws her arms around Maya, who laughs and laughs and I’m instantly exhausted by it all. But I’ve got to make a good impression, right? Not that that’s going to be any problem. As soon as she’s done hugging Maya, Angela throws her arms around my waist and shakes me back and forth like I’m a tackling dummy.

  “I can’t believe this!” she says.

  “I believe you,” I say, trying to release myself.

  Maya takes her inside and gives her a tour of the cabin. There is so much shrieking that I put headphones in while I try to get a little work done. That doesn’t last. Someone grabs the headphones off my head and says, “All right you, let’s get to it. Maya’s going to take a nap while we talk. What the hell did you do to her? She’s moving like a zombie!” She sits across from me.

  “She started it,” I say, smiling at the memory. She started it, but I finished it.

  “Oh I bet she did. You know all the fucking losers she’s been with? Most of the guys she’s dated have been about as fun a shoe. And way less interesting. So you’ve got to be careful with her. She said that you’re into games. You better not be conning her. If you break her heart I’m going to break your face. I don’t care how rich you are or how nice your face is.” Angela crosses her arms and squints. I wish that I had ever felt this much conviction about anything.

  “We feel the same about Maya,” I say. “I don’t know what she told you, but I hired her to help me work on a book.”

  “Yeah, she mentioned it, but when I look around this place, and at the way you two are looking at each other, I can’t picture a lot of writing taking place. You know what? I think you’re too charming. What do you say to that?”

  She hasn’t given me a chance to say one word. I haven’t had a chance to act like an asshole or a charmer. “I say that I like Maya more than anyone I have ever met. I’m glad you’re here. It’s important to me to make a good impression.”

  “For the sake of the experiment, right? For the book?”

  “I’m just trying to do this right. I’ve never done it right. Women have always made it too easy for me so I’ve never had to work for anything. Coming up with this kind of structure is supposed to keep me honest.”

  Angela laughs. “Spoken like a true billionaire. Maybe that should be the title of your book. Look, I’m mostly kidding. You seem amazing and she’s crazy about you. But please, please, please, if you’re going to act like you’re crazy about her, be crazy about her.”

  “I will,” I say. “You have my word.” I’m distracted. Something’s bothering me. I can’t figure out what it is. Something’s wrong. Angela chatters away about how nice the cabin is, and how nice the world is, and how nice everything is, and then it hits me.

  Mike never left. I never heard the helicopter take off.

  Chapter Eighteen - Maya

  I meant to sleep, but Angela’s rapid-fire interrogation downstairs is too good (and too loud) to miss. Conrad’s disappointingly monotone and monosyllabic, but that’s what happens when you talk to Angela: you wind up looking less than colorful against her onslaught. What can you say? She lives her truth.

  I might as well join them. I get up and check myself in the mirror. Wow. I’ve come a long way from the day I stepped into that elevator looking like a zillion bucks. But I look happy. This is one more thing I wish I could put in a bottle.

  There’s a noise behind me. The unmistakable sound of a window being opened. When I turn around I’m not alone. A familiar-looking woman is in my room, pointing a gun at me. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing here, or what she has to smile about, but she looks like she just won the lottery.

  “Let’s go downstairs,” she says, and then she puts a finger to her lips. Shh. “You go first.”

  “What do you want?” I can’t figure out where I’ve seen her.

  “I already told you. I want to go downstairs and I want you to go first. Let’s go see Mr. Man down there. It’s time for a little chat.”

  There’s no way to warn him. I go to the door and open it. I wonder if there’s any way to get a hand on her and knock her down the staircase. But no, she’s anticipating it. I can tell by the excitement on her face. Maybe she’s even hoping for it. What the hell is this?

  Conrad must have heard my footsteps because he comes to the foot of the stairs and looks up. I see two things on his face. First, the fear of seeing me in danger. And second, the shock of familiarity.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he says.

  The woman behind me leans forward, putting her chin on the top of my shoulder while digging the gun into my back. “What’s the matter, Conrad? Don’t you recognize me without out of uniform
?”

  Chapter Nineteen - Conrad

  How could I have been so stupid? For all the shit I’ve pulled, and all the games I’ve played, of course, something was going to come back to bite me. But I don’t want it to bite Maya. “Where’s Mike?” I say.

  “Don’t worry about him.”

  Angela jumps to her feet. “You’re that fucking crazy cop!”

  Maya lurches. I can tell that Cindy just pushed her in the back. “You’re goddamned right I’m that fucking crazy cop,” she yells. “And guess what happens next?” She pushes Maya again. My fists are clenched so tightly that I feel like they’re going to explode.

  “Don’t you do it,” I say. “Don’t touch her again.” But I’m worried. Not only is Cindy crazy, she’s trained. Of all the women who might have come for some payback, she is the one who can do the most damage.

  “I remember you telling me what to do,” she says. “That’s over now.” She pokes the back of Maya’s head with a gun, proving it. Maya’s gritting her teeth. I see her thoughts tumbling over and over. She’s trying to figure out how to make a move. I can’t allow that. “It’s all over now. They won’t let me work. They say that I need to go in for a psych eval. Why couldn’t you just have left me alone?”

  “I remember you doing it,” I say. “Gratefully. No one made you get into that car. If you lose your badge, that’s on you. And you said no one had ever made you feel like that, and we both know it’s true.”

  Maya is watching the floor. Something ugly is flashing in her eyes. If she gets a hold of Cindy, I don’t envy her, cop training or not.