by Marian Tee
I cried, “I want to fuck you.”
He released my arms so he could pinch both my nipples, rasping out, “Say you want to fuck me - Constantijin.”
I found myself grasping his hair and his nape, shamelessly pushing his head towards my breasts back. “I want you to fuck me, Constantijin.”
He pinched my nipples harder. “Beg me for it.”
“Please fuck---”
Someone knocked at the door briefly before it was pushed open, a tiny gray-haired woman stepping into the room. “Constantijin, we have an emer---” Her sharp voice abruptly died down when she saw us, Constantijin still pinching my nipples, my breasts bared to her sight.
Tears stung my eyes at the shame and horror of being caught like this, and I tore myself away from Constantijin, scrambling off the table while covering my breasts with my arms. As I hurriedly pulled my bra and blouse back down, I heard the older woman murmur a brisk apology before closing the door. I started crying at that. She sounded so…so used to this. Did he do this to every girl he fancied?
Nearly tottering in my heels as I spun around, I ignored Constantijin calling my name as I rushed out of the room, blinded by my tears.
I half-expected him to run after me, but he didn’t. Well, that was telling, right? The tears fell from my eyes more furiously at the thought.
Alyx jumped to her feet when she saw me. “What the hell---are you all right? What happened?”
I almost gave my virginity to Netherland’s #1 playboy, that’s what. And now I was paying the price for it.
Nodding jerkily, I stammered, “Nothing.”
But it was everything, and I woke up every morning, crying because I dreamt of him, of it, and I hated myself for being such a slut.
Then I received a call.
“Hello, Ms. Everleigh. This is Megan from Kastein Inc. I am pleased to let you know that you have been selected as part of the new marketing department. If you are still interested in the job, we would love to have you here tomorrow at nine in the morning. Your supervisor, Ms. Charli, will be waiting to give you a quick orientation.”
Lesson #2
Don’t make excuses.
If you decide to work for any of the companies that your billionaire owns –
You might as well say, “Seduce me, undress me, I’m yours.”
Alyx and I went shopping for clothes for mourning – I mean, corporate outfits. If my job interview was anything to go by, my rainbow assortment of dresses and three-pieces would have no place in Kastein Inc.
“Are you sure the last skirt you bought won’t violate your workplace’s dress code?” Alyx asked laughingly after over two hours of boutique-hopping.
I sniffed. “I already gave up on my colorful outfits. They can’t take away my minis, too.” Hampered by paper bags, I turned to my side, intending to push the glass door of Luigi’s open with my hips. Just as I swung my hips in full force, someone from the other side opened the door at the same time.
“Oh!” My heart jumped in fear as I felt myself crashing down, but a pair of hands immediately held me by the waist. I glanced up, an embarrassed smile on my lips.
My savior grinned down at me; his eyes twinkling as he carefully set me back to my feet. “Anytime,” he responded to my silent apology. He was casually dressed in shirt and jeans and looked extremely delicious. Or at least that was what Daria would have said, since she liked the tall, dark, and handsome type.
I blushed at the unconcealed admiration in his eyes, flattered and uncomfortable at the same time. My parents sent me to an all-girls high school and persuaded me to enroll in a ladies’ college as well. It was the same setup in our company, with me being surrounded by lady pharmacists and researchers from R&D. So trust me when I say all I knew of guys was what I got to watch from The Bachelor and Vampire Diaries, which – if you thought about it – didn’t exactly make great reference material. I could end up with a vampire willing to trade me in for a million dollars if I wasn’t careful.
“Thanks,” I said with a little nod and quickly sidestepped him, dragging a smirking Alyx behind me.
“He wanted to ask your number, you know,” Alyx said after giving our orders to the waiter. She had ordered salad and coffee. I had asked for the same – together with a small plate of fettuccine. Diet had never been a valid word in my dictionary. As far as I was concerned, it was a word made up by evil anti-pleasure monsters.
“Hmm.” I made the noncommittal sound, busy snipping price tags so I could have an easier time calculating my expenses later at home. Both my grandfather and Alyx’s were ex-military with Quaker backgrounds, and they figured very strongly in our childhoods. Add those two elements together and you got girls more comfortable shopping off the rack even though our credit card limits could afford a lot more than that.
While waiting for the appetizers, I told Alyx about the two other job offers I received from companies that were just as well-known as Kastein Inc. “One of them even offered me a thousand dollars on the spot as a signing bonus.”
Alyx choked. “And you didn’t take it?”
I chewed on my lip. “I really want the job at Kastein. It’s my dream job---”
She smirked. “Plus your dream boss, too, with his dream dick---”
I choked on my coffee. “That has nothing to do with it.”
But Alyx just crowed, “So you do think his dick is a---”
“No, I do not.” Alyx still didn’t know what happened or almost happened to us and how I totally had my walk of shame after my one-on-one with Netherland’s #1 playboy.
Last night, I stayed up late just so I could Google everything there was to know about Constantijin. Wikipedia told me he was an Eton and Cambridge graduate and an only child. His father had long retired, but his mother was Chairman of the Board while he had taken on the mantle of CEO a few years back, personally spearheading the company’s entry in the American market.
At thirty-two years old, what he accomplished for Kastein Inc. was mind-boggling. But what really filled me with shock and not a little self-disgust was how the names of his former lovers, hook-ups, and floozies could easily fill up a phone directory.
“Just be warned, Yanna,” Alyx murmured. “Office romances never end right.”
I let out an unladylike snort at that, unable to help it. Romance was definitely not something in Constantijin Kastein’s vocabulary. Mind-blowingly hot sex, yes, but a grand sweeping romance?
He might have given me my first (mini) orgasm, and he might keep me awake with consecutive wet dreams, but he was not the Mr. Right I have been waiting for.
Lesson #3
Focus on looking for Mr. Right –
And not Mr. Fuck.
If your billionaire finds out, he won’t let you go until he has you.
I am not going to look for Constantijin Kastein.
It was a mantra I repeated in my mind continuously when I made my way to the 34/F reception area of the executive offices of Kastein Inc. The girl behind the front desk, Megan, smiled at me warmly. She looked young and bubbly, but she, too, was dressed in black, and it was proof that I had made the right decision to shop for an all-black corporate wardrobe. In this office, any other color could probably get me tagged as Al-Qaeda or something equally horrible and to be avoided at all costs.
“Ms. Everleigh?”
“That’s me. Is Ms. Charli in already?”
“Yes. She’ll appreciate that you’re early. Let me take you to her now.” Megan escorted me to the very same conference room that I had the highest-lowest point in my life. I was already blushing the moment I entered the room, the same sense of shame attacking me when I recalled the older woman’s look of shock upon seeing me in her boss’s arms.
God. The memory made me feel like a slut.
Constantijin was nowhere in sight – not that I was looking or anything. Only one woman was inside the room, and boy, did she look scary! She made Vogue’s Anna Wintour look positively warm.
She stood up the moment I
entered, looking svelte in her black buttoned up polo, which was worn over a black-and-white striped turtleneck and paired with a leather-belted mini and black stockings.
The overall impact was phenomenal.
Wow was all I could think.
“Hello, Yanna. My name is Charli – without an E – and you will be reporting to me.” Her voice was very, very cultured, with the slightest hint of a French accent.
She was terrifying. I was tempted to run away, but only the prospect of working in my dream job kept me in place. I shook her hand gingerly and winced at the tiny tremble in my voice as I said, “Hello, Ms. Charli. I’d just like you to know how excited I am to work for you and the company.”
“Just Charli, ma belle.”
I nodded dumbly and gratefully took the seat she indicated with a wave of her well-manicured hand.
“Now, you know what Kastein company is?”
“Yes.” I recited what I learned from the Web, which was pretty much everything since I had a photographic memory. “It’s one of the fastest growing companies in Europe and North America. It specializes in real estate and entertainment. Mr. Erik Kastein concentrates on real estate while his son Constantijin Kastein concentrates on turning books and mangas into blockbuster movies and TV series.” I didn’t want to sound like I was trying to impress her or anything, even though I really was. I just wanted to make sure she knew I wasn’t taking this interview lightly.
“That’s right. Magnifique,” she murmured with a beautiful smile. “Now, we’ve hired you to be our marketing specialist.”
I blinked. “I thought you were just looking for a researcher.”
“True,” Charli replied. “But your research will be both textual and on-field. The thing is, we’re not really interested about where you’ve graduated, what your degree is, or even where you worked previously.”
I straightened at her words, now even more confused.
“What we were really interested about was your ability to meet business talents with your main passion. And that’s reading, no?”
It took me a while to adjust to her French, umm, verbal peculiarities. She said ‘no’, but what she really meant was ‘yes’…yes?
I finally nodded. “Err, yes, I love to read.”
Her face remained unsmiling as she asked, “But you can’t write to save your life, no?”
The way Charli said it made me wince, but it was true. “Yes.”
“And that’s why we need you. We are not interested in hiring writers. They are often biased and egoistical, often unable to appreciate anyone else’s writing over theirs. But you - you know how to judge books and writing without being a writer yourself and that’s why we need you.”
“I see.” But I didn’t.
“This is what you’d call a dream job, ma belle.”
I jerked in my seat at her words.
The words sounded eerie, more like a curse than a blessing.
Charli leaned close. “Your main job is to know and if you could, predict, what the trend in the market is right now regarding these materials. You need to look for projects worthy of international viewership. You have a blog, no?”
The sudden switch of subjects made my head whirl a bit but I nodded again.
“And you review works, there, no?”
“Yes.” Did she Google me too? How did she know so much about me?
“So I want you to do the same here, but only this time, you get heard.” She leaned back on her chair and looked at me with her naturally green and incredibly sharp eyes. “You will take the job, no?”
“I’d be crazy not to,” was all I could say.
Afterwards, Charli told me that I along with the two other applicants called back for a second interview yesterday had the same jobs. We would work as a team and individually, depending on necessity. The salary she quoted for me was standard pay in the industry, but she told me this could go higher in a short time, based on my performance. On the bright side, she did say I’d get free meals at work, excellent overtime pay when needed, and transportation allowance.
Mondays to Thursdays, I was required to report in office attire. Fridays were anything-goes. My work schedule would be from 8am to 5pm. No grace period. Oh, and one thing else, Charli reminded me as a post script — office romances were not allowed.
Déjà vu struck me for the second time, and I almost shivered at it.
Constantijin was still nowhere to be found when I finally walked out of the doors of Kastein, Inc. My phone rang just as I reached the other side of the street.
“Hello?”
“Did you miss me, Yanna?”
Holy...
It was him.
Constantijin.
The whole world disappeared the moment I realized who I was talking to. People were constantly walking before me, drivers honking their horns, and there was even a construction crew a few feet away drilling into the cement, doing God knew what. But none of their noise reached my ears.
“Yanna?”
I still didn’t know what to say so I stayed silent, secretly content to replay the sound of his voice over and over, especially the part where he said my name with that accented voice of his.
“I think about you all the time, schat.”
What did that last word mean? I was so, like, Googling that after this.
When I still didn’t answer, his tone turned from seductive to serious as he asked, “Why did you run away?”
Why didn’t you run after me?
But I couldn’t ask him that, could I? It would have been akin to, like, begging him to come after me. I said finally, in a stiff voice that required all my acting skills to carry off, “I don’t think we should be talking like this anymore. I’ll be working for you starting tomorrow. It would be inappropriate.”
A long pause followed, one that made me anxious and tense even though I didn’t want to be. I should hang up now. I knew that, but I couldn’t.
“That’s impossible.”
I inhaled sharply at the words, conscious of the zing of relief that went through me and shamed by it. Oh, God, I was so pathetic. Sometimes, I was too stubborn for my own good. Constantijin Kastein was bad news. How many times did I have to repeat to myself that anything that had to do with Netherland’s #1 playboy was surely going to end not just with a broken hymen but a broken heart as well?
My fingers tightened around my mobile phone. “I’m hanging up after this, Mr. Kastein. Please just---”
“I want to fuck you too much to stay away.”
Holy. Shit.
I glared at my phone, wishing it was a blond gorgeous giant I was glaring at instead. With just those few words, he had ruined whatever composure I had. Now, all I could think about was how he had me on the table, devouring my breasts, his erection jutting hard against my core, and me right now, soaking wet in the middle of a public street.
“Stop saying things like that,” I said weakly. Lame response, I know, but right now? That was, like, the best I could dish out.
“Why not?” The purr in his voice made me tremble, something I was sure had people looking at me oddly if they noticed. It was still early in the day, with the sun sending golden rays all over the place, and yet here I was shivering with desire.
“We just cant. It’s not…we can’t, okay?”
He chuckled, and the sound sent deliciously erotic shivers down my spine. It was almost as if I could feel his fingers trailing my back, promising me pleasure a hundred times more intense if I finally let him take me.
“Yanna, we are already doing it, whether you admit it or not. And tomorrow, when you get to work, we’ll be doing a lot more than this.”
Lesson #4
Don’t ask to be friends with your billionaire.
He’ll think you’re after the benefits, not the friendship.
In theory, first day of work should have been like first days in school. You had to feel your way around, meet new friends and frenemies, and figure out what you had to do to not be an ou
tcast. But the thing was, I had never experienced first-day trouble, mostly because I tended to skip it altogether. By the time I did show up in school, Alyx and Daria had already smoothed things over for me. They were cool, ergo I was cool by association.
But obviously, that wasn’t an option I had at work.
I took a shower early and chose a perfectly modest outfit for my first day – black blouse, matching slacks, and low-heeled pumps. My minis would be on hiatus until further notice.
Megan and Charli were already at work when I got to Kastein, Inc., making me vow to myself that I was not going to let my alarm snooze thrice starting tomorrow. Hopefully, double snoozes would be enough to have me arriving at work earlier than my superior.
When I got to the office Charli had directed me to, I saw the two other marketing executives she had told me about. My heart sank. One of them was Bottle Blonde. She had on a collared blouse as well, but unbuttoned way, way down to reveal more than an eyeful of her Ds. Next to her, I felt like I had breasts the size of eggs. Robin eggs, even. Her skirt was way longer than mine, but they had mid-thigh slits at each side, and her legs looked endlessly long with her fuck-me stilettos.
Immediately, I thought of Bottle Blonde coming up to Constantijin in her getup and my heart constricted.
The last one to make up our threesome was George, a gay Ivy League graduate who seemed to have a fondness for dorky-looking glasses and checkered shirts. I had noticed him in the interview, and he had the same combination on.
George and I smiled at each other. In an instant, I knew we were going to get along fine. Bottle Blonde and I sized each other up unsmilingly. Just as quickly, I knew we were going to be bitter frenemies for life.
The office we were given had light purple walls, a color that was very much easy on the eye. One side of the room was made of pure glass, providing us a breathtaking cityscape view. The left side of the room, next to the door which adjoined our office to Charli’s, was lined with three cubicles. Each cubicle had a table, chair, and a waist-high file cabinet. Displaying immense diplomacy, George opted for the middle table to keep Bottle Blonde – or rather Arian – and me apart. On the opposite of the room was a huge worktable, which I assumed where we’d be doing our work as a team.
