What the fuck have I gotten myself into? She wants to keep things professional, and I should have seen this coming from a mile away. The girl on the paper, I should have known from her education and breeding, from the way she rebuffed my questions during the interview - I should have known she’d reject my advances.

But she was the right person for the job. The right person for the position. The right girl for late nights in the office, whether she’d be spread out on my desk or not.

She’s the right girl for all the projects I have in mind.

All of them, including one very special project that I’ll keep her up late into the night to complete.

She’s not the only one who wants to be taken seriously, though. My interns apply for the job, and I have assistants come and go. The only one I really trust is Kayla, and Matt’s good too. I’ve finally been able to assemble an excellent staff, and Sara fits in with it perfectly. She is not a fly-by-night girl who just wants to be around me because she wants to be in the papers and wants a taste of what they all write about: my eight pack abs, my billions, and my ten-inch...you know.

I love seeing her squirm, and I’m incredulous that we’ll be able to keep our hands off each other, but I can play nice if that’s what he wants.

“Begging you?” She shifts in her chair, leaning forward. The neckline of her dress shows off her long, elegant, milky-white neck and collarbone. Her breasts aren’t pushed up around her chin like most of the girls in here, like the girl whose dirty selfies I have on my phone. Her modest, perfect breasts are hidden inside her shirt, beneath the edge of what I can just barely make out as a lace, soft bra. God, part of me wants to grab her by the wrist and bring her into the bathroom and bend her over the sinks so I can see her face in the mirror and my name on her lips, but I lean back, breaking our look from each other, and send a hand through my hair. The cooler part of me knows I need her to stick around for things more important than sex, not that there’s much that’s more important to that to me. Maybe my money and the show. Maybe.

“Yeah,” I say. “Begging me. But that’s all gonna be on you, baby. If you want to keep it professional between us, I promise I can deliver on that. I can keep my lips tight and my hands to myself. Even if you text me in the middle of the night saying like, come over, or let me come over, or meet me under the Hollywood sign, I’ll say no because what you really want is to do a good job. I can keep you in check. Keep you in line.”

“Is that what you do with all your interns, sir? Keep them in check, as you say? Under your thumb?” One arm crosses in front of her chest, the other elegant hand reaching out for her drink. Specs of salt kiss her lips as she brings the glass to her mouth, draining the remainder down her pretty lips, her tongue darting out to clean the crystals away. “You hire young girls like me so you can control them?”

“On the contrary,” I respond. She thinks she’s got me figured out. She thinks she can outsmart me and out-talk me. But I didn’t make my billions by being silent. “It’s women who control men. Look at the average man here.” I gesture around the room with one hand, careful to keep my gaze locked on Sara’s. “Everyone, and I mean everyone, from the richest son of a bitch in this room to the coat check guy, has one thing on their mind right now. And it’s how beautiful you are. And that’s power. We might think with our dicks, sweetheart, but it’s you we’re thinking of.”

Her eyes glimmer in the soft lights of the restaurant as she sizes me up. I can tell that she doesn’t know what to think of me - good, that’s the way I like it. That’s the way I like her, on her toes, questioning me, like she did at the interview. Her pretty pink lips purse into a smirk, and she draws the corner of her bottom lip between her perfect white teeth.

“What made you the authority?” she says simply. “What makes you think you’re qualified to dispense your wisdom, and why should people listen to you?”

“I don’t think I’m qualified,” I say. “It’s all of my callers who think I’m qualified. They’re the ones who have the power. If people stopped calling in for my fantastic advice, I’d be nothing. The money, the endorsements, everything would be finito overnight.”

“The money would be gone overnight?”

“The steady cash flow, yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t make all my money on my good looks, filthy mouth and charm alone. I’ve made some pretty good investments. Like the office building where you now work. But yeah, if people stopped calling me, eventually I’d lose all my clout. The money wouldn’t dry up overnight, but it’d diminish over time.”

“And the girls?” she challenged. “What about them? You think you’ll still have a steady stream of girls at your mansion every Sunday?”

“So you heard about the pool parties.”

“Would those dry up too?”

“No girl is every dry when I’m around.”

She shakes her head and laughs. “Cheesy.”

“You didn’t say it was false.”

“I didn’t have to.”

“So you do like me.”

She licks the corner of her lip and makes my dick rock-hard with that tiny gesture. “What happened to professional?”

“I didn’t do or say anything unprofessional. You’re the one with the dirty mind, miss.”

“You said that every man in here was looking at me and...you know…”

“I was just pointing out the cold, hard truth. Illustrating a point. And that’s what I do for a living, and if you’re doing to be part of Dirty After Dark, you should get used to it. But I’ll stop if you want me to.”

“I did say we should keep things professional.”

“This is professional. It’s my profession to give sex advice.”

“You are good with words, boss. I’ll give you that.”

The waiter comes by and I order two more of my favorite sweet, salty margaritas. The fresh lime and hint of mint they throw in there would make it so easy for me and Sara to keep talking all afternoon, but there’s some things we need to take care of back at the office.

After paying and going back to the office, I retreat into my space and Sara goes back to her desk. I’m not at all tipsy, the result of having the occasional liquid lunch when I’m doing an interview for a magazine or a photo shoot for an advertorial spread. As I sit down at my computer to see what emails have come in, I keep glancing over at Sara. She seems confident and a little bit looser than she had at the interview and this morning. She seems to be getting along swimmingly with the rest of the staff, and I happen to catch her and Matt having a quick cup of coffee at her desk in the mid-afternoon.

I’m looking over some numbers for the fourth quarter budget when I realize it’s five and time for everyone to start going home. At few of my staff stay behind and finish up whatever they’re working on, and I see Sara leave around a quarter past five. Kayla waves goodnight to me shortly after, and I stay behind to check some social media feeds.

It all got to be a little bit too much when I was in New York, and having Lexi on my jock all the time did not help. Everything spiraled out of control when her old man gave me his blessing to go off to the West coast and Lexi blew a gasket.

I scrub my face with my hands and get up, moving over to the window. I’ve had enough of staring at spreadsheets and numbers all day. Shit, I’m getting old. I’m gonna have to start wearing those special glasses they make for people who look at the computer for long periods of time. At 32 I feel like I’ve lived a whole life in the recording studio, at club appearances and in front of the camera. Gazing out my window, I see Hollywood Boulevard and my own faint reflection in the glass.

There’s nothing online about me and Sara being out at the restaurant today. The gossip rags don’t need to report on something as innocuous as a lunch. There was only one quick blurb about us, something about a new work relationship and it didn’t identify her by name, which I was grateful for.

I’m not sure if I should have warned her about the possibility of being in the media if we started spending time together, but I’m sure if she did her homework, which it seems she’s now done, she would know about that small risk.

The air outside looks heavy and thick, and the early spring warmth and smell of summer are putting me in the mood for something hot and quick. I have my pool party on Sunday, Sara’s right, but I like to have a look, don't touch policy for those. It gets too complicated when I have that many women together in close quarters; I find that it just encourages jealousy, and I don’t want that. I want to play nice. The girls I have threeways with are vetted carefully and I only accept once I know that they’ll be able to keep all the drama to a minimum.

I’m not ashamed to admit that a few of those threeways involved strippers. Not prostitutes, not that I’m against paying for sex. I’ve even counseled callers to seek out the services of pros when they are interested in it for whatever reason - needing to be anonymous, for example. I had a caller once who was a young gay man from a conservative, small town. He craved companionship and affection. He didn’t want to risk outing himself to his parents and community, but he happened to visit a friend at college in a nearby state. Not knowing how to approach another man for a casual encounter, he decided that the best thing would be to hire someone, although that was also something he had no idea how to broach. I made a few suggestions, and even though he was concerned about the ethics and legality surrounding it, I told him it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all.

So yeah, I’m definitely not against hiring pros. But some of the strippers I’ve been with have been phenomenally sexy, with the modest tits I like and comparatively big asses and small little nipped waists. I haven’t paid for sex with any of them, not exactly, but I do like to give them really fucking good tips when I do get a little bit crazy with them in the champagne room.

Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I check and see that my incoming texts are blowing up. Selfie girl with the double Ds in the red push up has texted me again, this time it’s the edge of her panties against her tanned, dark ass. It’s nice and round and perky, and I consider it for a second. I bet those lace panties would shred in my hands in a second.

I adjust myself and look over at Sara’s desk, where she has a stack of old medical texts. Kayla searched all over southern California to get those on special loan from a university's library a few counties over, where they have vintage archives. I knew by looking at her that Sara’s responsible and would take good care of the books.

I swipe to text the girl with the red lace panties.

“Not tonight, sweetheart. Sorry.”

I punch in Sara’s name and pull up a text.

“You have to come to the pool party on Sunday.”

I slide my phone back into my pocket. It’s Friday night, and I consider what I should do tonight. I could go home and just kick it, or I could go out for some drinks. I even think about texting red lace back and telling her my plans just fell through and I want to see her, but that seems rude. Plus, I can’t get Sara out of my mind.

Her pretty, delicate little hands and her soft, smooth, young skin. Her dark hair and the sprinkling of freckles on her shoulders. I can’t get her out of my head for some reason.

My phone buzzes and I take it out, expecting it to be red panties trying to argue with me or convince me to meet her for just a quickie, but it’s Sara.

“Is that an order, boss? Is attendance at the pool party a requirement for the job?”

I picture her on a pool float in a tiny black bikini, her natural and pretty body in sharp contrast to the girls that usually come. I like them too, but she’s just a refreshing change of pace. Something new for my eyes to feast upon.

“Not unless you want it to be,” I shoot back, smiling. I decide to go home and stretch out on my bed, maybe take in a cheesy Lifetime movie. I know they’re for women, but I like them.