Eli
“Eli, we need to talk to you.” Reece’s calm voice had me glancing up from the computer. I’d been going over financial reports that Preston had said I couldn’t put off any longer for over an hour, but I hadn’t been able to make any headway on them.
Possibly because my mind was going in a thousand different directions.
Looking around, I realized that I must have been in my own world for a while, because nearly everyone else had left for the day while I’d been staring at the screen. However, Reece, Preston, and Houston were standing around my computer, staring at me.
It took another second for my brain to catch up. “Talk about what?”
“Lots of things.” Houston’s dry answer made Reece shoot him a glare, but I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. But it was nice he wasn’t glaring daggers at me anymore. If all it took was two weeks to get over it, I’d have to say that the guy didn’t hold a grudge, which was good when dealing with me.
“What? I’ve got work to finish.” Glaring at the overly concerned expressions on their faces, I wanted to head in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, they had me backed into a corner. Literally. Glancing around, I realized I should have picked a different computer.
When I’d first sat down, the privacy at the back of the room was nice, but watching them, I felt like a trapped rabbit.
Reece seemed to be the spokesman for the group, so it didn’t surprise me when he sat down at the next computer and started speaking again. “We’re worried about you.”
Fuck, some kind of crazy intervention.
I rolled my eyes, not bothering to hide my frustration. “I already got that part.”
They all had matching looks that said they didn’t believe my front for a minute. Preston’s frown deepened. “Eli, don’t be an ass.”
Reece gave Preston the “you’re not helping” look and turned his focus back on me. “You’ve been miserable.”
“I’m fine.”
Okay, so maybe I’d said that sentence a lot over the past week, but I wasn’t going to back down from it. I might not be fine yet, but I knew I would be eventually. Everything was just mixed up in my head, and I had to get past it first.
“Bullshit.” Houston’s stern voice made me shift in my seat. I wasn’t turned on, but something about his voice had the sub inside of me rolling over and begging for attention.
Needy little bastard.
Houston shook his head. “You’re fully dressed in a real adult outfit and haven’t even tried to crash the site in a week.”
I looked down, a little offended. “There’s nothing wrong with my clothes.”
Maybe I was a bit boring today, but every guy needed a casual day once in a while. If my version of casual happened to be slacks and a button-down shirt, there was nothing to be ashamed of about it. “I look good.”
“You look like a banker on casual Friday.” Reece flicked his eyes at Preston. “You’re dressed nicer than Preston.”
Preston finally cracked a smile, but it quickly faded. “Your casual Friday outfit a few weeks ago was to show up almost naked. Now you look like you could go to lunch with those stockbrokers down the street who walk past the office too many times on their lunch break.”
I fought to keep a straight face, but inside I was almost smiling. He was right. But the little finance guys were funny, so I didn’t mind the comparison. “The stockbrokers are cute. And that was a bet. I had to show up in panties.”
They were getting ridiculous. “Besides, since when is being nicely dressed and functional at work a crime? Even around here.” Trying to push the discussion of the bet away, I headed toward safer topics. “Preston, you said the other day that you were tired of me dressing down all the time and not getting anything done.”
I waved my hand at the computer and then down my body. “I addressed both of those complaints, and now you’re worried because I listened to what you said? Lord.”
“Yes.” Preston spoke, but all three men nodded like those little dolls that were stuck on car dashboards.
Closing my eyes, I didn’t have to fake frustration. Jesus, I couldn’t please any of them.
“Just the fact that you tried to please him by changing your behavior is enough to make us think you need help.” Reece’s voice was filled with concern, and I fought the urge to look at him as he continued. “I heard the story about what you did last time Preston lost it and told you to function like a real adult from three different people this week. You’ve got most of the company so freaked out they don’t want to come to work.”
“Fuck, you just can’t please some people.”
“That!” Houston’s voice made me jump and glance at him. “Since when do you do anything to please other people?”
“I was trying to make things easier around here. Like I was asked to do.” Fuck. “Just find someone else to bother, I have work to do.”
Reece waved a hand, gesturing toward the screen. “You’ve been staring at it for hours, and you haven’t even turned the page in the last thirty minutes. You also haven’t written a blog post in days, and you haven’t wanted to do any shoots lately. You haven’t even posted any selfies or pictures that you took yourself. It can’t keep going on like this.”
“I’m only required to post a few times a month. We don’t make any of the guys blog more often than that.” I found myself rolling my eyes. “You can’t bitch because I’m following company guidelines.”
“Yes, we can.” Preston gave me a pointed look. “You take pride in never following directions.”
I was too tired for their drama. “I’m going to go home, and you guys can be all overbearing and nuts on someone else.”
Reaching for the computer, I stopped when I felt Preston’s hand on my shoulder. The words came out soft and meaningful. “You have to talk to us, Eli. You wanted him gone from day one, but now that he’s not here, you’re miserable.”
I shrugged. “So I’m fickle.”
“You know that’s not the point.” Reece was trying to be nice, but Houston was frustrated because his voice came out rough and almost angry.
“You liked the guy but didn’t want to like him, so you tried to make his life miserable.” Houston folded his arms over his chest and gave me a look like I was a misbehaving child. “Well, you won. He’s gone.”
That had me sitting up in the chair, swiveling to stare at him. “What? That’s insane.” That wasn’t how it had been at all.
“Which part?” Houston rolled his eyes.
“All of it. He was an ass first.” It had not been my fault.
Preston sighed. “We knew he might be. We had that discussion before he came for the interview. That’s why I sent you all the articles on him.”
“Articles?” I was drawing a blank.
“Fuck, Eli. Didn’t you read any of it?” When I gave Preston a confused look, his anger started to rise. “I sent you an email with almost a dozen blogs and stories about what his ex had done to him. It had the pictures that we like in it. Is this ringing a bell?”
The pictures did. “The pictures were why we hired him. They were much better than any of the other stuff he sent.”
Preston sighed, like I was more than he could handle. “Did you read anything else or did you just look at the pictures?”
“I saw that they were of his ex, and then I think I just looked at the photos. That was what we were hiring him for.” I shrugged. “Besides, you hire everyone. Why would I need to read up on him?”
“You make me insane sometimes.” Preston leaned against the wall and closed his eyes like he was trying not to throw something at me.
He was always calm and collected until I pushed him too far. It was starting to look like we’d gotten to too far already. Preston took a deep breath but didn’t look at me. “Roman’s ex blasted his personal life all over the internet.”
Preston took a moment, then continued. “The guy posted the pictures and talked about the BDSM side of their relationship, but he made it sound close enough to abuse that it freaked people out. It was all consensual spankings and things; I checked it out thoroughly.”
Finally looking up, Preston waited to see if I was still listening. “The guy did it on purpose to get the attention of some kind of reality show or something stupid like that, but it tore Roman’s business apart. From the other stuff I saw, it looked like the ex cleaned out their money and then skipped town. I sent you all those articles so you would know why he was a bit rough around the edges and why greeting him like a brat, very much like his ex, wouldn’t work with him.”
Oh.
There was a reason I wasn’t in charge of hiring.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Okay, so maybe I was deflecting, but Preston really should have said something.
“I did! I told you several times to read through everything I’d sent.”
“But you didn’t say why!” If he’d have said specifically why, then I would have gone through the articles. In my defense, I’d been busy with family and school, and the new photographer had been at the bottom of my to-do list.
Preston’s head fell back again. “God, Eli.”
Reece’s calm voice interrupted us. “I know you and Roman didn’t hit it off. You were you and he was freaked out by a sub that might have reminded him of his ex. But why did everything keep going so badly? You two just got worse, not friendlier. And none of this explains why you’re so upset that he’s gone.”
I wasn’t sure if he was fishing or if he already knew the answer, but I wasn’t going to share what had happened. It turned out, however, that I didn’t have to. Preston had that pleasure.
“They had sex in the studio right before you were hired. Instead of that clearing the air and them talking, they were both morons.” Preston’s matter-of-fact answer made me cringe.
“That’s private.”
“Not when you two morons have a porn shoot in the middle of the building when it’s not empty.” Preston refused to back down. “A shoot to get some additional shots is one thing, but the sounds coming from downstairs said you two were doing more than taking pictures. At least the kinds of pictures we post on the site.”
I rolled my eyes, trying to play it off, but I could feel my cheeks heating up. “Why were you even in the building? No one was using the apartments that night.”
The building had been intended to be trendy studio apartments, but the builder went under before they got more than a few done. When we’d purchased the place, we’d left the apartments on the third floor with the idea that employees could use them when they needed a place to stay. Sometimes they were full, but most of the time, it was just an employee who was between apartments or whose place was being renovated.
“I’d worked later than I’d intended and was too tired to drive home. I didn’t exactly get a good night’s sleep, though, thanks to you two.” He shook his head. “No sex at work. We’ve had that rule since day one.”
Oops.
“We didn’t have sex.” Not all the way.
“That was not a regular shoot, so don’t even try to lie.”
That made me bristle. “I’m not lying. It was technically not sex.”
“Well, whatever you guys did made things worse. And at that point, I wasn’t sure if I could even fire the guy.”
When I gave Preston another blank stare, he shook his head. “Sexual harassment lawsuit. I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure it out.”
“He touched me first.”
“For god’s sake, Eli.” Preston’s frustration was starting to rise again. “Between the comments you made, the way you behaved, and the panties bet, no court in the world would find in our favor.”
Oh.
Preston kept going. “Roman was angry and hurting when he got here and everything I let happen made it worse. And did you know he didn’t even get a talk about why we make new employees sit through a shoot? For some reason, he thought that was just special torture for him and completely inappropriate.”
“Shit, Eli. He probably thought you guys were nuts. I almost didn’t take the job until you explained why you’d had me see a shoot.” Reece’s voice was shocked. “And if you started off trying to get a response out of him, then he would have had a reason to fight back.”
“I got a response, alright. He thought I was a whore who wasn’t worth the time of day to him.”
“Can you blame him?” Houston finally broke in. “He’s a Dom, not a robot. He’d been hurt by someone he trusted and shared very personal things with. Then Roman gets to a new job, and there’s what he thinks is the same type of guy front and center. It doesn’t matter that he wasn’t seeing everything. You never gave him a chance to see the real you.”
“I was called more foul things by that man than anyone I’ve ever met outside the company. These walls were where I felt safe, and he came in with his attitude and judgment, and I was expected to sit back and be nice? Bullshit.” Maybe I should have read those articles, but I wasn’t going to pretend to be someone else because he had baggage and an attitude. “He shouldn’t have taken the job.”
“He probably needed the money.”
“Maybe, but that’s not the point. I don’t have to change my life to make someone else happy. My business, not his. If he was uncomfortable, he should have said something and walked away. Maybe we could have talked it out right then. But with the attitude and the anger, what did he expect me to do? Was I supposed to back off and be this sweet little thing that would make him happy? Hell, even letting him take control didn’t make him happy.”
And that was probably oversharing, but I was past caring.
“That’s because you screwed that one up royally. I came down to check on the nose and arrived just in time for the dramatic ending.” Preston rolled his eyes dramatically. “You got up after whatever you’d done and made it sound like you were more worried about the mess you guys had made and what I would think than about him. Duh.”
Oh.
“Hey, I was pretty lost. When I found my bearings, I was tangled in panties that were entirely too dirty to go back in the collection, and the first thing that occurred to me was that we couldn’t post the pictures on the site, they were too hot. Then he lost his marbles.”
“He thought you only cared about the pictures and stuff and not him.” Preston was looking at me like I was an idiot.
Okay, looking back on it, maybe I could see what Preston was saying. “Roman should have said something.”
Reece broke in. “You two scream at each other, you don’t communicate.”
So maybe he had a point too.
“He’s gone, and the drama is over. It’s not like we were dating.” One jerk-off session did not make a relationship.
“But you wanted one. That’s the problem. You two felt strongly about one another, and the only way you’d let it out was with anger. But now that the anger is gone, all you have left are the softer emotions you were denying.” Houston’s quiet words made me want to throw something at him.
“It’s over.” We all needed to see that and move on. “There’s nothing left to pick up and try to put back together. Hell, there wasn’t anything there to begin with.” As much as I hated to admit it, that was the truth.
“He hates brats and anybody he considers an attention whore, and I’m not willing to change for anyone.” No man was worth that. “I’ve lived that lie, and I won’t go back to it.”
Then, knowing there was nothing else to say, I got up and walked away. I wasn’t going to change for a man who hated everything I loved about myself.