10
Benjamin starts to sweat.
“This is Trevor,” Rebekah announces, introducing the pretty boy standing terrified in front of me, the pretty boy with the giant explosion of copier toner all down his front.
The one I took home Friday night.
The one I haven’t stopped thinking about all weekend.
The one who called me a rich, cocky prick, then left me high and dry with a boner in my pants.
“Trevor,” I state simply, keeping my face absolutely untelling and blank.
Impressively, he takes just one solid second to regain his composure before extending his own hand. “The p-pleasure is mine, Mr. Gage,” he gets out, eye contact never breaking.
I accept his handshake firmly. Our hands linger a second too long before finally letting go.
“And that is all of them,” explains Rebekah. “Now what I’ve had them prepare for you—”
She goes on to explain a bunch of things, but all I do is watch as Trevor reluctantly bends over to collect the six copies of the program he just made. Those tapered pants are doing so much for his ass right now, it’s taking everything in me not to grab him and pull his tight, sexy body against my hardening crotch.
I want to punish him for being such a cock tease—working a man up all night, then ditching him. I want to punish him right now.
Oblivious, Trevor rises off the floor with the six copies—and then doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. He moves to hand them to Rebekah, changes his mind, and takes a step toward me. Then, with his eyes clamping shut and snapping back open, he finally extends the copies to Rebekah—who takes them without so much as a second of interruption in her endless self-important rambling. Trevor slowly backs into the crowd of interns with a sheen of sweat over his forehead, then stands there with his arms folded and his head hanging, staring at the floor and wide-eyed.
Well, this summer just became a whole lot more interesting.
“I am going to my office now,” I declare, cutting off Rebekah midsentence, “as I have a lot to catch up on. Rebekah, call a team together in the conference room. I’ll be there in five.”
“Yes, sir.” Rebekah’s smile is flat as she gathers her folders and nods at the interns. “Dismissed back to your duties.”
Trevor looks up from his daze and returns to his duties at the table without so much as a glance my way. The poor kid looks like he’s shitting bricks. I almost feel sorry for him.
Almost.
When I reach my office, I shut the door behind me and lean against it. The silence and darkness of the office offers me no peace of mind.
Because my mind is too busy screaming: Holy fucking shit.
How is it that, in a city of over two million people, I happen to hook up with the one cute boy at the nightclub who happens to be a newly hired intern of mine?
I have a higher chance of being struck by lightning. Twice.
Which is exactly how I feel right now, by the way. I can’t move. I can’t even blink, my eyelids stuck open and my fingers tingling with anticipation. What do I do? Do I act totally normal? Do I go about my day pretending like there isn’t some kid out there who I just opened up my soul to—as well as my pants? I brought him to my home. He half met my dog.
There’s a knock on the door, which I feel through the three loud raps at my back. “Mr. Gage?” comes Rebekah’s voice.
I grab hold of my worries, stuff them down, then turn around and pull open the door. “Rebekah.”
“Raymond’s wife is in labor,” she tells me right away, “and Emilio is still in the city taking pictures. So we have the option of a meeting without them, or I pull—”
“Replacements,” I state, answering her before she’s asked the question. “Notes will be taken and forwarded to both of them. We need to handle the Jersey kid, and now.”
“Got it. I’ll get stand-ins for Raymond and Emilio. Your team will be in the conference room in five, as requested. And don’t forget about Benson’s lawyers at four.”
She’s gone as quickly as she’d come, and I shut myself in the darkness once again, eyes closed, my breathing strictly controlled. With a sudden lift of my chin, I decide to dismiss my worries about Trevor. Besides, judging from the look in his eyes, he’s probably as freaked out as I am.
Except I’m not freaked out.
I have everything under control.
I put myself at my computer and start to sift through all the email. Twice, I accidentally delete a message I mean to file away, cursing myself as I fish them out of the trash folder. I see a subject line with the word “Texas” in it and all I read is “sexy”. Then there is an email with the phrase “acute warning” and my eyes tell me I’m reading “a cute warm boy”. I’m seeing the word “blond” where it doesn’t belong, and “boner”, and “tight firm ass”.
An email titled “Re: on-the-clock” becomes “Re: on-my-cock.”
In the five minutes I gave myself, I get absolutely nothing done on account of my horribly perverted mind.
And it’s all that damned intern’s fault.
Or is it? Is it my fault for succumbing to the emptiness in my soul Friday night when I decided to hit the town for the first time in ages? Maybe if I had been stronger and chose to stay home with Lance and binge Netflix while catching up on emails, I wouldn’t be caught in this situation.
I whip off my blazer and fling it over the back of my chair. I’m working up a sweat thinking about all of this.
But if Trevor and I didn’t hook up Friday night and I was meeting him for the first time today, would I still have the same reaction? Would I see him among my crop of new employees this summer and think: That one stands out. That one is curious, driven, and focused. That one has something special about him …
I shouldn’t worry. The interns never meddle much directly in my affairs in the office anyway. Rebekah keeps them occupied with organizing files, running errands, taking calls … busywork, more or less. I decided years ago that my summer internship program would be a way to “share the wealth” of my company, bringing new, bright faces in every summer from all the local universities so they can work in a real office, gain experience, and get to jot my name down on their little résumés when they go off into the big world. Sometimes, I even take a few of them under my wing when there’s a big enough client who needs extra attention.
Yeah. Sometimes I’m a really hands-on kind of boss.
But I never let the interns get close—and certainly not as close as I let Trevor Friday night.
Friday night …
Wait a second. Trevor worked in the office for a whole week before we met, right? And he was chosen months ago after all of the interviews. He’s known about me all this time.
Doesn’t that mean he already knew what I look like?
Does that mean he knew who I was at the club?
I drop back into my chair, staring at the wall in a stupor. Was this all just an elaborate plan of Trevor’s? Did he know who I was at the nightclub, targeted me, then went home with me in hopes of gaining some advantage here in the office?
My jaw tightens up at the realization. Of course. Like every other desperate guy who waltzes into my life, he’s just another hot boy who wants something from me.
Just like all the others.
Well, he’s going to learn really fast who’s boss within these four walls. I’m in control of everything. I have to remind myself of that very important fact. Things will remain under my control as long as I maintain my control, no matter how sexy Trevor is.
The interns never work directly with me—not unless I request it. And so I simply won’t request it. As it’s of utmost importance to enforce an air of absolute professionalism, it’s completely within my power to maintain appropriate workplace behavior, to keep him busy away from me, and to salvage my brand of peace and tranquility I can only find here.
Hell. When I put it that way, it sounds downright easy to keep my peaceful atmosphere.
Another knock at the door. “Mr. Gage?”
“WHAT??” I shout out, exasperated. Then, I blink away my anxiety—shit, I’m jumpy—and run a shaky hand down my tie. I go for a calmer tone. “What is it, Rebekah?”
She slips her head inside. “Urgent memo. Just forwarded it to you from an Irene Kingston,” she tells me, her voice turning into a near-inaudible rasp on the last two words.
I quirk an eyebrow. “From who?”
“She put that it’s very urgent in the subject line. Isn’t she one of your secret clients? Never mind, not my business. Just thought you’d like to know before the meeting,” Rebekah finishes, all in a raspy whisper, before excusing herself, the door shutting as softly as a secret.
After a thought, I push my worries of Trevor to the side and pull out my personal tablet from my briefcase, then tap it to life and log into my private account—the secret part of my business I keep completely off the mainframe network. As I suspected, “Irene Kingston” is really Jazz using a fake name. Jazz is my totally off-the-books partner-in-crime hacker assistant who no one knows exists except me. Since she didn’t text me, I figure something’s up with her phone and it may be somehow compromised. I open a VPN client and connect to her through an encrypted IP tunnel.
Her face pops up on my tablet, but it’s half covered in shadow at the top by a wide-brimmed hat and the bottom by a puffy knit scarf. The only part of her face in focus are her eyes in high-contrast black and white. The way she looks is so comically mysterious that even I sometimes wonder how she doesn’t see herself as a caricature ripped right out of some 90s crime flick about the technological revolution.
“Sound check,” mutters Jazz in her German dialect through the screen—or rather, just her eyes, as I can’t see her mouth.
“Check,” I mutter back. “I have a meeting I’m already late to, Jazz, so give it to me quick.”
“Angelina Marie and her friend Lukas Pulaski split up.”
I squint at her. “Angelina Marie—Wait a second. Melena’s daughter’s boyfriend? The one who received the nude video?”
“Videos. More than one. I suspect he has a computer savvy friend of his own, sadly, because the hold I had on his cellular traffic is broken. I cannot regain control—I am being blocked—but I am still able to watch.” Her words are clipped and cold, made sharper by her thick dialect. “He contacted some John Doe—that is the literal screen name this man goes by—who is more than interested in buying the nude videos. There are two. Lukas is just awaiting payment.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and shake my head. “And you even warned me he’d be a problem. Damn it.”
“I just call the things by what they are, my friend. One of the videos involves chocolate syrup.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“But no leather cuffs? No nipple clamps?” She rolls her eyes. “Boring, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t. Can you block Lukas’s account? Buy us some time?”
“I can block his PayPal and Google Wallet easy,” she confirms, “but I cannot make any guarantees if they do a direct deposit through his bank, though I doubt even he would be so bekloppt.”
I won’t pretend to know what that word means. “Do what you can, Jazz. We can’t let those videos get out. Not one. Forward me Lukas’s information again, keep your eye on him, and tell me at once if those videos ever leave his phone.”
“Already doing so.”
I start rubbing my temple. “And explain to me again why you couldn’t just hack in and delete the videos?”
“Too complicated to explain.”
“You mean you think I’m too dumb to understand.”
“Correct. Are all of your clients such … sexual disasters?” she asks, her eyes pinching half-closed. “Like you?”
I snort. “Me? I’m not a sexual disaster. The hell you mean by that?”
“I have known you nine years now. No boyfriend or girlfriend. No long-term lover. No wedding. Is there something you are not telling, dear Benjamin? Has your sweet cock broken off?”
Jazz has a way of putting things. “Nope. It’s in working order, thanks for asking.”
“And you surround yourself with pretty young boy-men,” she goes on, her dialect growing thicker by the syllable. “Benji Boy, you are thirty-three years old, but your cock is twenty-three.”
“Jazz …”
“Young men, all around you. Why only young men? Why not men your age?”
“Blame Rebekah who does the hiring.”
“Hiring that you approve,” she counters.
I sigh into my palms, then lift a warning eyebrow at her. “This sort of prying isn’t the kind I pay you for, y’know.”
“I do not pry on friends,” she states, feigning innocence. “I am simply curious.”
“So I’m your friend, then?”
“Perhaps. Maybe. Shut up about it.” She shrugs, the subject making her uncomfortable. “I will get a new number and contact you, Benji Boy, my friend, as the old one is compromised.”
“Aww. I hit a note with you. How about your love life, Jazz? You know everything about me, probably up to and including the flavor of my toothpaste, and I know next to nothing about you.”
“I like it this way.”
I smirk. “Then I guess I’ll be alone dreaming tonight of how miserably single I am and wondering what’s wrong with me.”
“Not enough chocolate syrup in your life. That’s what.”
I choke on a laugh. “Keep in touch, Jazz. Or Irene. Or whatever your real name is.” I give her side eyes. “Nine years, huh?”
“Nine years, two months, sixteen days. Hmm. Now I have a craving for chocolate donuts.” The tablet goes dark, Jazz’s face vanishing.
With a shake of my head and a smile, I swipe the tablet off the desk on my way out of the office. I’m really glad I have Jazz working with me, despite the trouble my clients often cause. Since the start, Miss Melina and her spoiled daughter have been nothing but a general pain in my ass. Seriously, how many damned world-shattering crises can one celebrity have in a week? She’s a soap opera actress with a soap opera life.
And maybe so am I.
I push open the door to the conference room. My team sits at the long table chatting with one another—Julian, Samantha, and Quentin. At the opposite end of the table are two interns, awkward and silent as the chairs they sit in. One is bearded and handsome.
The other is Trevor.
Of course it is.