I hear a knock on my office door for the hundredth time today. I exhale deeply to keep from doing what I want to do. Telling my assistant to call everyone in the building and demand they all go home so that I can get some real work done. I have a shit-ton of papers to go through and more emails to answer than I could possibly read, and I have some important decisions to make in regard to if we are going to be ready for the launch of our video game that happens in less than three weeks. Because, if we aren’t ready, I need to save the company millions of dollars and postpone it now rather than waiting.

“Come in,” I snarl at whoever is behind the oak door.

I like my office closed off from the world. The door is solid, the same with the walls. No one can see into my world unless I let them. I don’t even have that many windows to look outside. I might be the most important person at the company, but I don’t have the nicest office, just the most secluded. But it doesn’t prevent me from having to deal with idiots knocking on my door all day.

The door opens, and a young woman steps inside. She’s probably in her early twenties. She looks put together but far too eager to be in my office right now. She hasn’t been yelled at nearly enough to have the look of despair that everyone else in my office knows well enough to wear on their faces when they enter my office. I’m a controlling fucker who wants things done my way. The proper way. I don’t accept mistakes. You get one shot to impress me, and if you don’t, you’re gone.

The woman standing in front of me is already failing. She thinks she’s going to impress me because she looks good in her light-colored skirt and jacket. She’s wrong. It takes a lot more than lean legs to get me off.

“Did you forget why you came in here?” I ask, glaring at her for interrupting me and wasting my valuable time. I make far too much money for this company to waste a single second of it not on point.

She smiles, clearly not getting the message I’m sending. “I’m Angela,” she says, walking toward me with her hand extended to me.

I look down at her hand, not bothering to shake it.

“What are you doing in my office, Angela?”

She tucks her hand back down to her side as she looks around for a chair to sit in. She won’t find one. I don’t keep chairs in my office. It invites people to stay and talk. I don’t want to talk to people. If we are talking, that means we aren’t working hard enough. And, if someone has something to say that is actually useful enough to listen to for longer than five to ten minutes, then that is what meeting rooms are for. Not my office.

“Um…Noah sent me in to meet you.”

I rub my neck in annoyance. “And why did Noah want you to meet me?”

She frowns. “Because he said you would like to meet me. I’m his new assistant, and he said that we would be working closely together, so I should introduce myself.”

I look at her. Really look at her. She’s fresh out of college; that much is obvious. This is probably her first job. She doesn’t have a clue what she signed up for when she started working for my company. I give her a month, tops, before she decides I’m too much of an ass to bother working for. It takes tough people to work for me. You have to be able to take getting yelled at and not back down. You have to be willing to fight for what you believe in. She looks like, if I yelled at her, she’d run out of here, crying. Might as well get it over with. Rip off the Band-Aid, as some would say.

“Angela, you seem like a nice girl, but you must not have listened very carefully at orientation if you think that you are ever allowed to talk to me. You are Noah’s assistant, not mine. If you have something that you need to tell me, you tell my assistant, Casey. You don’t waste my time, trying to talk to me. You don’t call me. You don’t email me. You don’t knock on my door. And you sure as hell don’t come into my office for no other reason than to say hello. Got it?”

She bites her juicy red lip, and my mind immediately flashes back to the last woman I saw bite her lip like that.

Skye.

But, even when Skye wasn’t wearing red lipstick, like this girl, her lip looked a million times more inviting than this woman’s.

“Why haven’t you left yet?” I half-yell, half-ask.

She releases her lip. “Sorry, Noah told me you’d most likely yell at me but to stay anyway, that it was good for you. That you would yell at me, but then you’d be nice. That you just needed to vent because you’d had a couple of bad weeks. He said to just wade through your storm of emotions, and then things would be a lot better. That you just needed someone to yell at who could take it, so then you could be nice.”

I sigh. I’ll deal with Noah later. “Please tell Noah to stop messing with me. It’s not helpful. And you would do a lot better at this company if you stopped listening to everything that Noah told you to do.”

She smiles, tucking her blonde hair behind her ear. “He said you would say that.”

I run my hand through my thick hair, annoyed and frustrated. Noah’s wrong if he thinks this is going to get my frustrations out. This is doing the opposite.

She puts her hand on mine. “The company is running well. Just try to relax. I’ll see you soon, Brody.” She removes her hand, turns, and walks out.

I blink rapidly, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened when another knock rattles against my door, but this time, the person doesn’t wait for me to answer. Noah just strides in.

“Hey, boss,” he says in his usual chipper self.

“What, Noah?” I want to yell at him for Angela, but that would mean more of my time was wasted.

He grins, folding his arms across his chest while he sits on the edge of my desk. “You fucked up the numbers again,” he says.

I frown. “No, I didn’t. That’s not possible. I checked them three separate times.”

He shakes his head and throws some papers on my desk.

I narrow my eyes as I pick up the stack of papers and stare at the numbers. I do the math in my head and can already tell that I’m way off. Damn it.

I throw them down in frustration, watching as they scatter everywhere.

Noah smirks and folds his arms across his chest like he’s the shit and I’m an idiot. Even though he wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for me busting my balls every damn day for this company.

“Now, will you listen to me?” he asks, but it isn’t meant to be a question.

“Why? I fucked up. It won’t happen again.”

He shakes his head. “Except it’s happened almost every day since we got back from the Bahamas. That woman still has your dick obsessed with her.”

“So what if she does? I don’t use my dick to get work done.”

He laughs. “You might as well. Your dick might do a better job than what you are currently doing.”

I get up from my desk and walk over to the small window that stares out into Detroit below. I lean against the wall, looking out at the people walking around below.

“You need to do something about this. You need to get her out of your system, so you can focus on what’s really important. The launch. We are launching our second video game in less than three weeks. We’ve done the unthinkable, raising billions of dollars when we have no money ourselves. We don’t even pay ourselves enough to live off of. But, if we get this right, then the world will take us seriously, and we can actually start paying ourselves.”

I nod. I know he’s right. Although I don’t care about money. I have a condo my uncle gave to me when he died. And what money I do earn, I spend on fast cars. I don’t need anything else to keep me happy. What else could money buy me that I don’t already have? I just enjoy creating. Working hard. That’s what’s in it for me.

“What do you suggest I do about it?”

He grins. “Fuck her.”

I narrow my stare at him. “She lives hundreds of miles away from here in Albuquerque. I live in Detroit. It’s not exactly easy for me to just go fuck her and then come back to work.”

“I think it would be worth the weekend trip. But, if you don’t think you can take the time off, I know an assistant who would be more than willing to help you out.”

I cringe at that thought. “Really? She’s barely twenty.”

“So? I’m not telling you to fuck her for her brain or maturity. You haven’t fucked anyone since Skye. You need to move on, get out there again.”

“Get out of my office, and get back to work,” I snap, done with this conversation.

Noah grins and walks out of my office without a word.

I’ll decide when I fuck a woman and who she will be. Right now, I don’t need the distraction. I’ll just increase the difficulty of my workout tonight. That will get whatever this is that I’m feeling out of my system so that I can focus.

* * *

I open the door to my condo. It’s late, as it always is when I get home from work. About a quarter after ten. Sometimes, I wonder why I don’t just create an apartment for myself at the office. That way, I don’t ever have to leave. I can spend every second being productive.

I walk toward the kitchen, not bothering to flick on the lights. I like it dark. I need to eat, exercise, and pass out. I don’t need light for any of it.

I throw the fridge open to pull out the premade meals that I prepare myself once a week, so then I don’t have to think about food the rest of the week when I see a shadow move.

I sigh as I pull out my container of food. I walk the three feet to the microwave, pop in the food, and hit the button for it to start.

“What are you doing here?” I ask without turning around. I don’t want to look at her. I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want her here.

“Noah said you needed some help with relaxing tonight,” Angela says, walking up behind me and rubbing my shoulders.

I tense instead of relaxing.

The microwave finishes, and I pull my dinner out and walk over to the bar where there is only one barstool. I take a seat, ignoring her. I begin eating my grilled chicken and steamed vegetables.

She tries to push her body onto my lap, but I don’t let her. I just keep eating like I always do by myself.

I’m going to kill Noah. He should know better than to think he can have any control over my life.

“You need to go,” I say sternly, still not looking at her.

“I don’t think that’s what you really want.”

I frown and finally look at her. “You have no idea what I want.”

She bites her fingernail and looks at me as she cocks her head, like by studying me, she is going to figure out what I want.

“Maybe not, but I know what all men want.” She reaches around and pulls on the tie holding her wrap dress closed. The dress falls open, and then she shrugs her shoulders as the dress falls to the floor.

My eyes burn into her black lace bra and thong underwear. She has a gorgeous body. And she’s right; I’m a man in need of fucking a woman’s brains out. The only reason I’m fighting it at all is that I hate when Noah is right. It will only empower him to pull shit like this again.

“Wait for me in my bedroom, down the hallway to the right.”

She smiles.

“And, if you tell Noah about this, you’re fired.”