Chapter 2

Crissy

I lay in my bed swiping through pictures on my dating application. Every time I got someone who matched up with me, I was sorely disappointed. None of the little boys warranted any sort of effort. None of them looked like they had any experience underneath their belts. I wanted a man, someone who could use their tongue for more than just overestimating their sexual prowess. I wanted someone successful who had a thirst for success just as much as a thirst for my body. These boys were all young, dumb, and full of come, and I’d gotten enough of that at Dartmouth.

A knock on the door sounded into my childhood room, and my phone hit my face. I groaned, tossing my phone to the floor. Then I heard my door open before my sister’s voice rang out.

“Crissy, it’s time for dinner.”

“Pass,” I said.

“Crissy, come on,” she said. “You can’t just ignore the world forever.”

“I don’t know. I can pretty much do whatever I set my mind to, Sissy.”

She crossed her arms, and a smirk peeled across my face. I loved pissing my sister off. It was my favorite thing to do besides pissing off Dad’s new wife.

“Come on,” she said. “Why won’t you join us for dinner?”

“Because we never did the ‘family’ thing until Mel showed up on the scene. Now it’s all ‘sitting at the table for dinner’ and ‘watching a family movie’ and ‘no going out on Fridays because it’s family night.’ Who fucking does that?”

“Regular families,” Sissy said.

“Well, we haven’t been a regular family since Mom died,” I said.

Mom died when I was fifteen. Fucking cancer. It crept up on her like a ghost and took her before we even knew what was going on. It was her autopsy that revealed the cancer, not the doctors who had declared they wanted to “save her life.” Sure, I grieved. But I also had to plan the funeral. I also had to shake the hands of those who came by with food for weeks. I also had to force my father to eat while Sissy buried herself in college work because no one else knew what the fuck to do with themselves.

The least they could let me do was eat in my fucking room.

“I get your point, and I understand,” she said. “Really, I do. But you’re living under their roof, and it doesn’t look like you plan to move out anytime soon. If you want to live here, you have to play by their rules.”

“You mean Mel’s rules?” I asked.

“Whoever’s rules,” she said. “And if you don’t want to, then move out. Eat in your room every night. Leave all your dirty-ass piles of clothes and half-eaten plates of food anywhere you want.”

“Pissed that my room’s better than yours?” I asked, grinning.

“Better? It smells like a garbage dump. Do you ever wash your clothes?”

“When I need them, sure,” I said. “But I’m usually lounging around naked anyway, so who needs clean clothes?”

“Ugh. Come down for dinner, Crissy. Quit being a bitch.”

“Why don’t you get an apartment with me?” I asked as she turned to leave. “It would be cheaper for both of us.”

“Fat chance,” she said. “You’re a slob, for one, and I’m just fine slumming it here with Dad and his plaything until I get done with my graduate studies.”

“Oh, yeah. The master’s in Music. What do you plan to do with that again?”

“Become one of the world’s finest female conductors; that’s what,” she said.

“Sounds enthralling.”

“Better than getting a business degree to try to get Dad’s attention,” she said.

“I didn’t get that damn degree for him,” I said. “I got it because I want to run my own company someday. Maybe start my own business. Franchise. Branch out. Take over the West Coast before Dad does or something.”

“Well, for someone who wants to take over the world or whatever, you sure as hell are lazy,” she said.

“Not lazy. I’m just biding my time,” I said. “You’re not gonna go away until I come down for dinner, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Can I come down naked?” I asked.

“Only if you want Mel to somehow view you as competition,” she said.

“That could be fun,” I said, grinning.

“Don’t fucking do that. Come on. Come eat.”

I honestly didn’t want to. I was more than happy getting in my car, driving up the road to get a burger, and then coming back. But in the process of doing that, I’d have to justify to my father why I was doing that and then face Mel’s idiotic “mom stare.” Like she’d somehow raised me and knew how to stop me cold in my tracks.

Such an idiot.

I pulled myself from bed and threw my hair up into a bun. I picked up my phone and shoved it in my back pocket. If I got bored at the table, I would just continue swiping. Even if the guys on my phone didn’t know a damn thing about what a girl like myself needed, at least they’d be pretty to look at.

But when I got to the table, a bomb was dropped on me that made me forget about their faces in a heartbeat.

“I’ve gotten you an internship at the company, Crissy,” Dad said.

“Wait. What?”

“You’ll be Grant Jacob’s personal assistant,” he said, grinning.

“Oh, that’s fabulous!” Mel said. “Honey, how in the world did you swing something like that?”

“Probably sucked his dick or something,” I muttered.

Sissy elbowed me harder than I expected, and I rubbed my ribcage. Apparently, Dad didn’t hear me. He was too busy gazing into the deep, dark eyes of his exotic, legal prostitute.

“You’ll be going to work for him tomorrow,” he said.

“That isn’t necessary, Dad,” I said. “I’ve already applied for a few full-time managerial positions around here with various places. I’ll be just fine.”

“It took a lot of convincing for me to get you this position, and with Grant no less,” Dad said. “Anyone would clamor for this job.”

“Then let them clamor for it,” I said. “I’m waiting to hear back on my applications.”

“It’ll be good for you, Crissy,” Mel said.

“Yeah,” I said, glaring at her. “It’ll get me out of the house and out of your hair.”

She didn’t take the bait. Mel just shrugged and took a sip of wine.

“You start bright and early at eight in the morning,” Dad said.

“Eight in the morning?” I asked. “Dad! Why the hell are you taking an interest in me now?”

“Crissy!” Mel exclaimed.

“Oh, can it, gold digger,” I said, not even looking at her. “Why in the world do you suddenly have an interest in me now, Dad?”

“You’re my daughter,” he said. “I’ve always had an interest in you.”

“Is that why you didn’t know what I was majoring in until halfway through my college years?” I asked.

“You came home and talked more about boys than you did anything else,” he said. “How was I supposed to know?”

“By asking me, Dad,” I said.

Mel rolled her eyes, and suddenly, I wanted to throw a green bean at her. She was snotty, she was a brat, and she spent my father’s money almost as fast as he made it.

“Why don’t you use that expensive degree of yours for something other than a basic managerial position?” she asked.

“What, like marrying rich?” I asked.

“That’s enough. Crissy,” Dad said. “We’re done here. I had a long talk with Grant, and he’s taking you on tomorrow. You either show up or you have no place in this home.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked.

Sissy elbowed me again, and I kicked her shin underneath the table. If she really thought I was going to back down from this fight, she was sorely mistaken.

“Get up in the morning and get to your new job,” Dad said. “It’s a paid internship and everything. Fifteen dollars an hour, with the potential to grow if you want to stay on longer than a year. And if you don’t want to go, then pack your bags.”

“You’re seriously gonna kick me out if I don’t show up?” I asked.

“You raise hell constantly in this house,” Mel said. “The least you can do is be productive before you come home and do it.”

I looked between Mel and my father before I saw the guilt roll behind his eyes. That was what this was about. Mel didn’t like having me around, so Dad was throwing me somewhere he knew I’d be safe so his pretty little wife wouldn’t have to deal with me.

I couldn’t take this anymore. I threw my napkin down on my plate, guzzled the sweet tea set in front of me, then slumped off. What the fuck was he doing, suddenly taking an interest in me? He’d been clocked out since I was fifteen! Since Mom died. Why the hell did he suddenly think he had a say in my life now? I was twenty-two years old, and I had a good head on my shoulders. Sure, I raised a bit of hell. Sure, I liked looking at hot men. But what woman didn’t?

“Such bullshit.” I slammed my bedroom door behind me before I flopped back down on my bed. Why couldn’t my father just continuing to play “house” with his Barbie wife? Why the hell did he have to drag me into it?

I no longer wanted to be at the house, so I fished around for my car keys, grabbed my purse, and checked to make sure I had Dad’s credit card. Then I ventured out the front door before anyone could stop me. If Dad was into people who spent his money faster than he could count it, then that was what I would start doing. If he wanted to start playing house, then I would start becoming the woman he wanted to play house with.

After all, he loved her, right?

I got into my car and drove to the nearest bar. I threw back a couple appletinis and munched on some bar food, and I soon found myself four drinks in. I was giggling with the bartender as he hunched over and smiled at me, and for a brief second, I thought about taking him to my car. If I really wanted to piss my father off, I could wake up with a boy in my room the next morning, but there was something appealing about drunken car sex that made my mouth water.

But a neon sign caught my gaze out the window, so I turned to see what it was.

A blinking “We Do Piercings” sign was out there, and I was drawn to its colors. I paid my tab and wrote down an insane amount for a tip for the beautiful man who made my drinks. Then I shoved out of the bar and walked across the street. My lips were smiling and my nose was numb, and by the time I could take a decent breath, a man was grasping my tit.

“You sure you wanna do this?” he asked.

“Go for it!” I exclaimed.

The alcohol numbed the pain of the piercings, and for a little while, I forgot everything. I forgot about my mother dying and the funeral. I forgot about all the hands I’d had to shake. I forgot about walking five miles by myself to her gravesite every day because Dad couldn’t stand to take me. I forgot about all the boys I couldn’t talk about with my mother and all the advice that had gone unsaid because Dad was too uncomfortable with those subjects. I forgot about how Dad paraded around different women every week before he sprung on us that he was marrying Mel.

I forgot about how he missed me walking up onstage to get my college diploma.

How could he fucking forget? Sure, he was there to hug me after the ceremony, but the look in his eyes had told me he hadn’t gotten there until after I had walked. Coupled with the hickeys on Mel’s neck, it was easy to figure out what the fuck he’d gotten so entangled with and what was so much more important than his youngest daughter graduating.

I had dreams of running my own business one day. Dreams of opening my own shop I could grow into a conglomerate. Dreams of stepping in as the CEO of a company. Dreams of having enough money to buy a company, like Grant Jacobs did with my father’s.

Wait. I was going to be working for Grant Jacobs.

Scratch that. I was going to be working alongside Grant Jacobs. This might actually be useful to me.

“There you go,” the guy said. “How do they feel?”

I looked down at my nipple piercings and smiled. The bars were rose gold and had little disco balls on each end. They caught the light and sparkled every color I could ever imagine, and it was perfect for someone like me. I never could pick out which color was my favorite as a child. Orange was so happy, and yellow was so bright. Red was so sultry, and blue just went with everything. Why couldn’t I have all the colors?

Well, now I did, right there on my tits.

“How much do I owe you?” I asked, smirking.

By the time I got home, everyone was in bed. No one was waiting up for me to see how I was. No one had sent me any text messages asking me if I was all right. My sister wasn’t even awake in her room to poke her head out as I came up the hallway.

No one was there. Just like they weren’t there when Mom died.

I passed out face-first into my pillow, and suddenly, I saw Grant. His deep green eyes glared at me while his dark hair hung around his face. I reached out, running my fingers through it, but suddenly, he had me pinned to the wall. For a man who was almost fifty years old, he was strong. I ran my hands up his arms, feeling his veins bulging from his muscles before I wrapped my legs around his waist. My hands ran up his strong chest, tracing every divot his muscles provided before he thrust his hips forward.

I was breathless. His cock tore at my insides and pressed against every beautiful space. His strong legs rolled his muscle-bound hips, snapping my skin against his while his balls pounded my ass. His lips devoured me, sucking my pouty bottom lip in with his gleaming white teeth. He tugged on it, and I moaned, but before I could reach the best part of the dream, my fucking alarm went off.

I woke up panting, my chest flushed. The pain from my nipples pulled me from my dazed sleep, and as I lifted my shirt, I couldn’t help but laugh. Fuck. I was about to start my new job with a boss my mind was obviously curious about, and I’d just had my nipples pierced.

I didn’t even know if I had a bra that would cover this shit up.

This internship might not be as bad as I had first thought, though. Not only was Grant Jacobs a fine-looking forty-nine-year-old, but he owned one of the most prestigious up-and-coming businesses in the South. My business degree readied me to shadow someone like him, and being next to him at all times would give me a good look into the world behind the degree I’d obtained in school.

It would also give me a beautiful look at his ass.

“Crissy, you up?!” my father yelled from downstairs.

I groaned as I rolled out of bed and dragged myself to the bathroom. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about my nipple piercings, but I certainly knew what I was going to do about this internship.

I had an hour to piece myself together before I had to be in his office.