I wake up slowly, surfacing in a groggy fog. My head is pounding and I’m not sure if I want to be awake, but there’s some reason…

Something I need to…

There’s this nagging worry at the back of my mind…What the fuck am I worried about?

I shoot up in bed, shoving my hair out of my eyes. The guy lying next to me—Mike? Dave? Troy?—is snoring away.

“Wake up,” I say, shaking his shoulder.

“Wha…?” he asks blearily.

“I have to go to work,” I say, swinging my legs out of bed, heading for my bathroom, “and you need to get out of my apartment.”

“Oh,” he says, disappointed, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Are you sure you aren’t up for a little morning fucking?”

I poke my head around the corner of the bathroom and glare daggers at him. “I am late,” I say, enunciating every word, “and you need to get the fuck out of my apartment. Pronto.” I run through a sponge bath that barely covers the basics, and then hit my closet. I rummage through my clothes, trying to find something that I can throw together that won't look like I threw it together.

Morning fucking. Is he fucking with me right now? I brought him home last night, hoping to finally get some, but nope, he just fell asleep on me, too drunk out of his mind to fuck. Now my six-month itch is six-months-and-one-day old, and I have to go to work horny.

Again.

I peek my head around the corner, making sure he's moving his ass, and he is.

Slowly.

I consider throwing a shoe at him to hurry things along, but then decide to hold back.

For the moment. I’m not above chucking the shoe if need be. A nice stiletto would get his attention, right?

I finally settle on my low-cut lilac silk shirt and black pencil skirt, ‘cause I know it’ll emphasize my curves just right. My immediate boss, Dick Henningford, is a lecherous old man who forgives his female employees almost anything, as long as they wear the right clothing. I’m not above using this to my advantage.

And anyway, I have a feeling that this morning, I’ll need his forgiveness because I check my iPhone and see that I only have 65 minutes to get to work, and it takes 60 minutes to get there.

On a good day.

Oh yeah, I’m fucked-not-actually-fucked this beautiful Monday morning. Ugh.

I stick my head around the corner again and spot Dave-Mike-Troy sprawled out on the bed, snoring.

Stiletto time!

I pick up my red patent leather pair—my favs—and chuck them across the room, one after another.

“WHAT THE HELL?” Dave-Mike-Troy roars, jackknifing into a sitting position.

“Awww…you’re awake. How sweet,” I purr sarcastically. “Now will you get the fuck out of my house?”

Dave-Mike-Troy mumbles a string of swear words under his breath as he shoves his arms back into his shirt and begins buttoning it up—using words that even I don’t use very often—but I don’t care. He can call me a cunt all day long if he wants, as long as he’s leaving as he does it. Now I'm kinda glad I didn't fuck him last night.

I pull the closet door shut and begin stripping and dressing in the confined space, and not for the first time. I struggle to zip up my skirt as I bat hanging clothes out of my face; I make the resolution to clear out my closet of everything I don’t absolutely love and give it away to Goodwill or whatever.

The problem is, I love it all. I don’t work at a fashion magazine for nothing. It’s my life.

Finally dressed, only makeup and hair left, I exit my overstuffed closet to find an empty apartment. Dave-Mike-Troy has exited the building. Or, at least my part of it, and really, that’s all that matters.

After only 30 minutes in front of the mirror, which I consider to be nothing short of supersonic speed, I tap on my iPhone and check the time.

Fuccckkkkk…I only have 35 minutes left until I’m officially late to work, so by time I get downstairs, down the block, take the next train, and run down the two blocks from the subway station to Blush Magazine…

Well, I’m not sure even my push-up bra can save me today.

As I begin my hike down the three flights of stairs, I pull my iPhone out of my Kate Spade purse. Fuck this. Yeah, rent is stupidly expensive in Manhattan and I probs shouldn’t be spending money on a cab to get to work, but sometimes, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. If I don’t take a cab, I may not have a job to get to. I may as well have stayed in bed and taken Dave-Mike-Troy up on his morning fuck. At least then I wouldn’t be as horny as hell right now.

I debate between a yellow taxi cab and an Uber as I push open the front door to my apartment complex. A cab will be faster but more expensive. An Uber may not be close by. I should probably—

“Taxi! Hey, taxi!”

Some oh-my-god hot guy is flagging down a passing yellow cab. His suit is delish and his ass even better. I almost forget what I’m supposed to be doing as I take a moment to appreciate the fine specimen in front of me, but at the last moment, I remember:

I need a ride to work. Like, right now.

So I do something I’m not exactly proud of, okay? I’m not gonna write home and be all, “Hey Mom, guess what I did today? Yeah, that’s right, I fucked a guy over and stole his cab.” As I slither in past the oh-my-god hot guy and into the backseat of the cab, I even make myself the promise that I’ll post a “Sorry to the universe” apology on Instagram tonight. Complete with a sexy sad face. I can’t have karma completely biting me in the ass, right?

I slam the door close, just missing oh-my-god hot guy’s fingers and yell to the driver, “Go, go, go!” He slams on the gas and we take off, swerving into traffic, just missing a hot pink Toyota Prius.

I can’t help myself. I’m sorry, universe, but sometimes, you just have to.

I roll down the passenger side window and hang my head out of it, looking back at the guy and waving madly at him, a Cheshire grin on my face.

“Sorry!” I holler, my hair whipping around my face.

Sorry not sorry, but we can leave that part out, right?

Besides, the guy is just…uhhmm…..hot?

Like seriously, my thong would be wet if I were looking at him for another few minutes.

He had piercing blue eyes and a rugged looking face. Dark wavy hair. You could tell under that suit that fit his frame so well was a body that you probs would spend time licking over. And not one of those courtesy licks to get him to finally go down on you. No, like licking the ridges of his abs kinda body. A hard body.

Ripped and muscled and tan, oh my.

I settle back into my seat, ignoring the protestations of the Prius driver over me hanging out the window—take a chill pill, dude—and give the address for Blush.

I’m going to make it to work on time after all! Congratulatory pats on the back for me are in order.

I spend the rest of the ride just looking out the window, daydreaming about the guy. How he’d just walk over and pick me up and throw me on my desk and rip off my panties and bury his face into my cooch and just shoot me into orbit. Then just push his fat cock into me and make me yell and…

Okay, seriously, I need to chill out. This not having sex thing is just getting outta hand.

Besides, the guy seems sort of familiar. Where have I seen him before?

I walk into work after paying the cabbie (no drinks out on the town for me tonight, not with that bill) and realize, fuuuccckkkkk…something isn’t right. Like, usually on a Monday morning, people are a little slow to get to work ‘cause everyone’s hung over, but there’s slow to work and then there’s just not fucking working at all. The reporters and editors and photographers are milling around aimlessly instead of, like, doing something. Like, their jobs.

Panic grips me. I know two things off the bat, and I’ll give ‘em to you as they occurred to me:

1) No one’s gonna notice I’m (discretely checking iPhone) five minutes late. Yippee! I got away with it again. I am a rockstar.

2) No one’s gonna notice I’m late ‘cause something much worse than Ashley being late to work is going down. Much, much worse.

Damn.

My best friend, Natalie, spots me and rushes right over.

“Ashley, there you are!” she hisses. “They’re going to do the announcement in like two minutes!”

“Announcement? What announcement?”

“Oh my god, girl, you really don’t read work emails outside of work, do you? They sent it at 5:30 this morning. There’s some big announcement happening this morning, and, like, everyone thinks they know what it is. But for reals, no one knows. It’s all just gossip.”

She’s pulling me toward the back of the room, which is where everyone just shoves the shit they don’t know what to do with—it’s basically our communal shit storage area. Old copies of our magazines, props for photo shoots, Christmas decorations—all that crap that no one knows what to do with and no one cares enough to organize.

But today, they had cleared all of that out, and put a dais up in the middle of it, with a microphone planted right up front.

You know, like what they’d do if they were planning on making a big announcement.

Like we don’t have jobs anymore.

Fuuuuuccccckkkkkkk…

Suddenly, not getting laid this weekend doesn't seem so important to me. I could be fired. In like three minutes, my fucking job could be gone.

I feel panic thrumming through my veins.

“Natalie,” I say, my voice rising in pitch. “Are we getting fired?” I may or may not have ended that question in a high-pitched squeak.

She whips around and grabs my arms, shaking me. “Don’t you freak the fuck out on me, Ash!” she commands, staring me in the eyes as she does it. She could be scary when she wants to be, and she wants to be right now. “Let’s hear what they say, and then freak out. For all we know, they’ve gathered us together to tell us that we’re getting extra large Christmas bonuses this year.”

“Extra large” would imply that we've received Christmas bonuses previously, but before I can point out how we’ve never gotten a penny as any kind of bonus, Mr. Isaouk steps up to the microphone.

This is a really bad sign, ‘cause he is a class A dickwad who’d fuck over his own mother for an extra $50. He also happens to own Blush.

No, seeing him definitely does not give me the warm and fuzzies.

“Hello?” he says, the mic screeching with feedback. Everyone groans with pain as the sound reverberates through their heads, but it does the trick; everyone in the room turns to stare at him.

Mr. Dickwad Boss Man begins droning on about how we’re a family and he cares about all of us, which could not be farther from the truth, and even he didn’t seem convinced by his speech when I glanced to the side.

The right side.

The side where, right at this very moment, the guy I stole the cab from not even 40 minutes ago is standing.

And he’s staring right at me.

And … oh god, it dawns on me … he's the Wolf of New York.

I

am

so

fucked.