Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 58185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 291(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 291(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
If I sent it this way… who knew what might happen—but something would befall me, wouldn’t it? Part of me knew that it represented a bizarre response to having been denied a climax, but my body didn’t seem to care.
I clicked Send, and my face did get hot the moment afterward, as the thought of all the possible consequences went through my head. I hovered my cursor over Unsend. I was on the verge of clicking when the response from Sarah came back: Thanks, Ingrid!
I could send another message around, apologizing for the typo. I could pretend, when someone caught it, that the rush to prepare had caused it, and I would probably get off with a reprimand—get off, ha, said a wry voice in my head. Or I could wait.
Minutes ticked by of furious preparation in the bullpen—quiet, urgent conversations I could only hear the speech rhythms of as Kevin, Louis, and Martin got their story straight. Joseph remained in his office, though I could hear his keyboard urgently clicking through the open doorway. They must all have looked at the memo by now.
No one noticed. No reprimand, no discipline. Just the mundane, if frantic hum of office life continuing unabated. It should have been a relief, but instead, a strange disappointment gnawed at me.
“Numbers look good,” Sarah said as she passed by, flashing me a thumbs-up.
“Thanks,” I murmured, my voice hollow. The lack of discipline only heightened my frustration, feeding the dark, erotic storm brewing within me. I needed Joseph’s firm hand, his unyielding control to ground me. Anything less felt like… like I had gone adrift, a boat helpless to steer through a gale.
I pulled out my notepad, the pen gliding effortlessly over the paper, creating intricate designs that mirrored the tangled web of my emotions. Each stroke was a silent scream, a plea for the structure and discipline that Joseph alone could provide.
“Meeting in ten,” Joseph reminded me with a shout from his office, snapping me back to reality. I closed the notepad, my heart pounding with a mix of dread and anticipation that I knew didn’t fit the situation at all, but was apparently impervious to reason.
“…a 3.4% increase in market share,” John Grappler droned on, his voice a monotonous hum that grated against my already frayed nerves. I had long since stopped writing words in my notepad and switched to finishing off a particularly intricate, looping design that represented my best effort so far at gothic filigree.
The doodle made the one solace I had amidst this corporate purgatory. I knew that some of the CEO’s words were passing me by, and I forced myself to stop in the middle of a curve and listen. My eyes flicked toward Joseph sitting next to me at the long table, his piercing blue gaze fixed on the presentation.
“To repeat,” John Grappler said, “with the growth in market share thanks to ‘You and Selecta’ we’ll be ready to retool several different units, and…”
I glanced at my notepad and found that I had recorded exactly the same words, verbatim, in a section I had taken down twenty minutes earlier. Frustration seemed to boil up from my chest. How could this man be Joseph’s boss?
“Idiot,” I muttered under my breath, the word slipping out before I could stop it. The room seemed to freeze, the air thickening with the weight of my transgression.
Joseph’s head snapped toward me, his eyes narrowing. The junior executives, across the table from us, turned their heads in unison, disbelief etched across their faces. An electric tension surged through the room, making my heart pound wildly in my chest.
“Excuse me? Ingrid, is it?” John’s voice, usually so assured, faltered slightly as he looked over from his slides, his silver hair catching the light. His eyes bore into mine, a flicker of something dangerous lurking behind his calm exterior. “Do you have something to add?”
I felt a flush creep up my neck, spreading like wildfire. “Nothing, sir,” I stammered, my voice barely above a whisper. But the damage was done; I had done it, and everyone who counted, in my little corner of Selecta, knew it. In fact, only one person counted, the one seated next to me.
Joseph’s silence was deafening. I stared down at my notepad, unable even to turn my eyes in his direction. I knew for certain, though, that his gaze on me had not wavered since I had spoken. I felt it pinning me in place, making my skin prickle with a mixture of fear and anticipation. I could almost feel the phantom touch of his hand, the promise of discipline that lingered just out of reach.
“I apologize, John,” Joseph said finally, his tone icy and controlled. “Let’s continue. I’ll sort this out with my team later.”
In the last three weeks I had blushed more frequently and more fiercely than in my whole life before coming to Selecta. The scalding heat that surged into my face, my neck, my scalp—my whole upper body, it felt like—seemed more like Joseph had sentenced me to burning at the stake than like any of those blushes.