broke up.
That Damien was a son of a bitch.
***
“You have an appointment with Riesling Financial today at one p.m.,” I said to Riley. “I’ve cleared your schedule. After that, you’ll have an hour free before another meeting with the sales executive of Crawford.”
I reported his schedule to Riley about once a day. Initially, I thought he didn’t pay attention, since all he did was nod his head while reading some other document of his. However, he always walked out of his office on time, without ever needing me to remind him about his appointments.
“Okay, that’s good,” he replied. He picked up a file from his desk and glanced through it briefly. “Summarize these documents for me. I need them for the meeting, but I don’t have time to read through all of them.”
“Yes, sir.”
We kept a professional relationship in the office, most of the time. Sometimes, he’d spring out of the normal routine—pun intended—and I’d find myself sucking his private parts. But other than the occasional instance, Riley was serious about his work.
He looked so amazingly sexy when he got serious like that.
“Is that all, sir?” I kept up the formalities, calling him ‘sir’ at the office, but when the doors were closed, and we were left alone—with Ryan, of course—I’d begin screaming out his name. Sometimes the twins decided to get naughty, coming up with their dominant-submissive play, and then 'sir' would return to my vocabulary once more.
“Actually, no. Tyrone told me about yesterday. He said you spent quite long in your apartment.”
“And is that a problem?” I crossed my arms. I didn’t like them butting into my affairs so much. Sure, I lived in their house and cooked breakfast for them, but we haven’t made anything official yet. We maintained a sex-buddy status quo… for now.
He leaned forward and propped his elbows onto the desk, crossing his fingers together. “I’m your boss.”
“And… what does that have to do with anything?”
“As the boss of this company, it’s my job to know the whereabouts of my employees.”
I sighed, not buying his half-assed argument, but answering anyway. “I was cleaning up the apartment.”
He raised a brow, indicating he didn’t believe me. “For so long? I didn’t know you were such a messy person, to leave so much junk behind.”
I scowled at him. I wasn’t exactly a neat freak, but I had standards and left things reasonably clean. “It wasn’t me. My ex-boyfriend came in and made a mess of the whole place. That slob. I had a week’s worth of his crap to clean up.”
The teasing expression of his face immediately fell. His lips pressed into a hard line, and the look he had turned into one of deep annoyance. “You never told us you had an ex-boyfriend.”
I gave out a laugh of disbelief. “I’ve had plenty, thank you.”
Irritated, Riley let out a rough noise. “What was he doing in your apartment?”
“Begging for us to get back together, like a sorry piece-of-shit.” The thought of me ever kissing that unsympathetic asshole again sent a shiver of disgust through my gut.
“We can send him away, you know, through legal or illegal means.” He then brightened up a bit. “Speaking of which, we’ve gotten that issue with your ex-boss settled.”
“What issue?”
“He punched you in the face, remember?”
“Oh, yes, that.” I’d nearly forgotten about that. Riley’s ice pack was surprisingly effective; the bruise lightened so much, I barely noticed its presence after the first day.
“Kristie helped us take some photos when you were sleeping for some evidence,” Riley continued, “but we decided the court would go too easy on him and settled for easier, less-troublesome, non-legal means.”
He spoke nonchalantly, which was probably the reason why he seemed even more dangerous. “You really don’t have to,” I said, waving my hand to dismiss his idea. “I’ve already settled that. I sent his wife a picture of
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni