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Craving The Boss Page 3


  At this point, I don’t know what hurts the most, the fact that I got out of my comfort zone and got off on a stranger, or the fact that this stranger was irresistibly hot and couldn’t get out of my head.

  “Anyway,” I tell my friend. “It’s time for me to go now. Thanks for coming over.”

  I hope that as I’m headed to work (as much stressful and pestiferous as it is) I can actually keep my mind off…things…and strange, smoking hot man. Yep, hopefully the plaguy workplace will do to get my life back on track.

  ‘Cause that’s all I wish right now.

  I just want to get on with my own life. That’s all. Nothing much. Nothing less.

  But, does this fuss stop even when I’m headed to my workplace at Kensington’s? Well, I guess you know how it goes. Before I make it to the glorious building where I work, I have to drop by the coffeehouse at the end of the block and order the usual skinny latte for my boss. Yeah, needless to say, she’s a pain in the ass. My work badge says assistant, but if you asked me, I’d say more like a servant. Seriously, Mrs. Kensington is the buzziest person to ever exist. Sure, she’s a successful debutante, the CEO of her own company and is dirty rich, but anyway, that wouldn’t make up for her plaguy, fancy-ass needs. I have to comply with her every request.

  Now, you might be wondering, why do I keep working for her if she’s that pestering of a person? Thing is, Mrs. Kensington has got connections (lots of them) and she might be very persuasive. And with my finals on the corner and the job market being all ready and versatile, I can’t really risk doing that.

  I’m her coffee buyer, her personal shopper, family issues consoler, and none of it is entailed into my job description. I could be paid twice the monthly payments if we take into consideration my other out-of-description jobs that I do for her.

  “Hey, Keira,” Harley, the latte boy, spreads his usual smile that with this much stress I’m handling today, I’m kind of skipping over. “The usual?”

  “Yep, Harley.” I mumble, uninterested.

  I guess it would be safe to say that Harley has been having a little crush on me since forever. When I first started frequenting the coffeehouse, he persisted all my coffee orders were on him, but after a couple of persists I kept him off with this approbation, mainly because all the orders were for my boss. And she didn’t deserve to have free coffee, a) because she was loaded and needed to spread her wealth to the world for economical dispersion and b) she was the meanest pinchgut world has ever seen.

  “You seem a little distracted today. Has your grouch of a boss put you into intricate assignments again?” Harley smiles while flipping the lever to prepare my skinny latte.

  “Something like that.” I tell him and in a flash, all of it comes back to me. How could I get that fucking roué out of my head?

  I wait, contemplating, as he’s disposing of my coffee order while random people enter the coffeehouse and have their drinks requested. I mean, it’s kinda random, but for some reason I feel the sereneness on these couple of minutes being dispersed into multiple little pieces of other lives. Actually, my best day would’ve been cozying up at the corner of the ambience, enjoying my coffee and scrutinizing other people as they entered and leaved by that door.

  I know it’s kinda bizarre, but yet so comfy.

  I mean, I probably wish that as a receptive impulse my inner part complies so that on a perceptively enumerative world I wouldn’t be complying every request of Mrs. Nutty.

  “I didn’t order two.” I scowl as Harley interrupts me from my thoughtfulness.

  “I know.” He says smoothly.

  I scramble on my purse for eight bucks, but before I even manage to bring the money forth, he interrupts me as always.

  “Oh, no. It’s on the house.”

  “I know,” I say, which, thinking about it a second later, comes off a little bit bizarre. “I mean, at least take the tree ninety-nine. Believe me, she’s got plenty.”

  “Ok,” he spreads a boyish smile and shrugs nonchalantly while I give him Mrs. Nutty’s due.

  As I hurry my way to my workplace, nudging my way rapidly through the Seattle rumbustious crowd, I take the elevator, summoning to the twenty-third floor. That’s where Mrs. Kensington is waiting for me anyway. Um, waiting I say? Let me put it another way. She’s all encumbered into her daily work sheets and getting cracky over her skinny latte being precisely eight minutes and fifty-six seconds late. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re taking me as one of those OCD freaks. But I don’t blame you. Anyway, you’ll get why, when you meet my boss.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Kensington.” I push forth a gilded smile, after having passed through the receptionist area and sending a nod to the girl behind the counter. Mrs. Nutty doesn’t even acknowledge my presence in her office, as I’m swiveling towards her work desk and put the paper cup above a white napkin across the muss of files organized compulsively on it.

  “Keira, there’s some job you’re assigned to. It’s your big shot, I might say. One of the rival franchises is taking into consideration a merger agreement, which is going to be very big for our brand if we succeed. And you are to participate on this trial and spread your skills around. I designate you take this very seriously. Because if you fail, not only do you miss a tremendous shot for the future of this company, but you also put your job title at risk. And not to mention, your reputation.”

  She’s such a scumbag, isn’t she?

  I’m trying to process everything she’s saying, but needless to say I’m perplexed by the way how calm her complexion remains even while she’s putting up with her manipulative schemes. Because, yeah, this woman is the most manipulative, stone cold bitch that earth has ever seen. I mean, it doesn’t even take more than two minutes to realize her true nature.

  But anyway, what did she say to me? I’m about to go out there and have my skills manifested?

  Nah, I might’ve heard that wrong. I need to pinch myself to realize this is not only happening in my head, but I refrain myself the hurt just to save her gridding, unaffected look at me.

  “Why me?” I manage to spill out, totally perplexed at her words.

  “Oh, it’s not my choice.” She doesn’t even hoist her eyes from the laptop.

  Now, this makes much more sense. I’ve been working for this woman for a couple of months now and all she’s been doing all along is trying to prove me how worthless and insignificant my ideas are to her company and to the world for that matter. That’s how I ended up being her PA. Which I’m not gonna complain, since you know how hard the job market can be nowadays.

  “Clearly, the man designated to sign this agreement has personally requested your name to be put on the line. He made it clear to me that they wouldn’t accept another designer but you.” Since she’s not even glaring my way, I take advantage to pinch myself. Yep, this is really happening! It’s as real as it can be. Just when I thought I got away with it, she dispatched her attention from whatever it was she was doing into her computer and takes a look at me. The first thing she notices is my hand and her perfect eyebrows furrow compulsively. But then, she tries to pretend nothing bizarre just happened. “Ah, and he’s the CEO by the way. You need to take these files.” She slides my way through the desk some attached documents and I process toward it, getting hold of them. “He’s required you start working on it right away. There’s an address at the end. Now go.”

  I hesitate to do so, since this all sounds so surreal to me.

  “Didn’t you hear a word I said?”

  “I—”

  “Then get on with it. Before I make up my mind to put your ass on the streets.”

  I get out of her office before she gets to the point where she can’t control herself anymore. What a psycho! I look down the files and scramble for any clue.

  Capitol Hill, 98102.

  It wouldn’t take long for me to get there. I order a cab and tell the address to the driver, while my head still refuses to believe this is happening.

  All the way
over there I’m basically pondering what this man must look like and why he had decided to summon me to this ordeal. How come he knows me in the first place?

  My perplexity has obviously decided to take over, so everything around me just passes by randomly. I’m too eager to know this person, I skip over everything else, as I’m making my way to the third floor in the Cardenas&Co building. I explain my visit’s purpose to the receptionist (as much inexplicable as it is) and when she hears my name she puts a fake smile on her face and leads me across the hallway.

  I enter into the spacious office and my jaw drops.

  This, I didn’t expect.

  The man whose name I can’t remember (maybe never even asked him in the first place) is standing unexpressibly in from of me, hand shoved in the pockets of his designer pants.

  Just when I thought I started to get his face out of my head.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  {Cason}

  I can barely hold my excitement, having that stumbled look upon me. To be honest—and that not in a very cocky way—I kind of expected it to be like this, but every time she’s around, I mean, there’s some fuck-worthy air about her that makes my cock twitch in depression and excitement, comingled altogether.

  First, after having taken a look at me head to toe, a little distastefully, (but I know it’s just a pretense, so I won’t take it to heart) she bends her head down and checks some files she’s supported on her forearm and then swings her head back to take the door, from where she came in, into scrutiny.

  And I know she’s just wishing there has been some misunderstanding. That I am not the man she’s been assigned to meet with. That this is all a dream about to end soon.

  But guess what?

  It’s not a dream. It’s a rather elaborated plan I’ve been holding up with for these last tormenting couple of hours, while having all my crew pegging themselves away to find a girl named Keira, who’s majoring in interior design. Of course, it’s not easy (or all the way legal) to find a person just by their name in a city inhabited by more than half million people.

  Well, let’s just say that I have a very insidious crew. I guess these are the perks of being one of the most successful entrepreneurs on one of the most elusive cities in the US.

  But, okay. After having let her deal with her insecurity for a while, I decide that there’s been enough room for silence, and begin to push forth without breaking off the smirk on my face.

  “Hello, Ms. Akerson. I see you’ve finally managed to get your way back into me again, huh?” I lay my eyes on her body, gazing from below excruciatingly, drenching on her model-thin perfect figure, and when I meet her eyes, I realize how cracky she can be. Boy, I have almost forgotten about that.

  “I’m having a hard time deciding whether it is a phantom standing undesirably in front of me as if having chased after me, which I’d be incapable to carry a restraining order against, since, duh, it’s just a phantom; or I’d been having way too much poison to drink that my body rejects any attempt of recalibration and because of that my mind’s quivering into deceptive mirages.”

  “Well, I’d say I cannot object to the latter. You had way too many drinks the other night. Actually, I’ve never seen a girl being so keen on booze since after high school. Kinda savage, huh? You go, girl. You go.”

  I can witness her look going from befuddled to wanting to wrap her hands around my neck and strangle me. And I find that weirdly a turn-on. Her glossy cherry lips stir naughty, pestering thoughts on my mind. Her aptitude, blonde hair and all over the shop bib-and-tucker would make her just a random girl out of hundreds of them on my company. But the thing is, she comprises something bizarre I have not yet been able to comprehend on, which makes her so affective to me. And that is just annoying. I don’t want no girl having that effect upon me. I don’t wanna get tied up right against some chick and turn into a bondman reacting towards every signal she releases my way. Instead, I’m down for the opposite. I want to be the one to have them under control, make them comply with my every request and after getting what I want, let them loose. It’s always been that way and I’m not looking forward to changing it now.

  While being totally taken on her silhouette, I might have conducted glares I didn’t intend on since I can perceive her eventual smirk upon me.

  “Are you trying to hit on me or something. ‘Cause let me tell you this: it won’t work.”

  She caught me off guard right there. I must have looked like a teenage boy being startled over his silly crush, since there’s some contended, flattered-ish smile on her face. And she never smiles to me. As for scowling, yeah that might have worked with her.

  “I guess we’re way past over that. We woke up together on the same bed, remember?”

  “Just because I’ve spent the night with you, or didn’t—” she looks somewhere unlocated in the air and frowns “—ugh, whatever that was, doesn’t mean you get to have some sort of prerogatives over me.”

  “Um, sure it does.” I scowl on the edge of my excitement here.

  I can even transcribe her ever so infuriated look upon me being like ‘what is wrong with this guy and his arrogant ways?’ and somehow from this moment on I know that she’s in the game. And that’s so fortunate ‘cause I really slogged myself to come to this girl (or make her come to me). And, yeah, more like I had my crew slog themselves while I waited leisurely for her to come in, though you get there was some effort involved here by my part, don’t you?

  “Okay, I don’t know whatever it is you want me here for, but I don’t think I’m gonna be required in this place. Not sure whether I’d want to be here in the first place.”

  “Oh, okay. Wait up over there. You say you don’t wanna be anywhere near me and yet here you are. Nearer than you think.” I make one excruciating step at a time closer, leaving bit by bit very little distance between us. I can see in her eyes this intimidates her, even though I didn’t intend to. Okay, who am I kidding. That’s exactingly what I meant doing it. The thing is I love how she claims she’s better off far away from me though I can see it in her eyes that’s just a dotty excuse she uses to protect herself. And I can see that with every step that I take toward her that barrier she’s built somehow is starting to crash piece by piece. And that’s what she’s afraid of—that that distance between us would come to vanquish and she’d find herself totally barrier-less and wouldn’t be able to resist this thing that’s in the air and would beg to go all the way with me. But she’s not that kind of girl. That’s what all these layers are for. Because just as I can see all these things on her eyes, she can see in mine that I’m trouble for her. The kind of guy she wants to escape from. And doesn’t, at once.

  Just in the middle of our pleasantry, which consists of awkward silence set in between, Dustin, my friend, sneaks into the room with his annoying smile glued on the face that gets all the girls on their knees (to do what he likes best of them), waddling around like he owns the room. No knocking. No permit required. The motherfucker thinks he can fuck about my proprieties as if they were his just because he’s my mate. And yet, do I let him dawdle over my places because he’s my best friend? (I do!)

  A huge part on that plays even my P.A. whom he’s managed to negotiate with and by negotiating with her I believe you get that he’s screwing her. And yet, you’d find yourself wondering why I decide to deal with this mess. Okay, Dustin’s father is one of the co-CEOs in one of the business deals that I’m part of. I guess that’s what gives his prick of a son the privileges to come and fool around my offices as if they were a fuck-house.

  “Hey asshole,” he finally greets, ‘cause that’s the only way he knows to do it, and takes an audacious, famished look at Keira. “Miss me much?” He nudges my arm and leans against my desk, fixing his hands on the edge. “Who’s the chica?” He asks me and that’s about the moment I want to make his plastic-perfect nose of his bleed.

  I’m having a hard time taming the girl as it is, and there he is, creeping in and screwing everything as he doe
s best. But on the other side, I cannot conceal that I’m a little amused too. Her face is coruscating in all the shades of miff possible. And I just want her to realize that there’s way worse than me. (My friend, for example.) And that I might look like a Trophy Boy when compared to him.

  “Meet my interior design executive, Ms. Akerson.” I tell him.

  “Ooh, some fancy-ass, lawyerly words you got there, fucker.” He tells me and gets his stare back at the girl, who is looking at him like she’s needing to chop him off to pieces or something. And, really, who could blame her? I’d say I might even give her a hand on that.

  Ignoring his office-inadequate vocabulary, which is the only way he can talk, really (his folk’s attempts to civilize him didn’t rack up, no matter the top-notch college he was obliged to attend) I proceed with the presentation.

  “Keira, meet Dustin, my…” Uh-oh. I’m stuck right there. Do I really need to present this douchebag as my friend? I mean, despite the vicious manners and silly-boy looks he’s my mate and I love him to bits, though let’s say that he’s not the right person you might wanna present to a girl you want to impress. And here I find myself frowning. Why do I need to impress her? Dustin’s met tons of the girls I screwed and I’ve given zero fucks about it.

  “I’m his mate.” He forces a smile and takes a step closer to Keira, who’s standing firmly in a non-expressible way right in front of us, and reaches his hand toward her. “In case there’s any confusion. I’m into girls.”

  Keira looks at him, weirded out and doesn’t respond, leaving his hand held out in expectancy. He slightly draws his hand back inwardly and totally tries to ignore the price-worthy situation that just happened. God, I’m so on about it and I’m gonna pester him for the rest of his life. He isn’t used to girls like Keira obviously, (and neither am I) that’s why he’s absolutely hinged back by what just happened. Clearly, Keira’s not the type of girl I usually got around me. She’s stubborn and fierce, pretty and mysterious, sexy and impermeable.