Chapter 2
Taylor
Not everyone liked their job, right? It was totally normal not to enjoy your nine-to-five job.
I couldn’t complain, because I didn’t hate it.
The people were good, the hours were typical, but the tasks…
not exactly intellectually stimulating. Still, I needed it for the health insurance and consistent paycheck, because life as a full-time writer was fucking hard.
If I had it my way, I would be home all day, writing, waiting for whatever boyfriend or partner I had to come home and pamper me—or I could pamper him.
I wasn’t picky. That fantasy was so far outside the realm of reality that I didn’t even let myself think about it too much.
It was more likely that Grysten, the monster in my latest novel, would come to life and sweep me off my feet rather than me finding a partner who wanted to support my writer life.
The bonus side of this job was that I wasn’t incredibly busy.
Once I got the morning rush of mail done, I had time to just sit.
When I first started this job, I confirmed with my boss that as long as I was there and available if anyone needed me, I could do whatever I wanted on my laptop or whatever, as long as it was work appropriate.
Editing my gay monster romance novel was work appropriate, right?
I mean, it was just words on the screen.
It wasn’t like there were images… which reminded me I needed to contact the artist and commission some pieces for this next release.
I had been putting that off, though, because the artist was going to ask for inspiration on what my monster should look like.
I didn’t have any inspiration that I could share.
I had a feeling sending her a picture of Griff Halstead, the VP in the office across the room, was not going to go over well.
Not that she would know who he was. But still, you couldn’t take random pictures of people and send them off to artists and ask them to make them into giant ogres with bulging biceps, tusk-like fangs, and twelve-pack abs.
Not to mention the oversized cock. Or could you?
Maybe I could find a model on one of the photo sites that looked like Griff.
Could I do a reverse image search using his LinkedIn profile picture?
That probably crossed some sort of line.
Griff was the right size to be my actual monster.
At six-seven, he towered over me and everyone else.
His massive shoulders meant he had to walk in many of the doors sideways in order to fit comfortably.
Any room he was in instantly felt small.
Or maybe that was just because I felt small when I was next to him—in the best way possible.
Not that I was supposed to be thinking about those sorts of things.
No, I needed to focus on my work. Not my nine-to-five work, but my actual work. The real things I cared about. Or rather, the fake things that existed only in my imagination until I put pen to paper and shared my words with my readers.
I had a scene that needed some work. It wasn’t often that I printed copies of my work for me to edit by hand, but this particular scene required extra focus that only came with pen and paper.
It was the first sex scene, and those were always tricky.
Grysten finds the lost omega in the forest and immediately takes him back to his cave, thinking that the human man must be a sacrifice from the local village and he was permitted to have his way with the little human.
I picked up my red pen and rifled through my bag, hoping to find the orange folder that I kept my work in.
It wasn’t there.
Had I pulled it out this morning and worked on it before getting the morning mail out?
No. I had a ton of things to deliver this morning, mostly external mail that came in with a few inter-office items that were in the manila envelopes. I knew my scene was in my bag, I saw it when I unpacked my lunch.
I looked around my office, which was actually just the mail room. There was nothing. Since the mail had been delivered, the counters were empty.
I rifled through the stack of inter-office envelopes.
They were too close to the color of my folder for comfort.
I really needed a different-color folder, or maybe I just didn’t need to print out my work and bring it to the office.
The risk of someone accidentally picking it up was too great.
I should have thought of that before now.
My heart raced, panic filling my veins, sending my body on high alert.
If anyone found that envelope folder and read what was inside, I’d be fired for sure.
It was one thing to work on homework or other safe-for-work things, but a gay monster romance where the omega is practically split in half (in a good way) by Grysten’s eleven-inch cock?
Yeah, that might get me a conversation with HR.
Also, someone was bound to notice that Grysten looked an awful lot like Griff…
I wasn’t embarrassed about my work. I wrote romance novels. Smut, as it was somewhat affectionately called. Although that word had pros and cons, I didn’t mind it. It had its place in the world. But that didn’t mean everyone felt that way.
My books were modestly successful, and my readers were amazing. I loved that I brought a little bit of joy to the world with my work.
And if that work fell into the wrong hands and people found out I was spending work hours working on my novel, I was going to be in trouble. As much as I wanted to stay home and write all day, if I actually could, I would be doing it already.
I needed this job.
Fuck, where in the world could it be?
My phone rang, and I answered it. My friend Trav was on the other line.
“Hey, man, what time are you getting out of work today?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “I get out of work at five every day, Trav. You know that.”
“Still, I thought maybe you would slack off early today. A boy can dream.”
“I wish,” I said. “Did you need something? I’m kind of panicking right now.” I lifted my shoulder to hold my phone against my ear so both my hands were free to search my bag for the third time.
“Panicking? Why?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”
If I told my friend I’d lost my scene, he would laugh hysterically and then rush down here and help me find it—probably in the clumsiest way he could possibly manage.
“It’s your night-out day.”
I groaned. “Today?”
“Yeah. I told you last week we’re going to an amateur MMA fight.”
“A what?”
“Amateur boxing or fighting or whatever they do in the ring. Just know that you’re going to watch two guys in a ring, scantily clad, sweaty—”
“Beating the crap out of each other?”
“Yes,” he said, “but ignore that part. Just imagine the sexual tension.”
I snorted. “I don’t think all the boxers are gay or bi or into each other. They—”
“We can pretend.”
Once a month, my friend forced me out of my shell and took me somewhere that I wouldn’t normally go. He called it creative inspiration. I called it torture. But in reality, those nights were usually fun, and he never actually took me anywhere that was too uncomfortable for me.
I drew the line at him taking me to a BDSM club, although maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
An MMA fight might help with me trying to mentally choreograph fight scenes for when Grysten has to defend his omega against the evil orcs that try to steal him away. It counted as research.
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” Trav said, forcing me to snap back to the present.
“Okay, that’s perfect,” I said.
“You sure you don’t need help with whatever your issue is?”
“No, I’m good.” I was most certainly not good.
After a few more minutes of chit-chat, we hung up the phone.
I had no choice but to begin retracing my steps. Maybe my work was at home… but no, I remembered seeing it when I got here this morning. I took it out and set it next to my laptop. Then I began sorting the morning mail. Then I delivered it.
Oh, goodness. Had I delivered it somewhere?
I looked out into the open office area where various people were working, scanning each desk for my orange folder. My eyes were immediately drawn to Griff and Sawyer as they walked back to Griff’s office from wherever they had been.
In his arms was the stack of mail I had delivered to him today.
With it, the orange envelope that looked way too much like the inter-office envelopes.
Oh, fuck.
I had delivered my explicit, slightly over-the-top monster sex scene to Griff. The same man who had been my inspiration for Grysten.
Fuck my life.