Chapter 12
Avery
I walked to my desk before anyone could say anything and set my tote under the desk carefully, because careful movement had become necessary.
I felt my bareness under my skirt with vivid intensity, every step reminding me how aroused I was just by being obedient and wearing what he told me.
I lowered myself into the chair slowly, which turned out to be a bad idea because every inch of fabric brushing against my bare pussy reminded me of him.
I opened the operations guide to page twenty with the solemn focus of a woman trying to survive the most intense experience of her life. This particular section was about internal document routine, which was fantastic. Riveting. Life-changing.
I reached for my legal pad.
That was when I saw the envelope. It had been tucked under the top edge of the pad, flat and cream-colored, with only one thing written on the front.
My name in his handwriting.
I knew who had written it from birthday cards, condolence notes, and the crisp signature at the bottom of the job offer paperwork Benjamin had sent me.
For a moment, I only stared at it.
The office moved around me. Phones rang and someone laughed near the printer. Dana’s voice cut through a conference room wall with something about Hartwell while Benjamin typed furiously at his desk. Callum was no longer visible from where I sat.
My pulse moved lower in my body.
I glanced around once, as if the whole floor might be watching. No one was. Or, rather, Benjamin probably was, but he was not looking directly at me, which I chose to count as privacy.
I picked up the envelope and opened it.
The note inside was one sheet, folded once.
Avery,
I wrote this before you came in.
No, I did not check the lobby cameras. No, I did not ask security. No, I did not have Benjamin confirm your outfit, though I’m sure he would have enjoyed the opportunity to be insufferable.
I knew that you were going to wear the black pencil skirt.
I also know you are reading this with your face hot, your knees tight under the desk, wet and flustered and pretending my handwriting is not more interesting than the operations guide.
Do your work. Finish your training. Behave where people can see you.
I’ll deal with you after work.
C.
I read it once.
Then again.
My face went hot exactly as predicted. My knees were, infuriatingly, tight under the desk. And my body, which had clearly signed a separate employment contract with Callum Rowe, responded to the words ‘wet and flustered’ with an immediate, helpless pulse of need.
I folded the note too quickly and nearly gave myself a paper cut. I slipped the note into the back of my legal pad and opened the operations guide to page twenty again.
For the next hour, I tried to work like a woman who had not just received written proof that her new boss understood her underwear situation better than she understood her own career goals.
I read about approval chains, document permissions, naming conventions, file retention schedules, and client communications.
I took notes because I did not trust myself not to drift into a full-body memory of Callum’s hand in my hair while his mouth devoured mine.
Dana came by shortly after I arrived and dropped three project summaries on my desk.
“Rewrite these,” she demanded.
“Good morning to you too.”
She just looked at me. Silently.
“Good morning,” I corrected myself.
“Better. Rewrite the executive overview in plain language. Keep the technical substance. Remove the incense.”
“The incense?”
“Consultant language. Words like synergize, empower, future-forward, holistic, and stakeholder ecosystem.”
I picked up the pages. “Understood.”
Dana’s gaze flicked over me once, not lingering on the skirt, exactly, but noticing it in the practical way she noticed everything. “Nice outfit.”
My heart stopped.
“Thank you.”
“Sharp. Don’t let it do the work for you.”
Then she walked away.
I sat very still.
Benjamin appeared three seconds later, as if conjured by my stress. “Dana complimented you. Terrible. We’ll have to monitor you for overconfidence now.”
“She told me not to let my skirt do the work for me.”
“Sound advice. Though, in fairness, it appears highly motivated.”
I glared at him.
He leaned one hand on the edge of my desk, lowering his voice just enough that only I could hear. “You seem flushed.”
“I’m drinking coffee.”
“You are holding a capped pen.”
I looked down to see that I was, in fact, holding a capped pen.
“Ben,” I said carefully.
“Yes?”
“Do you know everything?”
“No.”
I stared.
His mouth twitched. “Only the important and inconvenient things.”
“Did you know about the note?”
“What note?”
I noted that he answered far too fast.
“Benjamin.”
“I am a vault.”
“You are a vault with commentary.”
“A superior vault.” He straightened. “For the record, if there were a note, I would not know its contents. I would only know that Mr. Rowe visited your desk at seven this morning, looked unnecessarily severe while doing so, and left with the expression of a man making a decision he planned to call thoughtful and disciplined later.”
I swallowed.
“He was here at 7:00?”
“Mr. Rowe has many enemies, but sleep is the one he courts most inconsistently.” Benjamin tapped the operations guide. “Read. Rewrite. Do not stare at the back of your legal pad like it contains scripture.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then you’ll have no trouble ignoring it.”
He left before I could ask whether vaults could be strangled.
I kept working somehow. I did not know how.
The first summary was so dense with consultant language I had to read it twice before realizing the entire paragraph meant: The east entrance will be temporarily closed.
I rewrote it in actual English, which felt satisfying enough to temporarily distract me from the note burning a hole through my legal pad.
The second was about public access during construction.
The third involved stakeholder engagement, which I cut so aggressively I imagined Dana feeling a disturbance in the force and smiling.
Shortly after ten, my email chimed.
I almost ignored it, because serious employees did not leap every time Outlook made a sound, but I glanced up and saw the sender was Callum Rowe.
My lungs suffered immediate paralysis and my body went still.
Subject: Schedule adjustment
Avery,
After work is too far away.
You will come to my office at lunch.
C.
I stared at the email while my pulse tried to climb out of my throat.
I should have been alarmed. I was alarmed.
Somewhere in the responsible portion of my brain, a small woman with a clipboard was screaming about professionalism, power dynamics, and the fact that I had been employed for approximately the length of a long weekend.
Unfortunately, she was being drowned out by the rest of me, some parts louder than others.
I read the email again.
Benjamin, three desks away, said without looking up, “Whatever that email is, your face has become a liability.”
I closed it so fast I clicked the wrong window and opened the bribery training module from yesterday.
“I hate open-plan offices,” I muttered.
“Good. You’re becoming one of us.”
I tried to reply to Callum. I typed Okay, deleted it, typed Understood, deleted it, typed Yes, stared at the word until my whole body embarrassed me, then deleted that too.
Finally, I wrote I’ll be ready.
I hovered over send for a full fifteen seconds before pressing it.
His response came less than a minute later.
You already are.
I made a sound, a tiny one, but not tiny enough and Benjamin slowly looked over the top of his monitor.
I refused to meet his eyes.
Dana returned for the summaries a short while later and I handed them over with what I hoped was a calm, employable expression. She read the first one standing at my desk. Her red pen hovered, then lowered without marking anything.
“This is better,” she said.
“Thank you.”
She read the second, made one mark, then the third. “These are also good.”
From across the aisle, Benjamin said, “Careful, Dana. If you praise her twice in one morning, we’ll need to file paperwork.”
Dana did not look at him. “If I praise anyone twice in one morning, assume that I’ve lost my mind.”
I smiled down at my keyboard.
Then my phone buzzed with a text, and I held my breath as I read it.
Callum: Fuck it. I’m coming to you now.
I forgot how to breathe. For several seconds, I simply stared at the words.
Callum Rowe did not seem like a man who typed something like that lightly.
He seemed like a man who made lawyers nervous and mayors cautious.
He did not seem like a man who abandoned revised schedules because he could not wait until lunch.
Except apparently, he did when it came to me.
The thought was so dangerous I had to set the phone face down on the desk. It buzzed again and I picked it back up immediately.
Callum Rowe: Do not move.
My entire body went hot.
There was a particular way the office changed when Callum entered it.
Conversations did not stop exactly, but they refined themselves.
Postures noticeably adjusted. People became slightly more efficient in the space of a breath.
It was not fear or at least not only fear.
It was more like when Callum walked into a room, he generated his own personal gravity.
I looked up and saw that he was coming across the operations floor toward me. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, no tie, and his attention was fixed on me with such quiet intensity that every other person in the room blurred. He did not rush.
Benjamin rose from his desk as Callum passed.
“Sir,” he said.
“Move my 11:00.”
Benjamin’s eyebrows lifted. “The mayor’s chief of staff?”
“Marcus can hold them for ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes,” Benjamin repeated, tone rich with disbelief, suspicion, and the beginnings of a migraine.
“Fifteen.”
“Ah. Time, that famously elastic legal substance.”
“Benjamin.”
“I’ll move it.” Ben glanced at me once, then back at Callum. “Shall I also notify civilization to brace?”
“No.”