Mine

20. Pepper

TWENTY

PEPPER

It’d been a week since I’d seen Salt.

Two weeks since we met.

Tommy left a proposal on my desk at the end of the day last Friday. Their meeting was perfect, or so I’d heard. Salt had everything Tommy wanted, and Tommy had a vision of how we could take his career to the next level.

For one week, I’d let that proposal sit on my desk.

And every single day, I thought about Salt.

Despite the fact that everyone else went home for the weekend over an hour ago, I was still here.

Still staring at the damn papers.

All of my sex toys arrived earlier in the week. They’d helped the ache that was gnawing at my heart and pussy.

A knock at the door startled me. My head whipped up, but then I relaxed as Ellen leaned against the frame, offering a grim smile. She was dressed in yoga pants and a jacket, a gleam of sweat on her forehead.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stay late on a Friday unless something big was happening,” she said.

I slowly covered the contract with another piece of paper as I sighed. “There’s just a lot to do. Did you go for a run already?”

“Yeah, I’ve been off for a while now. Since I left at my normal time, unlike you. Does a lot have anything to do with you going to Russo’s last week?”

I stiffened. “How the fuck do you know about that?”

“The same way I knew you were still working. Remember, our locations are shared on our phones?” She held hers up, flashing the screen. “You know this is how I show my love. By checking on my Sims. And I’ve been giving you time to confess to whatever’s been weighing on you the last week, but you’ve been locked down tighter than a damn vault.”

Fuck. I’d forgotten about the phone locations. Normally, I would have laughed, but since I was keeping secrets, it made me feel bad. “I went to listen to a potential client that night. I wanted to hear him again before his meeting with Tommy last Friday.”

“Is that why you blew me off? Couldn’t just tell me you wanted to go listen to a potential client? Or, I don’t know, take me with you?”

Double fuck. I winced. “Are you open for dinner tonight?”

She gave me a flat expression. “I am, but only if that means you’re going to tell me what’s going on.”

Lying to my best friend made me a bad person. I knew that. But I just wasn’t ready to tell her about Salt. I still wasn’t even sure what the fuck happened over the last two weeks.

It’s over now.

I’d almost texted him a thousand times. By now, I was sure he’d forgotten all about me.

“My mother’s death date is this weekend,” I said softly. “And I’ve been a little frazzled between Jeff being a thorn in my side and this new client.”

“Does this client have a name?” Ellen asked.

“Salt.” Saying his name aloud felt like sharing a secret. “His name is Salt.”

Ellen snorted. “Wild. Is that his first name?”

“No,” I said.

“Hmm.” Her shoulders softened. “I know this weekend will be hard on you. Let’s make dinner, have some wine, and celebrate everything we have going for us. Whatever you’re working on can wait.”

It really couldn’t. “Give me five minutes and I’ll meet you at the elevator.”

“Fine,” she sighed dramatically, flashing me a smile.

I smiled back as she left and then pulled the papers back out. Tommy had put together a full portfolio on Simon. Over five hundred thousand followers, the majority of which he accumulated from a few very viral videos online. He hadn’t recorded anything professionally before, and plenty of his fans were foaming at the mouth to be able to listen to him for longer than the sixty-second snippets he shared.

There were two songs in particular I was interested in. The one who had made me orgasm last Tuesday night and the one he’d closed with. The others needed work, but had a lot of potential.

He wrote his own songs. He already had a stage presence. He still had a band even if he allegedly fired one of them that night.

I traced my fingertips over the pictures of him. Tommy defined his look as sexy, mysterious, and emo. He wasn’t wrong. Between his tousled hair, dark eyes, and tendency to wear all black with his leather mask—he fit that base description.

I would have chosen different words though.

Young. Hot. A sadistic sex demon with a voice that will rob your soul of sanity.

A sharp pain startled me—I’d been biting my bottom lip. The sting brought the memory of our last encounter roaring back. The sound room. Wrapping my body around him as he fucked me relentlessly. The way he’d figured out what I’d done to myself and the power exchange that followed.

The weight of this decision sat heavy on my shoulders.

If nothing happened between us, I would have approved without hesitation.

I would own his music.

It was the closest I’d ever get to making him mine.

So that was the answer then.

I opened my laptop quickly and logged into my email. I opened up my chain with Tommy and sent a brief message.

Hey Tommy,

Proposal looks good. Let’s move forward.

Pepper

she/her

CEO of Rosethorn Records

Send .

I snapped my laptop shut and stood quickly, pulling on my jacket. I grabbed my bag from the bottom drawer and checked my phone.

No messages. At least, none I cared about.

Nothing from Salt.

Of course nothing from him. We’d made it clear that our fling was over. It’d been a week since I'd seen him, and over a week since we’d touched each other. Given how many would readily throw themselves at his feet, I knew I was just a forgotten memory.

I’d spent a lot of time getting used to my new vibrator this week, and thinking a little too much about getting back on my knees for him. I’d even done more research on kinks and explored things I might like. There was a whole world of pleasure I’d been missing out on.

More than anything else, I wanted to continue to explore what we had. The idea of starting over with someone else—after my experience with Salt—didn’t appeal to me in any way.

I could find someone older. Someone who fit the picture of who my friends imagined me with. A man who’d already gone through a divorce, too. Maybe with older kids. A career that was set in stone, steady and respectful.

Not a broke, horny songwriter over a decade younger than me.

But, now the contract was signed. If we pursued a relationship, I’d have to inform the board, or risk my position as CEO. And I wasn’t going to risk over fifteen years of work for anyone. It meant too much to me.

And telling everyone…

Well, it would never happen.

I flipped off my office light and headed for the elevators. Ellen pressed the button as I approached and bumped me with her shoulder.

“Do you want to stay over this weekend? We could go to some workout classes. Or the spa. Get facials and deep-tissue massages.”

Ellen’s parents owned a chain of high-end spas through the country, which meant we could go any time. She didn’t need to work as my assistant, which was exactly why she was the perfect fit. Well, and a thousand other reasons, too.

“You know I’ll be miserable company this weekend,” I sighed. “I need to think about my mother for the next forty-eight hours and all the trauma she gave me by being a woman of god.”

I also needed to stew about all the times I’d been told I wasn’t good enough. Tommy’s blunt questions last week still haunted me, so I’d be thinking about that, too.

Either I wasn’t good enough, or I was too good. There was no in-between.

Ellen snorted. “From what you’ve told me, she was not a good mother. I’m sorry, Pepper. You know my parents love you. You can always call my mother and get her off my back.”

I relaxed as we stepped on the elevator and took it down to the lobby. I leaned against her for a moment, laying my head on her shoulder. She rested her head against mine.

“I don’t know how you put up with me,” I whispered.

“Well, we both have our moments,” she said. “The last one was me. Or do you not remember the absolute disaster of me dating that couple from Memphis?”

“Oh god.” I strangled a laugh. “Okay, yeah, that was pretty bad.”

She made a face. “Still bitter about the amount of gas money I wasted. It’s the principle of the thing. Anyway, my point is, you’re having a moment right now. A lot going on while you’re starting to explore your sexual side.”

My brows shot up. “I should have never shown you my sex toy shopping cart.”

Her laugh rang through the lobby as we made our way out to the street. Her apartment was a few blocks from mine, which made getting together easier if we needed each other.

“Does the wife ever reach out to you?” I asked.

The Memphis couple had been married for ten years when they decided to open up their marriage. The husband was all for Ellen and his wife being together, until he realized that it meant they’d also have a relationship outside of his participation. It had gotten so stupidly messy that eventually Ellen cut them both off last summer. As a result, we’d spent many evenings drinking way too much wine, eating too much ice cream, and watching way too many true crime shows.

“She’s tried.” Ellen shook her head. “Not interested in being a third like that.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” I said. “Being polyamorous.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It works for me. I like being solo polyamorous, because it meets all my needs. I like having partners while still being independent. Certainly beats being married to the same dipshit for fifteen years.”

“Okay, harsh .”

“Sorry,” she chuckled and then glanced at me. “Are we not at the joking stage yet?”

I linked my arm in hers as we crossed the street. “I guess I should be by now, right? I mean, the whole thing is a fucking joke at this point. And I’m the punchline.”

“Wrong,” she quipped. “You’re not the punchline, honey, Jeff is. He’s a fucking idiot. If he worked for any other company, he would have been out on his ass years ago. What does he even do? You and Tommy take care of all the high-level shit while Jeff sits on his ass and rakes in money. He’s a straight white man who has all the privilege in the world, and everyone bends over fucking backwards to keep it that way.”

“God damn,” I whispered, my eyes widening. “You’re right, but what brought that on?”

She sighed. “I just hear things. Around the office. And I’ve heard the way he speaks about you when you’re not in the room, Pepper, and the only reason I haven’t blown up on him is because I want to stay working for you. The most stress I have is making sure that you eat, and keeping Jeff off his high horse.”

“I need to give you a raise,” I muttered.

She smirked. “It can go toward our wine collection.”

I laughed as we rounded the block. “What kind of wine are we having tonight?”

Ellen hummed. “If I pull out the 1990 red, you either have to Uber home or crash on the couch.”

I shoved Salt to the furthest corner of my mind and smiled. “Deal.”