Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHARLIE
Tuesday morning, I shoved clothes into my suitcase. Athena and I were going to fly to California tonight for a meeting that I had with investors, and I had held off on packing until now because I was nervous about it.
This was my first chance to finally separate myself from my family and their money. After what had happened this past weekend with Derek, I had more fire in me than ever to make this start-up succeed. I didn’t want to depend on my family and their name forever.
Athena deserved more than that.
I folded suit pants and tucked them away into one of my suitcase pockets. While this was the biggest meeting of my career, I was nervous that I would make a total fool of myself in front of Athie and the investors.
From my limited experience with investors and venture capital, most of them were grimy, disgusting, and only after one thing—taking as much of a company as possible for as little investment as possible.
My lip curled up in disgust from the thought of having to negotiate with retired frat guys like Derek and my father. I flicked through my shirts in my closet and picked three that would match the suit.
While I hated that this was the case, being a man and asking for investment was easier than being a woman and asking for one. The majority of investments went to male-led businesses while less than five percent went to female-led businesses.
Fucking stupid.
I had heard one too many horror stories from my business classes in undergrad about female students who had been bullied by investors who wouldn’t stop asking them about their worth after they’d built a million-dollar business.
Someone knocked on my bedroom door, and I looked up from my messy thoughts to see Athena, dressed in a lime-green sweater and some bell-bottom jeans. Her hair was thrown up into a bun.
“Yes?” I hummed.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I have a question for you.”
“What is it?” I asked, zipping up one side of the suitcase.
“Have you happened to see my birth control?” she whispered, teetering from foot to foot.
“Your birth control? It’s not in the cabinet?”
She sucked in her inner cheek, her bright eyes on mine. “No.”
I drew my tongue across my teeth, pleasure and guilt rushing through me. My gaze raked down her body, landing on her hips. Then I grabbed another pair of dress pants from my closet and walked to my suitcase sprawled out on the bed.
“Why are you looking for it?” I asked, looking up. “It’s not like you were using it anyway.”
Athena’s cheeks flushed a bright red, and she averted her gaze and tucked some hair behind her ear. “Y-yes, I was. I just, um …” She crossed her arms over her chest and shuffled her feet, peeking back up at me. “I forgot to take it the past couple of days.”
Once the pants were packed away, I stalked closer to her, took her chin in my hand, and lifted it. “A few days, huh?” I drew my nose down hers, my lips grazing her soft ones. “Since we started this little thing between us?”
She stayed so silent that I could hear her swallow. “Charlie, I … please, don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad, Athie,” I murmured, swiping my thumb across her lower lip. “After I filled you with my cum the other night, I popped all those pills into the trash so you couldn’t take your pills even if you wanted to. And to my surprise, you haven’t been.”
Athena moved closer to press her lips against mine, but I didn’t let her get close enough. Instead, I kept my lips millimeters from hers, the corners of my mouth curled into a smirk. She whimpered against me.
“I’m going to do whatever I have to do,” I murmured, “to trap you.”
A giggle escaped her lips. “To trap me?”
I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her flush against me, lifting her into the air. “Trap you with me forever, Athie.” I spun her around and landed on my bed next to the suitcase, her body on top of mine.
She grinned, her nose scrunching all cute, the way it always did when she was happy.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, pushing some hair off my forehead. “You’re worried.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Yes, you are. You have that line between your brows, like you do when you’re worried.”
After letting out a low sigh, I looked away because I was embarrassed. I had never felt embarrassed in front of Athie before, but I didn’t want her to think that I didn’t have us and that I wasn’t going to take care of her.
I had just gotten a taste of her, and I didn’t want her to leave me.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“I’m nervous about this trip.”
“About the investors?” She curled her fingers against my shoulders. “You’ll do great.”
“They’re going to be assholes,” I said. “I don’t want to deal with it.”
Athena shrugged. “So what? You don’t need them. Your business is doing well on its own, and I think you know the market better than anyone, especially with your experience in the … you know, porn world.”
Investors wanted a product that would make them hundreds of millions, a product or platform that could be worth billions of dollars. What my team had created could easily hit that mark. But it included elements of porn that made that a bit harder.
Everyone consumed porn in some way, but not many people liked to admit it.
It was an easy market to break into, especially with advances in AI and technology, but there was going to be a lot of credit card charge-backs from husbands and wives who’d been caught consuming pornography by their spouses.
“Stop it,” Athena said, using her forefinger and thumb to stretch out the wrinkles that had to be forming on my forehead. “There is no reason for you to stress about this. You’re okay whether they invest or not.”
“I want to make a good living for us,” I whispered, staring up into her light eyes. I gripped her waist and pulled her closer to me. “I want to give you the world without my family’s monetary support.”
“I don’t need the world,” she said, kicking her legs back and forth in the air.
“You deserve it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She pecked me on the lips. “All I want is to be happy with you and my friends.” A small laugh escaped her lips. “Becoming a lawyer would be cool too. I can be your sugar mama.”
“I have expensive taste.” I chuckled and curled my fingers into her sides, tickling her where she was the most sensitive. Somehow, someway, she could always make me smile, even when I felt like shit. “I don’t think you’d be able to afford me.”