Chapter 21
Sophia
‘How does that feel?’ he asks, shooting me a dirty grin as he smiles down at me.
I wince. ‘Intense. It’s a lot.’
‘I think you can take a bit more.’
‘No, honestly, I—’
He bears down harder, and I grimace. ‘Jesus, that’s painful. You went hard on me today.’
‘Because I knew you could take it, beautiful girl.’ He’s still smiling, and I’m putty in his hands. This man is delicious.
My new personal trainer, Caio, is the polar opposite of my boss: warm, smiley, and emotionally competent. He’s also as big a whore as I am, if his stories are to be believed.
Sadly, I’m not his type. Nowhere close.
‘If I can’t walk tomorrow, I’m coming to find you,’ I warn him.
‘You’ll be fine. Caio’s stretches are infamous. And don’t forget an Epsom salt bath tonight. You did great today.’
We beam at each other, and I know he’s right.
That’s why I’m taking this pain now, allowing my hamstrings to scream at me as he bears down on me, pushing my right leg so far forward that I could lick my knee if I wanted to.
I force myself to breathe through the discomfort.
The more confronting it is now, the less tight I’ll be tomorrow.
Caio hinges his weight forward and pushes my leg a little further. If he were straight, this position would be incredibly dirty. I’d forgotten how fun it is flirting with gorgeous gay guys.
‘I want an arse like yours by the end of the year,’ I tell him.
‘You’ll get it. But it’s a lot of work, baby. I didn’t just get this in the gym, you know.’
I sigh. I know. Caio is a go-go dancer at Electric Dreams, a fabulous-sounding, Eighties-themed gay nightclub in Soho. His buns of steel are the product of hours and hours of shimmying up and down poles (and, presumably, hot guys’ bodies) as much as they are of weights.
‘I’d come and dance there if I didn’t think I’d clear the room,’ I say with a pout.
He laughs. ‘Everyone would fucking love you. You should come one night. Bring your girlfriends.’
That’s not a bad call. It’s exhausting to go out with the seraphim.
We get hit on everywhere we go. A gay club would be gold—we could dance all night, safe in the knowledge that we have zero sex appeal for any of the other punters.
Maybe it’s an outing for another weekend.
Tomorrow night we have a group outing to the elite Mayfair sex club, Alchemy.
One of its founders, Genevieve, is married to Anton Wolff, billionaire entrepreneur and the dirty bastard who dreamed up—and founded—Seraph.
Gen gave all the seraphim membership over the summer.
I think she figured that having objectively hot women go there to blow off steam could only be good for business.
‘Seriously?’
‘Anytime. Breathe, baby. It’s a lot to take.’
‘That’s what he said,’ I quip, as he stays braced above me in this weirdly intimate and totally asexual position. I turn my head to stare at his arm. ‘If I were you I’d spend far too much time measuring the girth of my biceps.’
‘I spend far too much time measuring the girth of a lot of things,’ he admits with a grin, and I full-on cackle like the classy chick that I am. I’m still sniggering to myself when a shadow falls over my face, and I look up to find my boss glaring down at us, arms crossed over his chest.
He looks cranky and morally outraged and hot as hell.
Ugh.
‘What the fuck is going on here?’ he demands, and my mouth drops open. The nerve of this guy. He’s been a total cunt to me since our hotel interlude on Tuesday, distant and dismissive and demeaning, and now he’s trying to muscle in on my downtime?
I don’t think so.
‘Um, excuse me? I’m on my lunch break. What the hell is your problem?’
Caio eases off me and helps me lower my leg down. Fuck, my hip flexors are tight. He scrambles to his feet and holds out his hand to Ethan as I rear up onto my elbows with difficulty.
‘Hi, Mr Kingsley. I’m Caio. We haven’t met. I started four months ago, I...’
He trails off as Ethan shakes his hand in the rudest and most cursory way possible before glaring back down at me.
‘It doesn’t look like you were working out.’
‘Caio was stretching me because he just worked me like a motherfucker.’ I can’t help it if that sounds risqué. Ethan is entitled to precisely zero disclosure about what I do in my lunch hour, whether I’m on his premises or not.
‘Well, if you’re finished “stretching”, get showered and come upstairs.
I need you on the Montague stuff. Now.’ Without waiting for an answer, he turns and flounces out of the gym as I lie here and fume.
The Montague transaction may be front and centre this week, but I’d bet my life savings that this little emergency comprises nothing more urgent than my boss’ mystifying need to throw his weight around.
Caio squats back down next to me. ‘Do you need to go?’
‘Jesus, no. Do the other leg.’
He kneels like the obedient and rational human being that he is and lifts my other leg. ‘Is he always that… grumpy?’
‘Yes.’
‘And hot?’
I sigh. ‘Also yes. Unfortunately, the two are directly correlated.’
‘Hmm.’ We both turn to see Ethan’s fine arse disappearing through the glass doors. ‘Tom trains him. He says he works out like a psycho.’
‘Nothing could surprise me less.’ Especially because I have borne witness to the results of whatever demons spur him on in the gym.
‘I think he was jealous. Maybe he wants you. You should definitely fuck him.’
I laugh. Sadly, my need to uphold contractually enforced confidentiality is greater than my desire to gossip with Caio.
‘Not jealous. He just likes to remind me who’s boss at every possible opportunity.’ I don’t add what’s obvious to me:
Ethan is still suffering from a vulnerability hangover after those things he said and did on Tuesday, the way he allowed himself to need me.
And I’m the one who has to bear the brunt of it.
‘What the hell was that down there?’ I ask as I stride back into his office, banging the door behind me.
I’ve showered, fixed my makeup, and run some straighteners through my sweat-frizzed hair, vibrating with outrage the entire time.
Damn Ethan and his ability to ruin my post-workout endorphin hit.
He stands up and shoves his hands in his pockets. ‘That guy was all over you. Have some self-respect.’
My mouth drops open. ‘Like I told you down there, he was stretching me. And it’s none of your business. Who the fuck do you think you are?’
‘Your boss. I don’t need gossip circulating that my EA is fucking everything that moves. When you behave like a slut in your place of work, you damage my reputation.’
I take a few steps closer, so we’re almost toe to toe, and will myself to remember that I’m far too high maintenance for prison food, because the chances of me strangling this man are going through the roof.
‘Oh no you didn’t. You did not just slut-shame me.’
His look of alarmed regret is truly excellent. ‘I wasn’t slut-shaming you. I was pointing out that, as my EA, you have a duty to behave in an appropriate way.’
‘There is nothing appropriate about the way I behave with you, and you know it,’ I hiss. ‘It wasn’t very appropriate when you got me naked “in my place of work” and came all over my tits yesterday, was it?’
His lips press together, and he grabs my jaw in a pincer grip between his thumb and forefinger.
‘That’s different, and you know it. We have a particular relationship, and I pay you a fuck-tonne of money for that privilege.
So excuse me for not being thrilled when I see you giving away the goods for free in the office gym. ’
I reach up and wrap my fingers around his wrist, my nails digging into his skin. Good. I hope it fucking hurts.
‘Firstly, he’s gay, dickhead. Not that it’s any of your business.
’ He’s still gripping my jaw, so I can’t nod to make my point, but I raise my eyebrows.
‘Yeah. That’s right. That guy probably loves dick even more than I do, which is saying something.
So the only person whose reputation is at stake is you, because you’re the one jumping to conclusions and throwing public hissy fits. ’
I take the opportunity of his clear shock to wrench myself out of his grasp and back away.
‘And let me make myself very clear. We do not have an exclusive relationship. I can flirt with whomever I want. I can fuck whomever I want. So don’t for a second assume you have any jurisdiction over me when I’m not in this office. Do you understand?’
He visibly deflates. I’ve quite literally knocked the wind out of his sails, it seems. He points to the chair behind me. ‘Sit down. I want to talk to you about that.’
I glare at him to ensure he understands he’s not the boss of me, and I reluctantly sit. ‘What.’
He flops into the chair behind his desk and picks up a manila folder that’s sitting on his keyboard, lobbing it across the desk to me. ‘I want to renegotiate our terms.’
I frown and flick open the folder. It’s our Seraph contract. ‘How so?’
He clears his throat. ‘I want exclusivity.’
I laugh. I actually laugh. He came upstairs after our little altercation, and his first reaction was to pull this thing out of his filing cabinet? You’ve got to be kidding me. ‘Hard pass.’
‘Why?’ He leans forward, gripping his armrests. ‘You can’t possibly be getting better orgasms elsewhere.’
I stare at him, at the memory in those grey eyes. Because I remember too, and it’s very fucking unhelpful. ‘It’s not about the orgasms.’ There’s no point in lying, after all. We both know that he fucks me like no one else can… when he wants to play ball, that is.
‘What is it about then? Money?’
‘No. Not exactly.’
I can’t exactly tell him that it’s really about my determination to ensure that I reserve a decent portion of my time and energy for healthier, more regulating relationships with people who’ve worked on themselves and aren’t the emotional equivalent of traumatised five-year-olds.
It’s time to deflect. ‘What is it about for you?’
He stiffens further. I know this is hard for him. I’m sure he’s been hoping that I’ll just roll over and he won’t have to divulge any vulnerabilities.
But I’m not about to make it easier. He has to understand the parameters of this relationship, and he has to respect my need for space and boundaries. That’s the crux of it.
So I cross my legs and wait.
‘I need to have more… certainty with you. More control of the situation. I appreciate that I may have… jumped to conclusions down there, and I apologise, okay? But I find that things work best when I’m in the driving seat, and so I’m afraid I require that. Control, I mean. Over, er, you.’
I would like it noted here that I deserve a very shiny gold star for not laughing. Wow, this handsome, infuriating Eight would make a fantastic case study for an Enneagram course. Instead, I lean forward and attempt to engage on a rational basis.
‘Do you remember when I told you you needed a sub? That’s what a sub would give you. Full control. That’s not me. The only way you get me is as a free agent.’
‘I don’t want a sub. I’m not kinky like that. But I need more power over you,’ he insists. I wish he didn’t look so forlorn. He’s making this far harder than it should be, even if he is being an overbearing wanker.
‘Ethan.’ I interlace my fingers and rest them on my crossed legs.
I feel like a therapist which, honestly, is what it seems I’m becoming for this guy.
An unqualified therapist. ‘I say this with respect. You saying I should give you more control because you “need it” is like a heroin addict telling me I should give him more crack because he “needs it”. Do you understand?’
I mean, as messages go, it’s pretty hard-hitting, but sometimes you need to go for a blunt delivery. My instincts tell me anything less brutal would fall on deaf ears.
That said, his expression is blank. ‘I’m not an addict.’
‘No, you’re not a drug addict. But we all have our coping mechanisms, and yours, it seems, is control, and the feeling it gives you can become addictive.
When you’re in the driving seat, as you said, you feel safer, and when you’re not, you feel unsafe.
And none of that is shameful or problematic or your fault.
Actually, it’s a really fantastic self-protective mechanism that your nervous system has developed.
But the more unsafe you feel, the more and more you’ll want to control everything. Especially your relationships.’
I pause, because this is a hell of a mirror I’m holding up for someone who’s not remotely self-aware. ‘And my job isn’t to enable you. It’s to uphold my boundaries so that I can be well and regulated and able to function properly. It’s not to feed your excessive need for control.’
‘I don’t have an excessive need,’ he insists.
‘I just—I would like to know that we were exclusive so I don’t need to worry about sexual health issues, and also I’d like to negotiate that I get to go bare with you.
The condoms are bothering me. Oh, and I’d like to be able to see you some evenings, for sex, if that’s an amendment you’re willing to negotiate. ’
I sigh and push myself up to standing. This guy is gaslighting me less than he’s gaslighting himself.
He hasn’t heard a single word I’ve said except for no, and it’s not his fault.
It’s really not. Those bodyguard, or protector, parts are so firmly in the driving seat that he’s operating with very little sense of Self, and those parts will be working very hard right now to ensure that he doesn’t try to derail their agendas.
‘It’s a no, Ethan. I’m enjoying this job, honestly.
The sex is great, and the work is interesting.
But my take is that you’re in a very dysregulated place, with little to no interest in tackling that, and that makes it less enjoyable for me to spend time with you.
I’m sorry, but it’s true. It’s important that I have the freedom to seek healthy relationships—and sex—outside of this.
’ I pause and deliver my punchline. ‘And I’m heading to Alchemy tomorrow night with the seraphim, so there’s no way I’m negotiating any kind of exclusivity agreement today. Not on your life.’