3. Drake
CHAPTER 3
Drake
“Don’t go anywhere,” I say to Mimosa.
She glares at me, but she doesn’t respond. I wonder if I should put her in the cage for the day and keep her completely in the dark, like a parrot or something, but I’m not that cruel.
Mostly.
I did leave her water and a few snacks, and I’d let her stay in the bathroom so I didn’t come home to any kind of mess I wouldn’t want to clean up.
She tugs experimentally at her chain, but there’s no give in it. I grin at her, then head out of the bathroom.
I shut the bedroom door behind me and make my way down to the lobby. My chauffeur is already waiting with the car, and I get in so I can get started with my day.
I already have a ton of emails from all sorts of people. My assistant handles most of them, and she flags the ones that I actually need to look at. Without that, I’d be handling hundreds of emails per day. The few that are already flagged as important can wait until I’m in the office, after my morning meeting.
After that one, and before the next, something that never fails to sour my mood.
Today’s schedule is mostly meetings, in fact. It’s been years since I did any of the day-to-day operations of the business. Now I’m there to listen to ideas, shoot the stupid ones down, and do all the networking that keeps us relevant.
I’m about two minutes into reading an article on my favorite business website when I get a text from Chase. I open it up and, after one readthrough, tilt my head.
Heard you’re settling down? Lmk if you need tips on coupled life.
He included a picture of his “girlfriend” May, who’s asleep, wearing a nightie that’s not nearly sexy enough for my tastes. There are two cats curled up with her, one on either side.
I’m not sure whether what I’m feeling is jealousy or disdain — probably a mixture of both, honestly, but I think I prefer the thought of Mimosa in her cage. Even if she starts to behave, I’ll still have to keep her locked away.
My friends have a habit of losing their women, and I’m not going to fall into the same trap.
Coupled life is for pussies .
I send the text, momentarily amused, then navigate back to my email inbox. Ten more emails have come in since Chase texted me, and I huff in annoyance. I don’t feel like going to work. I want to stay at home to play with Mimosa. What’s the point of being CEO if I can’t just make everyone else do what I don’t feel like doing, anyway?
It’s just meetings, meetings, rereading the minutes of those meetings, and more meetings.
The familiar itch to go out and do something creeps under my skin, and I fidget.
My driver is silent, as though sensing my mood, and it takes all I have not to tell him to turn right the fuck around so I can take a sick day. I’m already behind, though, and these meetings really can’t be canceled.
Some of them already have been.
I’m glad that the first one is over breakfast because I’m starving, and the place we’re meeting has pretty decent steak and eggs. Of course, I have to leave forty minutes later on the dot so I can get back in time for another meeting. I would have lingered longer, except my assistant texts me to remind me of the upcoming meeting .
Ugh.
I barely have time to sip a coffee before the meeting at the office starts. It’s some guys from a tech company that wants to integrate some synergies and manage our corporate strengths while increasing our value proposition… blah blah blah . I know all the marketing bullshit.
But I can’t blow them off because the one guy’s daddy is influential in finance, and so I have to smile and nod and tell them I’m really excited about the prospect of future cooperation if the numbers make sense.
When they’re finally gone, I slump across my desk and click the button for my assistant’s intercom. “No more meetings,” I tell her, like there’s actually room in my schedule to play the petulant child and skip work.
“Three more meetings,” she tells me. “You have ten minutes before Janine Hernandez from NB Bank arrives. I can stall her for maybe five minutes once she’s here, but if you blow her off, we’ll lose access to the higher ups and we’ll be dealing with the same runaround we had five months ago.”
Five months ago, which had been the last time I’d canceled a meeting with Hernandez at the last minute. Fuck.
I grab a pen from my desk, starting to click it.
“What about after that?” I ask. “I really need to get out of here, Caroline. You know better than to book five fucking meetings in one day.”
It’s not her fault, not really, but between acquiring Mimosa and my usual impatience, it seems like she did this to set me up for failure.
Caroline sighs, that great huff of a breath that lets me know exactly what she’s thinking.
I almost snarl at her that I’m the one who pays her fucking salary, but I can’t go through yet another assistant. Finding competent, discreet assistants isn’t exactly the easiest thing.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Brutal, but these are too important. The only reason I scheduled them all in one day is because you’ve been telling me to keep your Fridays clear.”
Right. I hadn’t known when Giulio and I could make the deal, and I’d wanted to be ready to drop everything to go pick out my new pet .
“Stall Estela when she gets here, then,” I tell her, clicking the pen more furiously. “I need… I need a few minutes to clear my head.”
“Yes, Mr. Brutal,” Caroline says dutifully.
I cut the call and get up, heading into the bathroom. I have to do something to take the edge off, and that means…
Fuck. I’m out of the pills that make it so much easier to bear the rest of the day, and alcohol isn’t an option yet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything at all.
I lock the door and undo my fly so I can pull my cock out.
The first few times I did this, I wondered if I was really jerking off at work. It’s so unprofessional.
But I’m in charge here, and it’s my private bathroom in my private office. I really don’t give a shit about professionalism.
I brace one arm against the wall by the toilet and close my eyes as I start stroking myself.
I think about Mimosa, trapped in the cage by the bed the night before. It couldn’t have been comfortable. The metal had bitten into her skin, leaving tally marks no matter how much she squirmed and tried to readjust herself.
When she behaves, I’ll give her a pillow and a blanket, but she has to earn those.
She’ll have to earn everything from me, and that thought has me biting back a groan.
I remember what she felt like in the shower, when I was fucking her ass, and I remember how her tits felt in my hands.
I’ll have to be careful with her; she’s bitten other men. But if she bites me, she might not have any teeth left to do it again.
I’m not fucking around. I’m not getting soft , the way Hunter and Chase have.
I tighten my grip and go faster, imagining Mimosa chained up and spread wide for me. I want to see her skin red with humiliation. Fuck, it would be so hot to parade her in front of a bunch of guys and make her debase herself for me.
Yeah, I should do that. I should invite Hunter and Chase—except who knows if they’d even show up for a party like that anymore. Their fucking whores have them wrapped around their little fingers.
Doesn’t matter. Mimosa, tied up, cunt stretched wide around a dildo, wearing a gag so she can’t bite anyone, and?—
I groan as the pleasure slams into me.
It’s still a sad, short orgasm.
I sigh, washing my hands before tucking myself back away and adjusting my pants. If only I was one of those bastards lucky enough to have an assistant ready to bend over at a moment’s notice, but I’m not interested in Caroline like that. That’s specifically why I hired her. Maybe I’d known better, known that I needed someone who’d be every bit as responsible as I’m not .
I snort. Hell, she could probably run the place without me by this point. I’m not risking that by coming on to her, especially not when I have a perfectly good whore waiting for me at home.
I’m barely out of the bathroom when the knock comes to the door — and fucking hell, why Hernandez managed to get here early is beyond me. I settle into my chair like I’ve been there all along, though fuck, I’m allowed to take a piss around my meetings.
After I bark my assent for the business manager to enter the room, I grab the pen again. I guess I’ll drive us both crazy.
“George Browning’s assistant called,” Caroline informs me once Estela has left.
I stare at her. “Okay.”
She comes closer to the desk, setting a cup of coffee down at the corner. I didn’t even ask for the cup, but I’m grateful.
“He wants to schedule a meeting. About the, ah, usual concerns, I think.” Caroline winces a little. “I tried to feel out Sam—his assistant—to find out what mood his boss is in. You probably want to meet with him.”
“I don’t want to meet with George,” I say flatly. “We just had a board meeting like a week ago. There’s no way the board has concerns again. He can wait for the next scheduled meeting like a normal person with a full plate.”
“The board meeting was almost three weeks ago,” Caroline corrects. “A board meeting you didn’t even attend. And I think you should meet with him, because he also scheduled a meeting with Oliver.”
Oliver is my CFO. He’s a wet rag and I should fire him, except he owns too many shares and has so many friends that I can’t risk getting rid of him without extremely good reason.
I shouldn’t have hired him in the first place, but since executive level hiring decisions are overseen by the board, I hadn’t had much choice. They wanted Oliver! Oliver had done wonders for so many other companies! Oliver would bring in even more profits!
“How do you know he scheduled a meeting with Ollie-ollie-oxenfree?” I ask her.
Caroline smiles at me. “Because I was chatting with Oliver’s assistant, and she let it slip. Very innocently, of course. There’s no reason it would be a secret from you, right?”
None at all.
“Fine. I’ll meet with George and make sure he isn’t getting too chummy with Oliver.” I reach over to grab the coffee and take a long sip. “Please tell me I have a break now.”
“You have half an hour.” She gives me a strange look. “Long enough to run down to IT and bother people there.”
I quirk a brow at her. I do enjoy annoying Patrick, and sometimes it helps lift my mood.
Him, and what he has to offer in the form of small white pills.
It shouldn’t surprise me that she’s put some of the dots together — though if she really knew what we had in common, she’d be on the phone with the NBPD in a heartbeat.
Not that they’d do anything about it, but I’d lose a valuable assistant because they all claim to have morals or whatever.
“Yeah, okay,” I say, getting up from my desk. I lift the cup of coffee to her. “Thanks.” I pass her on the way down the hall to the elevator, traveling down the few floors to the IT department. I search out Patrick, the tech guy I depend on for nearly everything — inside and out of work.
I wave to his assistant and enter his office, shutting the door behind me.
He’s tapping away at his keyboard, a look of concentration on his face.
“If it isn’t my favorite employee,” I drawl as I step into his office and close the door behind me.
Patrick turns to me and shakes his head. “Dude, do you not have work? Fucking executive types, lazing around all day, bothering the rest of us that have real shit to do…”
That’s exactly what we’d both said, back in university, before we’d gotten here. He’s an executive too, although he likes to pretend he isn’t.
I smirk at him, taking another long sip from my cup. “I have lots of work to do, which is why I’m down here hiding so no one can find me.”
Except Caroline, but she knows I’m about to lose it, or she wouldn’t have sent me down here.
“Why is it always so damn cold in here?” I complain, adjusting my jacket sleeve and beginning to pace across his office — back and forth, back and forth, like that’ll let out some of this anxious energy.
He looks at me, then says, deadpan, “So the equipment doesn’t melt down and cost the company millions trying to replace it.”
“Right, right.” I pause only long enough to glance at him. “I got one, man. I finally did it.” I can’t talk about the details, not here of all places, but I have to tell someone. “You’ll have to come over.”
Patrick stops typing. “You got… that thing? That we were talking about?” His expression turns hungry. “Seriously? I didn’t think you’d go through with it.”
I scoff, finally stopping to face him. “Why not? I can handle it. I’m a big boy.” I leer at him. “It’s been nice so far, but I don’t have time to play until the weekend.” I know I shouldn’t whine at him in particular, since he regularly pulls overnight shifts for days on end when we have a new app launch, but he’s one of the few people who would understand my complete frustration.
“I know you can handle it.” Patrick makes a non-committal sound. “You just have a lot of ideas and usually get bored with them before they ever get off the ground.”
“Way to call me out, dude,” I mutter, but I can’t be too offended when he’s just being honest. “I know one way I won’t get bored, though…” I trail off, looking expectantly at him. “I need to put in a supply order.”
“Did you run out already?” Patrick asks, incredulous. “You’re really blowing through the stuff.” But he leans down and unlocks one of the drawers of his desk. When he sits up again, he tosses me a bottle.
I catch it and glance down at the unlabeled bottle. I have no idea what’s inside, but I know the stuff will make me feel fucking wonderful.
I tuck it away into the inside pocket of my suit, already anticipating the incredible high that’s going to come from the pills, and straighten. “You should come over soon,” I tell him. “I know you’re busy with the upgrades, but think of it as an incentive to make sure it goes off without a hitch. I’ll throw a party and everything.”
Patrick nods. “Yeah. I can do that.” After a beat, he adds, “You are going to share, right? Not like your two friends who got all possessive?”
I laugh at him. “Nah, man. You know I don’t give a fuck.” I glance at my phone when a text buzzes through and groan when I see Caroline’s reminder that I have another meeting in five minutes.
For fuck’s sake.
“Gotta go be a CEO now.” I sigh, but the subtle weight of the pills in my pocket makes me feel better. These little things are going to make the rest of the meetings so much more tolerable.
Thank fuck for Patrick and his miracle drugs.