22. Ember

22

EMBER

I was sprawled on my couch in silk pajama shorts and a tank top, half-watching The Great British Bake Off while working on the Davenport proposal. It probably said something about me that I was doing extra work at 9 PM, but I actually enjoyed it. Plus, watching amateur bakers stress over soggy bottoms was oddly soothing background noise. I found myself muttering corrections at the screen: "No, don't open the oven now—and that's way too much cardamom, what are you thinking?"

"What do you think, Catman?" I asked, glancing at him as I returned my focus to the laptop screen. "Can I do a good enough job on this that Cole won’t be able to snake Davenport out from under Foster Real Estate’s nose? Or have I already doomed myself?"

Catman licked his paw, blinked his eye, and then began trying to knock my water glass off the coffee table. He did all of this while maintaining eye contact and radiating that special brand of feline judgment reserved for the people who inexplicably feed them and clean up their poop, much to the likely confusion of cats world-wide.

I plucked the glass away from his destructive little paws and set it on the side table instead. “Thanks for the input, Catman,” I muttered. "Your feedback is noted. Maybe next time try a sticky note?"

My laptop chimed with a new email from Orion Foster.

Miss Hartwell,

Thank you for your diligent work today. I trust you'll give this email the attention it deserves.

Regards,

O. Foster

That was it. Just two lines of completely innocent text, so professionally crafted they'd sail past any IT filter. The man could make "Regards" sound like foreplay. But my whole body was already humming with anticipation, remembering his instructions. I closed my laptop and set it aside with trembling hands.

Catman took one look at me and promptly left the room, as if he knew what was coming—or who was coming, in this case.

I leaned back against the couch cushions, letting my mind drift to this morning in Orion's office—the intensity in his eyes as he told me how he wanted to watch me, touch me, taste me... My hands followed the same path his knuckle had traced, down my neck, between my breasts, lower…

I imagined him in his perfectly ordered apartment, loosening his tie, thinking of me. I pictured him popping the button to his slacks and reaching inside tight boxers to grip himself. He would already be hard—he would’ve been hard just thinking about sending me that email.

My own hand slid inside my underwear and I began to circle myself, arching against the couch and squeezing my eyes shut.

I pictured Orion standing in some expensive penthouse apartment, maybe with one hand on a huge window as he gripped himself in a powerful hand and pumped his cock again and again, his thoughts fully fixed on me.

God .

I squirmed against my own touch, shocked to find I was only moments from an explosive climax already.

My finger moved faster as pleasant, tingling warmth radiated through my body.

“Oh, Orion,” I gasped. “Oh, God, Orion,” I breathed harder, body pulling in tight as I came hard and fast.

I licked my lips and stared at the laptop, body still trembling and brow flushed with a light sheen of sweat. The timestamp on the email said it had only been two minutes since he commanded me to finger fuck myself.

I bit my lip. It was a little embarrassing that I had finished so quickly, but… I wondered if confirmation that I had climaxed would push him over the edge instantly. I imagined the chime of my email making Orion reach orgasm and couldn’t help myself.

I sent him an email.

Mr. Foster,

I gave your email my full attention. It took me barely over two minutes to finish thinking about it. I imagined you were thinking very hard about the email, too. Was I right?

-E

I bit my lip as I hit send and felt a fresh wave of warm arousal. This was so damn kinky and more than a little weird, but it was fun and oddly hot all the same.

His response came almost immediately:

Ember,

I admire how quickly you work. I can only assume our joint focus on this topic was the cause of you completing your task so quickly. I concluded my own review of our exchange shortly after receiving your message. I have enjoyed working together on this with you, and trust we will come together on future projects.

Regards,

O. Foster

I read the email with a growing smile on my face. The idea of some poor person in HR ever having to read these emails to look for evidence of our inappropriate relationship was too funny. I was fairly sure none of it was explicitly clear or obvious, but the exchange was so weird it was hilarious.

He hoped we would come together on future projects. I wondered if that meant I could expect more demanding emails from my boss commanding me to finger myself at his will.

It was so, so dirty and definitely wrong from a professional level. But I had also never done anything like this before with a man. Hell, I had never even sent a guy nudes of myself or spicy pictures because I felt too awkward about it.

I bit my lip as I stared at my laptop screen, heart still racing. This was intense and probably ill-advised, but there was something thrilling about it. Even if the arrangement was unconventional, Orion made me feel seen and desirable in a way I'd never experienced before.

I thought back to how bold I'd been in his office earlier. Hell, I had spread my fucking legs and let him get the upskirt of all upskirts. I had even hoped I was wet enough for him to see it through the fabric of my underwear. Sure, I was a bit of a brat and knew how to stand up for myself, but sexually? This wasn’t like me at all.

I was relatively reserved in that sense. Maybe it was a confidence issue or body image issues I still harbored thanks to my mom. But whatever normally held me back was nowhere to be found when Orion was concerned. He gave me some kind of confidence I didn’t know I had.

With a sigh, I tried to shift mental gears and focus back on work. The proposal needed finishing and I would need to meet with Davenport soon. When I did, I wanted to be thoroughly prepared to impress both him and Orion.

But my mind kept drifting to thoughts of my impossibly attractive boss, wondering if he was thinking about me too. The idea filled me with a pleasant warmth that lingered for the rest of the evening.

Even as guilt about Cole and the Davenport situation nagged at me, I couldn't deny that something real was developing between Orion and me. I just hoped I could figure out how to come clean before it was too late. Because if it wasn’t for the little fib about why I wanted the job in the first place, I would have said things were shaping up to be great. All we needed was a little time.

I worked a little while longer, then decided to engage in one of my recently discovered guilty pleasures before bed. I pulled out my phone and found one of the influencers who filmed Orion’s hate note sessions every day.

There was a video from this morning I hadn’t watched yet.

To everybody’s surprise, Patricia Rosh herself had started delivering Orion’s hate notes two days ago. Apparently, she was flooded with applications once people found out how much Orion was paying her employees in bribes. People who had no intentions of being real or long-term employees were applying in hopes of winning an assignment to Orion and the subsequent cash payout he’d give them before they got fired.

I watched the rail-thin woman in her sixties read Orion a few notes. Surprisingly, he stood tall and let her read them with the faintest smile on his lips the whole time, almost as if he was enjoying seeing her demean herself.

But unlike when I first watched his hate note routine, the stack of cards had dwindled dramatically in size. Now, he was only getting two or three per day, if that.

I smiled, mostly because I was totally checking out Orion in his suit and thinking how this video had only been taken half an hour before he called me into his office and started our little email arrangement. It made me wonder if he was thinking of me, even then.

I chewed my lip and curled up with the video. Once it finished, I started it over to watch just one more time.