25. Rhaim

25

RHAIM

I only had to glance at Lia once in the morning to know she'd done as she'd been told. Not because I could see any of her below her waist—she was already sitting behind her desk when I walked in—but by the way she sat a little straighter and her cheeks pinked.

She was a good girl—currently my good girl—and I needed to figure out the best course of action for keeping her.

I wasn't exactly a campground individual, leaving people better than when I met them, but I had enough sense of self-preservation to know I ought to tread lightly. At least while we were starting this thing, especially with her history.

Only she didn't really seem crazy to me, and I didn't like that word besides—if killing people for money and occasionally for fun didn't make me certifiable, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But I knew something had happened to her. It was written in the bones of her body and how she held herself, for anyone out there in the world like me to read.

And even if my plans to keep her for myself didn't come to fruition, and I still had to give her to a fucking St. Clair—I had to do something about that, for her sake.

I didn't want her to change who she was around me—I needed her to feel safe enough to tell me the truth at all times—but she wouldn't last five minutes in a boardroom with the way her expressions flickered across her face like candlelight.

She was like one of those fancy pieces of fractured Japanese ceramics that were glued back together with gold to show how beautiful the imperfections could be.

Except I couldn't use a precious metal with her—I needed to break her down into her component parts and rebuild her with steel. The way I desired. Give her space to be weak around me and only me, and create a creature capable of swimming in the depths of the ocean otherwise.

So the first thing I did in the morning once I reached my desk was open up several more drives for her to access and shot her a note to do a historical review of Corvo's cashflow for generalized IPO audit-prep.

If I had an intern, I might as well make good use of her.

All of her.

Not just the parts of her beneath the tight gray pencil skirt—known to me now that I was in my office and could watch her moving about via my camera—that I lusted after.

I spent my whole day in there, trying to figure out our best plan of attack—and trying to figure out how I could determine which analyst at the New York Stock Exchange I could threaten or bribe into looking the other way when they were listing us. Corvo could handle its books being looked at for the past ten years. Prior to that...fuck Nero for ever thinking going public was a good idea.

Sometime during the day Lia put herself on my afternoon calendar as an appointment, and I groaned a little. We were going to have to talk about her propensity for doing that.

And at 4 p.m.—the exact same moment a calendar reminder hopped up onto my monitor—there was a knock on my office door.

"Come in," I said, looking over.

She opened the door, but she didn't cross the line between our offices, intentionally.

"Does Business Lia have a question?" I shrank the screens I was working on and leaned back in my chair.

"Is this busywork?" she said, frowning slightly.

I wanted her full lips inside my office and on me—but a deal was a deal.

"No, although it is a test."

Her eyes went dark with concern for a moment.

"Can I tell you a secret?" I asked.

She tilted her head, sending her hair cascading over one shoulder. "I don't know, can you?" she asked, waving her hand around to indicate any possible surveillance.

"If any feds happened to be listening in on us now and act on what I tell you, it'd count as insider trading, which is a felony, so I think we're safe."

"Then...yes?" she said, with a soft laugh. "You have no idea how good I am at keeping secrets."

"Mmm." After her stint in janitorial, I had an idea. I stood and walked around to the front of my desk to lean back on it. "Your father wants to take Corvo public."

"Why?" she exclaimed, and then looked at me like I'd hurt her. "Why didn't he tell me?"

"You know how he is—he barely told me," I complained with a shrug. "But his mind is made up."

"He can't," she protested, seeming horrified. "Corvo was supposed to be mine. He?—"

I raised a hand to interrupt. "Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but what were you basing that assumption on?" Had Nero promised her the company over a distant Christmas dinner?

Her cheeks flushed a brilliant red. "Nothing," she admitted. "But I want what I'm owed," she added fiercely.

"Owed, eh?" I said the words sarcastically. No one had put more blood and sweat into Corvo than me—she had to know it. Hell, it was why she was here.

She lifted her chin and stared me down. "We've each paid in our own fashion."

I inhaled to challenge that, then decided to take a different turn. "Are you seriously arguing with me while we both know you're not wearing any underwear?"

She went as red as the bag she sometimes carried. "You told me not to be embarrassed!" she snapped and I growled.

"Little girl, I told you about this still highly theoretical IPO so you could help me not drown in paperwork. And maybe the only thing that's gotten me through today has been the knowledge that your pretty pussy has been twenty feet away from me, behaving, up until about three minutes ago."

"You do realize it's attached to the rest of me, right?" she said, then bit her lips, perhaps wishing she could take her words back.

I would have been pissed—but we'd just started this thing. It was only natural for her to test my boundaries. I sat down on one of my leather armchairs and patted my knee. "Ditch your phone and come here."

She swallowed, her gaze flicking from my hand to my eyes and back again. "Are you going to spank me?" she said, with a tremble in her voice.

"No, little moth," I said. "What I'm going to do to you will be much, much worse."