CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

MAE POV

With my laptop undergoing therapy down in the IT room, my desk was pretty barren. I tried to busy myself with paper shuffling, sorting my latest batch of delivery schedules into neat alphabetically ordered piles, but it didn’t help any.

It didn’t matter how many kind words Jesse had heaped in my direction, I knew there would be no coming back from the discovery of smutty boss-centred stories if they managed to see the light of day.

My poor cheeks were still on fire and my nerves were still jittering, and I only had myself to blame. It was one of those well-deserved serves you right things that comes from making a dumbass slip up.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t fantasised about Mr Douglas stumbling across my stories. I mean, sure I had — usually with my hand down my knickers and my clit about twenty seconds from orgasm. Exactly the same way I’d fantasised about Mr Adam bumping into my anonymous journal account online and putting two and two together to make fuck yeah, let’s get it on with my barely legal student. But this was real life. Real life in my real job, and Mr Douglas was my real life boss with the real life power to fire my sorry ass.

I couldn’t even imagine how I’d explain this crap to my mum if I ended up back in Princeton with my tail between my legs.

My brain was zooming around in circles, getting nowhere fast, and it didn’t matter how many times I promised the universe that I’d learned my lesson and would strip Mae’s Stuff of anything even vaguely incriminating the very minute I got through the door that evening. Every minute that passed made it more likely that either one, my laptop was screwed beyond repair, or two, that I’d already been discovered and Mr Douglas was working out my severance package with personnel that very second.

Jesse tossed me another friendly grin and a thumbs-up across the room, but I could barely force a smile in response.

And there it was, under the fear and the humiliation and the abject misery at the prospect of getting found out as a good girl gone bad. That flicker of sadness went deep.

Because I liked it here.

I liked my job, and I liked the thought that it could really be going somewhere.

I liked my Friday evening drinks after work with the other girls, even if I didn’t know them all that well yet.

I liked Jesse’s morning routine of putting the radio up a little louder, and the way Lilly huffed through her email pings before she’d even grabbed a coffee.

And I liked him. The gorgeous Mr Douglas.

Not just because he had fingers that looked like they belonged inside me every time he pointed out something in the meeting room, and not because I could see the outline of his dick in his suit trousers when he leaned against the kitchen worktop when he was making himself an afternoon tea.

I liked him because he was powerful enough to radiate testosterone across fifty feet, but still managed to be fair with everyone in the office. He was strong, but wasn’t a bully. He drove us hard, but was working just as hard right along with us.

Sure, he didn’t seem to say thanks all that often, but when he did it really meant something. He asked a lot, but he gave a lot with it. Our annual leave here was more generous than anything my uni friends had landed in their new positions. The sick benefits in my employment contract were much more generous than they needed to be.

Not only that, but he was smart enough to explain complex filtration technology across the desk to me when I was still a newbie with no way of knowing the difference between a micron and a microbe. And he managed to do it without making me feel like a totally ignorant dumbass.

That’s someone who has confidence and brains, without the kind of arrogance that means they treat you like an inferior species.

I took a breath and filed the rest of the paperwork in a binder.

I could beg for my job if it came to it. Promise I’d learn the error of my ways and drop to my knees and cry for forgiveness until he showed mercy. Still, in light of the fact that most of my stories involved begging for his dick in some way or another I doubted that would be the smartest course of action.

He’d probably think I was a dirty little slut behind my girl next door freckles, and that would be the biggest shame of all, because I’d spent my whole life – ok, sure, the little I’d spent of it so far — wishing, hoping, praying that a man like him would be the one to show me every filthy thing I’d ever dreamed of, and so far no one had even come close.

I hadn’t looked twice at the college lads through university. No Steven , or Stiles, or Lucas was going to fling me over his shoulder after a football game and slam me a quick one behind the changing rooms.

I wanted more than that.

I wanted experience, and maturity, and authority and drive and determination.

I wanted a man who’d take what he wanted and leave me a whimpering, squelchy mess of fuck yes!

I wanted everything.

Mr Douglas would be everything. For sure.

I was more than sure he’d be everything I ever wanted.

Urgh. I could have happily slammed my forehead into my desk just to shut down my own inner freak out.

I’d still been in the middle of penning my latest fantasy. It was a Christmas cracker of epic proportions. Arguably the most humiliating of them all — and the one I’d likely now never get the chance to finish let alone act out one day. One festive tale of my hot, older boss being the one to claim my virginity as his Christmas gift.

I’m aware it may sound crazy that I’d have gone all the way through university gripping tight to my V card, but not so crazy when all the pieces are put together.

When I was a kid it was just me and Mum, and there was nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Mum was great. She’s kind and funny and was always there to pick me up when I needed a hand. She was at enough school events for two parents combined and she always made sure I had enough of everything to do just fine.

I was a happy kid, and she was a happy mum, but a happy woman in love, she was not.

She had an endless string of boyfriends from when I was still too young to work out what they were doing there. Enough uncle Finn and Greg and Henry that I stopped taking the slightest bit of notice when they started calling in at teatime and bunking up with Mum in the bedroom next to mine.

There was no point getting attached to any of them. They’d be idiots or assholes enough to last a few months tops. To be honest, it was barely worth me remembering their names.

Some of them would try. Some of them would even try pretty hard, especially at this time of year, but it didn’t matter.

The thing was that I didn’t want an uncle anything.

I wanted a daddy.

A real daddy who’d come sledding in the snow at wintertime and put on a stupid Santa outfit and watch Christmas TV with me.

That’s what was on my Christmas list every single year — the one I never showed Mum. My secret Christmas list.

Santa, please bring me a daddy. I’ve been a good girl this year, I promise.

That’s what I’d been writing about last night. Only these days my Santa wish wasn’t for a daddy to read me a bedtime story, and I definitely hadn’t been a good girl that year.

Now my wish for a daddy was a man who could treat me like his sweet little princess. Who’d be strong and kind and fair. Who’d make me feel safe and loved and wanted.

And who’d punish me when I was bad.

Yeah, that too.

The prospect of slamming my forehead into my desk for real was getting more appealing every second, and since I wasn’t just a shrinking little violet who wanted a Christmas daddy, but a young professional trainee logistics manager with a laptop out of service, I figured it was time I sucked it up and pulled my shit together.

If I was going to be fired, why delay the inevitable?

I picked up my office handset and dialled the extension for IT.

My mouth was bone dry when Nick himself answered, but still I managed to stumble through my reason for calling.

“It’s Mae from upstairs,” I told him, “and I need my laptop for this afternoon’s delivery schedules. I was just wondering if you’d be done anytime soon?”

Oh, how my pulse thumped as he took a breath of his own.

“It’s done,” he told me, and I punched the air in a tidal wave of relief.

Until he took another breath, and kept on talking.

“I took it up over an hour ago. Mr Douglas has it in his office.”

Oh, how the tidal wave turned into a tsunami of doom.

“Give him a knock,” he continued. “Laptop is good to go.”

And so was I.

I had a feeling I’d be good to go myself real damn soon.