The smile on my face evaporates the moment the line goes dead.
“Good luck getting through to him today,” I murmur under my breath.
I pull my purse onto my lap and take out my lipstick, the small perfume vial, my compact mirror. A fresh swipe of color, a spritz at my neck. Then I gather the tablet and the documents he needs to sign and head straight for his office.
Three soft knocks, and I step inside. I don’t wait for permission. I never do.
His eyes lift from the screen, following my every step. He leans back in his chair, gaze fixed on me as I come to stand beside him.
I set the papers down and unlock the tablet, showing him the new spreadsheet I built using the company’s software. Cleaner, faster, more intuitive than the disaster he’d been using.
He studies it, then nods, leaning in, close enough that I know he can smell the perfume I reapplied just minutes ago.
“This is excellent,” he says, and the praise skims down my spine like a hand.
“You did a great job. Use this system from now on and transfer everything else into it.”
His approval burns through me, erasing every dirty look I’ve endured since stepping into Margaret’s position. All the assistants who’d been here longer, who thought seniority alone made them entitled, believed they would be chosen.
Let them glare.
I’m the one he keeps. In more than one way.
Without breaking eye contact, I step back toward the door and quietly turn the lock.
“Maya.” His tone tightens. “There’s a stack of new investment analyses I need to get through.”
I move toward him, slowly, deliberately, then sink to my knees, my hands resting lightly on his thighs.
“I can be quick.”
His smile is slow, loaded, and it makes my pulse thunder.
“What are you waiting for?” he asks.
I unbuckle his belt, the leather sliding through the loops with a rhythmic click that fills the heavy silence. Keeping my eyes locked on his, I slowly lower his zipper.
I let my mouth work its magic, and in less than ten minutes, I have him completely undone. Breathless, shattered, forgetting every person and every obligation outside these four walls.
And when it’s over… when he leans down, his voice still rough, and murmurs that he’ll come by my apartment later tonight…
Herperfect little voice stops mattering altogether.
Chapter 10
August
I know he's cheating
Cecily
“He’s been working so much lately, I barely see him anymore,” I confess to Harper as we sit sipping wine in her and Jonathan’s backyard during one of their occasional weekend barbecues. Alicia is at her best friend’s house, and Ethan decided to stay home.
Harper noticed how unusually quiet I’d been, and eventually, everything spilled out. How absent Colin has become, how the distance feels more pronounced these days. My gaze drifts toward the grill, where he and Jonathan stand shoulder toshoulder, a glass of scotch in hand, laughing as they turn the meat and vegetables.
The third couple in our little circle, Oliver and Felicity, are in Spain for two weeks, enjoying a summer vacation with their kids. Out of the six of us, Harper and Jonathan are the only ones who chose not to have children, and they’re perfectly content with that.
If Colin didn’t work so much, I wouldn’t mind having two or three more myself. Though we’re both only children, he seems perfectly at peace with that solitude, while I’ve always felt a soft envy for people who grew up in noisy, sprawling homes. The kind of household where no one is ever truly alone.
