Except apparently, I do.
Or at least, I did this once.
For practical reasons. Because I was exhausted. Because the work would still be there Monday. Because Benjamin and Ainsley could keep the most urgent pieces moving without me. Because there was no point attempting it while my body was still recovering.
Definitely not because Mario told me to.
I step through security, visitor badge clipped to my blazer, briefcase over my shoulder, and my laptop bag in hand.
My phone buzzed all morning before I even got here. Benjamin had already sent two revised vendor-access summaries. Ainsley had flagged three payroll permissions that still needed clarification.
There are twelve calendar invites waiting for me, four marked urgent, which is pretty much always a lie, and one message from a department head who apparently thinks “role-based access protocol” is a personal attack.
It is fine.
All of it is fine.
Because I slept.
I slept Saturday night. Then again Sunday night. Deep, dreamless, uninterrupted sleep. No 3:00-in-the-morning wake-up. No tossing and turning. No furious sexual frustration. No waking up aching and cursing Mario Conti for existing.
Well.
Not cursing him.
Thinking about him, yes.
A lot.
Too much.
But thinking about what actually happened is very different from being tortured by what had not happened yet.
Now there are memories, which is worse in some ways. Better in others.
I cross the lobby, grateful that my legs are no longer shaky and that I can approach the day with a professional outlook.
You know, aside from telling my boss that I had sex dreams about him and having the best sex of my life.
Aside from that, I am composed. I am professional.
I am wearing a dark gray pencil skirt suit today with a green blouse because it says calm, authority, and power.
Also, it really compliments my eyes and ass.
My heels click as I cross the lobby floor and arrive just in time for the elevators to open.
I step inside with three other people, all of whom are mercifully too busy with their own phones to notice that my pulse jumps the second the doors close.
Thirty-second floor.
I have walked onto this floor before, many times now.
But this morning, everything feels slightly different.
There’s the same frosted glass, the same polished floors, the same art on the walls. The same muted conversations because this isn’t just any floor. This is the floor where the CEO works.
But I am not the same. I am different.
