AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She was a tiger.
Often, I likened people to animals. It helped me associate them with strengths and weaknesses. Some people were sharks, ruthless but dimwitted. They only thought about their next meal, and when they sensed weakness, they attacked, without any thought to the political advantage of soft power. Some others were lions. They could be seen as lazy, taking long days off to golf or vacation, but they were critical thinkers. They picked their spots, and then struck without mercy. Vicious and unflinching, when they brought down someone, they did so with maximum efficiency.
Everyone thought they were a shark or a lion, but most people weren’t. That wasn’t a knock on them, either. Some people, for instance, were rats. There were negative connotations to that, which I was aware of, but being a rat was noble. They were resourceful and determined. They were survivors. They could make something out of nothing. And they were scary as hell when there were a bunch of them.
Still, others could be tigers, like Julia. Relentless and smart, seemingly playful but giving off a dangerous vibe that told predators to stay away. She could be tamed, or could pretend to be tamed, but it would take a brave soul to try. Or an idiot she lured in for a quick kill. I admired tigers. They were the only type that didn’t seem to care about power or money. They had their own agenda. I wondered what Julia’s was. I was pretty sure it had something to do with that rundown bar.
Whatever her agenda was, I was going to take advantage of her tiger-like personality while I could. I would put her through the paces relentlessly and see if she broke, and if she didn’t, she was going to be an asset who was worth her weight in gold. Hell, more than her weight. Hers, mine, and everyone in the damn company’s weight.
I needed someone who I could trust, someone who could essentially mirror me and make sure I was as productive as possible. That’s what drove me. Not the dollars in the bank account, not the number of companies we acquired. It was being better than I was the day before, the week before, the year before. A constant, churning quest to be more than I was. To fight time, age, and God himself if I had to, just to end my life one day as an old man, knowing that I had been the absolute peak of what I was capable of being. That I never could say I could have been better, more.
Which meant that in order to use every facet of my skills, in order to use every bit of my brainpower, I needed to keep my fingers in a lot of different pies. Which sometimes meant I needed someone to keep people occupied until I could address them, to keep them satiated until I made a move. Or with some people, to play the game of “I’m too busy to respond to you, so shut your mouth and wait,” by having my assistant handle our interactions.
It was a wildly important game in the CEO world. Having an assistant who not only was good at listening to a nervous or anxious client or board member’s dumbass worries, but was capable of breaking down their thoughts into the important bits, giving them to me and then acting and sayingexactlywhat I told them to do as a response.
Too many people failed at that. They would put their own spin on it, either to soften a blow or to gain some sort of power for themselves. To make themselves feel more important by painting the picture of their influence to the client and exercising some rebellion by not doing precisely as I told them to.
What they never realized was that by doing what I said—to the letter, to the inflection, to the breath—they were exerting tremendous power, so much so that soon they would barely have to do any work at all. Their mere presence would be elevated almost to mine, and they could send subordinates of their own to do my bidding.
My best assistant had mastered it. Macy Day Anderson. She was a peach. And most certainly a tiger. She had six children of various ages and multiple interests, and yet, she was capable of handling that household and my needs like it was nothing. In the many years since I had her as my number two, the company had grown and she had left to retire to the Cayman Islands with her husband of forty years. I made her a very wealthy woman by the time she left, and she was happy to skip off to spend some of it.
I was only angry that I was suddenly a lot less productive.
Perhaps there would never be another Macy Day Anderson, but Julia had the tools to be very close.
If I could keep my eyes to myself.
As the day went on, that was becoming increasingly hard to do. I found myself burning through my coffee even faster just for the chance to call her in, send her to the coffee shop down the street and watch her tight skirt as she turned and walked away from me.
Her body wasincredible.
I couldn’t help noticing how athletic she was. The skirt wasn’t especially short, but it did hug her ass tightly, and the blouse she wore gave off a fantastic view of her arms and collarbone. I always found myself drawn to the collarbone. It was weirdly sexy to me, and when cleavage was pushed up just below, it made it ten times better. With Julia it was more like a hundred. I could just imagine how soft and succulent her breasts would be as they pushed against the front of her blouse so hard that the top button looked like it was holding on for dear life. When she bent over, it was everything I could do not to stare down the front of her shirt.
Part of me thought she did it on purpose.
It wouldn’t have been the first time an assistant tried to seduce me in some way. It would just be the first time it would have worked.
One of the many assistants after Macy Day had left me was a woman named Penelope. At first, I was simply amused by her name. She was a young, attractive woman with an ancient name. I liked that. But she was immediately someone completely different when she was on the job than she had been in the interviews. I was aware of the effect I had on women, but Penelope was blatant about it.
After I had outright ignored several of her advances, Penelope had gotten herself into a major bit of trouble one night. I had been away, out of the country for several days, and Penelope had been running the office in my stead. She was already on thin ice, having missed several important memos and not really keeping up to speed like I needed her to in the office, so that when I got back, I was ready to give her a final warning.
But when I walked into the office, having texted her to tell her I was heading there and that I needed her to leave several folders on my desk before she left, I was shocked by what I saw.
The folders were on the desk, all right. But so was Penelope. Completely nude and with her hair down.
I hadn’t even hesitated. I simply told her she was fired, grabbed the folders from under her ass, and told her to lock up when she left and leave the key and phone at the receptionist’s desk.
I never heard from her again.
A thought crossed my mind as I watched Julia running to a file cabinet to retrieve ancient forms that I clearly could have avoided using by emailing someone a scanned copy. If Julia had been waiting on my desk like that, would I have reacted the same way?
The professional part of me wanted to say yes. But the realistic part of me, the part that knew me down in the soul much deeper than my brain liked to think, said no. I would have ravaged her. Nothing would have ever been the same after that. And I wouldn’t have cared.
Julia was standing in front of me, and I realized she had been speaking. I had lost myself in my own little dreamworld and I hadn’t noticed she was holding out the file and saying something. I sat up quickly, scooting my chair in so I could hide the erection that was pushing against the seam of my zipper, and took the folder from her. As I did, my forefinger brushed hers and it felt like electricity sparked through us.
I cleared my throat and looked for my coffee cup. It still had a bit left in it, but I slammed it down.
“Another coffee,” I said.
