The Ice King's Chubby Fixation

Chapter 7: The Shift

POV: Eryx Voltaire

The screen in front of me had been showing the same paragraph for eighteen minutes. I knew it was eighteen minutes because the clock on my desk was a gift from a man who always said that time was money and he was not wrong. Time was money truely, and I was wasting it, staring at words that would not enter my head because my head was occupied with something else.

The office was plunged in absolute silence. It was a suffocatingly void. I could hear the faint hum of the air conditioning scraping against the glass of the massive windows, but not even that sound could anchor me to reality.

I pushed back from the desk, I stood up and walked to the window. The city lights were turning on one by one. Small yellow lights filled the street below. Usually looking at them calms my nerves. It reminds me that everything down there was far below me. But tonight it did not help. I pressed my palm against the cold glass. It felt so cold against my palm, I kept it there hoping that the coldness would help calm me down but it didn't. I kept seeing her face, especially her killer lips… those succulent lips of hers, they were shaking because she was trying not to cry. I remember the way she breathed out slowly trying to calm herself down. I can't stop thinking about the way she bit her lower lips, like she was trying to stop herself from feeling anything at all. And no matter what I did, I couldn't stop thinking about it, about her… I couldn't help it. I turned away from the window. I felt tense, so I walked to the decanter and poured myself some whiskey. I lifted the glass to my lips to drink but then I stopped halfway. I remember the whiskey she had spilled on my desk earlier. It was gone now, the cleaning lady had cleaned it up but I could still see the faint mark of where it was supposed to be. Her hands were shaking when she spilled it and she looked so scared, she looked at me like she was waiting for me to punish her. Clumsy and cheap. Is that what I am paying for? She flinched when I said those words, I felt somehow after saying that to her but I had said it anyway. The whiskey suddenly tasted bitter on my throat, I took another drink. She did not cry at my harsh words, I expected her to. A woman like Elowen Hart, soft, trembling and broken by everyone who had ever known her… she should have cried. She should have let the tears fall, the apologies spill out and the excuses pile up at my feet. But she did not. She stood there with my decanter in her hand and listened to every cold word I said to her. No, sir. That was all she said. Just those two words but they somehow stayed in my head more than anything anyone had said to me in years. I set the glass down harder than I meant to. It clinked against the wood and made a small annoying sound. I did not want to think about her. Would she flinch if I touched her? Would she look at me with those gold eyes and bite that trembling lip and wait for me to be cruel? I dragged my hand down my face. This was not me, women were the last thing I thought about. I kept them only for one night and then they were gone. I sat down and I reached for my phone, I scrolled to Cleo's contact, the woman who had brought me Elowen Hart's file three weeks ago and I called her. She answered on the second ring. "Mr. Voltaire. It is late. Is something wrong?" I wanted to tell her to fire her and find a new secretary for me but I couldn't say it, the words sat heavy on my lips. "Sir?" "Nothing," I said. "Was a mistake." I ended the call and set my phone down. The whiskey sat unfinished on my desk. The city sprawled below me, indifferent and cold. My mind kept drifting to her, imagining what she was doing, wearing, eating… oh I am f*ck*d totally. I did not know why I had not fired her. I did not know why I had looked at her hip instead of the spill on my desk. I did not know why I could still smell vanilla and old books every time I closed my eyes. I did not know what she was doing to me. But I knew one thing. I was not done with her. Not even close. And that was the thing that scared me most.