Make Me Yours, Daddy

-019-

~*JUNE*~

Meetings are so boring.

No, boring isn’t even the right word.

They are painfully, mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly unbearable.

I would rather scrub every floor in this building with a toothbrush than sit through another minute of this torture.

This is the first meeting I’ve ever attended, and if it were up to me, it would definitely be the last.

Right now, I’m seated beside Mr. Macaulay in a conference room as big as an entire house.

Around the long mahogany table sit a group of men and women, their voices blending into meaningless noise as they throw around words I barely understand.

Something about business ideas. Something about numbers. Something that has them all nodding in unison like pigeons pecking at invisible crumbs.

I watch the silver-haired woman at the far end of the table wave at a chart projected onto the screen, droning on about quarterly earnings and something about market saturation.

Her lips keep moving, but I hear nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

My brain has checked out completely and gone on vacation somewhere warm, where meetings don’t exist.

Ugh… I cannot wait for this to be over.

It still surprises me that I haven’t collapsed from sitting this long.

Three hours. Straight. No break. No mercy.

My ass aches from sitting in a rigid, upright position for too long, my lower back screaming in protest.

My feet throb inside my heels.

Every muscle in my legs has gone numb and come back to life in a painful pins-and-needles symphony that makes me want to cry.

I shift slightly in my seat, subtly stretching my legs under the table, trying to find even a moment of relief—but there is none.

And I have to sit through all of this for what?

Company bullshit I’m not even interested in.

The bald man across from me shifts the conversation, and now everyone is talking about synergy.

Synergy. I hate that word now.

My phone buzzes in my bag beside my chair.

The room goes quiet for a second, and every head turns toward me.

Shit.

Mr. Macaulay looks at me. "Turn your phone off. I don’t want anything disrupting this meeting."

I nod quickly. "Yes, I’m sorry."

Opening my bag, I check my phone—it’s a text from Tyler: Hope you made it to the meeting just in time.

I glance up.

Everyone has already gone back to their boring meeting talk, so I quickly type back: Yes, I did. Talk to you later.

I switch off my phone and turn my attention back to the meeting.

Unconsciously, I tug at the lapels of my jacket.

The jacket covers most of my shirt and half my skirt, almost passing for a coat.

I really owe Tyler one. If not for him rushing over to hand me my jacket so I could cover my shirt, the one Mr. Macaulay had deemed "too revealing," I would have been late for this meeting and probably scolded by him.

Sometimes I really wonder what I’ll do without Tyler.

I swear, I owe him my firstborn.

Sorry, future firstborn.

The bald man finally stops talking.

Thank heavens.

There’s a rustle of papers, the squeak of a chair shifting, someone clearing their throat, and then a man in a grey suit starts speaking.

My stomach grumbles.

I glance around quickly to make sure no one heard it.

Luckily, no one did.

I press a hand lightly against my stomach, as if I can physically quiet it.

I didn’t have breakfast this morning because I was running late, and now I’m regretting it because I’m hungry as hell.

A loud creak cuts through the haze, followed by the scrape of a chair against the floor.

I flinch, like someone has snapped a rubber band against my skin, and snap toward the sound.

Mr. Macaulay is standing.

He moves with that same controlled, almost predatory grace, walking to the front of the room where a large projector screen glows with charts and graphs.

Picking up the remote from the table, he clicks it once, and the slide changes.

Then he speaks, his voice filling the room, deep, steady, and commanding.

I stare at the him as he speaks, my eyes following him.

He’s facing me now—not fully, but his body is angled in my direction as he points at the screen.

Slowly, my eyes drift downward.

My gaze keeps going, slipping down the length of his arm, across his torso, down to his waist, and then lower.

I do not mean to do it—I swear I do not—but my eyes land right on the front of his pants.

I regret it the instant they do, because there, I see a prominent bulge straining against his fabric.

My breath catches in my throat.

His c**k presses out, thick and impossible to miss.

How has no one else noticed?

I can see the outline of it, the way it curves, and the way it presses against the seam of his pants like it is trying to escape.

Then it clicks.

This man is having a full-on erection right now. In a meeting. In front of all these people.

He has zero shame.

Absolutely none.

My eyes are glued to his c**k, that impossible bulge that seems to grow more pronounced with every passing second, as though it knows I am watching and enjoys it.

"June."

The sound of my name pulls me back like a sudden alarm blaring in my head.

I jerk my gaze upward so fast I feel something pop in my neck.

Mr. Macaulay is looking at me. Not at the screen. Not at the table. Not at the people in the room.

He is looking directly at me, his dark eyes fixed on my face with an expression I cannot read.

Damn. Did he catch me looking at his pants?

The smirk that curls at the corner of his mouth tells me everything I need to know.

He noticed.

Of course he f*****g noticed.

His eyes flick down to his own lap for a fraction of a second, then back up to my face, and that smirk widens just slightly, just enough to make my stomach drop into my shoes.

A hot flush spreads across my chest and up my neck, burning into my cheeks.

I force my gaze around the room.

Every single person is staring at me.

All of them looking at me like I’ve grown a second head.

"Are you here with us?" Mr. Macaulay asks.

I snap my gaze back to him, unable to form words.

I try, but they catch in my throat.

"You were not listening, were you?" Mr. Macaulay says.

It isn’t a question. It’s an accusation, delivered with a cold precision that makes me want to sink through the floor.

"Uh… I am," I stammer, finally finding my goddamn voice. "I was listening. I am listening."

He raises one eyebrow.

"Really?" he says.

My throat closes up.

"Then what was the last thing I said?" he asks.

A lump forms in my throat, hard and sharp like a stone I cannot swallow.

My mind is blank.

Entirely blank.

I don’t know what to say.

"What did I say?" he presses. "I’m waiting for an answer."

I stare at him, dumbfounded.

The room is silent.

I can hear someone breathing, ragged and uneven.

I think it might be me.

Every pair of eyes presses down on me like lead.

I try to speak, to force out anything, a word, a sound, even a lie pieced together from the fragments of my panicked mind.

Nothing comes.

I have no idea what the last thing he said was. I don’t remember what he said. I wasn’t listening.

I can’t lie my way out of this because I don’t even know what the truth is supposed to be.

"You don’t know what to say, do you?" Mr. Macaulay says flatly.

I shake my head. "No, I don’t."

He rubs his forehead with two fingers, pressing hard against his temples like he’s trying to push back a headache.

He lets out a long, slow sigh that seems to deflate the entire room.

"Not only weren’t you listening," he says, his voice dropping lower, colder, "but you also lied to me. Do you have any idea how much I despise liars?"

I swallow hard. "I’m sorry."

"Save your apologies," he corrects sharply. "I don’t care for them. The two types of people I hate most in the world are incompetence and liars. And you, June, are proving to be both incompetent and a liar."

"I am sorry," I whisper again. My voice cracks on the last word.

"We will talk about this later," he states.

"Okay."

I sit there like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, arms limp at my sides, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.

Murmurs ripple through the room.

Someone whispers something I can’t make out.

Another lets out a soft huff that sounds almost like amusement.

I keep my eyes fixed on the table and don’t pay them any attention.

I cannot.

If I look up and see their faces, their smirks, their pity, I will fall apart.

Mr. Macaulay turns back to the room.

"That is enough," he announces. "Let us continue."

The room immediately goes quiet.

He clicks the remote, and the slide changes.

A new chart appears, full of colored bars and percentages.

He turns his head slightly, just enough for me to see the profile of his jaw, the sharp line of his cheekbone.

"Better listen this time," he says quietly.

I nod. A small, jerky movement.

I’m not sure he even sees it before he turns back to the screen and begins speaking again, his voice smooth and controlled as though nothing just happened, as though he didn’t just humiliate me in front of a room full of people.

I remain completely still, ashamed of myself, feeling like the biggest i***t who has ever lived.

Mr. Macaulay now doesn’t only think I am incompetent.

He also probably thinks I’m a complete freak who stares at men's bulges.

Yeah. Brilliant, June.

Just brilliant.