From my Bully to CEO

Chapter 13

PRESENT

GRAYSON’S POV:

“So?” Selene demanded the second she crossed the threshold of my office, arms folded over her chest so tightly like she wanted to weld them there forever.

“Take a seat,” I said with every ounce of patience teenage Grayson would’ve burned through in a second.

She rolled her eyes.

“You’re wasting my time,” she said flatly.

“Because you’ve got so many pressing matters to attend to?” I countered, closing the door.

Her annoyance gave way to wariness as her warm eyes flicked towards the closed door.

I almost told her a door wasn’t barrier enough for the things I wanted to do to her. Could never be enough. It was worthless either way. A door made no difference to me.

I could see her in a crowd and still have the most inappropriate thoughts about her.

I tried not to dwell on my thoughts as I crossed to the other side of the room and sat behind my desk. She was still standing in the center of the door, eyeing me like I might throw a dagger her way any second now.

I rolled my eyes but decided not to force her. Getting her through that door was already a small miracle; no point testing how far I could push before I hit her “commanding d**k Grayson” threshold.

My fingers went to my tie, loosening the knot at my throat.

I noticed the way the action pulled Selene’s attention and how quickly she looked away, like she needed to be extra efficient about dangerous things such as lingering glances before it turned into something else.

The faintest blush crept up her neck and she scowled extra hard to cover it up.

Satisfaction bloomed hot in my chest. She wasn’t as immune to me as she liked to pretend. I realized that a minute ago as well, when I confronted her outside on her desk earlier but it still felt just as thrilling.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell this is about,” she asked, “or do you just need an audience while you undress yourself?”

I laughed. A very unexpected, very real burst of sound that tore through my lips and lit my nerves on fire.

She blinked, mouth falling open for a fraction of a second before she composed herself.

I would’ve been almost offended by the fact she thought me completely incapable of human emotions like laughter if my mind wasn’t already preoccupied by a myriad of answers to her comment, each more indecent than the last.

I could’ve told her that if she kept standing there, I’d undress her instead. Slowly. Thoroughly. I could’ve told her the exact sound I thought she’d make when I touched her.

Instead, I tightened my grip on my pen.

Judging by the way her blush flared, she caught the shadow of those thoughts in my eyes. And she knew exactly how wildly inappropriate they were.

“How did you know about the meeting?” She asked instead, shifting the conversation to safer grounds. “I took extra precautious to make sure you wouldn’t.”

“Glad to know you’re putting so much efforts to see me fail,” I said dryly, pulling out a file from my drawer and sliding it across the desk.

She eyed it with a lot more suspicion that something as harmless as a file could ever warrant.

She took a hesitant step forward, then another before pulling the file from the desk and filliping it open, eyes hungrily reading through the content.

She still didn’t sit, stubborn little menace.

“You hired another secretary along with me?” She demanded once she read through, eyes wide and almost furious.

There was something else behind the fire too. Something that glittered with the thrill of new challenge, of finding a worthy opponent to torment.

Of course, she hadn’t expected me to make this easy for her. It was the only reason she’d started this war. She didn’t wanted easy.

“I did,” I said simply.

She slammed the file back on the desk with a lot more force than was necessary. “You’re f*****g unhinged.”

“You really thought I’d hand you the reins and allow you to burn all my hard work to the ground just like that?”

She titled her head to a side, as if genuinely considering.

“No, obviously,” she admitted, the bite in her tone softening just a breath. It sounded a lot like a compliment.

That was a smart move, Vexley, her expression said. Something she would never say out loud.

But I learned to read her a long time ago. All those subtle shifts in her face, the silent tells she didn’t know she gave away. Ten years later, I still knew every one of them. Still remembered the exact way she moved, the exact way she looked at me. Like a dream I couldn’t stop replaying.

“I still hoped,” she continued, finally sitting from across from me. “Would’ve made life easier for me.”

“But you never really liked ‘easy’, did you?”

She pressed her lips in a thin line, like she despised all and every reminder that I already knew her. I had sparred with her in sterile hallways, day after day—except instead of swords, we had used thinly veiled insults and chemistry quizzes and thick textbooks. I had wanted her since before I’d known the why of it all.

“Don’t act like you know me, Vexley,” she said.

There it was.

I wanted to tell her I did. I knew her like the rhythm of my own heart. Ten years apart and I hadn’t forgotten a thing. She’d been burned into my mind like a scar and that there was no unknowing her, even if I tried.

I said none of it.

“Why’re you showing me the file now?” She asked, slamming the door shut on that topic all by herself. Maybe she also didn’t wanted the answers. “Why not just tell me think I was making progress with my petty sabotages, letting me chase my own tail?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked simply.

She rolled her eyes but even the queen of indifference, Selene Hale, couldn't keep the faint smile from worming it’s way onto her face.

We really did bring the worst out in each other.

She pulled the file from the desk once again and flipped it open, searching for something specific.

“At least this means you’re paying four times the amount any sane CEO would for a secretary,” she said with a sly smile. “That’s a win in itself. That I’m causing some sort of damage.”

“Oh, darling,” I drawled. “That’s barely a dent. I could pay ten secretaries just to alphabetize each other’s work and not notice the expense.”

Her smile fell.

“Wow,” she murmured, rolling her eyes. “Always so humble.”

I could almost see the wheels in her head spinning as she tried to find a way to outmaneuver this roadblock I’d thrown in her way.

“Who’s the secretary? Are they here, in the office building? Or do they work remotely?”

I raised an eyebrow but answered none of her questions.

“I’m not going to give the answers to you, Hale,” I said. “You’re going to earn them.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Earn them?” She scoffed. “You’re absolutely out of your mind if you think I’m going to do anything of the sort.”

“You haven’t even asked me what you’d have to do,” I prodded, feeding that wild curiosity of hers. “I promise, it isn’t hard at all.”

Her narrowed eyes stayed firmly on me but I could tell that she wasn’t really seeing me.

She was probably running a full SWOT analysis in that brilliant, vicious head of hers. Or mapping out the cleanest way to kill a man without leaving a trace.

Selene’s Hale mind had always been a chessboard and right now, she was trying to think three moves ahead.

The fire in her eyes burned just as bright. “What would I have to do?”

In my head, the answer came fast and filthy. It was ten years’ worth of filthy daydreams crashing together. The depraved fantasies that knocked every sane thought out of my head whenever she would walk in wearing those damn skirts and that blood-red lipstick.

I wanted that red smeared across my chest, my throat, every place her hands and mouth dared to touch. I wanted to feel her bare skin beneath my palms. I wanted to hear what that sharp mouth would sound like wrapped around a plea. I wanted the sound she’d make if I bent her over my desk and taught her exactly how “earning it” worked in my world.

“Go on a date with me,” I said instead.

Yes, I’d spent ten years dreaming of every depraved, filthy thing I’d say to Selene Hale if I ever managed to win her affection back but more than any of it, I’d dreamed of the mundane.

Of date nights and waking up next to her. Of making coffee for her in the mornings and have her look at me with something other than the burning hatred she usually reserved for me.

I wanted the most innocent of things with Selene Hale. But first, I had to win her back. Show her I wasn’t the same self-obsessed, emotionally constipated boy I was back in higschool.

“No!”

The answer came instantly—and just as expectedly. She stood up so fast the chair almost toppled backward.

She didn’t even spared me a glance before she turned her back to me and was already heading out.

The chance was slipping through my fingers before I’d even gotten the chance to hold onto it properly.

“Just one night and I'll fire the other secretary," I said quickly.

She stopped. Thank God.

That hadn’t been the original plan. The original had been one date, one question answered - slowly building to the name and then, eventually, the firing. Let her fight her way there.

But she was walking away and I knew I wasn’t going to get another chance.

So, I upped the stakes. And I knew she knew that too. Because when she turned around, she was smirking. Not bold or outright but I felt it hidden beneath the bitten lips and too tight smile.

She knew I was going to play on my terms and she’d just tilted the board in her favor with a single move. She’d made it entirely hers.

“Just one night and then you’ll fire them?” She asked. I nodded.

The silence stretched where she pretended to consider my offer. But I already knew her answer. This was too tempting an offer for her to waste.

“I want that in writing,” she finally said.

I grinned.

“Smart move, Hale.”