Caught in her pants

** Gwen's POV** The vibrating hum is subtle. Barely audible over the soft music drifting from my phone on the nightstand. "f**k…" I breathe, magazine open in my left hand, rose toy doing its very holy work beneath my sheets. The man on the shiny page stares back at me. Expensive jaw. Dark composed eyes. The kind of face that belongs on a billboard — which, coincidentally, it does. Several of them actually. Three continents wide "Yes daddy…" "Yesssss—" "Oh my gawd—" "GWEN." I launch myself halfway off the bed. "I'm up mom, I'm UP!" A loaded pause from the other side of the door. "First day at work, darling. Don't make me come in there." "I said I'm up! I'm completely up!" Her steps retreat slowly, slow enough to entail that she's not fully convinced… I quickly stuff the magazine underneath my sheets, kick the rose toy under the bed “she wouldn't look there, would she?” I say to myself. While I drag myself to the bathroom before I can talk myself back into the sheets. Twenty minutes later I'm standing in front of my mirror looking like an actual functioning person, which honestly feels like a victory. Nice chic blouse that mom found down the street two days ago and somehow knew was mine before I'd even seen it. Short skirt that leaves the imagination doing some light cardio. Hair packed into a neat bun. Small gold earrings. A little perfume. I study my own eyes in the mirror. They give away everything. The excitement sitting just beneath the surface. The nerves are threading through it. The barely contained chaos happening somewhere behind my forehead that no amount of mascara is going to fix. "You can do this, Gwen," I tell my reflection quietly. She looks mildly convinced. "We are going to walk into Belmont Fashion House. We are going to do our jobs brilliantly. We are not going to embarrass ourselves or say anything strange or stare at anyone inappropriately." My reflection says nothing. Smart girl. Because we both know the real reason my stomach is doing gymnastics this morning has less to do with the job and considerably more to do with one very specific name. Damon Belmont. Youngest billionaire CEO of Belmont Fashion Industries. A global empire that has been quietly dismantling its competition for years with the kind of elegance that only truly dangerous things manage. Branches in Milan, Tokyo, New York, Paris — and here. Montreal. Which is apparently where my entire life is about to shift on its axis. I've followed this man's career since I was seventeen years old sitting at a sewing machine in my mother's living room sketching outfits in crayon. I've watched his company grow from impressive to untouchable. I've studied his design philosophy, his aesthetic instincts, the way the Belmont line moves between commercial and couture without losing its identity. I've also, separately and perhaps less professionally, spent a concerning amount of time staring at his photographs. Tall. Broad shoulders built like they were drawn by someone who understood architecture. A jaw that has no business being that sharp for a living being, Dark eyes that got you locked into him and locked out of the world. "I'd do absolutely terrible things for that man, Gawddd" I inform my reflection. She doesn't seem to not agree I toss my phone in my bag and head downstairs. --- Mom is in the kitchen showing off. Full breakfast. Eggs, toast, fresh orange juice. She's standing at the microwave,looking not a day passed 20 and as beautiful as ever. "Sit. Eat." She doesn't turn around. "Mom I genuinely will eat at work, they have company breakfast—" "Sit." She turns around. The look on her face is calm and final. "Eat." I sit. I steal a slice of toast awaiting her gruesome turbulence. "Compromise?" I offer. The long stare. The one she's been refining since I was small enough to fit under the kitchen table. Then slowly, the corner of her mouth lifts. "Promise me you'll actually eat when you get there." "I promise, General." She laughs. It was soft, warm. One thing with my mom was, She fills a room without trying. Makes it warmer just by being in it. The kind of woman who should have had an entire life built around her — a partner, stability, someone who deserved her. She didn't get that. When I was three, my father was caught in their bedroom with her brother. No slow unravelling. No careful confession. Just a door swinging open on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon and an entire life coming apart on the floor. He left. Said he was sorry. Said he loved her brother. Said things I imagine she's never fully finished processing even now, two decades later. She never spoke about it with bitterness, which I think is one of the most remarkable things I've ever witnessed. She just turned herself toward what remained — toward me, toward her sewing machine, toward the quiet satisfaction of making something from nothing. She'd let me sit beside her at night while she worked. Let me choose the colours. Let me believe I was helping when really I was just a small child covered in thread pressing buttons at random. But she treated my contributions like they mattered and slowly, over years, they started to. By twelve I was sketching outfits until midnight. By fifteen I was at war with her sewing machine every weekend. By graduation my piece was walking the Belmont underground fashion show…one of the best nights of my life. And that night I decided. Belmont Fashion House. Not as a secretary, not permanently as an assistant — as a designer. A real one. Someone whose work meant something. Today I take one step towards that. I give my mom a long hug before I leave. "You'll do great, my little sunshine," she says simply. "Miss me alot." "Go, Gwen." I laugh while I put on my helmet. I hope on my bike and I pull out into the city. --- The Belmont Fashion House Montreal branch doesn't look like a building. It looks like an intention. Glass and clean steel lines, the kind of architecture that communicates taste without announcing it. I park in the garage and stand outside the entrance for longer than is strictly professional, bag on my shoulder, eyes travelling up to the massive billboard above the doors. Damon Belmont looks back at me from it. I exhale through my nose. "Wish me luck, daddy," I whisper. Then I straighten my shoulders and walk inside. It hits me the moment I cross the threshold — the smell of fabric and ambition and something expensive and unnameable layered underneath both. Open wardrobes line the walls with hanging garments in silk and wool and things I can't identify from here. Women in sharp professional cuts move with purpose in every direction. My chest does something complicated. This is real. This is actually real. "Gwen Peters?" The voice arrives before I've located its owner. Even, measured, carrying the specific authority of someone who has never once needed to raise it. I turn around. The woman is striking. Excellent posture, supple frame, nice glasses, ginger hair sleeked back nicely. She looks at me like she knows I feel out of place. "Yes ma'am," I reply almost immediately "Olivia Grey. Manager of the Montreal branch." A brief pause while her eyes complete their assessment. "You'll be working directly under me. Keep up." She turns and walks. I keep up. "Eight AM every morning without exception. Company breakfast at eight-thirty, lunch at twelve-thirty, closing at six." Her heels are sharp and decisive against the floor. "You'll be assisting in executive scheduling, prepping for the winter showcase and other stuff you'll be made aware of. She opens the door to this fairytale. Cream walls. Gold accents. Sketches framed and hung like proper artwork. A sleek desk with clean lines. It smells like vanilla and paper and something that feels oddly like possibility. I fall in love with it immediately and completely. "No gossip," Olivia continues without looking back. "No office drama. No distractions. And get yourself a longer skirt, Miss Peters — you're here to work, no one here would f**k you even at gunpoint." "I would though." The voice comes from the hallway behind me. Deep. Unhurried. The kind of baritone that doesn't need to compete with anything in a room because rooms naturally go quiet for it. I turn around. And my entire nervous system makes a sound like a dial-up connection losing signal. Damon Belmont. *THE* Damon Belmont. Standing four feet away in a charcoal suit that fits him the way suits fit men in films and almost never fit real people. He looks exactly like every photograph and simultaneously nothing like any of them — because photographs don't capture the way a man like this takes up space. The way a room rearranges itself quietly around him without being asked. He's looking directly at me. Something warm and deliberate behind his eyes. "Of course you would," Olivia says, flat as a runway, without turning around. Damon's gaze doesn't move from mine. Not immediately. "Settle in, Miss Peters," Olivia says. "Then come find me." She leaves. Damon doesn't move. He takes two slow, easy steps closer. And suddenly the entire building feels small "It's okay” he says. Something easy in his voice. Almost kind. "I don't bite. Unless I'm asked to." "See you soon little one." He walks away with a shady looking man trailing him. And I stand at my office door with my hand tight on the frame, completely unable to move, doing a full systems check on my own brain. Did Damon Belmont just talk to me? Did he call me little one? Did he— "GWENNNN." Olivia's voice cuts clean down the hall. Right. Work. I'm here to work. I repeat that twice, firmly, and walk toward her office. I almost believe it by the time I get there.