Chapter Six
911 Words
The day went by pretty quickly after the earlier incident.
Naya went about her work more quietly than before: head down, eyes on her screen, responses direct and minimal. Anyone watching would have thought she was simply focused. Nobody was watching closely enough to see the difference.
She couldn't get the scene out of her head.
It replayed in fragments — the woman's unbothered continuation, his hand guiding, and then his eyes finding hers and staying there. She kept returning to it even though she didn't want to.
What sort of person does that in his office? In the middle of a workday? With staff on the other side of the door?
How many of his workers had seen him like that — naked or mid-act or both? Was she the first one to walk in or just the latest in a long line of people who had learned quickly to knock louder and wait longer? She thought about the other staff on the floor — their carefully neutral expressions, the way everyone moved with their eyes slightly down. Maybe they all knew. Maybe this was just Tuesday.
And his reputation, didn't he care about his reputation? He was on the cover of financial magazines. He ran a company worth more money than she could properly conceptualize. Surely there was something at stake in being caught like that.
Then she thought about the NDA.
She sat up slightly straighter.
She had signed it this morning — had read it carefully, twice, the way she had told herself she would read everything in this building before putting her name to it. Standard confidentiality agreement. Nothing unusual. Nothing that had stood out.
Well. It's not like he would clearly state that he was a man w***e in the agreement, she thought.
“I hereby confirm that I may witness my employer engaging in s****l activity during office hours and agree to keep this to myself”. Right. Because that would be too honest and honesty was clearly not his thing.
She almost laughed. Almost.
She went back to her screen.
The afternoon moved around her — emails, calendar updates, a call she had to coordinate between two departments who apparently couldn't speak to each other without her as an intermediary. She did her job. She did it well. She did not think about the closed office door any more than she absolutely couldn't help.
Then the door opened.
The woman stepped out.
She had put herself back together completely — not a hair out of place, dress smooth, bag on her arm, heels hitting the floor with quiet confidence. She walked past Naya's desk looking like she had just completed a productive meeting. All elegant and beautiful. Like she wasn't the one who had been gagging on a d**k twenty minutes ago.
She left without sparing Naya a single glance.
Naya watched her go.
He must have a fetish for cold and rude women just like him, she thought. That had to be it. Some specific attraction to people who moved through the world like nobody else in it quite registered.
She turned back to her screen and started packing up for the day — shutting down the monitor, gathering her things, running through his schedule one last time to confirm there was nothing outstanding that needed her to stay. There wasn't. His calendar was clear for the rest of the evening.
Then his office door opened again.
Damian stepped out.
He looked at her — directly, for the first time all day. Not past her. Not through her. At her. His expression was exactly what she had come to expect from him in the short time she had known him — blank, unreadable, giving nothing away. He held her gaze for a moment that lasted slightly longer than nothing.
He said nothing.
Went back inside. The door closed.
Naya stood at her desk for exactly three seconds.
Then she picked up her bag and walked to the elevator because his schedule was clear, her work was done, and she was not going to stand in this building one minute longer than her contract required.
She stepped in as the door closed behind her.
Her phone rang.
Ryan. She hadn't spoken to him properly since the drive home yesterday — had ignored his call last night, had been too deep in research and rage and the yellow blanket to find the words. She looked at his name on the screen for a moment.
She picked up.
"Hey."
"Hey," he said. "You good?"
She leaned against the back wall of the elevator and watched the floor numbers descend and thought about where to start. She briefed him — not everything, not the full picture of what she had walked into that afternoon, but enough. Enough for Ryan to understand what kind of building she was going into every day and what kind of man was behind the door she sat outside.
When she finished there was a short silence.
"I don't know how long I can do this, Ryan," she said.
"Then don't," he said.
"I have to."
The elevator reached the lobby. The doors opened. She walked out into the evening air and the city moved around her like it always did — indifferent, loud, completely unaware that she had just had the worst first day of employment in the history of employment.
"I know," Ryan said quietly.
She knew he did.
- Writer
