"Ros, I have better things to do than to meet a bunch of college kids that won't last five minutes here."
His long-suffering second-in-command pursed her lips disapprovingly. The only person in his employ who would ever dare to do something so bold in his presence.
"These are the best and the brightest interns from the Seattle U class of twenty-eleven. You said it yourself, you want your workforce young and hungry. They're young and they're hungry. It will take you three minutes to impart some wisdom, put a face to the corporate name and then we can move on. These people need to know what success looks like, walks like. Alright?"
He grumbled incoherently under his breath, staring icily out the windows of his ostentatious office.
"Excellent," she breezed, "The meeting is scheduled to take place in Conference Room A in five minutes."
With that, she was gone. He stared after her resentfully. He'd had a shit night and his mood was souring further by the minute. His latest sub, Rachel, had abruptly ended their arrangement last night. She wanted the whole package and he was still offering only what he was offering, the partial package. The familiar sense of edginess and unease that preceded a sub leaving his service, whether their choice or his own, was in full swing. She'd been good, too, Rachel. Demure, intelligent. Slim, strong. Obedient, willing. She'd been able to take more than anyone before her and as he sat broodingly, he knew his appetite would now take more and more to appease. He glanced reluctantly at his watch.
Ros would be back and baying for his blood if he were late.
With a sigh, he roused himself. His subtly expensive suit folded where it ought to fold, accentuating the defined lines of his torso, the broad expanse of his shoulders. The usual looks of surreptitious lust from nameless, faceless employees followed him down the glass panelled walls as he strode forcefully along. His own aesthetic blessings made him twinge with unease. His classical looks were like a beautiful portrait hanging deceptively over a mould-spore ridden wall. Skin depth beauty hiding a soul deep putridity.
They rose like a collective jack-in-the-box when he entered.
Sweeping to the head of the table, he nodded curtly and all fourteen assembled soon-to-be college grads seated themselves nervously. With only mere years separating them in age from the public magnate, he was a foreboding force. Fixing the lapels of his suit jacket so that they were just so, he finally looked around at them all with an expressionless face and barely hid a sigh. They were eager. So eager they could barely sit still. The men were dressed in suits that told him they weren't from money and the women were polished, but self-conscious. He drummed his fingers lazily on the table and tried to think of something wise and empowering to say. Which wasn't that easy when he currently couldn't give two shits about anything that wasn't finding a new sub, a new outlet. Feeling a stern look from Ros boring into his neck, he supposed he best get on with it. He opened his mouth, but that was as far as he got.
All sixteen sets of eyes snapped to the glass door as it was jerkily thrown open, careering back off the wall.
She was a tangle of limbs and folders. Flustered and frantic. Long and shiny hair, honeyed mahogany, fell around her slim, defined face. Which was currently on fire. Nobody in the room had ever seen anyone blush so violently, they were quite sure. The girl looked up like a deer-in-the-headlights and swallowed nervously, clearly wishing the ground would open and gobble her whole. Ros frowned disapprovingly and rose, arching a brow and checked her ever-present clipboard for the name and photo of this moronically late, late comer.
"Miss Steele, this meeting began two minutes ago. Please find your seat without further disruption."
A few sly smiles were exchanged amongst the rest of the interns. At least they had managed to turn up on time, to a meeting with the damned company president himself. Surely that was a plus given that apparently some people couldn't get their shit together even if it were to impress Seattle's most enviable young entrepreneur. The flushing Miss Steele muttered her effusive apologies and looked around the room for her seat. She felt faint. The only seat remaining, carefully passed up by the others, was the chair to the extreme right of whom she knew on sight to be the Mr Grey everyone whispered about. He was appraising her quietly, oddly coloured eyes drinking her in over interlocked fingers. Stumbling and trying to ignore the muffled giggles that ensued, she awkwardly made her way to and collapsed into her seat.
Ros shook her head subtly.
Imbecile.
"Please continue, Mr Grey," she murmured.
He could smell her.
A subtle, clean scent. It wafted over him as she sat in an ungraceful heap. He could practically feel the heat radiating from her face. She stared down at the table, gnawing her bottom lip with straight and perfectly white teeth. Something inside him stirred, awakened. She was beautiful. Dressed plainly and almost dowdily, but beautiful nonetheless. There was something…innocent, about her. Not an immaturity as such, he mused, but some form of naivety hung over her. Suddenly feeling all eyes but hers on him, he opened his mouth and issued a simple, short speech that impressed the benefits of hard work and good intuition and the boundless opportunities Grey Enterprise Holdings had to offer in return. They listened with rapt attention, staring at him with an almost indecent attention. Not her though. One quick glance to his right-hand side saw her still staring steadily at the table, her cheeks still resolutely a-flame.
The meeting broke up on a platitude he managed to fabricate and Ros herded the interns up and out.
Attempting to follow his seasoned VP down the corridor, the college students bottlenecked at the door and even though she had practically bolted for it, Miss Steele as he now knew her, was jostled to the back of the queue. Still seated at the head of the table, he watched her hungrily. The Dom in him was rustling, rattling at the bars of the cage he was stuffed into during the working day. She was non-confrontational, non-assertive. Easily embarrassed and had all the coordination of an amputee baby goat. She was nervous. Almost twitchily so. His eyes narrowed as she allowed herself to be pushed back by a confidant platinum blonde, muttering an apology that she should have been receiving.
The Dom in him shook the bars of his cage angrily, pointing vigorously at the door.
Screaming at him.
"Miss Steele," he said quietly, "A moment of your time please."
She spasmed. He stifled an uncharacteristic laugh. The last of the interns had just left the room when he had called to her. She was alone. Utterly alone. He pointed with a delicate hand to the seat she had just vacated and waited pointedly. She swallowed, the blush that had just begun to subside returning in full force. She moved awkwardly, stiffly. When she sat he saw that her fingers were shaking. He found that interesting and the corners of his mouth crooked up. He strove to choose his words quietly, but she beat him the punch.
"Am I in trouble, Mr Grey?" she blurted, her voice pleasing to him. "For being late?"
The Dom in him trembled with anticipation.
"It's just, I got lost," she babbled, "It's so big here. There's so many floors and levels and glass. I just…" she trailed off, embarrassed by her gurgling diction. "I apologise," she said quietly. "I assure you I am usually a very punctual person and this will never happen again." She folded her hands neatly in her lap and looked down at the table she had been studying so intently, gnawing her bottom lip once again.
The bars of the Dom cage were beginning to cave under the pressure.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
There was something intoxicating about this girl. The thoughts that were flooding his mind were unclean, even for him. It was that lip. The way she chewed her bottom lip. It did something to him. The ready blush of her cheeks did nothing to control his visions as he imagined a different set of cheeks sporting that blood-red quality. She was looking at him now. Nervously peeking at him through thick and dark eyelashes. She was waiting for her fate, he realised. She thought he was going to kick her off the programme. He allowed himself a small smirk. He didn't want to get rid of this one. Far from it. He wanted her close. He wanted her closer than close.
"What do you think, Miss Steele?" he countered, "Do you think that you should be? In trouble?"
She blinked innocently up at him and a surge of blood trundled into his length. He was seized with the desire to…he swallowed. He was getting carried away. He oughtn't to toy with the poor girl like he was. She was clearly petrified. But he couldn't help it. He watched her carefully, gauging her reaction. She moved her plump lips wordlessly as if trying to figure out a complicated math problem. He kept his gaze trained on her, knowing it was making her uncomfortable. He enjoyed her discomfort. Revelled it. It turned him on. Rachel had left him in the middle of a scene, she had left him starving. They had parted on amicable terms, sure, but unfulfilled terms nonetheless and he was burning with need.
He tilted his head as he studied her. God, she looked like a fucking girl-scout. Radiating purity.
She was probably in a church choir and donated money to a puppy charity.
Not his usual type.
"I don't know," she all but whispered, "Please, Mr Grey…I can't lose this internship."
How he would love to fuck that sweet little mouth.
He raised a perfect brow and grinned internally when he saw her pupils widen, an involuntary reflex.
She was attracted. The pretty portrait hanging over the cesspool of darkness never failed to enamour the unwitting and the unknowing. Of that much, he was sure.
"You don't know?" he mused. "You arrive to my briefing late and unprepared and you don't know?" He rubbed a hand through his tousled hair and watched her lips part in the middle with satisfaction. "I am a very busy man, Miss Steele. A very busy and successful man. I am not accustomed to my very own interns thinking that my time is beneath theirs." He shook his head, savouring the pulsating tingling in his groin at her look of mortified horror. "I am not used to that at all, I'm afraid."
She flushed even more furiously, wishing she had Kate's charming tongue and oozing confidence.
"I'm sorry, Mr Grey," she said in a sotto voice that enticed and ensnared him, "It won't happen again."
The Dom in him danced his happy dance as thoughts of pure filth filled his cage.
"You say you cannot lose this internship," he countered carefully, "Why is that?"
She was thrown by the question but to her credit, her intelligence overrode her awkwardness.
"I got to college on scholarship. My financial aid stops the minute I graduate. I've worked part-time as a waitress to make ends meet but not enough to have a savings stash. This internship is my springboard into working life."
That surprised him but he didn't show it.
"Your parents don't help you financially?"
Her brow knitted together.
"With all due respect, Mr Grey, that is rather a personal question that I'd rather not have to answer."
His Dom faltered, thrown by this sudden streak of feisty and clipped confidence.
All in all, it pleased him.
He inclined his head gracefully.
"Of course, that is your prerogative. I was merely trying to assess whether you are hungry enough to be in my employ. I expect my people to give more than can ever be reasonably be expected, every single day. I don't employ people who aren't committed to what I am trying to do, trying to create. My business is more than my livelihood, it is a reflection of me. I will not have anything or anybody, diminish that reflection." His mouth twitched at the consternation splaying across her face. In actuality, he couldn't give a flying shit if she had turned up hours or days late. He just enjoyed toying with her, exerting his implicit power over her, watching her squirm.
And blush.
He never knew a blush could be so godamned endearing.
He never knew he could find anything about anyone endearing.
"I'm dedicated to being here," she said quietly, "I've done my best to make a new life in Seattle. I'd like to continue building upon it."
His curiously piqued.
"Make a new life? Is there an old one you're trying to forget?"
She gaped at his arrogance. His supreme arrogance. Who was he to interrogate her like this? About her personal life. About the most personal aspects of her personal life. She shook her head, her embarrassed flush beginning to tinge with righteous indignation. Her back straightened somewhat as she cleared her throat.
"That's another personal question, Mr Grey. I'm afraid I'm going to invoke that prerogative again"
He grinned then, and it took her godamned breath away. His face lit up, his eyes twinkled. He looked his twenty-seven years and he radiated with an energy that suddenly consumed her. A careless shrug of his defined shoulders offset the boyish charm and he leaned forward, invading her space, speaking conspiratorially.
"Maybe so. But I am a man who gets what he wants, Miss Steele. In all things. At all times."
She stared back, an odd and previously unexperienced feeling of desire surging through her veins.
"What happens when you don't get what you want?"
The grin was back. The grey pools seeming to quiver with a private joke that only he understood.
"Oh, Miss Steele, there are some things I've yet to experience. That scenario would be one of them."
….
A/N: Hi guys! This one is unconnected to Forever, Grey (updated that one yesterday and will again, soon) and there will be divergence from canon. I've been bitten hard by the 50 shades bug once again and so, here we go!
Inks x
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