Summoned by the CEO Page 3

  We keep going for what feels like hours but could be minutes, months, millennia--who fucking knows. I sure as hell don't, because time feels meaningless, like we're experiencing forever in this moment.

  That sense of being transported to a place of timelessness gets stronger, and before long I feel us both giving in to the primal beauty of the moment.

  And slowly the shouts turn to sighs, the screams turn to moans, and then we’re laughing, just laughing like children, kissing each other like puppies at play as I collapse on top of her and she goes limp under my weight.

  “What just happened?” she whimpers, tears flowing down her soft round cheeks. She’s shaking beneath me, her eyelids fluttering, her face flush with the same unnamable, indescribable sense of disbelief that’s roaring through me like a river.

  “The last thing I expected to have happen,” I mutter, kissing her mouth and stroking her hair. I flex inside her and groan, feeling my balls push up more of my seed. The thought of birth control, protection, protecting myself, my billions, my reputation comes to mind and then disappears like a wisp of smoke on a winter’s night. If anything I want Angie to get pregnant, I think with a surge of manic wildness, feeling my cock incredibly start to get hard again as an image of this woman round and heavy with my babies comes out of nowhere like it’s always been there. “Happen this soon, anyway. Yeah, I wanted you the moment I saw you. But I was gonna play it cool. Take it slow. Give you a chance to get to know me. Fall in love.” I stroke her hair and kiss her again. “But when I got close to you I realized we’re already in love, Angie. It’s not just lust. This is real. More real than anything else in my life.”

  I see panic pass through those big brown eyes of hers, and she blinks and looks away like she doesn’t know how to react. I know I’m talking like a lovesick maniac, like one of those losers who send out dick-pics to chicks they meet online and immediately ask for their hand in marriage. Yeah, I’m babbling like a lovesick maniac.

  But you know what?

  I feel like a lovesick maniac.

  Which means that I am speaking the truth.

  A truth that she’s going to have to come to terms with, no matter how much it freaks her out.

  Because I’m not letting go.

  She’s mine now.

  Claimed in the most ancient of ways.

  Filled with my seed.

  Mine. Mine. Mine!

  I’m calm and silent, but she keeps talking like she can’t help it. “Well, as far as my life goes, this is the most unreal thing that’s ever happened,” she says, that panic showing again on her pretty face. She tenses up beneath me, and I know she’s thinking now, thinking about the practical matters of what just happened, about her job, her future, about my seed inside her. “Oh, God, what have I done?! How could I have . . . have . . . oh, shit, you . . . you came inside me! I let you come inside me! I’m not on birth control! What if I get . . .” She shakes her head firmly, and I can see the wheels turning in her head. “I can take the Plan B pill,” she says, blinking five times and then forcing a smile and nodding. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll just head over to the drug store and—”

  “You aren’t taking any Plan B, C, or fucking Z pill,” I growl, feeling a dangerous possessiveness rise up in me like I’m responding to a threat. A threat to my future. A threat to my forever. “There is no Plan B, Angie. That’s not how I live my life. No backup plans. No second-guessing. That’s how I built my business, how I earned my billions, how I dominated my industry. After Pops died I decided that I wasn’t gonna make the mistakes he made. He was a hard worker, but he was always afraid of failing, always fearful of taking risks. He always had a Plan B, a backup strategy, a fallback option.” I shake my head and tighten my jaw, reaching up and slowly gripping Angie’s wrists again. “If you have a strategy for failure, it means you’re subconsciously expecting to fail, that you’re afraid of being wrong, that you think you are wrong.”

  “Planning for the worst case is just common sense,” Angie says, frowning as she feels my grip on her wrists again. “Everyone is wrong sometimes. That’s just how the world works.”

  “Not my world,” I whisper, leaning in and kissing her roughly on the lips. “And you’re in my world now, Angie. You are my world now. This is the plan. The only plan.”

  “OK, maybe we need to take a step back, Mr. Archer,” she says, her voice wavering, her eyes darting left and right like she’s losing her shit—or maybe like she wants to lose her shit, if that makes any sense.

  Yeah, it makes sense, I realize as I narrow my gaze and see that this woman is mentally strong. She doesn’t lose her shit like a little girl. But what she felt in my presence has shaken the fuck out of her, and she’s trying to put it into context, trying to do and say things that a normal woman would deem “sensible.”

  “You’re not a normal woman, Angie,” I whisper. “You’re special. I was never destined to be with a normal woman, and you were never fated to be with some normal loser who punches the time-clock and worries about his fucking 401k and cholesterol levels.”

  “OK, you are so full of arrogance and prejudice it’s not even cute,” she snaps back at me. “You’ve got a bunch of hourly workers punching the timeclock for your damned company! So they’re all losers?!”

  I wince when I realize what I sound like. “That’s not what I meant,” I say quickly. “I just meant that you’re meant for something more, someone more.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, and I’ll take it under advisement, Mr. Archer,” she says, a firmness in her tone that tells me she’s closing herself off to the simple truth that we’re together now, that she’s mine and there’s no getting away from it. “Now if you’ll unhand me, I need to get back to work before someone wonders why I’ve been gone so long.”

  I snort in surprise, wondering if this woman is for real. And then I’m pissed off. Straight-up angry. “Work? Work?! Fuck, you work for me, Angie! Anyone says a goddamn word to you I’ll fire their entire department and replace them with those robots on wheels.” I shake my head and snort again. “And who the hell says unhand me? What world are you living in?”

  “Your world, remember?” she shoots back triumphantly, like she’s delighted to be able to use my own words as a weapon. “A world in which you think you control everything and everyone. A world long gone, where men think they can growl and grunt and beat their chests and people will bow to their will. A world in which rich, powerful men think they can . . . that they can own women.”

  She blinks like she’s almost embarrassed that she’s playing the sexist card, but I can’t help but take the bait. She wants to taunt me, get a rise out of me, fuck with my head? Well, it’s working.

  “I can’t speak for the pussy-ass men of this new generation of wimps,” I growl. “But I do own you. I just claimed you with my seed. That means I fucking own you. That’s how an alpha beast claims his mate. And guess what? I’m the fucking alpha beast in this building. And you’re my mate. You’re no longer my employee. You’re my woman, and that’s that. Get used to it, Angie.”

  “I’m not going to be defined by being nothing more than a man’s woman,” she growls right back at me, venom in her voice, fury on her face. “And you can’t fire me. My performance reviews are outstanding, and there are no grounds for dismissal.”

  “Well then, you’ll have to resign. Company policy clearly states that two employees with a reporting relationship cannot be involved in a romantic relationship,” I say with a grin and a shrug. “And since I’m the CEO, every employee technically reports to me. Which means either you have to quit or I have to quit.”

  “So I guess you’ll have to quit,” she says, also with a grin and shrug like she’s mocking me, testing me, straight up defying me! “Coz I’m certainly not quitting.”

  “You’re a fucking secretary somewhere in the bowels of Archer Industries!” I cry out, raising my voice. I hat
e the fact that she’s getting to me, and I know what I should do is calm the fuck down and just ignore all of this. I don’t even believe what I’m saying, but she’s pulling me into this bullshit argument that I sense is about something else entirely—about us dealing with a shockingly strong connection that defies logic, that seems like the stuff of myths and fairy-tales, something from those head-in-the-clouds romance novels that all the admin assistants read in the break-room.

  “First you belittle hourly workers,” she says, her voice rising in pitch just like mine. “Now you’re downplaying your admin assistants. These are the folks who are the arms and legs of Archer Industries, you know. I’d argue that we’re more important to this company’s bottom line than you are!”

  I thunder with laughter, shaking my head and laughing again. “I’m both the brains and the balls of this company, little girl. I am Archer Industries. Everyone else is replaceable, interchangeable, cogs in the wheel that turns because of my ambition, my energy, my power and dominance.”

  Angie rolls her eyes in a way that makes me see red. Blood fucking red.

  “So the rumors are true after all,” she says. “You are a delusional megalomaniac who’s isolated himself from reality, lives alone in his dark tower up in the clouds like some old vulture, counting his gold like a depraved dragon.” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes again. “You got lucky when your business took off twenty years ago, and like so many clueless Type-A men you decided that it wasn’t luck but had something to do with your skill or power or whatever.”

  My anger has risen to a point where it’s slowly overflowing like a volcano that hasn’t erupted but is simply oozing molten lava, gently enveloping everything in red heat. I feel it course through every sinew in my hard body, and I slowly release my grip on Angie’s wrists, leaning back and caressing her cheek as I slide my other hand beneath her head and fist her thick brown hair.

  Nobody’s ever messed with my head like this, said shit like this to my face, rolled their eyes at me, mocked and defied me, straight-up insulted me! I know that in a way Angie’s as surprised at herself as I am at listening to someone talk to me like this. I know that what I sensed earlier is true: This weird fight we’re having is more to do with us trying to work through the explosive way we just came together, trying to fight feelings that are so visceral we’re scared they aren’t real, trying to fight through the confusing sense that we’re in love even though we don’t really know each other yet.

  We’re trying to fight ourselves, I realize as I narrow my eyes and tighten my grip on her hair until she winces, gasps, and then lets out a low moan that gets my cock so stiff I almost choke. We’re each trying to fight our own long-held beliefs of how two people come together, how two people fall in love, what love even is, at some level.

  “Believing in luck means you lack faith in your own power and abilities,” I whisper as I pull her close. “That’s why you’ve settled for a job that’s below your potential, Angie.”

  “Again with this disrespectful crap about admin assistants,” she snarls back, almost spitting into my face, she’s so damned angry. I love it. I fucking love it. She’s got fire, this woman. She’s not a pushover, not a weak, frail little waif who’s going to bow down to the king, submit to the CEO just because he says so.

  Nah, she’s not going to submit just because I say so.

  I’m gonna have to make her submit.

  “Half your admin assistants have college degrees, you know,” she goes on even as I smile grimly and begin to kiss her bare neck. “Many of them are doing this part-time as they juggle personal responsibilities like kids, elderly relatives, all kinds of stuff that life throws at you.”

  “Well, life’s thrown you at me,” I mutter as I lean in and start to suck her boobs, making her gasp like she didn’t even realize what I was doing until my mouth closed on her big red nipple. “And I’ve caught you. You’re mine, Angie. There’s no luck involved here. It started as fate, and now it’s the force of will. My will.”

  “You’re not even listening,” she mutters as I cup her ass with one hand while still gripping her by the hair. “So arrogant. So self-centered. So . . . ohmygod, what are you doing, Mister Archer?! What are you doing?!”

  I’ve spread her asscheeks with my strong fingers and placed my thumb firmly on her tight rear pucker, and from the way her eyes go wide I know she’s never been touched there, never been taken there, never been claimed from behind in the most forbidden, most filthy, most dominant way. It’s scaring her, scandalizing her, maybe even disgusting her. But I felt her nipples stiffen in my mouth as I touched her there, and I know that she’s on fire right now, that her entire body is an erogenous zone, her entire body is . . . is mine.

  “Are we still fighting?” I whisper after taking one last long, hard suck on her pert nipple and then rising up. Angie’s firmly in my control, held tight by the hair as I massage her asshole with my big thumb and slowly push her towards the dark tinted window overlooking the city. “Still fighting ourselves? Still fighting our instincts? Our deepest needs? Our most secret obsessions? Our darkest desires?”

  “Ohmygod, you really are the devil,” she moans, her face red with both embarrassment and need, her body trembling with both fear and arousal, her pussy dripping with both her own juice and my thick semen. “Fighting ourselves? What does that even mean?”

  “You know what it means, Angie. That bullshit argument wasn’t about admin assistants and hourly workers. You know damned well that although I’m a tough boss, I take care of my people. I pay better than anyone else at that level. I offer benefits to working parents like no other company does. Everyone gets health insurance, even the part-timers. All that venom you spewed . . . that wasn’t directed at me, Angie. It was directed at yourself.”

  “At myself?” she snorts, her eyelids fluttering as I get her to the window and slowly make her face the thick, dark glass. “Talk about deflecting blame from yourself to someone else. I should remind you that you snorted disdainfully and called me a secretary. This isn’t the 1950s, you know. We don’t call ourselves secretaries.”

  “I’ll call you what I fucking want,” I growl against her cheek from behind, grabbing her wrists and placing her palms up against the cool glass of the window. “I should remind you that I’m the boss, the CEO, the goddamn king. Now behold my kingdom before us.”

  I reach around and force her to look down at the city sprawled below us. Archer Tower is by far the tallest building in downtown—I made sure of that when I built it. I always wanted to be the biggest, the strongest, the most powerful.

  “But there was always something missing,” I whisper as I feel Angie’s breath catch as she looks down on the city from what feels like miles above. I can feel it starting to sink into her—the fact that she is destined for something bigger, that she was born to be a queen. My queen. “I thought I could rise to my peak potential on my own—hell, I thought I had reached my potential after Archer Industries became the dominant player in the field. It seemed like there were no new lands to conquer. And then I saw you in my hallways.”

  “So now I’m a conquest?” she mutters as I press up against her, my hard cock firmly pressed lengthwise against her rear crack as I massage her breasts. “You’re so full of macho nonsense that I’m actually starting to believe that you’re serious. Oh wait. Nope. Don’t believe it.”

  “Life is nothing but a series of conquests,” I say softly. “And not only am I going to conquer you, but you’re going to conquer yourself. Not only am I going to claim you, but I’m going to show you how to claim yourself.”

  “OK, you’re talking nonsense again,” she mutters, groaning as I reach around and rub her mound roughly, releasing her strong feminine musk that gets my cock to throb so hard I almost explode all over her ass. “I’m perfectly comfortable with myself.”

  “Therein lies the problem, little Miss Angie,” I whisper, grinning as I fe
el her arch her back and push her ass against my cock. “Being comfortable means you’re settling. You need to be uncomfortable to grow, to reach beyond yourself, to become who you were meant to be, who you were born to be. You think it’s comfortable for a butterfly to fight its way out of a cocoon, to transform itself from a slug that crawls on the ground to a winged beauty that flies free?”

  “Firstly, it’s a caterpillar, not a slug. And secondly, did you just call me a slug?” she says, turning her head halfway, her eyes half closed, lips trembling from the way I’m rubbing her mound and making her drip all over my hand. “That’s body shaming, you know.”

  “You aren’t ashamed of your body,” I say with a grin. “I saw how you reacted when you knew the cameras were rolling.”

  “Ohmygod, the cameras!” she shrieks, turning her head again, her eyes flicking wide open. But she doesn’t try to push me off, and when I see the color rush to her face even as I sense her arousal spiral upwards, I knew I was right.

  “It turned you on, didn’t it? Turned you on in a way that surprised you,” I say, fingering her wet crotch once last time and then bringing my slick fingers to her rear and sliding them into her asshole smooth and deep.

  She lets out a moan that’s so deep I know it comes from a place that’s never been reached before, and I feel her come all over the damned floor as I finger her asshole with forceful, dominant strokes.

  “We’ll watch the footage when we’re old and gray, with our grown-up kids and our teenage grandkids gathered all around, maybe even the dogs and cats watching in awe,” I whisper with a devilish grin as she snorts, shakes, and then comes again.

  “You are the devil,” she mutters after a long series of gasps and shudders. “And all this talk about needing to be uncomfortable to grow, about reaching deep within oneself, expanding one’s horizons . . . it’s all just buildup because you want to fuck me in the ass, isn’t it?”