Brutally His: A Dark Billionaire Romance

Chapter 25

Iwent back to my empty penthouse and got fucking drunk.

I had pulled all-nighters before, but it was always for a case, never a woman. Though, I had never met a woman like Edwina Carmichael.

After three sleepless nights capped off with half a bottle of whiskey that Luc had gifted me some time ago, I was nursing a pretty intense hangover.

And still didn’t have the solution to how I could keep Eddie without ruining her life.

There was only one thing to do.

I would present my case to Edwina.

We would establish professional and personal boundaries.

I would lay out everything, what I wanted from her professionally and personally. It was paramount I make it perfectly clear she could reject my proposal, but if she rejected it then changed her mind later—that would be it.

She would be mine.

No more excuses or hesitations.

No more dilemma over work, or even the reality of my loveless marriage.

Mine.

The more I considered my options, the more I liked the things we could do once those boundaries were set. The spanking and the rough fuck over my desk were reckless and couldn’t happen again. But they could happen over the weekend in my home office.

I liked the idea of her working in the nude. Pacing back and forth in front of me, reading case law while I watched her full, perky tits shake with each step.

Or better yet, while I dealt with tedious weekend calls that seemed to last for hours, she could be on her knees, keeping my cock warm with her sweet lips.

Of course, I would pay her for her work on the weekends from my personal account, not taxpayer funds. Just because I was resolved to pay for her future law school degree as well as her apartment and all other expenses, didn’t mean she shouldn’t be paid for her work.

If she allowed it, it would be the perfect arrangement.

“Mr. Astrid, good morning.”

A surprisingly chipper and absolutely annoying voice greeted me at the elevator.

“Hi, I am Gretchen. I will be your paralegal. I know your secretary is out, so I took the liberty of getting your coffee. The last girl didn’t give me the key to the desk, she said I had to get it from you so I could start work?”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” I asked, walking to my office, in desperate need of aspirin and for the annoying, chipper bird squawking at my side to fly off.

“I’m Gretchen, your new paralegal.”

“No.” I slammed my office door in the girl’s face, before grabbing my phone and calling over to Mrs. Lakeson.

“Good morning, Mr. Astrid. Can I help you with something?”

“Put Edwina back on my desk. Now.”

“She came in this morning saying that it was best if you two didn’t work together. She said something about an incident with your fiancée. I hadn’t heard you were engaged. Congratulations.”

“I don’t care what happened between Edwina and Catherine,” I barked. I think her name was Catherine, who could remember. “I want her back on my desk.”

“Mr. Astrid, we have plenty of other paralegals…”

“That I am sure the others will be fine with, but send Edwina to my desk now, or I will fire the squeaky toy currently on my desk and every other paralegal you send to me until she’s the only one left. She will be assigned back to my desk in the next fifteen minutes or else.”

I slammed my phone down and made a note to Cynthia to send Mrs. Lakeson an apology basket of whatever the fuck she liked as soon as Cynthia was back.

The fact that so far she would only have to send one was proof of how well Eddie and I worked together.

Mrs. Lakeson, to her credit, worked quickly.

The phone at the paralegal desk rang within two minutes, and then a moment after that, the squeaky one was gone. It took another twenty minutes for Eddie to be back where she belonged.

She had done it to bait me, and it fucking worked.

“Ms. Carmichael.” I stretched my arm out to motion to the interior of my office. “A moment.”

She marched over the threshold, arms crossed over her chest. Her expression carved out of stone. The very definition of resting bitch face.

She was pissed. Understood.

I closed the door and approached my desk.

She looked at me for only a moment with narrowed eyes before turning and swinging the door open.

Okay, I was becoming less understanding.

Without saying a word, I pivoted and, keeping my gaze on her, decisively slammed the door shut. Then I locked it.

I raised my eyebrow. Clearly she was angry. I would let her speak her mind first.

Then I would bend her over this desk and remind her who she answered to.

My resolution to not indulge in such risky behavior at the office again immediately forgotten in the face of her disobedient attitude.

“Well, you called?” she asked, tapping her foot on the carpet.

“You look like you have something to say, and so do I. You have the floor.”

“Since you’ve made it impossible for me to work elsewhere and keep my job, I wanted to make a few things clear,” she said, standing tall, ready to make her case.

I imagined just for a moment that this was how she would look in front of a judge and jury, ready to make her opening arguments. She was going to be a force to be reckoned with, and I couldn’t wait to behold it—when her icy gaze was lasered in on someone else.

“By all means.” I motioned to the chair in front of my desk.

She looked at it for a moment and then stayed where she was. Her arms still tightly crossed over her chest. Her body language screaming that she was closed off to me completely.

“Fine.” She took a breath and started her statement. “What happened last night will never happen again. Never. If I have to work for you, fine, I will work for you, but that is it. You will never touch me again. I hate you. I hate men like you. I hate that you think that you can just pull rank and decide where I work and how I spend my time. I hate that you broke into my home, dragged me out of there, and put me somewhere more convenient for you to fuck, as if my purpose in life is to serve your cock.”

I clenched my jaw, not liking what she was implying but enjoying the mental image of her on her knees serving my cock.

Still, I let her continue.

“You say over and over that’s not why you’re doing it, but what else could it possibly be? This professional relationship may have gotten started on the wrong foot. Fine, I’ll take responsibility for that one.”

She admitted partial guilt, a rookie mistake.

“But all of that ends now. You do not own me. From this point forward, I work for you, but that is it.”

“Are you done?” I asked, leaning back into my leather seat.

I looked her up and down and wondered if she knew she had started off wrapped around herself to seem small, but by the time she was done, her feet were shoulder-width apart, her hands on her hips and her chest pushed forward.

In the span of only a few moments, she went from meek and closed off to a classic power pose. Damn, she was going to make a fine attorney one day.

“I am,” she said. “I should get back to work.”

“No, you had your turn, and I listened. Now you’ll hear me. I don’t care if you hate me. In fact, I encourage it because anger gets things done. You can hate me all you want as long as you take that energy and channel it into your work. And you don’t want me to touch you anymore? That’s absolutely fine. You will regret those words, but I swear I will never lay a finger on you again—unless you beg for it. But do not mistake my generosity for some misguided, lecherous intent.”

She made a motion like she was going to speak again, and I raised my hand to stop her.

“No, you had the floor, you said your piece, now it’s my turn. You will stay in that apartment. Not because I want to fuck you but because it’s safe. I don’t know if you just haven’t been paying attention to your work or if you are a little slower when it comes to common sense, but we are working on bringing down an extremely dangerous mafia organization. There is a reason I have only one paralegal working on this, and I’m not willing to bring on another. Do you think it’s a coincidence that my secretary is on vacation, and I didn’t get a temp at that desk?”

Actually, I didn’t get a temp because I couldn’t stand them. Each of them were not only incompetent but just as chipper as the paralegal I’d just had removed from Eddie’s desk. But she didn’t need to know that.

She stood staring at me for a few moments, not saying anything, her brow furrowed like she was confused by something.

“It’s not a coincidence, Ms. Carmichael. I asked for the best of the best. I saw your work in the other case, and when I saw your name listed as Eddie, I thought you were a man. Not because I needed a man to do this work but because I thought a man would be safer. Turned out I was wrong, and I was not about to dismiss you because of your gender. I’m still not, because you are one of the brightest minds on the paralegal team. That is what I need for this case. But the fact is that this case does put you in a position where you could be in danger. And I think last night I proved exactly how easy it would be to get to you in that filthy, cheap apartment.”

“I…”

“I’m still not finished, Ms. Carmichael.” I stood, forcing her to look up at me.

I didn’t move closer to her, but I didn’t have to. “Here is what’s going to happen. You are going to accept the driver and come to work every single morning. You are going to use my black American Express to order lunch for you and me every single day because it is not safe for you right now to randomly roam the streets of New York City. The same will happen with dinner. You clearly don’t have any self-preservation instincts, so precautions must be taken. At the end of the day, you will take the car that I have assigned to you and head back to the apartment, where you will be safe. You will double-lock the doors, you will not tell anyone where you are, and —let me make this last part completely clear, Ms. Carmichael—you will never, ever insinuate that I was doing this out of anything other than concern in a professional capacity.”

“But–”

“You don’t want to continue our sexual relationship, that is fine.”

The last thing it was… was fine.

I also had no intention of stopping my pursuit of her. I would just have to be more strategic about it.

By the time I had finished my argument, I was out of breath. I’d talked to her like a witness or opposing counsel.

She looked at me and straightened her spine, then nodded. “I understand, and I think what you just said is the best action moving forward. I will be at my desk continuing my work until noon, when I will come in to get your lunch order. Is there anything else?” she said.

I took a deep breath through my nose and shook my head, dismissing her.

She turned on her heel, unlocked the door, and marched to her desk, leaving my door open. True to her word, she pulled the files from her file cabinet and got to work.

What just happened was unfortunate, but it was the best professional move.

If she had reacted in any other way, if she had smiled or cried or shown any type of emotion other than cold understanding and professionalism, then what I felt for her would have died.

Fuck, I loved not only the fight in her but how she carried herself with dignity.

It made our private moments where I broke both down and forced her to submit to the demands of my cock that much more intense.

There was absolutely no way I could possibly keep my vow never to touch her again. Even now, while sitting at my desk staring at the computer screen, my cock was rock hard for her.

I only had two choices: keep my distance or make her beg.

She was going to look so pretty on her knees begging me.