Then he reached for Ferrara’s discarded suit jacket and helped him shrug back into it.
And just in time. Ferrara hung up, his expression vaguely irritated, his broad shoulders tense under the jacket. Yep, definitely a case of blue balls.
“Do you want me to call one of your… girlfriends?” Nate offered.
Black eyes shifted to him. “My girlfriends?”
Nate tried not to fidget. “You know, the women that call you all the time? I don’t know what you call them.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Nate forced himself to hold his heavy gaze. “I’m just trying to help. You seem tense. Sir. You always act like a dick when you haven’t gotten laid in a while.”
“I act like a dick,” Ferrara repeated slowly, sitting down in his throne-like black chair behind his desk.
Nate looked at him warily. “Notice that I didn’t say you were a dick. I said you act like a dick. There’s a difference. I didn’t call you a dick. So you can’t fire me over that.”
Ferrara simply regarded him for a moment. “I should fire you right now. I should have fired you months ago. You’re the most useless, insolent, disrespectful assistant I’ve ever had.”
Rolling his eyes, Nate smiled. “You say it all the time, but I have it on good authority that I’ve lasted longer than any of your previous assistants.”
“Only because you would accuse me of purposely setting you up to lose your ridiculous bet if I were to fire you.”
Nate laughed a little. “Please. As if you haven’t been setting me up to fail.”
Ferrara’s eyes narrowed. “You’re delusional if you think I have nothing better to do with my time—or that you would still be here if I really put my mind to it. I wouldn’t even need to fire you. You’d quit yourself.”
Clenching his jaw, Nate scoffed and lifted his chin. “Right. There’s nothing you can do to make me quit.”
A dangerous gleam appeared in Ferrara’s dark eyes, something almost amused but with a hard, cruel edge to it.
Nate swallowed, feeling like he might have pushed him too far.
“Shall we test that?” Ferrara said.
Before Nate could begin to process what that was supposed to mean, Ferrara said, “Fine. Send Helen or Bridget a message, tell her I’ll be free at seven.”
Nate raised his eyebrows. “Helen or Bridget? You seriously have no preference? That’s harsh, even for you.”
Ferrara fixed him with an irritated look. “Why would I have? It’s just sex. A mutually beneficial arrangement. No one is getting used if all parties have an understanding that it’s just sex.”
Although Nate didn’t agree, he decided to keep his mouth shut. He could see that Ferrara was dangerously close to losing his very limited patience. “Fine,” he said slowly, still not really understanding what that had to do with Ferrara testing his resolve to keep the job. “I’ll call one of your booty calls and tell her to come to your—which of your apartments?”
“Obviously not the one I live in,” Ferrara said, his gaze already on his computer. “And not the other one—the renovations still aren’t finished there. She should come to the office.”
Right.
A little bewildered, but figuring that Ferrara just intended to leave work as soon as the woman arrived, Nate muttered, “All right.”
He left the room, his boss’s discarded shirt still clutched in his hand. He scowled at it before dumping it into the laundry hamper and pulling Ferrara’s phone out of his pocket.
His scowl deepened as he glared at the contacts before he found a message from someone called “Helen” who described in gross, obscene detail what she would like to do to Ferrara’s cock.
God, how was this his life?
Nate sent her a message. 7pm, Rutledge Enterprises.
When seven o’clock came around, there was the sound of high heels before a stunning blonde appeared by Nate’s desk. “Raffaele is waiting for me,” she said. “I’m Helen.”
Right. The woman who wanted to get her throat wrecked on Ferrara’s cock before taking it between her—admittedly fantastic—breasts.
Unable to meet her eyes, Nate nodded and led her into Ferrara’s office. “Your—Your seven o’clock is here, sir.”
Ferrara didn’t even lift his gaze from his computer.
Helen smiled and walked over. “Hey there, handsome.” She plopped down on Ferrara’s lap and kissed him, her manicured fingers burying in his hair, then running down his chest, and scraping against the bulge under—
Flushing, Nate took a step back, but before he could close the door, a commanding voice stopped him.
“I didn’t say you could leave yet.”
Confused, Nate stopped and reluctantly looked back.
Dark eyes were fixed on him with a strange expression Nate couldn’t quite read. “Shut the door and come over here.”
Nate could only stare at him in bewilderment but his legs were already moving. Fuck, Ferrara really had him trained well.
“What do you need the boy for, Rafe?” Helen purred teasingly, kissing Ferrara’s stubbled jawline and neck.