“Did she wait long?” I asked, absentmindedly. I was staring at Missy again.
“Yeah. She should’ve started back in London, but I’m glad she’s begun now. She might be upset at me for telling you, but this is the first real job of her career. Can you imagine? She’s so talented, imagine if she had started earlier? She’d be a titan.” This wasn’t really news to me, but I acted like it was. All of the articles that I had read about Missy had called her a socialite and party girl, so this being her first real job was not surprising to me at all. She was definitely good at it, that part I agreed with. It was just hard to talk to Missy’s friends while trying to watch her on the dance floor at the same time.
Everything about her drove me to distraction. She looked incredible, but that was true every time I had seen her. It was everything else about her too. She was just so different from me and initially, I thought that those differences were insurmountable. That they put too much space between us, but now they just made me curious. I wanted to know more. She wasn’t exactly like me, and she didn’t have to be. Her being so different was new, it was exciting. I wanted to know everything.
And of course, the sex was mind-blowing. It was the one thing that bridged my lower-middle-class Southern American upbringing and her socialite existence across the pond. We were from completely different sides of the tracks, but when we were naked, we spoke exactly the same language.
I wanted her, in a way that scared me a little bit. I knew all the risks and all the limits, she had spelled it out for me, but I wasn’t convinced. I was making all the excuses I could.
She thought we were too different? Why would she want someone who was exactly like her? Variety was supposed to be the spice of life. If you are going to get with somebody, why wouldn’t you make it someone who had a completely different and exciting perspective than you did? As long as your core values aligned, wasn’t that enough?
If the excuse was that we were working together, we weren’t going to be working together forever. At some point, our professional relationship was going to come to an end and that left the door wide open for everything else. That professional relationship excuse wasn’t even a good one in my book. It only counted when there was a boss exploiting their power over one of their subordinates, but I wasn’t her boss, she didn’t work with me in that capacity. In this sense, we were pretty much evenly yoked.
What else could she possibly complain about? She couldn’t say that the attraction was not there, because that would be a bald-faced lie. I knew it was there. I had seen it, and she had all but admitted it. We were literally at the last step, all we had to do was commit, but she was still holding back. What did I do to make her see? I was at the point where I was ready to do anything. Having her really felt like a dream come true. I would wear suits all the time if that was the trade-off.
“Do you think you would recommend her to your friends or colleagues?” I heard, tearing my attention away from Missy. Her brunette friend was looking at me this time, Brenna was her name maybe, it might have been Maggie, I wasn’t sure. I cleared my throat, hoping that she didn’t notice what I was more interested in doing than talking to her.
“Sure, the ones that need help. I don’t know how many people that would be though,” I said, looking back over the dance floor. Missy wasn’t alone anymore. A man had come up to her and he was beh
ind her, grinding on her. I saw her turn around and say something to him. There was a short exchange of words, and she seemed to take a couple of steps forward. He followed, wrapping his arms around her. She turned around again and seemed to be talking to him. When I saw her put her hands on his chest and attempt to push him, I knew everything that I needed to know.
“Would you please give me a second ladies?” I didn’t actually wait for their answer before I stood up and left the VIP section, heading towards the dance floor. I headed straight for them. I felt my hands clenched into fists. He was behind her again, his arms wrapped around her so that she couldn’t turn around. She was obviously uncomfortable, I grabbed the drunk loser by his shoulders and spun him around.
I was ready. I was about to knock his lights out, but I stopped, recognizing the man I had had a meeting with earlier today. It was the Fed, Alex. I hadn’t noticed him leaving the VIP. He was noticeably intoxicated, but that didn’t feel like a good enough reason to harass a woman when she clearly wanted him to stop. I held myself back.
“Hey, Easton, there you are. I thought you had left already with one of those women you were talking to. Or all of them,” he added with a wink and a laugh. His behavior made my stomach turn.
“Is everything okay here?” I asked Missy and not him.
“Of course, we’re having a good time, aren’t we, babe?” He said, slinging an arm around Missy’s shoulders. Missy tried to get out of his grip. I forced myself to slow down because the consequences of this could and probably would get ugly if I lost my temper.
“Leave the woman alone,” I said to him.
“Oh, come on, you think just because you saw her first, she’s your property? Sorry, but you should have gotten to her sooner,” he said. He was talking about Missy like she was a bag of rice at the grocery store, the last one, and we were squabbling over who got to take it home. It was disgusting.
“Easton, it’s fine, really, I’ll handle this,” she said.
“Damn right, she’ll handle this,” Alex said laughing, cupping his cock and balls over his pants. That was it.
“Back off man, she’s off-limits,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Says who?”
“Pay attention, man. How many times did the woman gave signals that she’s not interested?” I said to him. He was one of those oafs that thought a woman physically pushing him away from her meant an invitation. I was ready to force the point home if he was dedicated to pretending he didn’t know what she meant.
“Easton, please.” I barely heard Missy.
“Listen. You get out of the way tonight and next week, you’re gonna have a contract waiting for you on your desk. If you go ahead and fuck it up now, it isn’t just you and me who are going to have a problem.” He turned his attention back to Missy, this time slapping her on the ass.
Everything went dark. I raised my fist and I punched Alex right in the jaw. He hit the ground, more so from the shock, I thought than from the force of the punch, but all that meant was that I needed to hit him harder. I made a grab for him when someone pulled me back. I spun around, ready to hit them too when I realized it was Toby.
“Are you out of your mind? What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“He was just trying to help me. This guy wanted to dance, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer. Easton just got the point across,” Missy said, appearing next to me.
“Easton, do you realize who that man is? I swear to god if you mess this up.” He dropped to the ground helping Alex up. Some part of my mind registered that he was doing damage control because of me, and this was potentially very, very bad. There was a good chance that my actions had cost the company a lot of money, but it wasn’t as loud as the part that was satisfied that the man who was harassing Missy was going to have a sore jaw on top of a hangover in the morning.
“He was harassing her. He doesn’t deserve an apology.” Toby glared at me. I was going to get it in the morning, I knew that, but I wasn’t feeling sorry for what I had done. Alex was the man dangling half a billion in front of us, but he was also a man who couldn’t take no for an answer from a woman. He was one of the creeps who kept touching women even when she asked him to stop. What kind of loser did it make me if I didn’t do something about it? It was just his unlucky day that the woman he had targeted was Missy because now, I wasn’t even sorry.