1
Trevor is determined.
First days on the job are never easy. But when you work for someone like Benjamin Gage, who happens to be CEO of his own built-from-the-ground-up multimillion-dollar PR company, every day is a deeply challenging endeavor to prove your mastery by overcoming the greatest of life’s obstacles.
Like fixing this jammed-up copier, for instance.
“Please be nice,” I beg the afflicted machine, then gently poke the button a twelfth time. The thing beeps at me in protest, then flashes that same dick-shaped icon on the screen. One of the other interns—some hot punk with a slim checkered tie who’s totally not my type—didn’t exactly explain how this evil thing works.
“You got a boner?”
I jump at the voice. It’s yet another intern with perfect hair who carries a stack of his own paper to feed the copier. What’s with all the hot guys at Gage Communications?
“E-Excuse me?” I sputter back.
“You got any toner?” he repeats with a nod at the machine. “It needs more toner.”
My cheeks flush red as I deliberately don’t acknowledge what I thought he said. Also, I refuse to note his distractingly tight dress shirt that encases his big pecs. The hiring department clearly had a certain type in mind when they interviewed applicants at my university. Are hot young college men Benjamin Gage’s type?
“More toner,” I murmur with a self-conscious nod, drumming a little nervous rhythm on my thighs. “Yeah, of course. I knew that.” I pop open the side of the machine and stare into its mechanical guts like I have a clue what I’m doing.
The intern sets down his stack of papers, pops open the front of the machine, slips out a long dildo thing, struts to a neighboring cabinet where he retrieves another, returns to pop the new one in, slaps shut the front, then taps a button. The copier hums to life and produces the copies I need.
I recall his name from the introductory meeting we had a few hours ago at the start of our day. “Thank you, B-Brandon.”
“It’s Brady. Brandon’s the one with the beard,” he informs me with a tiny roll of his eyes, then proceeds to take over the copier for his own task.
I give him a tightened smile, humiliated even further, before grabbing my papers and stumbling out of the room.
This place is filled with distractions, and they all take the form of striking faces, built bodies, and tight business clothes.
What in gay office hell is wrong with me today?
Really, this is so not me. I’m supposed to be the driven and studious one. I’m not the kind of guy who drools over hotties and mourns my abysmal lack of a sex life. I’ve never even noticed until today how insanely repressed I am sexually.
I can’t let it distract me. Besides, none of the others seem to like me anyway. Stop showing them so much damned attention.
I clutch my papers tighter to my chest as I walk past another hot guy. Naturally I notice his rosy cheeks, cute thick glasses, jaw that’s perfectly square, broad shoulders … then narrowly dodge a wall I almost crash into face-first.
I think I’m just nervous because I haven’t actually met the boss yet. Benjamin Gage, the self-made millionaire, is a powerful man whose reputation for success and perfection is known from one end of the country to the other. His multimillion-dollar PR company has represented countless celebrities. He “makes people look good”, as his unofficial slogan promises.
Of course, I’ve also heard Mr. Gage is intimidating as hell, a royal dick, and apologizes to no one.
And now he’s my boss.
“He’s not a man you want to cross,” Rebekah had warned us. She’s our direct supervisor—a woman in her thirties, despite her makeup doing everything in its power to convince you otherwise. Her auburn hair’s pulled back so tightly, it gives her half a facelift. “Mr. Gage does not conduct his business in … the conventional way. His methods skirt the lines of the law at times, but you didn’t hear it from me. Never question him. Just keep up. And if you get on his bad side, well … you might as well kiss your career goodbye.”
What a pair of sweethearts, this Rebekah and Mr. Gage. I’ll be sure never to cross either of them, I had promised myself, making my fifty-seventh mental note for the day.
One more mental note and I’ll need another brain.
When I’m sorting through the papers I just copied, stapling them to corresponding packets a different employee prepared, a hand swats my ass so hard, I shriek and lose hold of the unstapled packet in my hand, the papers flopping onto the floor.
I spin and face my assailant, scowling. “Damn it, Elijah,” I hiss.
My straight best friend and fellow intern grins his dumb grin as he leans on the table. “You’ll need a chiropractor after today.”