“We need to appear squeaky clean. Your traveling around the country on the company’s dime doesn’t look good,” George continued. Like usual, he was the one taking the lead in the meeting.
“I flew commercial for business.” What the fuck was he getting at?
“How many women did you see? Hookers did you hire?”
I gaped. I couldn’t help it. “Jesus, George. What is your interest in my sex life?”
“A young man like you, running around, sowing his seeds, carousing—all that leaves the company open to scandal.”
Stunned. That was the only feeling I had. I scanned the room. Were they in agreement? “So when you all looked the other way when my father bribed and extorted, that wasn’t risky, but my being single is somehow a bridge too far?”
Simon looked chagrined, but the others mostly looked away.
“Single men aren’t settled, stable,” George Keyes said.
“I don’t remember your telling my dad to get married.” What a hypocrite.
“Your father has been married. He raised his kids on his own when your mother left.” George said that like my father was a saint for raising me and Amelia.
I bit my tongue. They wouldn’t care that being raised by my father was like being raised by Rasputin.
Simon Jones nodded, but his expression held sympathy. “You’re working hard, James, we can see that.”
They all had called my father Mr. Dunsmore, but I was James, or in George’s case, Jimmy. Maybe I needed to assert myself more. Be more of an asshole like my father.
“But the company has a lot to overcome, and a single man playing the field doesn’t show the sort of stability that our partners and investors need right now,” Simon finished.
I hadn’t fucked a woman in longer than I could remember. Sex wasn’t anywhere in my orbit. But I couldn’t very well tell these men that. Not without having them see me as a lesser man than they already did.
“What are you saying?” I asked, thinking maybe I was misunderstanding them. Maybe Iwasa lesser man.
“You need to get married. Settle down,” George said.
I looked at each man and woman sitting at the boardroom table, wondering if they’d taken whatever my father had drugged Amelia and Max with last year.
“What if I don’t?”
George didn’t blink. “Well, we could remove you as CEO.”
“So that's it? I don’t have to bring in more money or clients, I just have to get married to be CEO?”
George’s jaw tightened. “No one trusts you, Jimmy.”
“No one trusts Dunsmore Investments.” I pointed my finger at him. “That’s on you.”
“James,” Simon sighed. “We all have to do better. For the good of the company.”
“It’s not that no one trusts me, George. It’s that you don’t. All of you. It makes no sense. I’ve done everything I can to protect this company, and you know it. But all these hoops you make me jump through, it makes me think you want me out, not because you think I’m bad for the company but because you’re afraid I’ll get in the way of your nefarious deals.”
“I beg your pardon,” Alice, the member who had a vested interest in one of our projects, protested. “That’s too far, James.”
“You can fuss and bluster all you want, son, but we’ve determined that the head of this company needs to look solid and stable. A man with a wife, a pregnant one would even be better, is what’s going to make people rethink this company.”
They had to be on drugs. But as I stared at them all, I could see they believed what they were saying. Or maybe they hoped I’d give them the finger and quit. Jesus fuck, a part of me wanted to, but I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
After the meeting, I left, going home to shower their taint off me. In the shower, I pressed my hands on the tiles, willing something other than all the bullshit in my life to fill my brain. As if the universe heard my wish, Ms. Pearson... Reyna... came to mind. She was wearing her pencil skirt, the black one, which she alternated with the blue. I liked that one because it rode up higher on her thighs. Imagining her silky legs, my dick sprang to life. The first time I got a hard-on at home thinking of her, I’d ignored it. I didn’t want to be that kind of boss. But then I decided I was in my home, alone. No one would know. Since then, I’d spent a lot of time fantasizing about Reyna. So I didn’t think twice about imagining her on her knees, her pink lips wrapped around my cock as I stroked it. Her lips slid up and down, my cock in and out of her hot mouth.
“Fuck.” I stopped wanking for a moment as I sped to the edge. I didn’t want it to be over yet. When the orgasm slipped back, I took myself in hand again, stroking slower until I imagined hitting the back of her throat. Then I lost all control. My hand flew over my cock, my hips bucked, and my cum shot out over the shower tile.