Friday, 4:07 pm

Four hours later, I had a new bodyguard, and her name wasn’t John. I wasn’t convinced that choosing her over one of the Johns was the right call, but she seemed more than capable, and I felt more of a connection with her than I had the others; that had to count for something. Granted, that connection was probably my attraction to her, but I was still hiring someone qualified. As soon as she accepted my offer, Erin notified Helen, who had been finalizing the paperwork for a security team.

Chloe filled me in on the details she could. Hannon Security hired her after she left her last job, thanks to Henry Psalter. Her first assignment was part of the security detail stationed at his main office, but her attention to detail helped her quickly work her way to his personal security. The person in charge of the Gerrard account had been the owner’s son, John Hannon. That’s right… another John.

She enjoyed her job and found the work easy compared to her previous life. She enjoyed her team and the people Colin surrounded himself with but didn’t care for Colin himself. He was stubborn and short-tempered. Chloe admitted that her interaction with the man had been limited; he was never that communicative with his security detail, preferring to interact with John alone. Despite that, she managed to stop an actual assassination attempt on Colin as well as several assaults against various personnel.

She couldn’t answer many of my questions about the old man… specifically why he left me with nearly a trillion dollars and complete control over his entire estate. Among security, John was likely the only one to have that kind of privileged information. Unfortunately, John was dead. At first, the doctors had claimed a heart attack, which was strange because the man died at thirty-five in perfect health. His father had taken the initiative to do an autopsy and extensive analysis of the body, only to discover a poison that had been difficult to detect. That triggered a closer examination of Colin, the discovery of the true cause of his death. Considering how recent the event was and the sensitivity of the information, none of what Chloe was telling me was public knowledge.

With Chloe’s suggestion, I decided to go with another security firm that didn’t have a history with the Gerrards in case someone at Hannon was guilty of foul play. I challenged the fact that she had worked at Hannon, but provided proof that she’d been off when the murder occurred and provided an alibi. In fact, her innocence was the reason she knew as much as she did. Hannon Senior needed someone he could rely on to help him piece together what had happened. Satisfied, I put Chloe in charge of selecting the team. She asked for the resumes and files of all the other candidates to consider as well.

After finishing the interview, Chloe said she would take the weekend to move into a room in my house. That surprised me, but Chloe insisted on it before accepting the job offer, stating that the only way to ensure she could do her job properly was to live as close to me as possible. We discussed her having access to my email accounts, passwords, codes, and all the same keys, but the invasion of privacy felt too great. Helen showed up during the privacy discussion and took Chloe’s and Erin’s side, insisting that my bodyguard would need as much unencumbered access as possible to do her job well. It took being outnumbered three-to-one, but they eventually convinced me that Chloe needed access to all of it. Erin already knew almost everything, and now, so would Chloe. Helen assured me that the firm’s paperwork would ensure my bodyguard’s discretion, and Chloe assured me that if I could trust her with my life, I could trust her with anything.

The price of safety was steep.

After agreeing on the living arrangements, Erin left with Chloe to familiarize her with the house, find her a room, arrange for her credentials, and make sure all the paperwork was filled. Once all of that was complete, Chloe would immediately set up a detail to start working by the end of the day. We shook hands once more, and then the two ladies departed. That left me and Helen on our own. She set her things down on a chair and sat on the couch next to me. I smiled at her, and she smiled back, clearly feeling awkward about something. “How are you doing, Marcus?”

“I had a visitor last night,” I said.

“I heard,” she said quietly.

“Yeah? Who told you? Erin, or your daughter?”

She winced a little under my question’s sharp tone. She didn’t answer immediately, staring at the floor in thoughtful contemplation. Finally, she looked up at me. “My step-daughter.”

We stared at each other in long silence, and I was trying to decide how mad I should be. Helen was a stickler for details. The entire time I had known her, she considered all the angles and anticipated things that would have never crossed my mind. She had been my go-to and my confidante. She found Erin for me, and I didn’t appreciate that Erin was quickly usurping her as the woman I could trust the most. Sure, it was bound to happen, but finding out she was withholding information from me was a shitty way for that transition to occur.

“You didn’t think that was something to mention in the bathroom on Monday?” I asked. Had it only been Monday since Helen gave me a blowjob in a YPV bathroom? Jesus, a lot had happened in five business days.

“I miscalculated,” she said.

“How?”

“I didn’t think she would be so interested in you, and I wasn’t aware of her visit at the coffee shop.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why did it have to be a calculation? She’s told me more about your family than you have, and I felt blindsided. You could have avoided that, Helen. You should have told me about Ashlee, and you should have told me that Roger was having issues with what we’re doing.”

For the first time in a week, Helen looked rattled. Her blue eyes were surprised, and I realized she hadn’t expected me to know that.

“Marcus,” Helen finally said, “As you can imagine, I’m not exactly thrilled about sharing the details of my family with you, and I’ve done just as much to keep what happens between us from my family as well.”

“Roger does know about us, right?” I asked, my stomach in knots at the thought that her husband ignorance from the beginning. What if he hadn’t known? Could things become problematic between me and my lawyers? Did I need to get other lawyers?

“Yes,” Helen said, “But I don’t think he expected my involvement to be so… thorough. The time away from the office, and the time spent with you… it’s been gratuitous.”

“So he just expected this to be a temporary thing until he got me to sign on the dotted line?”

Helen tilted her head to the side, obviously weighing her words carefully. “I think he expected me to start weining you off my affections a bit sooner. It was one of the reasons to push for an assistant the day after you signed. We needed to find you a new toy to play with so you could relinquish the current one back to its ‘rightful owner’.”

“Jesus, Helen,” I said, “you make it sound like you didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

“Oh I most certainly did,” she said, leveling a gaze at me that backed up her words. “I just went a further than Roger might have wanted.”

When she didn’t immediately offer more I offered to fill in the gaps, “The deal we made. He doesn’t know about it, so now that they have my business, and I have Erin, he doesn’t seem to understand why we keep seeing each other.”

Helen nodded. “At first, I was able to convince him that you were primarily interested in staying with us because of our relationship, but I haven’t been the only voice whispering in his ear.”

“Ashlee?”

Helen nodded. “You’re handsome, young, and Ashlee’s type.”

“She has that kind of sway over Roger?”

“Normaly, no,” Helen replied. “That’s where I miscalculated. Your account was so important that there was no way any of us was going to let Ashlee within ten feet of you. They needed someone more seasoned to handle you. When I interrupted Ashlee in the bathroom, I thought that would be enough. I suspect she’s been saying things to her father about the amount of hours I’ve put in with you this week.”

“As I’ve said, Roger and I have an arrangement. I’ve been useful in the past at securing agreements, and we’ve both had our share of extramarital affairs. We’ve even shared a few. When it comes to me, he’s not a particularly jealous man, but he does care about his pride. Roger has made sure that every man I’ve been with was aware that he knew. He’s even watched me with a few of them, but he keeps me on a tight leash. Anyone I’m with has to be on his terms. He was more hands-off with us because of your importance.”

“And our deal happened,” I concluded.

“He still doesn’t know about that,” Helen said. “No one does. As far as they know, I’m simply more enthusiastic about you than some of the others, and Roger’s starting to lose patience that I haven’t been at his beck and call lately.”

I turned and leaned back into the couch next to Helen and mulled over what she was telling me. The situation she described to me sounded an awful lot like a form of forced prostitution, but even after giving me all the details, Helen didn’t seem upset, ashamed, or scared. She still seemed cool, collected, and ready for business. It was a testament to her strength and made her seem even more formidable.

“Do you want out of our deal?” I finally asked.

“No,” Helen said. “Unless you’d prefer to not have me. I’m not interested in being in a relationship where I’m not wanted.”

The word ‘relationship’ threw me for a second, but based off the context, it was probably a reference to our deal. “Why did you make it in the first place? Don’t you like your life? Doesn’t this put you in the possible position of losing everything?”

“I like the money,” Helen admitted. “I like the power and prestige of being on one of the best firms in the world and managing the money of powerful and influential people, but as much as I enjoy those things now, I’m limited by whatever Roger lets me have. I married him when I was twenty-seven and he was fifty. He was handsome, intelligent, and powerful. He swept me off my feet with all sorts of promises and expensive gifts. For the first five years, I was happy. I even tried to take on the roll of Ashlee’s mother, but after the first few years, he started getting bored with me. I caught him cheating a few times, and then there were the extended nights away. By then, I knew what I’d married into, but I was stuck. If I left him, I’d have nothing. Within a decade of our marriage, we came to the arrangement I told you about.”

“Meeting you, and seeing how you looked at me again… I liked it. Not only that, but you were naive. I saw you as someone I could leverage to get out of my current situation. When I saw how relaxed Roger was with us, I assumed I could use it to my advantage. I thought I could work for you, slowly turn you against the firm, and then when it came time to renew your contract with them, I could convince you to leave them for another firm and become your primary manager. I convinced them that you wanted a stipulation to renegotiate the contract in a year. I basically gave them a trial period. It’s relatively standard. A year would have been enough time to convince you that the relationship with YPV wasn’t for you. Bringing someone like you to any other firm would probably make them grateful enough to bring me in as a partner.”

“Wow,” I said. “You had it all figured out.”

Helen nodded, her face an emotionless mask, but her body language was tense. I could tell this was making her uncomfortable.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked. “I just asked about your daughter and husband. You didn’t have to tell me about trying to use me.”

“Because I like you, Marcus,” Helen said. She turned toward me, our knees touching as she gave me a small smile. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not in love with you. Honestly, I don’t know that I can be in love again. Roger did a lot of damage to the younger me, but I enjoy you.”

She slid one leg over my lap and straddled me, reminding me of the first time she showed up at my apartment a week ago. She draped her arms across my shoulders and gazed down at me with her crystal blue eyes. That small smile of hers remained.

“I’ve enjoyed your company. I’ve enjoyed building a new life for you, and I’ve really enjoyed the sex.”

The scent of her flowery body wash was light and pleasant as Helen brought her forehead to mine and nuzzled our noses against each other. It felt oddly intimate and romantic, which was very different from our other trysts; those had been slow, all-consuming desire and lust, like the edges of a sheet of paper curling and blackening by the smoldering embers that marched inexorably across it. For the first time since I met her, Helen felt like an actual person and not some succubus. I didn’t get the sense she was trying to distract me with sex or manipulate me. She felt… vulnerable.

Then I felt her hips slowly rock back and forth in my lap, grinding her crotch against mine. There she was. There was the temptress.

“Roger only-”

My phone buzzed beside me on the couch, cutting Helen’s words short and stalling her gyrating hips. We both stared down at the name on the screen.

It was Ashlee.

“Answer it,” Helen said softly as she began to push herself off me. I felt a strange mixture of reluctance and relief as Helen backed off of me; Helen’s presence always filled me with a level of lust that was nothing short of palpable. Simultaneously, I felt very unpleasant things deep in my gut after her admission of manipulation after trusting her so implicitly. I wasn’t surprised by the revelation. More than once, Helen’s actions felt calculated, but it still stung.

“I don’t want to talk to Ashlee right now,” I said as she slid off my lap.

“Answer it,” Helen insisted in a still-quiet voice as she knelt in front of me. She reached up, and her slender fingers curled around my belt, undoing my buckle as she urged me on with her eyes.

Once again, my libido did the thinking, and I reached blindly for my phone as I stared directly into Helen’s ice-blue eyes. I hit the answer button and brought the phone up to my ear as the woman kneeling in front of me pulled my pants down enough to expose my cock. It was already halfway to hardness thanks to Helen’s slow grinding moments ago. She slowly wrapped her fingers around the base of it and leaned forward to lay her cool cheek against the part she hadn’t grasped.

“Hello?” I said, trying to make my voice sound as normal as possible. Helen kept her eyes fixed on mine as she nuzzled my warm member on the smooth, unblemished skin of her cheek.

“Marcus? Hi! It’s Ashlee!”

“Hey Ashlee. How are you?” I asked, letting Helen know that I was definitely talking to her daughter and not someone else using her phone. Despite what she told me about her troubles with Ashlee, Helen gave a small smile in response and turned her head so that her lips met the side of my prick. She delivered a long, moist kiss to its sensitive skin and and closed her eyes as she continued to drift her lips across the top half of my length.

“I’m okay. Just at work. I heard you were getting security today. That’s good! Now that people know who you are, I’m sure you’re going to have all sorts of creeps coming out of the woodwork to find you.”

“Yeah. I’m not crazy about it, but I see the importance.” I said as I watched and felt Helen silently deliver long, languid kisses along the side of my dick. She gently squeezed the base while the fingernails of her other hand gently grazed along my balls.

“Good. We can’t have you getting shot in the face. It’s too pretty,” Ashlee tittered.

“Thank you. I wouldn’t want it to get shot either,” I said. I made a conscious effort to not return the compliment, feeling awkward about telling a woman how pretty she was while her mother’s mouth was on my cock.

There was a moment of silence between us, and I suspected she was waiting for some sort of affirmation of her attraction. Helen pulled her lips off my member and mouthed, “Speakerphone.” She obviously saw the trepidation on my face because she returned my unspoken concern with a look that plainly said, “Trust me.”

Reluctantly, I complied and set the phone on the couch next to me.

“Did you get my message last night?” Ashlee finally asked, her tone subtly sharper, but still pleasant. I must have hit a nerve by keeping silent.

“The note? Yeah, I saw it,” I said and tried my best to sound as conversational as possible as Helen returned her mouth to my cock, raining sweet, sensual kisses across the head.

“And my little present?”

“Your panties? They’re… in my room.” I slowly began moving my hips in small, involuntary circles as Helen continued to shower my dick with affection. I was fighting to keep any hint of what was happening out of my voice.

“And the other present?” The sharpness in her voice melted into something more beguiling.

“The pictures?” I asked. Helen’s eyebrows rose as she proceeded to trace the underside of my cock with the tip of her tongue.

“Yes.”

“I saw them.” I said, my breathing getting shallow. Helen’s grip on the base of my cock tightened and a bead of clear precum bloomed into view at the tip. I bit my lip and had to stop myself from groaning as the blonde seductress extended her tongue and slid the flat of it along the mushroom head, capturing the evidence of my stimulation. “I liked them.”

“I wish we hadn’t been interrupted last night,” she said, her voice lowered to a husky tone that betrayed her growing arousal. “I got home last night and touched myself thinking about you and what might have happened.”

I couldn’t help myself. “What do you think would have happened?”

“Whatever you wanted," she purred. “I’d do anything for you, Marcus. I’m touching myself now, just thinking about it.”

“You’re at your desk?”

“In my office. I wish you were here now. I would love to suck your cock.” I heard a breath from Helen as she silently snorted once, a smile on her face as she cradled the head of my member between her lips.

I swallowed hard, staring at the mother on her knees with the head of my cock pressed to her lips while the daughter described how she would do it. This had to be the most erotic thing I’d ever witnessed in my life. It surpassed what we had done with Bobbi. It was hotter than her holding onto Erin while I took her ass. Helen had been there for my most depraved moments… making some of my wildest sexual fantasies come true.

“How would you do it?” I finally asked her.

“I would take long licks up your cock,” Ashlee said, her words soft and slow, each word dripping with avarice.

Taking instruction from Ashlee, Helen slipped the tip of my cock from her lips, stuck out her tongue, and dragged it up the length of my cock in slow, deliberate licks, staring into my eyes the whole time.

“I would kiss up one side and down the other.” Helen followed suit, placing her lips on the side of my cock again and delivering wet, suckling kisses.

“Oh Marcus, I want to worship that cock of yours,” Ashlee moaned into the phone. “I want to feel your balls in my hand. I want to massage them. I’d make you feel so good.”

I felt Helen’s fingers return to my balls, cupping them in gentle hands as she delivered another wet kiss on one of the most sensitive parts of my dick just under the head.

“Oh fuck…” I groaned, unable to contain myself.

“Are you touching yourself, Marcus?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“So am I. I’m so wet for you, Marcus. My fingers are fucking coated in pussy juice. I wish I could feed them to you.”

In my mind’s eye, I saw Ashlee feeding her fingers to Helen instead, before Helen brought her lips to mine. The thought of tasting Ashlee on her mother’s lips... I let out another groan, feeling myself inching closer to the point of no return.

“Then I would take you in my mouth. I would suck you off so well. My lips would be all yours.”

“That feels… I bet that feels amazing,” I said, half to Ashlee teasing me on the phone, half to Helen, bathing my cock with her lips and tongue.

“I would take you in my throat as much as I could. I would choke myself on you. I would let you fuck my throat again and again until I learned to take all of you without gagging.”

A single, low titter escaped from Helen just before she mimicked her daughter’s words and engulfed my cock with her mouth. Her lips plunged halfway down the length, and I felt her tongue mold itself to the underside of my cock as she sucked on it. She pulled her head back, releasing all but the head.

“I’m getting close,” I said through gritted teeth. I reached over my head to grip the back of the couch, needing to hold onto something, but not wanting to interrupt Helen from her work.

“But I haven’t even gotten to the best part,” Ashlee said.

Her mother drove her mouth back down on my cock. She didn’t even slow when she had half of it in her mouth. Her lips continued traveling lower, and I felt the head of my cock meet brief resistance before squeezing into her throat. Helen didn’t stop until she had my entire length inside her mouth, her nose and lips buried in my pugic hair. I felt my hips leave the couch and her hands grasp my ass as she kept my cock within the confines of her throat.

“…where you bend me over this desk and fuck me.” Ashlee moaned and whispered, “My pussy is so warm and wet for-”

“Oh God! Fuck!”

I felt my cock spasm inside Helen, my load spilling down her throat while her daughter cooed encouragement from the phone. I reflexively snatched for Helen’s head and bucked wildly into her face. I would have marveled at the fact that she managed to remain completely quiet while I face-fucked her, but I was too busy trying to not black out from the sheer wave of pleasure that engulfed me.

I’m not sure how much time passed, but eventually, I felt Helen tap my hand. I slowly registered that she wanted me to let go of her, but when I did, she looked up at me with my cock still lodged in her throat. Her eyes were wide, and there was a slight look of desperation on her face. She pointed toward the phone, where Ashlee was now moaning and claiming she was going to cum soon. In a moment of clarity, I hit the mute button. As soon as I did, Helen backed off my dick as if it were a live serpent and collapsed on her back, gurgling and coughing several times as thick fluids spilled out the corners of her mouth, coated her lips, and started leaking from her nostrils. Her eyes were a watery mess that had the beginnings of dark mascara starting to mix with the tears. In tandem with her mother’s coughing fit, Ashlee was in the throes of an orgasm of her own. Her cries were low and soft so she didn’t attract the attention of any of her coworkers.

I simply let my head roll back and stared at the ceiling, letting the sounds of mother and daughter wash over me.

“Oh, Marcus,” Ashlee eventually said over the speakerphone after her cries of pleasure died down.

Helen’s coughing and sputtering immediately went silent, and I unmuted my phone.

“Yeah,” I said, my breathing still heavy.

“I came thinking about you taking me. I can’t wait to have you for real.”

“I…” My eyes found Helen’s. She was still on her back, breathing quietly and staring at me with those ice-blue eyes of hers. Her face was a mess, but the look I saw in her eyes was a woman of strength, unbroken by years of heartbreak, loneliness, and the machinations of high society.

“I’m tempted,” I finally said.

“When can I see you again? I can’t this weekend, but maybe Monday?”

“I’ll call you Monday,” I said.

“I can’t wait,” Ashlee said. We shared a silence for a few moments and then she said, “Thank you for that, Marcus. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Have a good weekend, Ashlee,” I said. The phone went dead as she hung up on the other end.

Helen sputtered another cough as her daughter hung up.

“She almost sounds smitten,” I said.

“She’s not,” Helen replied, her voice raspy. She hadn’t moved from her position on the floor. “She’s just trying to win a prize.

I stared at her in silence, thinking about what we had just done, wondering how Helen could possibly know Ashlee’s motivations. Was it because that’s all I was to Helen? Perhaps less of a prize and more of an escape hatch from her current life?

“I appreciate you, Helen. You’ve taught me a lot in the past week,” I finally said, standing up and securing my pants and belt, “And I appreciate you being candid with me and coming clean about the situation with Roger.”

In my post-nut clarity, part of me wanted to apologize to Roger for letting his wife blow me after I knew he no longer wanted me to. Part of me didn’t because it sounded like he was a complete bastard. Another part of me felt bad for leading Ashlee on in that phone call, and not giving her any clear response to her attempts to pursue me. Then I remembered Erin’s view of Ashlee as an entitled brat, not to mention Helen’s description of her step-daughter’s manipulating ways. I stared down at Helen.

“I don’t know that I want to be part of whatever game your family is playing,” I finally said. “I need time to think. I need you to leave.”

Helen blinked slowly at me once, then nodded. I couldn’t read the expression on her face… especially with the state it was in.

“Seriously, Helen. Thank you. This isn’t goodbye. I just need a little time… maybe talk to Erin about all this.”

She nodded again. We stared at each other in silence for another few moments, and then I turned away from her and simply walked out of the room. I’m sure she appreciated not having an audience while she collected herself.

Friday, 6:12 pm

My phone buzzed, and I almost decided to ignore it, thinking it might be Ashlee again, or worse… Jessica. My ex tried to call me again shortly after Helen left, but after everything else, I couldn’t bring myself to deal with her. I’d even ignored the voicemail she left after.

However, it wasn’t Ashlee or Jessica. It was Natalie.

My stomach twisted in knots as I saw her name on my phone’s display, and I hesitated, wondering if I should just give up on her. This life I was building wasn’t compatible for the kind of relationship I had imagined with her, and I suspected she wouldn’t be interested in joining whatever path I was currently on. In my melancholy state, I was considering doing both of us a favor and moving on.

I answered the phone. “Hey, Nat.”

“Hey, Marcus,” she replied. There was a lot of background noise as if she were in a coffee shop. Still, her voice cut through the din like a ray of sun through a sheet of dark clouds, and despite my sullen mood, I couldn’t help smiling.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m at the airport about to get on a plane.”

“Oh right. The wedding.”

“That’s right, but I wanted to talk to you one more time before I left.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I feel a little weird leaving things the way we have, and I just wanted to check and see if you were okay because I’m not sure if I am.”

I wanted to grin like a maniac. I wanted to shout from the rooftops that she wasn’t okay with our current situation. I wanted to tell her that I had thought about her every day, and that I couldn’t wait to kiss her again.

I wanted to tell her that I was falling in love with her.

And that’s exactly why I couldn’t tell her any of that. How could I love her when I was leading this kind of life? She was already on the edge… wary about all the changes happening in both our lives. She had opened her heart and trusted me, and I didn’t want to break her the way her last boyfriend had. I wasn’t good for her.

I took a deep breath and said, “Natalie, I think it’s best that we don’t pursue anything between us.”

I got nothing but background noise from her end of the line.

“My life is complicated, and there’s been a lot of changes. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I know you’re a little scared. I don’t want to try to start something with you when everything is so up in the air. That’s why I don’t think this is a good idea.”

More background noise, but nothing from Natalie.

“Nat?”

“I heard you.”

“Can you say something?”

“I’m…” She fell silent for several beats. “I’m sad.”

“Yeah,” I said, “So am I.”

“I need to go. I’m boarding soon.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said. “Have-”

The phone went dead as she hung up. “-a good time.”

Fuck.

Friday, 8:00 pm

It was my first Friday night, and I stared at the ceiling. I could barely see it in the darkness as I lay on my bed in my new apartment. I was alone. Natalie was gone. Helen was gone. Erin left to get Chloe situated in her new role and assist in hiring a security team. Now, I had no clue where she was and didn’t want to call her on a Friday night in case she had plans. That left me in this massive place on a Friday night by myself. I guess Vikram was right; in the right circumstances, I really could maintain my privacy.

It was astounding how I could go from a financial analyst squarely stuck in the middle-income bracket to being the wealthiest man in the world. I’d had sex with four gorgeous women this week, had an entire floor as an office, bought an apartment for more than one hundred million dollars, and had just been sucked off by my lawyer while her daughter was on the phone. How was that even possible? I had everything a man could wish for.

However, after what transpired between Helen and me, then with Natalie, being in this house felt empty. I felt empty. I spent so much time processing the changes in my life or getting my dick wet, that this was the first time in a week that I’d had more than a few moments to navel gaze. It was unsettling.

I pulled out my phone and looked through my history. After Natalie, I tried to reach out to a few people to see if they were busy. Emily had replied, but she was busy at an after-party in celebration of getting the part she had auditioned for, and I didn’t have the heart to dampen her mood. Dillon hadn’t returned my text. I tried a couple of other friends, Jonah and Kwan, realizing that I had ignored them all week and had to remind myself that they weren’t at my beck-and-call like Erin. I identified the frustration at not getting answers back when I wanted them; I was getting used to the instant gratification.

“I need to be careful about that,” I muttered.

I thought about calling Bobbi, but I didn’t want to deal with her crap. What I really wanted was to talk to Natalie. I wanted to rewind to the moment before I’d essentially closed the door on us and tell her why. I wanted to explain the money and women and tell her everything. Why did she have to leave for the weekend? Why had I been stupid enough to say what I said?

I just wanted to pass the weekend by sleeping through it. I rolled over and buried my face in my mattress, screaming into it in an attempt to move past whatever melancholy was holding me hostage. I had so many questions:

Why had I inherited all this money?

What unforeseen things should I be worried about?

Why had Colin been poisoned? Who had done it?

Was I in danger of the same fate?

What was next for me?

Should I try to talk to Natalie again when she gets back or take Helen’s advice to heart and not tie myself down to a single woman?

Then there was Helen. What the fuck was I supposed to do about Helen? Was I being too hard on her? Was she in an impossible situation that left her little room? She told me that she was mine, and encouraged me to trust her but purposefully hid things from me and had been actively trying to manipulate me.

However, she had volunteered all that information. Did she get points for that?

And let’s not get started on Ashlee.

And just who the fuck broke into my apartment?

I rolled back over, stared at the ceiling once more, and sighed in frustration. “What am I doing?”

“You’re starting your weekend,” a voice said in the dark.

A light just outside the master bedroom flicked on. I sat up and blinked as my eyes adjusted to the intrusion on my senses, making out the slight, feminine curves of a woman standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the illumination pouring from behind her.

“Erin?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I thought you were gone for the night.”

“I was,” she responded, her hand sliding down the frame of the door and falling to her side as she took a few steps toward me. “But I talked to Helen briefly. It sounded like you had a rough day, so after I was done with Chloe, I picked up a few things and came back here. I had a feeling you might need some company.”

“It’s Friday night. Shouldn’t you be out with friends or something?”

She slowly sauntered toward me. I could barely make out the details of her face, but those hardly mattered. It was what she was wearing that drew my attention - a simple set of lingerie encased in a sheer robe that had no practical purpose because it concealed absolutely nothing. Her ensemble was completed by a pair of high heels that gave her two extra inches of height.

She stopped and stared down at me in silence, her face too obscured by the near darkness for me to read her expression and gain an idea of what she might be thinking. Not really interested in playing games, I simply sat on the bed and silently stared back at her.

Erin finally stretched out and flicked on the bedside lamp, illuminating both of us in soft incandescence. I’d been right about the outfit, but the light revealed the lingerie set was pastel pink, lightly edged in lace, and shimmering in a way that led me to believe the fabric was silk. I’d been mistaken about her wearing underwear. She was wearing a garter belt attached to some stockings, which all matched perfectly with the bra. Her completely shaven mount glistened in the soft lamplight with her juices. Her hair had been kept up in a clip all day, but now it hung loose and draped around her face like a silver curtain. Erin reached for the buttons on my shirt and began undoing them, her big brown eyes watching me.

“No sir,” she said softly, “I don’t have anywhere else to be right now other than doing my job.”

She slipped my shirt off my shoulders and let her perfectly manicured fingernails trail down my chest, falling lower to my abdomen, then continuing south to the buckle of my belt. In a few moments, she had my pants, underwear, and socks completely removed, leaving me sitting on the bed naked.

Erin knelt in front of me and eyed my steel-hard cock then looked back up at me with a mischievous smile. She leaned forward and planted her lips on the underside of my penis, just below the head. A small bead of precum slipped out the tip and stood there, glistening in the lamplight like morning dew.

I suddenly found my breathing shallow and ragged, and all my problems were fading like that same morning dew two hours later.

She pulled away, then proceeded to climb my legs and straddle my lap, placing her hands on either side of my face as we gazed at each other. A slender thumb ran over my cheek as we both breathed our shallow breaths, our exhalations mingling as she drew her face close to mine. Erin had always felt energetic, in control, and exuberant when anything sexual was happening, but this was different. She seemed smaller. Helpless. Delicate. As she looked at me, I saw a petite young woman who was offering her body to me in comfort and companionship.

I felt my shaft graze along the wet folds between her legs, and could feel her hips pivot to align the opening of her pussy with the head of my cock. I’d done a lot of sexual things with Erin, but we hadn’t actually fucked. Was that about to change? She leaned her head forward, nuzzled her cute nose on mine, and then gave me a soft kiss on the lips.

“I know you’ve been through a lot of changes this week,” she whispered, her nose still grazing mine. The look in her eyes contained gentle sympathy. “I know you still have a lot of questions.”

The pang of remembering Natalie resurfaced, but in the light of Erin’s loving gaze, it was blunted. In this moment, Erin felt like the moon, shining brightly enough to make it almost seem like she was the only thing in my night sky.

She lowered herself, her wet folds making contact with the head of my cock; it met resistance and Erin slowly kept up the pressure. I could feel the mushroom head ever-so-slowly engulfed in warm, wet flesh.

“You’re wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. You have power beyond your imagination, and there are so many people who will do anything for you just to have a small piece of that.”

I felt the head of my dick break through whatever resistance there had been and slip fully inside the opening of her pussy. I let out an audible groan, my face inching forward in search of her lips. They grazed, but a kiss didn’t happen. Instead, she stroked the side of my face and continued.

“But remember, Marcus, I will always be here. You bought me. You paid for me, and I’m yours, baby.” The word ‘baby’ caused my cock to lurch and I worked my hips upward, trying to slip more of myself inside her, but she followed my movements, denying me more access to her.

“Look at me, sir,” she said. The juxtaposition between her low-key command and calling me sir was a real turn-on and was a perfect representation of Erin Malik. She was confident, brazen, and energetic, but knew perfectly well when to follow my orders and submit to my desires. She really was the perfect assistant. As I looked up into her big brown eyes, I knew for a one hundred percent certainty she was everything I needed. I felt like I could truly trust her.

“Tell me you understand. Please tell me you understand that you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll always be yours for as long as you’ll have me.” Her request was barely more than a whisper.

“I understand,” I lied. Even though I felt completely safe with her, I was still confused. Was this some sort of profession of love?

Erin closed her eyes and lowered her body onto my lap, and the length of my cock sank into her hot cunt in one single, slow thrust. She gasped and shuddered as I held her small frame in my arms.

“Thank you,” she breathed, and then began to bounce in my lap as she molded her lips on mine for a fierce kiss as my cock began to piston in and out of my gorgeous assistant’s pussy. I could feel her warm breath pass across my face as it became more rapid. Our tongues sought out one another with equally rapid urgency. Her arms wrapped around my neck and her fingers twisted through my hair and gripped it tight. I slipped my hands underneath her bra to palm her firm breasts, kneading it in my hand to remind myself of their firmness. I enjoyed the feeling of the slick inner walls of her pussy clamping down on the length of my cock as it repeatedly invaded her small, tight pussy.

We stayed in that position for a good ten minutes. She writhed in my lap as we pawed at each other's bodies while sharing oxygen. And then Erin threw her head back, arched her body as if she were trying to get away from me, and let out the loudest wail I’d ever heard from a woman while fucking her. The sight of her svelte body covered in a thin sheen of sweat that glistened in the lamplight, arched back as she quaked in my arms pushed me over the edge, and I came deep inside my assistant, coating her insides with jet after jet of my semen. Realizing that we could make as much goddamn noise as we wanted to, I yanked her forward and plastered her body against me as I screamed primal pleasure before sinking my teeth into her shoulder. I fell back on the bed and took her with me, taking on her full one-hundred-and-change weight as we fell into the soft bed of the California King.

The next few minutes passed with us clinging to each other, sweating and panting noisily as we started sentences but were unable to finish them. The third time that happened, Erin fell into a fit of giggles and pulled my head into her modest bosom as she kissed the top of my head.

“Oh god… how did I get so lucky to find this job?”

“Are you kidding me,” I replied, my voice slightly muffled by the fabric of the bra and her damp skin, “Who’s the lucky one here?”

“How about we call it a draw?” she asked into my hair before delivering another series of kisses.

“Sure,” I replied.

A few moments of silence passed.

“Hey. Thanks for this. This is exactly what I needed.” I said and nuzzled her chest. “Natalie’s out of town all weekend,” I said. I felt a little weird bringing up Natalie while I still had my dick buried inside Erin.

“I know,” she replied.

“How…?”

“Just assume I know everything,” she sighed. “It’s easier.”

Challenge accepted. “I said we shouldn’t pursue anything.”

She didn’t respond. I just felt her arms squeeze me a little tighter.

“And then there’s Helen. I don’t know what to do about her. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through the weekend.”

Erin didn’t respond at first, and I started to wonder if I’d said something wrong. Then she gave me another kiss on the top of my head and sat up. "Well, I can’t have my employer distraught over the weekend. Let me see if I can do something about that.” Then she bounded off my lap, my softened prick slipping free from her vagina and exposing it to the cool apartment air.

She reached for something on the floor and when she stood back up, my lingerie-clad assistant had her phone to her ear. A moment later, Erin spoke into the mouthpiece, “Hey Danni! Are you busy this weekend? No? Good.” She looked down at my semi-hard dick and ran the back of a finger up the length of it, causing it to twitch. She smiled at me and winked.

“Why don’t you meet me at the Starlight in an hour, and bring an overnight bag. I have some ideas.”