Bull: A Steamy Billionaire Romance Novel (5 page)

I let the water run so hot that
steam fogged everything from the mirror to the facet handles.  I was grateful
that I couldn’t see my reflection.  I didn’t think I was unattractive, but I
needed a break from thinking about it at all.  I felt my breasts heave up and
down as I sighed.  It was a tiring but exciting day.

Suddenly, the room was filled
with a red light from taillights just outside our tiny window.  It wasn’t big
enough that anyone could see in so we didn’t bother covering it with curtains.

Like waking from a dream, or
perhaps the reverse, I was back in the red room with the bull, and my heart
sank.  How could I lose touch so quickly?  How could I still be thinking of
him? 

This is wrong,
I
thought. 
Poor Jared.  Poor, sweet Jared
.

I was filled with remorse at my
desire for the bull.  Jared deserved a wife who loved only him.  A wife that
didn’t dream of cheating on him.  Of course, he did enjoy watching…No.  That
was a one-time thing, drenched in liquor.

The red light dissipated and I
slipped into the tub, my skin flushing crimson from the heat.  I didn’t mind,
it felt refreshing.  I let my mind float along the edge of the water and back
into the bull’s arms.

I recalled the red glow in his
eyes, the way he charged me, tied me up, and took me.  I reached a hand between
my legs and teased my clit to find more than just water moistening my cunt. 

I remembered being reprimanded
for talking, Jared watching, and being stretched by the bull’s huge cock.  I
circled my fingers around my nub and pulled on my nipples.  They were still
sore from the biting.  I licked my lips to find the wound he left.

Though slow and soft, I brought
myself to orgasm imagining the fast and rough pace of the bull.  Then I dipped
my head below the water and held my breath as long as I could.

---

During the next few days at
work I finally got my shit together.  I was packing regular, healthy lunches
and a bottle of water.  I was coding so fast it made my coworkers’ heads spin. 
I was also working smart so no time was wasted.

And I was being rewarded with
more emails from the CEO.  He was impressed with me, he said.  He was excited
to see what will come of me.  He thought I was incredibly intelligent and a
valuable addition to the team.

The constant attention seemed
unorthodox to me, but it fueled me.  The way he cheered me on only pushed me
harder, until I was getting high off the praise.  High off the success.

We didn’t see much of the CEO
throughout the office.  We didn’t often hear from him, either.  I felt important
since I was getting emails almost every day.  Sasha agreed that he had really
taken to me.

I worked harder and the emails
kept coming. 
Great job
. 
Amazing work
. 
I pleased him.
 
That last one stopped my me in my tracks.

I pleased him.  I never had a
boss speak to me that way before, but then again, I’d never interacted so
personally with a CEO before.  CEO’s could be strange, I guessed.  After all,
with all that stress of running a company, the high from all that money and
success, I’m sure it was all going to his head.

I was a huge success at work. 
I was gaining popularity with each check box our team crossed off.  We were
ahead of schedule, and it was because of me.  Everything was moving swiftly and
I had forgotten all about the bull and the swinger’s party.

Until one Thursday.  It was the
first day since the first email that I received no emails at all.  I
obsessively checked all day and panicked when five o’clock came around and my
inbox was still empty.  Did I disappoint him somehow?  Maybe he was just busy.

Friday came and again,
nothing.  Sasha thought it strange he emailed me every day to begin with.  She
said now things were probably just returning to normal.  CEOs have better
things to do than email programmers all day.  I was lucky for the streak I had.

I knew she was right, but I
couldn’t help feeling let down.  Where did the silence come from suddenly?  My
mind was distant enough from the bull and coming down from my new high that the
world started to seem empty and plain again.  Everything was back to normal. 
Everything was okay.  Nothing was wrong.  Nothing was right.

Jared could tell I was becoming
more apathetic.

“Are you doing alright, Ness?”
he used my nickname.

“I suppose so,” I replied with
a shrug.  “Do you ever think about that night we had at the swinger’s party?”

“Oh man,” he said, “I almost
forgot about it.  It pops up every now and then.”  Typical Jared.  The most
unique night we’ve ever had as a couple and he’s already started to forget it. 
To be fair, I practically forgot about it too. 

Sex with Jared hadn’t changed
much.  He jokingly tried to play the bull one night early on, but we both just
ended up laughing.  I hid my disappointment in him.  Often, when he touched me,
I imagined the bull’s touch instead.  Or recently, I imagined our CEO, Ethan.

I couldn’t remember what Ethan
looked like.  I saw him once or twice when I first started, passing in the
halls, but I was too nervous to look at him too long since I was new.  I
imagined he was strong like the bull, but tender like Jared.

How would Jared feel about me
thinking of someone else?
  I often questioned.  I felt bad about it
at first, but it became so second nature that I stopped thinking of it as
wrong.  It seemed natural to imagine someone else when with my husband.

The entire weekend passed with
me sulking about my lack of praise, but my apathy faded by the end of Sunday. 
Come Monday, I was ready for normal.  Except it was anything but.

I coded through the morning and
almost missed lunch.  I turned to the right of my L-shaped desk and pulled out
my cooler.  I packed a whole wheat sandwich and an apple, a similar take on my
childhood school lunches.

I decided to check my emails
while I ate since I had forgotten about them all day.  I almost choked when I
saw one from Ethan.  I was furious and excited at the same time.

How could he wait so long?
 
Why
email now when I’ve finally moved on?
  Then I remembered he may have just
been busy.  He may have been thinking about me all along.  It read:

Mrs. Banks,

Please create a thorough
analysis of your latest venture to give at next week’s board meeting.  You will
be in charge of presenting it to the board. 

Regards,
E.M. Sloane

I replayed his words in my mind
in a jumble.  I tried to make sense of them but failed miserably time and time
again. 
You will be in charge of presenting it to the board
.  Why me?  I
was just a programmer.  My nerves flared up at the thought of standing in front
of a room full of important figure heads, one of them being Ethan Sloane. 

How could he expect this of
me?  There had to be some mistake.  I rushed to my boss for a second opinion. 
Certainly this was meant for someone from our marketing team instead.  Not me…

5

“It’s very strange indeed,”
said Logan, my immediate boss.  I hated interacting with any of the heads above
me.  I mostly tried to keep to myself and stay out of trouble.

Logan looked me up and down as
if that would lead him to the answer. 

“I don’t know, ‘Ness.  Mr.
Sloane wants what he wants.  It’s obviously addressed to you.”  That’s what I
was afraid of.  It
was
addressed to me.  Now I was going to have to
prepare an analysis of our current project and present it to a group of
strangers.

My boss wished me good luck and
sent me on my way.  I tried to comfort myself with the reminder that I landed
this position in the first place.  Obviously they saw something in me, right? 
You
can do this.
 I cheered myself on, trying to outsmart my nerves.

At home Jared was calm as ever
at the dinner table.  He talked about work as an accountant and despite both
our jobs being information based, I still had no clue what he did half of the
time.  But then again I suppose he felt the same toward me.

He often told jokes about his
coworkers, but I rarely got them.  Still, I learned how to force out a chuckle
at the right time.  What I loved most about Jared was the time we spent
together, not the time apart.  I suppose I had no interest in his life away
from me.

That night I must have been
late on the chuckle or too distant because Jared asked me if everything was
okay.  I wonder if he could see the creases forming in my fingers again.

“What?  Yeah.  Everything is
great.”  I lied.

“I noticed you’ve been a little
off since that party, but it seemed like it was getting better,” he guessed.

I looked at him in the most
apologetic way I could.  It wasn’t the party.  Not now.  It was this damned
project.  The swinger’s party felt so far away from me and I was grateful for
it.

“No.  It’s not the party.  It’s
this thing at work,” I admitted.

“Is everything still going
alright?  You were getting a lot of praise for a while there weren’t you?”  He
had such a damn good memory when it came to my petty work details and I was so
horrible at listening to his.

“Well, now I’m expected to
present an analysis and time line of our project to the board.  Our CEO will be
there too.”

“Honey, that’s great news!  You
have nothing to be nervous over.  You’ll impress the pants off ‘em.”  He tried
to comfort me but he wasn’t very good at it.

“I guess it’s just weird that I
haven’t even seen the CEO before.  I mean not outside of a few glimpses in the
hall shortly after I was hired.”  The words left my mouth but I was caught in
disbelief.  Maybe it was Ethan who was making me nervous.  Was I worried about living
up to his expectations?

“My guess is you’ll be fine,”
smiled Jared.  He reached under the table for one of my sore hands resting in
my lap.  He massaged it like he did the night before the swinger’s party and I
felt myself start to relax.

He continued, “Why don’t I draw
you up a bath and you can soak until you’re ready for sleep?”  He was always so
considerate.  He was always careful with me.

Despite having a long, hot
bath, I couldn’t sleep that night.  I laid in bed tossing and turning, almost drifting
off until I was bolted awake by the thought of my presentation.  It wasn’t for
another week but I was already restless and panicked.  When I finally got some
shut eye I had vivid, terrifying dreams about the bull.

I actually grew grateful of
this project over the next week, if only so it kept my mind off the bull.  I
don’t know why I started dreaming about him or even thinking about him but I
ran as far as I could from my thoughts.  The project actually seemed effortless
compared to my attempts at sleep.

Maybe it was that my sense of
reality was blurred, but I started to actually feel good about this
presentation.  I didn’t need to see Ethan Sloane before sharing one of the
biggest projects of my life.  I didn’t need to have done this before.  I worked
diligently through the next week to flesh out all of the details and prepare
comprehensive notes, and come Wednesday morning I would be ready to impress
every single chair of that board.

The night before the board
meeting I didn’t sleep.  I rode the wave of restlessness and let my nervous
energy carry me into that building the next morning.  I wanted to be quick and
sharp, and I didn’t want to risk being groggy from just waking up.

I marched into the front doors
with a double espresso like I owned the place, and that’s just the part I was
going to play in that meeting.  I walked to my desk one last time and watched
the clock on the wall tick toward 8:00.