That wasnotthe point. Ignoring the comment, I headed over to the stairs and started for the front door. When Eli started to detour toward the main offices, I stopped. “Go home, Eli.”
He waved off my concern. “I just have a few things to do before I can go. Paperwork stuff, nothing on the blog, I promise.”
Eli seemed genuine, so I nodded. “Alright, but quickly, and then go home. You’ve been working too much.”
“I won’t make extra work for you. Not when you want to please your maybe-master.”
He sucked. “He’s not my anything. Just my roommate who I’m still trying to butter up so I don’t have to move out anytime soon. Big kitchen and bedroom and low rent, remember?” I did not want to move.
Eli laughed. “He’s so into you.”
“He wants a free dinner.” At least, that was all I thought he wanted.
“Go have fun with yourroommate.” Only Eli could make that sound dirty.
Throwing up my middle finger while he nearly giggled in the background, I headed out of the office, pleased that he seemed to be back to his old self. I just needed one full night off with no crazy emergency calls from Eli or Preston about the site.
One night to hang out with Houston and maybe get to know what else he was into besides work and the gym…like bondage, discipline…hobbies like that.
****
Houston met me at the door. “It’s going to have to be against the rules to leave something like that in the kitchen all day. The smell is distracting.”
I just laughed. The funniest part was how serious he was. “I’ll keep that under advisement.”
He huffed and started heading back to his office. “Are you sure I’m going to get lasagna tonight? That’s what you said about the stir fry and the soup.”
“You had the soup.” I was the one who’d gotten the short end of the stick on that one.
He turned, frowning, and if it weren’t for his sheer size and generally dominant personality, I would have said pouted. “But you’d promised biscuits to go with it.”
Trying not to smile, I just nodded. “Everything should be fine at work.”
It had to, or I was going to kill Eli.
Houston snorted and shook his head. “I’ll believe that when I see it. You seem to work for morons who have no boundaries.”
Some days I would have to agree with him. “The major upgrades aren’t going to take much longer. After that, it’s mostly going to be maintenance and reorganizing the site a bit to make traffic flow easier.”
He nodded, but clearly didn’t believe me at all. “I just hope they’re paying you adequately for the additional work you’re being required to do. A little bit of unpaid overtime is one thing, but you’ve gone well beyond that.”
Not exactly, but I wasn’t going to say that when he had that look on his face. And since he wasn’t my Dom it wasn’t lying. Hell, he probably wasn’t anyone’s Dom. “I’m working it out with Preston.”
Well, he’d said to keep track of the overtime and he’d tack it on to my vacation hours. So far, I could probably travel to Australia and spend two weeks exploring the outback and not run out of leave. I just hoped he didn’t come to regret it when I actually used the days.
Before I got to use my PTO, something had to be done about Eli and Roman. They were just miserable.
“Make sure you get any deals in writing, Reece. Verbal contracts are not sufficient when working out delicate matters.” Houston must have thought something sounded off because he kept going after a short pause. “Money matters and things of that nature.”
We’d been talking about finances, so he shouldn’t have felt the need to clarify that. Right?
“He emailed me the details, so I think that should work as a contract. If it were something more…personal, I’d make sure to have a contract written out in person. Sitting down to go over…the details is important.” Sure, we were talking about finance.
Houston gave me a long look, and for a moment, I thought he’d say something. But he finally nodded and changed the subject. Was I reading him wrong? Was I just seeing things because that’s what I wanted to be there?
Probably.
“I’ll be out to help you in just a minute. I need to finish a few things up. There probably isn’t a lot I’m qualified to do, but I can clean.” He was serious, but I just grinned. Yes, he could clean.
