He was insane. “Fine. When we do the full line, we’ll reshoot those.”
“No, it needs to be now. I need to post about it, and I want those photos for tomorrow. It has to be tonight.”
“You're insane. I’m not reshooting those photos because you don’t think they look red enough. You have plenty of pictures from that shoot already, pick one of those. You’re half-naked and harder than a porn star in almost all of them, so it doesn’t matter what you put up!” So I was probably crossing the line with that one, but I really didn’t care.
“Your job is to take the goddamned photos I tell you to. A trained monkey could do it! Don’t make me explain that to Preston. I’ll be at the studio in half an hour and your judgmental ass better be there.” Then the brat hung up.
“Of all the—” Too angry to even finish my sentence, I started grabbing my clothes.
If he wanted pictures, I was going to give him pictures, but if he thought he could hold his fucking relationship with Preston over my head when he was shaking that hard cock at everyone who scrolled through the site, he was crazy.
I’d just about had all I could take of that little brat.
Chapter 6
Eli
“Okay, got to finish the paper because that’s due tomorrow, post to the blog, look at the reports that Preston sent over, oh, pay the electricity bill—they really should have made me sign up for automatic payments—and there was something else.” Tossing my keys and phone onto the couch, hoping that I’d remember later where I’d put my keys, I headed into the kitchen. “Caffeine and then I’ll write down the list.”
And possibly figure out what I was missing…
My to-do list was never-ending. Preston kept harping on me to get some kind of app for my phone to keep it all straight, but actually having a way to remember it all might give me a heart attack. As it was, the parts that I did manage to keep track of were enough to make me want to shove it all out the window and go get drunk.
I kept telling myself I was too responsible for that—and most days I was.
Sometimes it all just got to be too much, and it exploded in my head. I was trying to keep it from happening, but everything felt out of control and overwhelming. As I headed into the kitchen, I grabbed a notepad on the dining room table to start writing things down on.
Maybe an app would have been more practical, but there weren’t many things in my life that made me feel relaxed. When I found something that was calming, like writing things down or spankings, I tended to hold on to them like a crazy person.
Digging around in a junk drawer for a pen, I finally managed to find a pink unicorn pen that was a gag gift for my birthday. I tossed it and the paper on the kitchen table and started making coffee. The little pod things were fun, but it was a serious caffeine day, so I went for the regular coffeemaker.
Friends had complained that I had too many kitchen gadgets and little machines, but that was just ridiculous. You could never have too many coffeemakers. When the smell started weaving its way through the kitchen, I grabbed my biggest mug and doctored it up.
Taking it over to the table, I sat down and started brainstorming. The list was endless. Between household things and work and everything else, it was ridiculous. I needed a secretary or a houseboy.
“Wait. If I’m the sub, then I think I’m supposed to be the houseboy. Shit, that won’t work.” Well, that blew all my plans out of the water. No Dom for me if I was supposed to do all the housework and keep track of everything.
Taking a sip of my coffee, I had to smile. “Maybe I’m a Dom in disguise. A Dom that likes to be spanked and get fucked.”
As I wrote out the never-ending list, I kept telling myself it was one step at a time and I’d get everything done. Preston kept saying that I needed to at least hire someone a few hours a week to help manage everything, but that seemed like cheating. I wasn’t running the day-to-day operations of the business.
Finally getting it all written down and refilling my cup, I stood up and stretched. It was only late afternoon, but I could already feel a headache pushing at the base of my skull, and I was tired. Some of that was my own fault for going out to dinner with friends the night before, but I wasn’t old enough for one late night to completely run me over.
My habit of burning the candle at both ends wasn’t helping, but the naughty voice in the back of my head said we knew exactly why I was so worn out. It’d been entirely too long since I’d had sex or a scene. Just a spanking to take the edge off would help.
I wasn’t exactly looking for something lifestyle. Being at some master’s beck and call would make me nuts, and not in a good way. But I wanted something more intense than a random spanking once in a while. Men who were looking for more intense BDSM relationships wanted sweet, and someone who would at least try to behave.
I couldn’t promise that—not without lying.
I’d spent too much time figuring out who I was and what I needed to be happy to try to fit into someone else’s idea of what submission should look like. I was a proud brat, and I wasn’t going to change that.
Even if it would make it easier to find someone to date.
Heading back out to the living room, I paused long enough to grab my phone and go into my office. It was a beautiful mess. While I’d done my best to keep the rest of the house looking reasonable and put together, my office was like my bedroom—all me.
A relaxing gray color was painted on the walls, and spread out over two different desks were the crazy disjointed pieces of my life. In one part of my overgrown office, there were notes about blog posts, financial printouts, photos, and even a pair of panties that I was still trying to decide if I liked the color. In the other were charts and graphs for a paper I was writing for my MBA program and all kinds of other notes about classes I still needed to take and upcoming projects.
I was so close to finishing I could almost taste it, but with the end in sight, I wasn’t sure what would happen afterward. With family obligations wearing down on me and the freedom that school had given me slowly disappearing, I was starting to look at a second masters or even doctorate program, just to keep everything else at bay.
