The Billionaire's Bitch

Fifty-Four

I was confused now.

What Adrian had said stayed with me like an overpowering flavor in the back of my mouth I just couldn't get rid of.

I'd been bracing myself for him to be pushy and now that he wasn't I felt oddly deflated.

It was up to me?

I mean, of course it was, but...

But now I didn't know what to do. I was conflicted. I knew I should just be relieved and move on with my life as planned.

The plan being to harden my defenses against him and resist my devilish boss as best as possible. I had to hang onto the one sweet night that we had shared. He had loved me with his body and it had been tear-jerkingly beautiful, but it was over now.

I was just going to have to make do on the memory of his touch alone, as was he.

That was my final decision.

I just couldn't risk the heartbreak and humiliation of carrying on some ardent affair with my employer whom I already lived with.

I knew how it ended for me, I've read this story a time or two before. Hell, I'd practically written the damn book myself; my novel 'The Big Bad Boss', which would probably never see the light of day, yet suddenly I found myself relating to it more than I ever had before.

So I already knew that I should just leave things right here where they were. I had been the one to choose to end the affair before it even began. If I kept going, if I just gave myself to him as I so keenly wanted to, then it would be up to him when it ended.

And it would be devastating when he put me down.

So I was gonna write myself a new ending, one that hopefully didn't end in complete tragedy, even if it didn't have a happily-ever-after kind of a wrap up, that was just fine with me.

Or so I told myself.

I told myself this over and over, and I would continue to do so as many times as it took until it fully sank in.

Adrian was not mine.

I was not his.

I just worked for him, that's all. He was my employer, my boss, sometimes my worst nightmare, but he was not my lover and he sure as hell was never gonna be my boyfriend.

Which, pathetically, was ultimately what I was going to want from him. I knew myself. I was no casual weekend lover, I needed commitment to feel safe. I needed to know the relationship was actually going somewhere, otherwise what was the point?

I lay in bed later that night, sore and exhausted from the day I'd just had.

As I laid there, alone in the dark, I stared up at the ceiling and tried to quell my base urges by reviewing inserts from the PA journal in my head.

Janus Cooper, May 2009

'On time is late. Do not allow a single thread or hair out of place or he will come down on you like living hellfire.'

Sage advice, Janus.

I had discovered that about him myself, when he had regarded my original wardrobe with such open disdain.

And he had once told me that it bothered him when I had my hair a certain way. He was sensitive to chemicals and he'd claimed that my hair product "singed his nostrils" so I had stopped using my favorite brand of hairspray and my favorite hair smoothing serum, just to be safe. No perfume, either, not with his delicate nose.