OFTEN (BOOK 1)

One More Night

Minji

The theme of the conference this year was The Next Generation of Marketing Strategy, and as a way to embrace the new generation, the organizers had scheduled a poster session for students getting their degrees. Most students from Hanni's program were here, standing straight and eager beside their poster boards. In fact, presentation at this venue was considered a requirement for Hanni's scholarship, but I had applied for an exception for her given the size and confidential nature of the Papadakis account, her primary project. No other student here was managing a million-dollar deal.

The scholarship board had been happy to grant the exception, practically drooling over the prospect of putting Hanni's success story in their program brochure once the design was completed, signed, and released publicly.

But although she had no presentation at the meeting, she insisted on walking through every aisle and looking at every poster. Given that I was apparently incapable of being more than four fucking feet away from her and didn't have a meeting until ten, I followed her around the entire time, counting posters (576) and staring at her ass (perky, fun to spank, currently wrapped in black wool).

She'd mentioned in the elevator that her best friend, Danielle, provided a majority of the wardrobe I loved/hated. This morning's selection of a fitted pencil skirt and deep blue blouse was now also on my list. I tried a couple of times to convince Hanni that we needed to go back to the room to get something, but she'd only raised an eyebrow and asked, "Get something? Or get some?"

I'd ignored her, but now I wished I'd admitted I needed one more round before conferencing. I wondered if she'd have gone for it.

"Would you have gone back to the room?" I asked into her ear as she carefully read an undergraduate poster on a rebranding idea for some small cellular company. Graphs were taped to the poster board, for crying out loud.

"Shhh."

"Hanni, you're not going to learn anything from this poster. Let's go get a cup of coffee and maybe a blow job in the bathroom."

"Your father told me it was impossible to predict where I'd get my best ideas, and to read everything I could find. Besides, these are my student colleagues."

I waited, toying with a cuff link, but she apparently wasn't going to address the latter part of what I'd said. "My dad doesn't know what he's talking about."

She laughed, appropriately. Dad had been on every top-twenty-five list of CEOs practically since before I was born.

"It doesn't have to be a blow job. I could fuck you against a wall," I whispered, clearing my throat and looking around to be sure no one was near enough to hear. "Or I could lay you down on the floor, spread you wide, and make you come against my tongue."

She shivered, smiled at the student near the next poster, and walked closer to read it. The man held his hand out to me. "Excuse me, but are you Minji Kim?"

I nodded, distracted as I shook his hand, watching Hanni move farther away.

The aisle we were in was practically deserted but for the students standing near the posters. Even they had begun to wander off to more interesting areas of the room, where larger companies—conference sponsors, mostly—had put together shiny, trademark-filled posters in the interest of getting the inaugural student-led session off the ground successfully. Hanni bent and wrote something on her notepad: Rebranding for Jenkins Financial?

I stared at her hand and then up at her face, fixed in a thoughtful expression. The Jenkins Financial account wasn't one of hers. It wasn't even one I handled. It was a small account, occasionally half-ass managed by one of the junior executives. Did she actually know how much it was struggling with the dinosaur marketing campaign we had?