Page 10 of The Boss (Straight Men #2)

I woke in the middle of the night, my cock throbbing, precum slicking my stomach. I’d thought jerking off before bed would knock me out for the night and give me my seven hours of peace. It didn’t.

Groaning, I rolled onto my stomach, pressing my face into the pillow like that would somehow make a difference. My erection rubbed against the mattress, smearing precum over the sheets, and sending my mind straight into a lustful haze. There’d be no more sleep for me tonight. The ache between my legs wasn’t the kind that just went away, and at this point, ignoring it felt like stubborn self-punishment.

With a grunt, I flipped onto my back, reached down, and got to work.

Chantelle came to mind automatically—her body, her curves, the way she moved beneath me. It had only been three days since she had been gone, but it already seemed like a month. I tried to focus on how she sounded when she moaned, the way her nails raked over my back, the way her breath hitched when I drove into her.

I tightened my grip, jaw locking as I picked up the pace. My mind started wandering, conjuring visions of multiple women, crawling over the bed from all sides, vampire brides ready to feed on my body. Two sucking on each of my nipples, the other two between my legs, sharing the goods. I kept stroking faster, moaning in the dark, feeling my balls tighten.

Then, one of the women between my legs looked up at me, smiling, and— fuck . It wasn’t a woman at all. It was Chris.

“Bet I’d suck you so good you’d forget your own name,” he said.

My whole body locked up. My stomach flipped, nausea and panic hitting at the same time. I jerked my hand away like I’d been burned, but it was too late—I was already cumming, shooting all over my chest. My cock pulsated, my body spasmed, finally finding a temporary relief. And the worst part? The worst part was that, for one brief, terrifying second, my body had responded in a way it hadn’t to anything else all fucking week.

“Jesus Christ.” I scrubbed a hand over my face, dragging in uneven breaths. What the fuck was that?

When I looked at my phone, it showed five a.m. Too early to get up, too late to hope for more sleep. Maybe a session in the gym would help rid me of this goddamned itch. So, I threw back the covers and stalked to the bathroom, naked, cum still cooling on my skin. Turning the water to ice-cold, I stepped under the spray.

* * *

The days dragged on, and my mood only got worse.

I buried myself in meetings, in emails, in troubleshooting a server issue with the IT department, pretending like I wasn’t so fucking on edge that I wanted to break something. Everything irritated me—Alicia’s constant chatter, the never-ending pings of my inbox, the way people knocked on my door with questions they should already know the answers to. I snapped at my team over the smallest mistakes, barked at a junior developer for missing a deadline by a few hours, and by the end of the week, I’d officially become that kind of boss.

Even Chris had started giving me wary looks.

The gym wasn’t much better. Usually, lifting helped clear my head, but now, every time I tried to focus, my attention kept slipping. And it was even worse when Chris trained with me. I tried aiming my workouts early before work, when I thought he wouldn’t be there. But he kept surprising me, appearing when I least expected him to, almost like he tried to synch his schedule to mine. He was just… there. All the fucking time.

I couldn’t flat-out tell him to bugger off. We had finally smoothed things out, and I didn’t want to make it weird again. So, I grinded my teeth and kept working out with him. But every now and then, my gaze caught on him, noticing the way his shirt rode up when he stretched, baring the sharp V of his lower abdomen. The way sweat trickled down his throat and into his collar. The way his shorts clung to his bubble butt.

And that? That was unacceptable.

It fucking pissed me off. It pissed me off because I shouldn’t have been noticing these things. Because my body wasn’t listening. Because, at the end of the day, no matter what I did, no matter how many times I jerked off, it just wasn’t enough.

* * *

The next Monday, the inevitable happened.

Alicia knocked on my office door that afternoon, stepping in hesitantly. “Isaac, do you have a minute?”

I didn’t look up from my monitor. “What is it?”

She faltered. “I was going over the DevOps reports, and I think there’s a discrepancy in the—”

“Alicia.” I cut her off, already exhausted. “I hired you because you’re good at your job. So do your damn job. I don’t need a play-by-play of every minor issue!”

I had no reason to snap at her. She was just being thorough. But my voice came out sharp, clipped, the tension slipping out. Her face barely flickered, but I caught it—the tightness in her jaw, the way her fingers curled at her sides. Then, just as quickly, she smoothed her expression and gave a curt nod. “Understood.”

She turned and left without another word.

I blew out a heavy breath and dropped my head into my hands. Fuck. I wasn’t that kind of boss. Didn’t want to be that kind of boss. I just… I just needed to get my head on straight.

The next knock came harder. The door opened before I could answer and Chris stepped in, gaze sharp. “Okay, what the hell’s up with you?”

I stiffened. “Excuse me?”

Chris crossed his arms. “You’ve been an ass all week, Zac. You’re snappish, you’re scowling, but that?” He jerked his head toward the door. “That was unnecessary. You just chewed out Alicia over nothing. She looked like she was ready to quit.”

“Stay out of it,” I muttered.

“Not until you tell me.” Chris stepped closer, eyes narrowing. “What’s going on?”

Teeth grinding, jaw tight, my fingers pressed into the wood of my desk like I was about to snap it in half. “Chris, I’m not in the mood—”

“Yeah, no shit. But that doesn’t give you the right to take it out on everyone else.”

He was right, and I knew it. But knowing that didn’t help me in the slightest. So I kept glaring at him, hoping he would take the hint and get the hell out of my office. He didn’t back down.

“And quit glowering at me like that. You won’t scare me that easily.”

I rubbed my temples, trying to force the tension out of my skull, regretting the day I asked this brash, impudent brat to work for me in the first place. “I’m just stressed. Chantelle’s been in New York for the past week.”

He blinked. “That’s it?”

“She’s been gone for a week ,” I repeated with added emphasis.

It took him all of two seconds to put it together. His eyebrows lifted, and for a second, he just stared at me. Then he sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “So you need to get laid.”

I let out a humorless laugh. “Thanks for the insight, Freud.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “Go jerk off in the bathroom or something before you make another employee cry.”

I looked away, flexing my jaw. “Already did.”

Chris hesitated. “Well, do it again.”

“Did that too,” I muttered.

He stared at me, incredulous. “And it didn’t help?”

I didn’t meet his eyes. Silence stretched between us. I don’t know why I said what I said next. “Before she left… Chantelle said that if I wanted to… I could do it with someone else. She’s busy all the time and she thinks we should keep things open until the wedding.”

The air in the room changed. When I finally dared to look at him again, he was gaping at me, mouth hanging half-open. My gaze slipped to his lips, pink and glistening, just as he licked them. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Okay, look. I’ll do it for you if you promise to stop being a dick.”

My eyes snapped to his. “ What ?”

He shrugged, completely unfazed, like we were talking about something as casual as grabbing lunch. “You need a tug job? Fine. I’ll handle it. You let me get you off, you stop acting like an asshole. Deal?”

My stomach clenched. My skin went hot, then cold, then hot again. A sharp jolt of something slammed through me, curling tight in my gut. This is a joke. It had to be a joke. Except Chris didn’t look like he was joking. I swallowed hard, hands clenching into fists beneath my desk. “You can’t be serious.”

Chris held my gaze, unflinching, folding his arms. “If that’s what it takes for you to be normal again, then yeah, I’m serious.”

“Chris—”

“ Zac . Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want it.”

I looked him in the eye. And I had every intention to tell him to fuck off. But for some reason, I couldn’t find my voice. My face burned, a sharp, indignant heat crawling up my neck. My pulse roared in my ears. My throat worked, my fingers flexing at my sides. “Go back to work,” I muttered. “We’re not doing this.”

“Suit yourself.” And with that, he turned to leave.

A sharp breath left my lips. “ Wait .”

He paused, his hand already on the door handle.

A heavy beat of silence. Something inside me twisted, fierce and undeniable. The air between us tightened, stretched so taut it felt like it might snap. Then, finally—too desperate, too far gone, too fucking reckless—I let the last of my resistance slip. I swallowed hard, and in a voice that barely sounded like my own, I rasped, “Lock the door.”