My Billionaire Boss Dared Me to Say No, So I Locked the Door novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Mr. Wrobel

By day Ingmar is ice; under his desk, during a board call, Bartek takes the dare to the end, and a key card to Astor Street follows.

"My flatmate," Bartek said. "About the rent."

Ingmar looked at the phone in his hand for a long moment.

Then he looked at Bartek's face, and whatever he found there, he did not say.

"Go home, Wrobel," he said, and bent to pick the laptop up off the carpet. "Monday. Eight sharp. Wear the same trousers."

"Sir," Bartek said.

"And Wrobel."

"Yes?" Bartek said.

"Don't answer that at my desk."

He said it mildly, and Bartek left the floor with his tie in his pocket and his knees not quite his own.

On Monday at eight, Ingmar Ekeberg did not look up from his screen.

"You're a minute late," he said.

"The elevator."

"The elevator is a machine. It does not have a mother. Your coffee."

Bartek set it on the desk.

Ingmar took one sip and set it down so precisely that the cup did not make a sound.

"It's wrong."

"It's the same as Friday."

"Then Friday was wrong, and nobody told you." He turned a page. "Again."

Bartek carried the cup out past the glass wall, where two analysts were pretending not to watch.

One of them mouthed, Four, and held up fingers.

Four returns before ten a.m. was the record.

He had spent his weekend on Zosia's couch, eating her sister's leftover cabbage rolls.

He had wondered whether he had made the biggest mistake of his life or merely the second biggest.

Now the man who had held him down on that desk asked for the Joliet lease in a voice with no give in it.

"The Joliet lease. Page nine. You have misplaced a comma."

"It was in the original."

"Then the original was wrong." Ingmar did not look at him. "Fix it."

Bartek fixed it.

He stood at the corner of the desk with the tablet and looked at the back of Ingmar's neck above the white collar.

He thought about the exact place under the jaw where the pulse had jumped against his mouth on Friday.

His face went hot.

Ingmar's eyes flicked up to his, and for one half of a second there was something in them that was not cold at all.

Then it was gone, and he said, "The board call is at ten-thirty. You will be present."

"Present where?"

"Here," Ingmar said.

"There's a chair by the window."

"There is," Ingmar said. "You won't need it."

At ten-thirty the screen on the wall lit with a grid of faces.

The chief operating officer was in the middle, a gray, tired man with a lanyard, and four board members sat in boxes on either side.

Bartek stood against the wall with his notebook.

"Good morning," Ingmar said. "The Joliet lease."

He sat behind the walnut desk with his hands folded on the blotter.

Nothing in his face had changed from the face Bartek had seen on Thursday.

Then he took one hand off the blotter, out of sight of the camera, and crooked a single finger toward the floor.

Bartek stared at him.

The finger crooked again.

It was a question, and it was also a dare.

Bartek put down his notebook.

He walked around the end of the desk with his heart going hard in his ears.

The camera could not see him, because the desk had a solid modesty panel and the screen sat above it.

He got down on his knees on the carpet.

He crawled in under the walnut and sat between Ingmar's knees.

It was warm in the dark there, and it smelled of wool and soap and the faint cedar of Ingmar's skin.

"Our rate for the Joliet space is eleven dollars a foot," Ingmar was saying, level and bored. "The landlord has asked for fourteen."

Bartek put both hands on his thighs.

The muscle under the trousers went tight.

"Mr. Ekeberg," said a board member, a woman with a pearl necklace, "is your new assistant not present today?"

"He is fetching coffee," Ingmar said.

Bartek bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood, because if he laughed he would die.

He undid the belt, very quietly, and the zipper after it.

Ingmar was already hard.

He was hard and flushed and thick in Bartek's hand, and the head of him was wet.

Ingmar's thigh moved against his shoulder in warning, or maybe in thanks.

Bartek leaned forward and took him into his mouth.

Over his head, Ingmar's voice did not change.

"I am not prepared to go above twelve. The building has no loading dock on the east side."

Bartek sucked, slow and deep, with his tongue flat, and Ingmar's hand came down under the desk and settled in his hair.

The grip was gentle.

It was the gentlest thing about the whole morning, and it wrecked him.

He took him deeper, as deep as he could, and swallowed around the head, and the hand in his hair tightened.

"Mr. Ekeberg," said the chief operating officer. "Are you with us?"

"Entirely."

"You sounded somewhere else," the chief operating officer said.

"I was considering the loading dock."

Bartek's shoulders shook with silent laughter, and he felt the cock in his mouth pulse in response.

Ingmar's fingers tugged his hair once, sharp.

Behave, the tug said.

Bartek did not behave.

He drew his mouth up the shaft with a long wet pull.

He flicked his tongue under the crown, and then took him all the way down again.

Above the desk, Ingmar coughed into his fist.

"Forgive me. Dry air."

"What is the Joliet cap, then?" the woman with the pearls asked.

"Twelve," Ingmar said. "Twelve and a half. I need a, I need a moment."

"Take your moment."

"The figure stands."

His thighs were shaking against Bartek's shoulders.

His hand in Bartek's hair was nearly bruising now, and it was the loveliest thing Bartek had ever felt.

This was the grip of a man who ran a company of nine thousand people, and he was losing hold of himself.

Bartek hollowed his cheeks and sucked.

"Approved," Ingmar said, in a voice scraped raw. "The Joliet lease is approved. We are, we are adjourned."

"We have not discussed the Milwaukee tender."

"Then discuss it without me. Wrobel will send you the notes."

He came.

It was hot and heavy on Bartek's tongue, and he swallowed every drop.

He kept his mouth on him through the shaking, easing him through it, licking him clean.

Ingmar's hand slid from his hair to his cheek.

It stayed there, a broad palm cupping his jaw, and the thumb moved once across his lower lip.

On the screen overhead, the faces went dark one by one.

Ingmar let out a very long, very careful breath.

"You may come out now."

Bartek crawled out from under the desk.

His knees were stiff and his mouth was wet and his own cock was straining at his trousers.

Bartek stood up, wiping his lip with the back of his hand.

Ingmar sat in his leather chair, flushed from the collar to the hairline, and looked at him with stunned, dark eyes.

"You," Ingmar said, "are a menace."

"You told me to be present."

"I told you to be present, not to be," Ingmar stopped. A corner of his mouth went up. "Come here."

Bartek went.

Ingmar took Bartek's tie, a plain gray one he had bought on Saturday after the blue one went missing.

He used it to draw him in until their faces were an inch apart.

"You will go to the men's room on this floor," Ingmar said quietly, "and you will take care of that. And you will not think of me while you do it."

"That's an impossible order."

"I know."

He let go of the tie.

Bartek went to the men's room and locked himself in the last stall.

He thought about Ingmar the whole time, and it took less than a minute.

At six that evening Bartek came back with the day's last report.

Ingmar was at the window with his back to the room and a black card between two fingers.

"Wrobel."

"Sir," Bartek said.

"Come here."

Bartek crossed the carpet.

Ingmar held out the card without turning.

It was plain, black plastic, with no name on it, only a chip and a number.

"What is this?"

"A key," Ingmar said. "Astor Street. Number forty-one. The bell is not connected, so you will not ring it."

Bartek took it.

It was warm from his hand.

"Nine o'clock," Ingmar said. "Do not be late, and do not bring a coffee."

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