Wulf lounged behind his desk and scanned through email on his phone, scrolling quickly with his thumb.
His office door was ajar, and it creaked open.
Wulf’s thighs tightened, ready to leap. Sneaking up on him was a singularly bad idea.
Georgiana sidled in the open door and pressed it closed behind her.
Georgiana was a bright girl with a blazing independent streak, and she now reminded him of his sister, but that was odd because olive-skinned and brunette Georgiana in no way resembled honey-blond Flicka. Georgiana was still wearing jeans that clung to her slim hips and a tight Golden Devil tee shirt over her athletic body, so she hadn’t dressed for tonight yet.
Georgiana asked, “Sir? Can we talk for a sec?”
“Of course.” Wulf thumb-clicked his email closed and laid his phone screen-down on his desk. If she was submitting her resignation, losing two contractors in the same week would be difficult to manage. Sonya’s retirement had produced a hole in the schedule that his office manager was scrambling to fill.
Georgiana fidgeted by twisting one toe of her sandal into the carpeting, an unusual gesture for her. Wulf had seen her fidget three times in the past few years. Once was after their first date, and the other two times were when she had problem clients and needed help dealing with them.
Georgiana said, “You’ve got two girls in love with you.”
Not a problem client then, which was the predicament Wulf had been hoping for. He sat back in his chair and tapped his desk once. “I never tried to lead you on.”
Georgiana looked up at him, and the serious gaze of her brown eyes caught his attention. “I’m not one of them.”
“Then I don’t discuss personal matters. Thank you for your concern.”
“You don’t have to talk. You just have to listen, but you do really need to listen to me.”
She wasn’t fidgeting anymore, and she had leaned forward as if her next statement might be a shout. Her distress alarmed him. “Please sit down. Please continue.”
Georgiana sat in the chair on the left in front of his desk, and she braced herself with her arms on her knees. “Lizzy took the let-down after your date really hard.”
His innate sense of privacy would not allow him to gossip in return. “I see.”
“She thinks she’s in love with you. She wants to sit naked at your feet and be your slave girl.”
He should have been able to predict that. Failure rankled him. “Go on.”
“She’s on her way here now to confess it all to you and beg you to take her on as your sub. I don’t know what you want to do about that, but I thought that you shouldn’t be caught unaware.”
Wulf slowed his breathing and his heart rate. It wouldn’t do for Georgiana to see him react badly to that news because he would not want to embarrass Lizbeth. He had thought that he had been forthright with Lizbeth about the nature of their evening, but evidently, he hadn’t.
Georgiana said, “She’s really fragile right now. She had a break-up a little while ago over the Devilhouse, when the guy found out what she did for money, and she’s really hurting. She just wants acceptance.”
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’ll handle the matter.”
“Be careful with her.”
“I will. I never meant to hurt her.” To Wulf’s consternation, he had not meant to be so forthcoming. America must be influencing him.
Georgiana said, “Some girls can’t handle The Boyfriend Experience.”
“Understood.” Wulf touched his phone, a nonchalant gesture that suggested he might pick it up, even though crawling over the desk to obtain the next piece of information was uppermost in his thoughts. “And the other girl is?”
“Rae.”
Despite his practiced suppression of adrenaline, Wulf’s heart jumped in his chest. “Reagan?”
“This morning, Lizzy was telling Rae and me about how she felt about you, and I thought I was going to have to take Rae’s coffee away from her before she crushed the cup.”
She paused.
Georgiana paused just when Wulf’s heart was blocking his throat and he could not draw air into his lungs.
He said, “Go on.”
“Rae told Lizzy to tell you how she felt, and then Rae ran back to her own room, and we could hear her crying. Those dorm walls are about as thick as construction paper.”
“She was crying?” Wulf’s voice rose, and he swallowed hard to modulate his reaction. Rumors had started on less.
Georgiana said, “Sobbing her heart out, and you haven’t even taken her on an official Dom-Date.”
“That’s correct.” He picked up his phone. The corner of it oscillated in time with his pounding heartbeat. When she had stripped his shirt off him last week and seen the grotesque on his back, her pitiless anger when she had demanded whether they had shot the bastard had allowed him to retain his dignity, a small mercy. Her righteous outrage at injustice had been a wondrous sight to behold.
“Maybe those private Domme lessons are getting to her, but she really fell apart.”
Those lessons were certainly getting to him. “I see. Thank you for bringing both of these to my attention.”
Lizbeth was not in love with Wulf. She was in thrall to The Dom, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wulf at best and a shell company at worst. Lizbeth wanted to be a sub, not to love him. He had no pity for himself, only for her.
An option presented itself to Wulf, one that would solve both the problem of Lizbeth and mitigate a problem client of Lena’s. It would have to be done carefully, gently, on both sides, but it might work.
Wulf stood as Georgiana took her leave of his office, and then he picked up his cell phone and slid his thumb over the numbers, dialing.
He ignored the exultation swelling in his chest and mind.