Discovering The Devil, By Silver Jade

Ashlyn Reed was her second brain; her second wind. Clever would lick her lips at the sight of Ashlyn’s peanut butter skin tone and would often wonder if the twenty-four-year-old’s flesh tasted like peanuts or butter. She was sure that she would never to get a chance at that task.

Clever “The Clever Devil” Braveheart was CEO of a company that she started in her dorm room, which grew to pull in billions in revenue. Her assistant, Ashlyn, was priceless however. To be so menacing in the boardroom, the masculine, no-nonsense, control-freak Clever would completely turns to mush after work hours for her assistant. When constantly trying to block out the could-be passion between the two, she becomes sexually flustered to the point when forcing her own orgasms is a must.

Almost at a breaking point, she is on edge of want and to confess her wildest fantasies and deepest secrets, just to let Ashlyn know how she feels about her. There’s only one problem.

It’s not the frequent business trips out of state, or the many times of being alone that stands in Clever’s way. Ashlyn has a boyfriend.

TAKE A PEEK INSIDE!
CHAPTER ONE

 

CLEVER BRAVEHEART

 

They were all waiting for me to say something. Anything. Were they idiots? I had been running my company for fifteen years and had never experienced so much nonchalant chatter about how the same company I started in my dorm room was bound to see a twenty-five percent decrease. I took my eyes from the cherry wood table, over to my assistant at the door. Her natural, short curly hair was the same as it had been for the last six years. She was busy jotting something on the clipboard that was propped against the inside of her arm. Knowing her, it was notes from this fucked up meeting. Ashlyn was my second brain; my second wind. She was also my third hand. Most times, she was all my hands.

I licked my lips at the sight of her peanut butter skin tone just beneath her sloping top that she failed to pull up after such a long day. I often wondered her if twenty-four-year-old flesh tasted like peanuts or butter, but I was sure that I would never to get a chance at that task.

“Move to strike,” I mumbled. Within the dead silence, I knew that every person— all twelve of them— could hear what I had said. “There is a hundred and seventy million dollars in the budget for marketing. I want our cosmetics and lingerie on every social media outlet, inside every magazine for beauty and home, and I want billboards. It’s your job to figure out how to get it done. So… get it done and let it be that.”

“Ms. Braveheart?” a young woman said with her piercing green eyes on me through her specs. “What of the lingerie department?”

“Valentine’s day is vastly approaching. Have sales for what we didn’t sell last quarter. I will chop heads if what was said in here today comes to fruition. Ashlyn?”

On cue, as always, she spoke before she even so much as looked up. Such a good girl. “Edible Arrangements’ partnership was in question during the last meeting. Nothing was discussed of that, and the window is closing very shortly for any proposal.”

I then took my eyes to Chris Hodges. He was head of marketing, even though the gossip around the building was that he would rather take his Audi that the company paid for, for a spin to strip clubs and $2 whore strolls, than to actually do his job. He was a thirty-five-year-old Princeton grad who I would’ve loved to strangle because of his lack of work as of late.

He rubbed his cinnamon colored temple and opened his mouth for a word or two.

However, Ashlyn, knowing the ropes and everyone’s mannerisms, cut him short before he could anger me. “The deadline is a week from now, which also crosses over into the deadline for Dove Chocolates. In speaking of deadlines, the new design of bras for mastectomy patients, or cancer survivors, is due in two weeks. The previous designs were a hit with many of the women who wanted to feel beautiful, and according to our surveys, they absolutely loved the silk fabric at an affordable rate. Designers, there’s a tip for you. Lastly, 1-800-Flowers have accepted our terms and bargains for à la cart orders online. Would there be anything else?”

I loved how she could also be my voice when I needed one. Nine years before she had gotten here, my assistants were deathly afraid of me. I had to pay for one poor woman’s doctor’s bills. She had developed ulcers before training a vixen that screamed sex. It was the hardest six years of my life with that one, because she was making my flesh crawl with her overly animated sense of touch and whispers. That particular woman ended up needing hair replacement because she had begun to lose her hair once the company started to merge with others to bring our market better offers. Just after she had put in her two-week’s resignation, enters a fresh eighteen-year-old with eyes like a fawn and so much optimism that I was afraid to have her work for me. Even if the work was as bad, Ashlyn didn’t show it. I guess what they said was true about the third time being a charm. She was at my every beckon and call. Ashlyn would always arrive at the office at 730AM with a bright smile on her face, and had everything so organized that even I couldn’t forget.

With her being a fresh college student, I worried that she would fail me somehow, yet she never did. When she found the time to study and cover my ass all the same, I didn’t know. While everyone else spoke and gave the remaining presentations, I had become saddened. It was three weeks before the new year, leaving Ashlyn at the company for only seven months after that. I wasn’t quite sure if she had gotten a job offer from someone else, but I remembered her save-the-date for her graduation ceremony on the first week of June. To be near someone for six years, then have them to leave would pull a grey cloud over anyone’s head. Especially mine.

I was the devil of the industry with my attention to detail, my focus, and my knack for what women wanted. Being surrounded by so much beauty shouldn’t have made me sad at all. Yet, there was a flipside to any situation.

In college, I was focused as hell to make something of myself for my mother’s sake. She was a woman who had been nothing but spat upon. It made it worse to know that her only daughter was a lesbian who had come out of the closet at age thirteen. The people at the church would cut their eyes at her when she tried to worship, but she remained faithful to her congregation. It angered me when she was stricken with breast cancer and no one came to visit. She was the only reason that I borrowed bras from the girls in my dorm who only wanted my flesh, but I would remake them for a better suit to make them feel more beautiful. More feminine. Once I struck the exact model that I had been searching for after my mother’s mastectomy, I presented it to her and witnessed the streams of tears against her cheeks from happiness. It made the sweetest woman I knew the most happy. It made her feel beautiful again.

With that came her friends from her support groups asking for more of what I made for my mother, with matching panties. I dug deeper to find out what else could make them happy. It was the lingerie for women like them. The extra gifts like lotions, flowers, chocolates, bath accessories. That little group of women had become spokes people for my movement and eventually turned what I started doing only for them into a billion-dollar company. My mergers made me richer, though my intent was simply pure.

Now sitting at my desk, my second mother though she was only my receptionist, Mary, rang my intercom. “Clever. Joseph Stein is here to see you.”

I sat up in my chair and tugged at my dark red vest, took off my specs and clasped my fingers together on my desktop. He was a partner when it came to the bedding department. His genius idea of heated and vibrating beddings placed him in the same place as me, even though he was my senior by twenty years.

The two tall wooden doors of my office came open, and the tall, fat white man came through with a smile on his face and his cheeks shiny and red. “Well, if it isn’t the Clever Devil herself,” he greeted me.

I stood and opened my arms for him.

As he embraced me, the phone on my desk rang. He knew there was no way that I was getting that thing while he was there.

“So, how’s business, Clever?” he asked as he took a seat on the other side. “Mary, up front, told me that you almost went red in the face in your meeting.”

“You know I’m not about to discuss incompetence. How are you and the wife?”

“We’re fine, actually. I’m only here on business, but I had to break away to get to see my Clever up close for a moment. Loraine wants to invite you to the Hamptons for her holiday party. You can’t tell her no. She’s a spoiled bitch who will ride my ass. You know that she thinks you’re a melancholic who always needs sunshine and air.”

He was absolutely right. Or, I should’ve given all the credit to his spoiled wife who was the same age as me. Had it not been for Loraine, I highly doubted that he would’ve accepted my proposal twelve years ago. She and I graduated from Atlanta State together. Her degree in business wouldn’t mean shit though. Joseph was her sugar daddy until he realized he didn’t want his luscious piece of chocolate to go to another man with watery jaws. Now, she was a housewife who spent money and balanced his accounts. Every chance she got, she wanted to pull me out of my heavenly space that I made for myself in Atlanta. I might as well had given up the ghost before she started with the phone calls and emails, practically guilt-tripping me to make an appearance in New York.

“Are you seeing anyone?” Joseph asked me.

I lowly chuckled as I sat and steepled my fingers. “What on earth would give you that impression?”

“You’re a fucking Black billionaire, living in the African American mecca for gays, Clever. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be seeing someone. Before you think that my questions are for me, you should know that I don’t give a damn. These are coming straight from Loraine. She has a friend or something, but I’m not pushing you into all of that hoopla. She does have a point though, Clever. You should get out there before you become stale. You’re thirty-five with no love interest. People are going to start thinking that you’re a self-sexual.”

Bursting into laughter, I slammed my hand down onto my desk. “What’s so wrong with being that, Joe? At least then I don’t have a leash around my neck.”

“When’s the last time you had some a—”

The door silently crept open with Ashlyn speeding toward my desk. Her eyes were on her clipboard, and in her other hand was a massive glass vase full of white carnations.

“Beautiful,” Joseph commented.

She stopped dead in her tracks with an expression across her face that told me that she wasn’t in her right mind. Ashlyn never interrupted my visits. Immediately, she sat the vase on the large, freshly polished coffee table in the social area of my massive office space. Then, she flipped through pages on her clipboard.

“I didn’t make an appointment,” Joseph assured her. “It was a last-minute thing.”

“Oh,” she giggled, relaxing a bit. “Well, in that case, how are you and the missus, Mr. Stein?”

“We’re fine, Ashlyn. Say, how about you come up to the Hamptons for a holiday shindig? It’ll be plenty of drinks and food—”

“Oh, thank you for the offer, Mr. Stein, but—”

“Come now. The sap whose job you’re taking will be there. I want to see the look on his face when I introduce you.”

“Excuse me?” I questioned.

Joseph turned in his seat and smiled at me. “You didn’t know? Ashlyn is coming over as my Marketing Director. When my HR told me, I was thrilled. If she’s one hell of an assistant, I know that she would be one monster as my MD.”

My brows pressed tightly together as I took my eyes over to Ashlyn, who looked like she was frightened and didn’t want to speak out of fear.

“Holy hell, Clever. You didn’t know. I’m sorry. I thought she shared the wonderful news. At least, I thought it was wonderful.”

“In my defense,” she finally spoke, “I only thought it would be best to stick around familiar faces while I get my feet wet.”

I couldn’t reply. A piece of me cracked a little more. First it was her resignation and the thought of having to get used to someone else. Now, it was the fact that she was going over to a partner instead of staying home, where she belonged.

“I have other things to do, so I’ll leave you two to your conversations.”

“Ashlyn,” I strongly called her. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes.”

I reached underneath my desk for a wrapped box and thick orange envelope filled with cash that the top-floor employees stuffed. “Forgetting something?”

She rapidly blinked, trying to figure out the correlation.

“It’s three o’clock. You usually take your mom her gift during lunch and take the rest of the day off. Are you sure you’re okay?”

She snapped her fingers. “Right!” she sang. “I’m so sorry. I will take it after work.” She then hustled over to the side of my desk to grab her mother’s gift from my hand, and scurried out of the office.

I couldn’t help but get a peek at her backside in her tight pencil skirt on her way out of the doors. If only she knew the things that I thought of her. Her switching hips and backside forced me to clench my jaw to help rid my thoughts of groping her one good time. What troubled me in the midst of imagining her turning away just to wink at me was that I knew something was going on with her.

“Honestly, I’m sorry about that,” Joseph said after the door closed.

“No, it’s fine. She’s busted her ass to get through college. I can’t hold her back when it’s time for her to spread her wings and fly.”

“She’s your wife, Clever.”

I blinked multiple times before I could respond. “What?”

“CEOs are only as good as our assistants. They’re our work wives. They help to take care of the company while we make the money. It’s just the way it is. I don’t want you to think that I’m stealing your wife away from you. I mean, I would be vexed if I found out that my Marline was helping out some other fat fuck who made just as much money as I did. There wouldn’t be a way to compete and I wouldn’t be able to shame him just to get her back.”

“But she won’t be your assistant,” I recovered. “She’s going to be inside your boardroom, Joe. It’s completely different.”

“I guess you’re right. I should get out of here so I can help Loraine spend more money. I only thank God that I have kids already who are grown, and that she doesn’t want children. I would be broken in half financially.”

“It’s always a pleasure for you to stop by.”

We rose. I shook Joseph’s hand before he headed for the doors. He turned to me and said, “Don’t you forget about the Hamptons. Loraine throws a fit, and that’s all our asses in the oven, Clever.”

“I won’t,” I chuckled, stuffing my hands inside my pockets.

Then, I sighed. I would be headed to my $2.5 million home on Chambord Drive, only speaking to the only housekeeper I had. She and I would exchange pleasantries on her way out when I was coming in, because all of her duties were done, including sitting out dinner by the time I made it in. To be a fucking billionaire, my life was pretty boring.


  ***END OF SAMPLE!***
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