50 Shades of Drake 5 and 6

Chapter Seventy-Three

    "Don't panic," he said, pressing a kiss to her thigh. "They can be trusted."

    "I have everything on there," she whispered. "The Palmer stuff. Everything."

    "They can be trusted," he repeated. "But I backed up those files onto an external drive and wiped them from your computer before taking it in."

    She stared hard at him. "Why did they need my laptop? And where is my laptop now?"

    "Still at the office, in their possession. But they needed it so they could work on this..." He twisted to face the desk and pulled up an internet browser, where he typed in an unfamiliar website address.

    "What is this?" she asked him.

    "If you agree to it, this is the beginning of a three-tier plan for you to take the media world by storm," he explained. "First, digital news and the blogging world. From there to print. And from print to television, or wherever you want to go."

    "This is a website that you had built for me."

    "It's still in the process of being built."

    She leaned forward and ran her fingers down the monitor. "Your web design team is very good," she commented, feeling some of her anger disappear into thin air.

    "I didn't know what you would want to call it...they scoured your website looking for any kind of hints to that, but couldn't find much of any. When I realized that I was going to step in, whether you wanted me to or not, I also realized that you were thinking small."

    She turned and looked at him.

    "With the arts school programs that I was so serious on, I was thinking big. I thought that if I couldn't fund the entire program, I couldn't fund any of it. You showed me that I could start small and expand. Right now, you're having the opposite problem. You're thinking too small, too narrow, when you should be thinking bigger. You are truly talented. With your gift, there are many great things that you could do. This is going to sound like bullshit, or like flattery or whatever, but...I really believe that you have the power to shift the whole culture. Turn journalism upside down and bring it back to what it should be. Rather than see you cater to some douchebag editor, I would rather see you achieve the great things that you are meant to do."

    She shook her head, at a loss for words. "I don't even know what to say to you," she said softly. "I love you and I love that you have so much faith in me...but you're handing me this amazing opportunity, and that's not what I wanted."

    "Right, I get that," he said, taking a hold of her hand. "You want to earn it. You want to work for it."

    "Yes, I do," she said emphatically.

    "Well...it goes without saying that there are ways for you to earn it and work for it," he said, his voice dropping down lower.

    "That's not how I meant, and you know it," she said, but her heart was already skipping beats at his innuendo.

    He grinned devilishly, which didn't help matters much.

    Her eyes landed on the monitor again. "I wouldn't know where to begin with a website."

    "Take some time and think on it," he encouraged. "But once you're up and running, and you've got articles posted, I plan on spreading the word on your site. It will be promoted across all Grahams Enterprises channels. You'll interview me, of course, as your first guest. We can talk about the new music I'm working on. Then there are the acts on my label, and the artists I've collaborated with..."

    "Celebrity journalism isn't really what I was aiming for," she said, hating how doubtful she sounded.

    "It's not just about celebrity journalism or hip hop," he told her. "You can write about whatever you want. This is an online publication and you control it. The print version, you will control that too. We already have magazines in publication, but this would be something separate. Entertainers are eager to promote their projects, but whenever they go with a lot of these mainstream journalists, they get burned because of the angles that interviewers are taking these days, just to get a little bit of publicity. If they went with you, they know they'd be getting a fair interview. That is the angle we go with, and you'll have to turn people away, rather than sit by the window waiting for interested parties to approach you."

    It was all too overwhelming for her to even think of. That morning, she'd woken up thinking that she was going to be an office barista. Switching from that mentality to Aubrey's excited "take over the media world" mentality was taking quite a bit of effort. She could barely keep up with him.

    "Do you hate me?"

    Her brows drew together at the question, asked in such a hushed voice, that he sounded like a ten-year old boy, rather than the man in his early thirties that kneeled beside her. "I'm starting to think I could never hate you."

    "I'm sorry that I went against what you asked me. I really am."

    "I should've known better than to think that you would really just stand by and do nothing," she said, more to herself than to him.

    "That is what I should have done, to respect what you wanted." He stood up and bent at the waist to kiss the top of her head.

    With a sigh, she closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair. "So, I have an unexpected day off."

    "You do."

    "I'll...spend some time with Carlos, and think about where I would begin with this...online publication thing that you've set up for me."

    "Sounds like plan. I'm going to head into the office. When the team finishes the website, I'll let you know. They're also working on a tutorial video, to show you how to upload the stories to the website. It might take a few days for them to get all of it worked out, but I should have your laptop back today or tomorrow."

    "Okay."

    "When you think of what you would want to call the website, can you let me know? The website we're looking at now is just a demo, but in order to get the domain locked down, I need to know what you'd call it. Text it to me?"

    Do I even know where my phone is? I look at it so rarely these days. But like an obedient little submissive, she nodded. "I will."

    He tilted her chin up and kissed her. "I'm going to hop into the shower. Before I do, though...you're sure you don't hate me?"

    She laughed. "I don't hate you."

    "You're not going to, like...stab me in my sleep or some shit?"

    "No. Actually...I appreciate that you believe in me this much. I'm appalled that you went off on the editor, but he was a jerk. He did deserve it. And...maybe you're right. Maybe I was thinking too small."

    He smiled, kissed her again, then walked around the desk, tugging up his boxer briefs.

    "You have such a cute ass, Sir," she called out to him just as he reached the door.

    Before leaving the office, he flashed a wink and a smile at her over his shoulder.