Dominated By a Billionaire

chapter 1

It's not like never thought I'd get rich with a Master's degree in studio painting. But I thought I could maybe move to L.A., get a cute little apartment in Silver Lake or wherever, and spend my days working in the art department on indie films. So after I graduated from Benson College, this tiny school in sleepy Iowa, drove off to the west coast in my Toyota Tercel. As I sped through the unending green flatness of Iowa, I dreamed of the loft apartment, the exciting work, and the fashionably skinny boyfriend that were all certain to be mine a few weeks after I arrived in the City of Angels.

That kind of idiotic optimism, dear reader, is how you end up working delivery for a pizza parlor at age 28.

In reality, I couldn't get a cool job on an indie movie set. I live in a cockroach-infested, closet-sized apartment in downtown, where it's terrifying to walk around after sunset. I deliver pizza for a living. My boss is an ex-drug dealer named Ansel who punches the fridge whenever a customer complains on the phone. And, as it turns out, it's not quite so cute to be underemployed and barely making rent when you're almost thirty, so in terms of the fashionably skinny boyfriend, nope, nada, nothing. I've managed to have a few brusque hookups with Mikey, a stammering Communications major at USC that I met on Tinder. Mikey tries his best, but he's so timid and obsequious that I can't come, even when he goes down on me. After he's finished and gone to sleep, I roll over and get myself off, then promise myself I'll never come back. Then, a few weeks later, I come back.

This unending chain of disappointments went on unbroken for so long that I forgot life could be good, that lucky coincidences could happen, that dreams might come true, and that I could, in fact, have an orgasm during sex and not just after it. I had forgotten all of these things until the day I met Oliver Clarke.

*

It was around 11 a.m., a Tuesday in early March. It was my day off, so I had taken the opportunity to have a little me time. I'd had a long, warm bath, had shaved my legs (not because anyone was going to see them, but because I own a pair of supersoft sweatpants, which feel amazing on smooth skin) and was lying in bed, scrolling through the internet on my phone, wondering when life was going to get better. I thought I should do something fun, but I couldn't summon the energy. I'll be honest-I was missing Iowa right about then. I'd had this professor, who-yeah-we'd had a thing, but older men, they're not timid. They see what they want, and they take it from you, not like poor fumbling Mikey. One time, Professor Sterling had taken me out to a quiet balcony on campus, while a class gallery showing was happening below. I could hear soft jazz, pretentious murmurs, and clinking champagne flutes. Sterling pulled my dress up from behind and leaned forward. I remember the scent of his aftershave, the soap on his skin, faint scent of the day's sweat. The stubble on his skin scratched my neck as he growled softly in my ear, "I'm going to fuck you, right now."

Sitting in bed, I let out a soft moan, reached down and began to touch myself, softly, thinking of the matter-of-fact way that Sterling had pulled my underwear down, that night, the way his breath quickened and trembled slightly in anticipation, the way I whispered back to him, begging him to-

DING. DING. DINGALY-DING.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

DING. DING. DINGALY-DING. In bed, I picked up my phone. It was Ansel calling.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. I was so close. I answered the phone.

"Aubrey!" he said. "Aubrey, I need you right now. I've got a huge delivery, ASAP. 30 pies. We need to get these pizzas out to Clarke & Thompson skyscraper on Fifth, right away."

"Ansel, my one day off," I said.

"I'll give you fifty bucks," he said. "This is a big corporate lunch. My car broke down."

Dammit.

"Seventy-five," I said.

And that's how I found myself in an elevator, going up fifty floors in one of those massive skyscrapers near Grand Ave and 5th Street, carrying two huge stacks of pizza, wearing the pair of jeans I wore yesterday. I didn't even have time to put underwear on.