For years Clay Phillips has been working nights and weekends to get his start-up off the ground, but when long overdue success begins to turn heads, it attracts the attentions of heavy hitters that Clay is not prepared to contend with. Such a one is Christine Rivers, beautiful CEO of the Rosemont Group, who has come to meet with Clay personally about the prospect of a buyout. What begins as a bit of simple maneuver and professional strong-arming soon becomes much more as the seductive and forceful businesswoman turns to more elaborate means of bringing Clay around to her point of view. Threats, physical dominance, and sexual manipulation will all come into play before she has gotten her way and left Clay bruised and gasping on his office desk, hungry for more.
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She produced another folded sheet of paper and laid it in front of me. "First, you sign this contract, finalizing the sale for the amount I've offered you. It will make you a very rich man."
I managed to shake my head. "This is all happening too fast."
"Too fast?" she repeated. "I thought I had been very generous with my time. I have given you months to withdraw from my markets."
"I can't," I stammered.
She nodded, as though deciding something for herself. "Do you know what it is like when a little startup like yours wanders in and starts trying to underbid companies like mine? It is like a child that insists on sitting at the grown-ups' table. The child refuses to acknowledge objective reality. It only understands one thing."
She pushed the stacks of paper which remained in the center of my desk off to the side. One of them wobbled, tipped, and cascaded to the floor, but she did not notice. "The only thing they understand, Clay, is a firm hand."
She was standing over me, now, and I had shrunk back into the chair. Her sultry, inviting manner had been replaced by the tone of utter authority.
"I can make you regret your stubbornness in any number of ways. I can underbid every contract you receive, headhunt every name you hire, and grind your company into the dirt until every last investor you have is serving you papers. Is that what you want?"
I stared up at her, mute.
"Stand up," she said.
I stayed frozen in place.
"Stand up," she repeated. "You call yourself the owner of this company. You can't even stand and look me in the eye in your own office? You have to cower in your chair?"
Shakily, I complied.
No sooner was I standing than she had put her hand to the small of my back, pushing me over and pinning me down upon my desk.
"I'm going to do something much less permanent than all of that," she said. There was not so much as a single note of strain in her voice as she held me completely helpless against the smooth oak of my desk. "Because I'm beginning to like you, because in a certain way I can admire stubbornness, I'm going to teach you very simply and here, in private, just how out of your depth you are."
I tried to say something, but her hand against my back was compressing my chest against the desk too forcefully to draw full breath. Instead, all that emerged was a whimper.