Mine to Keep

Anastasia

I wake up with a start, my mahogany hair tumbling over my face and a shrill ringing, blaring offensively in my ears.

Groaning, I lift a hand to shut down the offensive alarm clock but even as my hand hits the button, the ringing doesn’t stop, instead, it is accompanied by a buzzing sound, rocketing it to another level of maddening.

Raising my head, I glare at the object of my disdain with disgust before my attention shifts to the phone beside it on the quaint table still shrilling loudly in the darkness.

I hit the button grudgingly, and press the phone to my ear, my thoughts in a heated jumble.

“What!”

“Good morning to you too, Anastasia,” came the lazy drawl, “is that any way to speak to your boss?”

Jake fucking Keaton!

I’m tempted to hang up the call and drift back to my blissful sleep. But because I am shamelessly in love with money and Jake Keaton just happens to have a whole load of it, I sigh and sit up begrudgingly.

Christ, the bastard!

“It’s –” my eyes shifts to the alarm clock on the table, “it’s not even six am yet.”

“I know,” he remarks, “I have a clock, works perfectly last I checked,” I can almost see the stupid smirk that is no doubt spreading out on his stupid face, “Come do your thing.”

“My wha – what do you—ughhh!” I grit my teeth together so hard I’m sure he can hear the gnashing sounds, “It’s not even six am yet.” The last word is stressed so much that it comes out like a little whine.

“Ten minutes, Anastasia. That’s how much time I’m giving you,” my boss declares, “ten minutes to get here. Beat it.”

He hangs up.

Ughh! The arrogant motherfucker!

I yell as I throw the covers away from my body and spring up from the bed.

I hate this man, lord, I hate him. Who wakes an employee by 5:52 in the morning? My work time doesn’t start till seven am and I know the jerk knows it because he typed out my appointment letter himself.

I brush my teeth and throw on a sweater over my pajama trousers because ten minutes is not enough time to get ready for work and if working with Jake Keaton for six months has taught me anything, it is that you absolutely cannot go against his words.

How many times have I heard the infamous, ‘my word is law’ over the past six months?

So instead I shove a pencil skirt, black heels and a white blouse into a duffel bag and wrap my hair in a loose bun while shoving my socked feet into a pair or running sneakers.

On my way out, my roommate pokes her head from her room, sizing me up. She is in an oversized T-shirt and her boyfriend, Richie, is peeking behind her, a goofy grin spread out on his face and his morning erection still very much evident.

Eeww, obvious much?

I glare at her to stop her from saying what I know she is about to say but knowing Ree, I know she is going to say it anyway.

She yawns. “You’ve got to quit this job Anna.”

I flip her off, “Just go to sleep, Ree.”

Stretching my legs to peer behind her I give Richie the middle finger too. “Don’t y’all have some sucking to do?”

He looks down on his dick and I see his face flush a bright red.

You guessed it - I am so not a morning person.

Although Ree is my best friend she cannot begin to understand that working with Jake Keaton, as infuriating and soul wrenching as it is, is probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Financially, that is.

It’s extremely hard these days to find a well paying job as a financial analyst but working for Jake as his assistant although is inevitably sure to make my days on earth shorter than intended, also fills up my account to an immeasurable height.

And it’s not like I am a self-sabotaging masochist either. I’ve taken this particular advice from Ree in the past on many of those impossible situations when the strain on my mental health became too much working with Jake Keaton and I’ll straight out tell him that I intend to quit, which by the way is something all twenty of his former assistants did before even getting to a month working with him but because Jake Keaton is the egoistical multi-millionaire that he is and for some reason unknown to me, rather than accepting my resignation, he offers to increase my income, making it too impressionable to resist.

And when you have someone depending on you for survival, you need every single penny you can get.

Throwing the duffel bag in the passenger seat of my car, I slide in the driver’s seat and hit the gas.

The drive to my boss’ house is not a short one but one advantage of driving before sunrise is that there are no other drivers trying to drag the lane with you and you can finally use your ‘I’m a great driver’ skills without anyone judging you, so with just two minutes left of the ten–minute window given to me, I drive as fast as I can, not stopping for a second till I get to the tall sprawling mansion that is Jake Keaton’s home.

The house is huge, too huge for one man with columns that seems to be holding up the ego of the owner and a décor that is a mix of ‘I have too much money’ and ‘I have absolutely no taste’.

I always thought of it as something straight out of a Real Housewives episode.

I don’t have the time to park the car properly as I turn off the gas and walk up to the front door, letting myself in without ringing the stupid doorbell or knocking on the brass door with just a few seconds left.

I know where to find him so I don’t bother looking in any of the numerous rooms and instead I take the stairs, two at a time, my breath coming out in short pants as I round up the corner and slam the door to the master bedroom open.

There he is.

Tall, dark, muscular, a glass of whiskey in his hand, a smug smile on his face –

And stark naked.