Holly and Her Naughty eReader by Julianne Spencer

it.
    “You’re late,” she said. “I was
just about to tell the agency to send someone else.”
    The receptionist was a beautiful
brunette in a sharp business suit with a Bluetooth behind her ear.
    “No, no. Please don’t,” I said.
“I just had some bad luck out there.”
    “Chill Babe. Lucky for you,
we’re very short-handed today and you’ll get your shot,” the receptionist said.
“How fast is your typing?”
    I remembered from the test at
the temp agency that I could do 110 words per minute.
    “I don’t know, 80 or 90 words a
minute,” I said.
    She sighed heavily, like my
answer pained her. “That will have to do, I guess. Christoph’s assistant is out
sick today and he wants someone taking notes on a conference call.”
    “Christoph? You mean…Christoph
Green?”
    “You know any other Christophs?
Come on. I’ll take you to him. The conference call starts in two minutes.
You’ll be seated at a laptop out of view. Write down every word you hear.”
    “Oh…umm….okay.”
    She led me down a long hallway
to a corner office with huge oak double doors and left me standing in front of
them.
    “Go inside,” she hissed at me.
“He’s waiting.”
    “Yes, okay, here I go.”
    I opened the door to find him
seated at a desk in the center of the room. The corner office was a beautiful,
extravagant place, bigger than my apartment, with a high ceiling. Windows all
around might have given a glorious view of New York, but the shades were drawn,
which was disappointing.
    Christoph turned to look at me
and I forgot any disappointment about the view. He was much better to look at
than the Manhattan skyline.
    Young, yes, he was young, but
behind his eyes was a maturity that belied his years. He stood to welcome me,
and he was the perfect height. A full head above me, but nothing more. Six-two
maybe. He wore a charcoal suit that fit him so perfectly my eyes got lost
following the lines of his body, at the artistry of it all. And his emerald tie
brought out the haunting shade of green in his eyes. I imagined myself buying
fifty more green ties for him so I could view his eyes in fifty shades of
green.
    “Hello. My name is Christoph,”
he said.
    He spoke with such authority,
even when going through the motions of a simple formality like introducing
himself.
    And then we shook hands. Eegads.
I remembered this from my last trip through this book. I think it was even more
exciting on this second go-round. Now, the stream of sexual energy that came
from his touch was charged with memory of where all of this was headed, and I
felt a tiny explosion of pleasure deep inside me.
    Here’s what’s cool about His Golden Shackles . At this point in
the story, Annabelle tells the reader, “I felt like, with him near me, I was
more than another anonymous nobody.”
    What a great line.
    To be somebody, to be noticed —that’s what Annabelle wants from
a man. That’s what I want too. I want to make a connection with a guy in such a
way that when he looks at me, he doesn’t see another pretty place to put his
penis, he sees a partner who makes him better than he is on his own. I want to
be with someone who wants to become something special, not by himself, but
together with me.
    And that’s how LA Jones, the
author of His Golden Shackles ,
created Christoph. Yes, he is a deeply troubled man in need of a woman to
rescue him (aren’t they all?), but what really makes him work is the man he could be when that rescuing is done.
Christoph Green isn’t just another magical billionaire who is unhappy because
he hasn’t found love. He is a good man whose own inner torment makes him behave
like a selfish child.
    Unlike Christian Grey and most
of his imitators in the Kindle store, Christoph Green is not a benevolent
billionaire whose business is a net good for society. Christoph owns strip
mines that destroy the landscape, and factory farms that aren’t terribly nice
to the animals they slaughter. He has stakes in precious metals