Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 124077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 620(@200wpm)___ 496(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 620(@200wpm)___ 496(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Work, she reminded herself. You are here to work. Not do…anything else.
But she couldn’t help remembering how thick his cock had been when she was grinding against him or how good he smelled and how he’d watched her with half-lidded golden eyes…
13
TERRA
After lunch, they returned to the accounts and Terra forced herself to concentrate on numbers rather than Taurex's smile, which was much easier once she started digging through the unpaid invoices again. She found one that was sixty days overdue, then another that had gone nearly ninety, and by three o'clock she had identified almost four hundred and twelve thousand dollars in outstanding receivables.
“Do you realize how much money is sitting out there just waiting for you to collect it?” she demanded, turning her laptop toward him.
Taurex leaned over her shoulder to look at the spreadsheet and she tried to ignore how good he smelled and the way the heat from his big body radiated against her back.
“I do now,” he said simply.
“You need procedures,” she told him. “An accurate way to get what’s owed to you.”
“I have procedures,” he protested.
“No, you have instincts,” she corrected him.
He frowned.
“Well then, my instincts are excellent.”
“I believe you.” Terra glanced pointedly toward the leaning tower of papers beside his desk. “But your filing system is not.”
Taurex straightened, looking mildly offended.
“My filing system is fine.”
Terra gave him a skeptical look.
“Your ‘filing system’ is a paper avalanche waiting to happen. If it fell on us, we’d both be buried for months.”
“I know where everything is,” he rumbled defensively.
“You asked me twenty minutes ago where the shipping permit from Vessara was,” she pointed out.
“Well…I knew it was in this room.”
“That is not the same thing as being able to put your hand on it right away,” Terra said. “You can’t go digging through a mountain of paperwork every time you need an invoice or a shipping manifest.”
Taurex crossed his enormous arms over his chest, stretching the white fabric of his shirt tightly over his shoulders and upper arms. Terra's eyes flicked downward before she could stop them, lingering for a fraction of a second on the impressive width of his chest and the way the rolled sleeves hugged his muscular forearms.
Stop it, she scolded herself. You do not find your new boss attractive. You do NOT.
She dragged her gaze back to his face and pointed toward the piles of paperwork with deliberate authority.
“Tomorrow we're getting you a filing cabinet.”
His eyebrows drew low, and a soft snort escaped him, like a bull looking at a matador’s cape.
“I dislike filing cabinets.”
“What? Why?” Terra asked, exasperated.
“They are ugly. Big, boxy pieces of furniture that serve no purpose other than to house all this ridiculous paperwork you humans insist on.”
“Well, we can get a lot of this online,” Terra told him. “But some places just won’t go digital. Besides, you know what else is ugly? An IRS audit.”
Taurex frowned. “What is an IRS audit?”
Terra slowly lowered the paper in her hand and stared at him.
“Oh, honey.”
His ears twitched.
“What? What is it?”
She sighed.
“You have a lot to learn. But don’t worry–I’ll teach you.”
By the time five o'clock approached, Terra was tired enough that her shoulders ached from sitting hunched over paperwork all day. But it was a completely different kind of exhaustion from the one she'd known at The Doll House.
There, she went home with sore feet and aching muscles and the weary feeling that she'd spent hours smiling at people she didn't like while pretending their hands on her body didn't disgust her.
This exhaustion felt productive. She had spent the entire day solving problems, organizing chaos and using a part of her brain that had been neglected for years, and she loved it.
The office was still far from perfect, but at least now the chaos had categories. The surface of Taurex's massive desk had finally emerged beneath the papers, several boxes had been emptied, the unpaid invoices were organized by age and Terra had drafted reminder notices for the worst offenders. She had also begun a list of questions for Taurex's accountant—assuming he actually had one.
“You do have an accountant, right?” she'd asked earlier, suddenly struck by the possibility that the answer might be no.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
When he gave her the name of the firm, Terra immediately looked them up online and felt a rush of relief when she discovered they were both real and reputable.
Thank God! Apparently Taurex wasn't completely suicidal when it came to Earth paperwork. Still, it was obvious that whoever handled his annual taxes wasn't doing much with the day-to-day bookkeeping, accounts receivable or general organization of the business.
That, apparently, was where Terra came in. And there was still a LOT to do.
She leaned back in her chair and stretched, trying to work the stiffness out of her shoulders. Across the room, Taurex stood near the enormous windows speaking quietly into some kind of communications device that definitely hadn't been manufactured on Earth. Terra pretended not to watch him, though it was difficult not to notice the way the late-afternoon sunlight outlined his huge body and made the tips of his horns glow faintly.