Chapter 14: Go Hard

"Indulge in your desire." I said the slogan in a slow, sensual voice and paused wondering if that vixen's tone had come from me. Initially I had put up walls and set boundaries with Flow, but once I got to know him it was a completely different story. He wasn't the superstar playboy I had imagined him to be, the player who when women tossed their pussies at him he caught them with no reservations. He was human, as human as the men who passed me on the street on the way to work. This revelation frightened me, I had never cared about any human who wasn't me and wasn't family before. Since I came to New York there were so many people that I had grown to love, my room mates, including Dom, Stone's miserable ass and then there was Flow.

Fabian Johnson had known my roommates before I did and but they had never been close, but since we got together he had genuinely started to care about them. He asked about JQ all the time and I usually didn't have an update. Roman was going through some emotional stuff after JQ left, he didn't like to talk about it. He had never told me the story about how they met or came become such close friends, but he was obviously having a difficult time during JQ's absence.

Clapping pulled me back to the conference room. I listened as one by one Mr. Braxton, Stone, the rest of the marketing department and some other Kandy Shoppe high-ups critiqued my presentation. They were impressed, I could see it on their faces and that made me proud of myself. I wanted to call my daddy, I wanted to call Fabian, I wanted to call London...I wanted to call Ma.

"What made you think of the design for the bottle, it's rather...provocative."

I smiled, there were two designs for the bottle, one was a naked female, the other was a penis. Stone had laughed until he was red in the face at the second design so the the hour glass shape won. I had worked on the label, it resembled black lace and had silver writing. I had worked out the packaging for the product as well, very easy just a box with the exact design as the label and Kandy Shoppe's logo big and bold in the center.

"I live with a porn star and strippers, it was the most obvious thing."

The boardroom roared with laughter. I looked at Stone, he was all smiles, his blue eyes lighting up, just when I thought this man couldn't do anything but smirk mischievously he learnt to laugh.

Mr. Braxton said, "Stone, I need a sample of this product in full packaging for the event next week."

"Yes sir, how many will you be needing?"

"About a hundred and fifty, and when you come do not leave Ms. James behind." When Mr. Braxton stood the rest of people in the conference room got to their feet. "Also Stone, since Ms. James is going to be here for a while, she will need more space to work with." Like the boss he is, Mr. Braxton strode out of the room and everyone else followed leaving me and Stone alone to clean up after the presentation.

"You impressed Braxton, he is not a man who is easily impressed."

"You were impressed too." I grinned.

"Okay, you got me. Braxton figured putting you in a house with Roman and his group would get you out of your shell. He has a way of reading people." Stone grinned, "We knew we were expecting you and not your cousin. Come on, lunch is on me, unless of course your boyfriend will mind."

I rolled up the printouts of my bottle designs while Stone shut down the projector. "Fabian isn't like that."

"Oh, he's Fabian now?" Stone chuckled, "Go put your things away and meet me in my office."

"Sure." I caught Stone looking at my ass as I stepped out of the conference room. In the month that I'd been in NYC, I went from a size two pants to a size five, I went from one hundred pounds to one ten. I ate three full meals a day and snacked in the middle, and beers are fattening. Dom had also taught me the maternity vitamin trick, so my skin and hair always had a healthy glow. I wasn't gaining any more weight but my ass and breasts were ballooning, I went from an A cup to a 44 B and my behind was getting wider and rounder. Coco and Kitty were convinced that me and Fabian were having sex, as if they were oblivious to how much I was eating. There was just so much food in New York, in Florida I only ate pizza, Wendy's or a home cooked meal on Sundays. I kept up with my salon appointments which meant that my hair and nails were always immaculate and as far as clothes went, Fabian's stylist made sure that I always had a new outfit.

I took one of the seats in front of Stone's desk, he handed me a computer bag with the Kandy Shoppe logo on it. "Macbook, fully loaded with Photoshop and all of the other programs you requested. Mr. Braxton got it as a congratulatory gift when I told him how well you were doing. It's yours, personally. Because you are the only one here with any graphical skills, you get the second corner office, we've already had your computer moved in there, everything else will be moved there once you get back."

"No way! I've been using Skype on my cell phone, it's going to be amazing to finally see my cousin at a more life-like size. Oh my gosh! This is amazing!" I squealed.

Stone chuckled, "Well leave the computer here and let's get lunch."

I followed Stone downstairs to his car, a recent model Audi R8. I got into the passenger seat and buckled my seat belt. I was surprised when we pulled into the parking lot at Aureole, Stone only brought investors here when they were desperate for their business--as desperate as Braxton and Kandy Shoppe could get. The maitre d' led us to our booth, an intimate little spot at the back of the dining room.

"Wow, this is a nice place." I said looking around me at the five star eatery, I've never even eaten in a place like this with Fabian, we usually hung out in his suite or ate at one of the bars he frequented.

A waitress wasted no time handing us menus. We decided to keep it simple and have whatever was on the prix fixe menu today. A three course meal at what I thought was a reasonable price.

"Do you like working at Kandy Shoppe?" Stone asked me.

"I love it. Honestly, working at an adult entertainment company was not something I ever thought I would be doing. At twenty-two I was pretty sure I would be working at a small company in Florida and living with my mother for the rest of my life."

"Sounds like fun." He said sarcastically. "You didn't have any ambition to do better?"

I chuckled, "Where I come from, 'doing better' is finding a man who wants to marry you, popping out a few kids, while working the same nine to five until you die. Even if I moved away and got a job, Kandy Shoppe wasn't where I thought I'd be. I love it because it is so out of the box."

"And what about your roommates?"

"I never thought I'd be living with strippers and a porn star that's for sure."

"They're celebrity strippers and an adult entertainment star, socialites, maybe not on the same level as you are because of your relationship with Flow, but you have to respect their achievements."

"Well, yeah. You know what I mean. But I love them like my family, they've been more like family than my actual family, it's good to know somebody has my back." The waitress came back with our first course. "So, when are you going to tell me about this new assignment Braxton talked about."

"Do you think you're up for it?"

"I don't even know what it is, but I'm feeling like I'm on top of the world right now."

"Every year we release a new line of products. He wants you to be there since you're working on what we're now calling the Desire Project. Basically we'll introduce Desire Massage Oil & Lubricant along with some other Kandy Shoppe project. Pleasure Room is the department of Kandy Shoppe that works with adult products. That's lubricants, massage oils, lingerie, sex toys, condoms..."

"I get it."

"The event usually involves a lot of...how do I say this...?" He rolled his eyes to the ceiling, "Testing and showcasing."

"Meaning?"

"A lot of naked women and men showing off the use of our products."

I dropped the fork, "There's actually going to be people having sex there?"

"Not exactly, actors."

"They're still going to be having sex."

"I guess you're right. Braxton really wants you there, but you don't have to go unless you want to."

"I want to, I signed up for this."

"Cheers." He grinned and took a sip of his water.

Roman had told me that my roommates had lived by the motto: go in and go hard, I was already in this, it was time for me to go hard.