Adults only. This is fictional workplace erotica intended for readers 18+. Contains sexual tension, power dynamics, and explicit themes in future installments.
Reminder! This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are products of my imagination or are used in a made-up way. Any likeness to real people, living or dead, or actual events is totally coincidental.
~
Anatolia leaves me a sticky note with the day, time, and place of the funeral.
At the bottom, in small, tidy script, is her personal phone number.
I let the note fall onto my desk.
It is too late for me now, as I have already promised Anatolia I will be her plus-one. Her date. Her shield. Whatever word I need to tell myself to make this task feel less impossible.
I have the board to think about. I have poured no small amount of time into this company: twenty years. I’ve built relationships with clients we once thought were unreachable for a company started by two friends on a night very much like this one. We were torn between choices, between being a money-grubbing company and doing what we chose to do: paying every employee a livable wage, with $60,000 as the starting entry-level salary, and the president’s pay capped at no higher than three times the lowest-paid employee. When it was Arthur and me, those kinds of decisions weren’t difficult to make.
Of course, Richard Veyron will attend his son’s funeral. And Tim Abbot, the president, might catch wind of rumors before the papers do, if the funeral is public. Every hungry set of eyes in that chapel would be waiting to turn my choice to protect Miss Vale into something ugly and selfishly profitable.
A VP walking into Veyron’s son’s funeral with his executive assistant, a woman nearly half his age, on his arm would draw one obvious question.
How long have they been together?
I need to protect her from scandal.
I need to protect my job, too.
Those two things are no longer separate. I have made my decision, and I stand by it, regardless of how tricky this situation may become.
Is she worth it?
I place both hands on the desk and let my head hang, wracking my brain for answers.
Is she worth all this trouble?
The question offends me the second I let it enter.
Anatolia makes all of this—my dull career, the distance growing between coworkers, the endless meetings, the intense pressure paired with tight deadlines, the awful loneliness of waking up every morning inside a life I have outgrown—feel worth surviving.
With aching realization, I clutch a hand to my chest, gripping the fabric tight.
She’s the first person I wake up thinking about and the last person on my mind before I fall asleep.
This crazy, stirring feeling in my chest has no professional explanation. No safe, risk-managed category to neatly file away.
I have chosen her.
I will protect her.
But my decision feels heavy, and I’m uncertain whether it’s reciprocated. What if she doesn’t feel the same way about me? From my position of authority, I know more about Anatolia than I should, by the nature of our jobs. Her schedule. Work habits. Her favorite ink pen. The way she takes her coffee black but her tea with cream. How she rubs her temple when Abbot asks, yet again, for another “quick revision” at five in the afternoon.
She knows almost nothing about me.
Not in the way two people know each other, when they look beyond the surface and see into each other’s most private, shadowed parts. Not the way I know how her eyes fill with tears when she’s overwhelmed with projects. How her left hand falls asleep when she types for too long without taking a break.
She deserves to know who I am, especially if she’s putting her career, her reputation, and possibly her safety in my hands.
I look at her phone number again.
Then at the note.
Then back at the empty chair.
I want to prove to her that I’m human, too. Not just her boss. I understand that her ask was more than a simple favor. And this isn’t an ordinary funeral under ordinary circumstances. What we have between us goes beyond an arrangement between a VP and his assistant.
A gesture.
What a terrible, dangerous word.
Fuck it all to hell.
I search for the nearest florist open this late on a Friday evening. Find one. Rain & Shine Florals. Five minutes away.
My solution.
*
A bell chimes as I push open the heavy wooden door leading into Rain & Shine. The shop smells like damp soil, freshly cut grass, a forest after heavy rain, and something sweet I cannot name. Buckets of flowers crowd the walls. Roses, lilies, carnations, blooms I have no name for. Everything is alive in the way my office never is.
An older woman with long silver hair braided down her back looks up from behind the counter and smiles like she has been expecting me. Her apron is dusted with soil, and her dusty pink gardening gloves look ripe with dew.
The florist. And my savior.
“Hiya, darling,” she says. “Welcome to Rain & Shine. I’m Sally. This shop has been in my family for generations, so if you need anything at all, don’t be shy. We have a little bit of everything, and if you have a special request, I can arrange that too.”
She reminds me of a loving grandmother, the nurturing kind who probably gives the best hugs and makes a wicked cup of tea.
“Sally,” I say, clearing my throat. “My name is Cassian. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Then my confidence gives way as I hesitate.
Anatolia isn’t just my assistant. And she’s not…a mistake.
She can be both my assistant and my heart’s ruin.
“There’s this woman,” I start.
Sally’s brows lift.
“I’m crazy about her,” I admit, and the words leave my mouth before my pride can stop them. “She’s brilliant. She knows the right thing to say when I’m spiraling. She makes my chaotic world quieter. She’s the light to my darkness.”
I hear myself and nearly wince. The sun to my moon is sitting somewhere in the back of my throat, thank God, still unsaid.
Sally puts one hand on her hip.
“Sweetie,” she says, “does she have a name?”
I stammer like a child caught eating too many cookies before dinner.
“Anatolia.”
Sally’s face changes slightly. Softens.
“Anatolia,” she repeats, like she is tasting the shape of it. “That is a beautiful name.”
“It suits her.”
“I imagine it does.”
She turns away, humming a melody only she knows, and begins moving through the shop with purpose.
“If you’d like to wait,” she says, “I’ll gather my babies together, something that will fit the mark.”
“Thank you.”
“Will you be taking them to her tonight?”
The question lands like a fist to the chest.
Fuck it to bits. I should have said no or made up a responsible-sounding excuse for the actual funeral we’re attending.
Instead, I say yes.
Sally only smiles, as if she knows exactly how much trouble I am in.
When she returns, she holds a massive bouquet tied with a shimmering brown ribbon.
Scarlet tulips. Violet saffron crocus blooms. Bright red poppies.
It is warm and bold and impossible to ignore. Elegant without being fragile. Beautiful, but not soft in a way that asks to be rescued. It looks like Anatolia.
I don’t have the right words to thank Sally because the bouquet goes beyond my wildest imaginings. It represents Anatolia’s elegance, her warmth, and the intoxicating beauty she carries around without seeming to understand the damage it does to men like me.
On my way out, Sally hands me a business card. My first instinct is to pull out my phone and text the contact to Anatolia, saving Rain & Shine as a future floral supplier for client gifts. Damn professional reflex—I can’t send her a florist’s contact on her personal number at six o’clock on a Friday evening while holding a not-so-subtle bouquet I have no professional business buying.
I shouldn’t give her the flowers.
No.
It would complicate our dynamic, but it would solidify my romantic intent. Meaning what, exactly? That she would open her door, see me standing there with tulips and poppies, and fall head over heels in love with me?
I pull the car over before I can make another irrational decision while operating a motor vehicle like a dumbass.
Headlights flash by.
Engines roar dangerously close to my door.
The bouquet sits in the passenger seat like evidence.
“What the fuck am I doing?” I say aloud.
Is this crossing a line with us?
With her?
I don’t even have her address. I have never saved it in my phone. I have never looked it up, because I’m not that kind of man.
So, what is my plan? Arrive on her doorstep like some pathetic knight in shining armor because I saw it in a movie?
Unbelievable.
I gently readjust the bouquet against the seat, then reach for my phone to tap the home GPS icon. Please don’t be over an hour in traffic. I repeat the mantra in my head a few times over, for good luck.
Before I can, the screen lights up.
Then vibrates again.
Two texts from Anatolia’s personal number.
Anatolia
hey
what are you doing?
Cassian
you’ll never guess
Anatolia
at home?
Cassian
nope
side of the highway
Anatolia
…
existential crisis?
Cassian
Hey.
Anatolia
I’m right.
Right?
Cassian
…
yes
Anatolia
hey
guess what
Cassian
what?
Anatolia
me too
Cassian
?
Anatolia
8067 Cherry Ave. Unit B
don’t leave me waiting
I stare at her address until the numbers blur.
I put the car in drive.
~
© 2026 Ozanna Wilder. All rights reserved. Fiction intended for adults 18+.
🥰