Filthy Headlines by Cassie Mint

Five

Sasha

Grant Keller is… not the monster everyone thinks. The knowledge is a queasy thing, sitting low and heavy in my stomach, as I spend more and more time with the reclusive billionaire.

First, there’s the security alarm—installed in my apartment one day while I’m at work.

Then there’s the box of designer sneakers left on my desk one morning with a note. It’s Grant’s messy scrawl—as if it could be from anyone else around here—and it says: For your walk home.

I sit for almost an hour, staring at those sneakers. Fiddling with the laces, my chest squeezing tight. And when I try them on after a full day of heels… it’s like walking on a cloud.

But it’s the elevator incident that really kills me. We’re bundled in the glass and chrome space together one afternoon, riding up to the top floor after another meeting in the city. And we’re chatting about nothing, flicking through our pages of notes, when the electric light overhead flickers before winking out.

The elevator hushes, slowing to a halt, and all around us is the tick tick tick of cooling metal and the ragged sound of my breaths.

“It’s alright.”

Grant looks paler than usual, but his voice is steady. Calm. He guides me back away from the window, until my shoulder blades hit the opposite wall and his fingers wrap around my bare forearm. His touch is warm and dry, sending nerves sparking under my skin, and my breath leaves me in a whoosh.

“Hello? Yes. The thirty-eighth floor.” He talks to maintenance with the same calm voice, and all the while his thumb sweeps back and forth over my wrist. Back and forth.

“Grant.” Even my whisper sounds strangled. He crowds closer, his shoulders blocking out the window completely as he keeps talking into the metal grate, and his heat washes over my front.

“Keep us updated, please. Yes. Thank you.”

As soon as he’s done talking to maintenance, Grant turns the full force of his attention on me. His chin dips, his pale gray eyes raking over my trembling lip, my ashen skin, my heaving chest.

“Wow.” His voice is light, teasing, but there’s an undercurrent of strain. “You really do hate heights.”

“I do now.”

His laugh rumbles through the small space as I yank him closer, burying my face in his chest. And okay—it’s easier to forget we’re in a tiny metal coffin hundreds of feet in the air when his cedar and spice cologne tickles my nose. When his arms wrap around me, crushing me tighter against the hard planes of his chest; when his pounding heart thumps beside my cheek.

“If I’d known this would be your response, I’d have sabotaged the elevator myself weeks ago.” Grant’s fingers play with stray tendrils of my hair, and what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

I know what I want to do.

I want to push up onto my toes and bury my hands in his dark hair.

I want to trace a circle around his voice box with my tongue.

I want to feel the hard length of him—the one currently pressed against my stomach—against other, more sensitive parts of me.

But I can’t do any of that, so I settle for muttering, “Liar.” He’s teasing, anyway. He’d never trick someone into this.

Because Grant Keller isn’t the asshole everyone thinks he is.

So it’s a relief in more ways than one when, six minutes later, the elevator hums back to life. We untangle ourselves slowly, stepping away with forced smiles, and when the doors slide open, we race to our separate desks without looking back.

Of course, those sneakers are waiting for me, lined up neatly on the rug. So I collapse into my desk chair, bury my face in my hands, and groan.

What the hell am I doing here?

* * *

It would be bad enough if Grant were my boss. My real boss, with my career in the palm of his hand. But the reality is somehow even worse—because it’s not Grant who starts calling me every day, his clipped, impatient tones in my ear.

It’s Simon.

“What do you have for me, Sasha?”

At least he’s learned my name. I guess that happens when you’re a big disappointment.

“Nothing. I—nothing, sir.” I bite my lip, leaning over my desk to check Grant’s office door is closed. It’s a risk for Simon to call me here. His patience must be coming to an end. “Mr Keller is bored of this project. He’s putting out feelers for his next enterprise.”

But none of that is news. It’s a clear pattern for Grant—one the press has already analyzed in a hundred op-eds.

Simon’s sigh rattles down the handset.

“I could have told you that, Sasha. What on earth have you been doing there for the last two months?”

Writing fluff pieces about the city’s business scene. Spinning articles out of the people I meet with Grant; the conversations I overhear.

Nothing that will impress my boss.

I squirm in my chair. There is one thing I could mention—one thing I’ve never read about Grant in the papers. His panicked sprints on the treadmill in his office, and those head shots in his folders, with names scrawled in black marker.

It means something. I know it does.

But those things are too personal, somehow. Handing them over to Simon—it feels like the worst kind of betrayal. So I swallow hard, and drum my nails on the desk.

“I’ll find something, sir. I promise.”

“See that you do.”

Somethingwalks through the elevator doors two hours later, and my stomach sinks. This is it. My in.

The woman has short, brown hair curled up in a bouffant, and a chunky necklace rattles against her chest as she strolls to my desk. I recognize Tina Belsham from an old security pass in my desk drawer—she’s Grant’s last assistant. The one who wrote that scathing review.

She has the face of a person who would do that. Like she’s been dipped in vinegar.

“Hello.” My face feels rubbery as I force a smile. “May I help you?”

In the end, it’s way too easy to make polite conversation. To hand over the paperwork she’s come to collect, and slip her Simon’s business card at the same time. Tina Belsham’s eyes light up, her penciled eyebrows twitching up her forehead, and she looks at me again with fresh interest.

She knows. She knows I’m a reporter. That I’m here undercover, lying to Grant.

I want to crawl under the desk and curl up in a ball.

Afterward, as the elevator hums back down to the ground floor and I’m left sitting alone at my desk, my stomach rolls so much I think I might throw up. This is my job. It’s the whole reason I’m here.

So why do I feel like crying?

* * *

The article comes out two days later. I know the exact moment Grant sees it: he curses loudly, the sound echoing down the corridor, and then comes the telltale thump thump thump of his treadmill.

I time him—he stays on there for nearly an hour, pounding away with angry strides. And I bring up Simon’s article on my computer, one eyed screwed shut as I read.

It’s… not so bad. It’s balanced, at least—Simon is a good reporter, not some tabloid idiot. He relays the woman’s complaints, but he’s quick to show her bitterness too. I’m relieved to see he’s unearthed the reason she was fired and included it in his write-up, and if anything, Grant comes off quite well. As firm but fair—not a bad boss at all.

It could have been so much worse.

My legs shake as I push to my feet.

His office is quiet when I nudge the door open. The sound of his shower floats through the closed door to the en suite, and papers are strewn across his desk. The article glows on his computer screen, and I wander over. Close the tab.

The photo of me is still pinned to his monitor.

“You saw it? The article?” Grant steps out of his en suite a minute later. He’s dressed in a clean black suit and sage green shirt. His jaw is hard as he tugs his sleeves straight.

“Yes. Grant… it’s not that bad. They actually paint you in a favorable light—”

His head twitches to the side, like he’s shaking off my words. And when he strides over to the desk, his steps are jerky with anger.

“The goddamn Courier… the press are vultures, Sasha.” I turn to leave, but he catches my wrist. His eyes burn into me, his face so close. There is barely any space between us. “Don’t worry about working here, alright? I’ll protect you from them. I’ll never let this shit happen to you, I promise.”

The room tilts to one side as I nod.

Grant’s thumb sweeps over my cheekbone. This close, I can smell his shampoo. The soap from his shower. His hand cups the side of my face, and god, I’ve spent so many hours staring at his hands.

They’re big. Strong. With long fingers and squared knuckles, and intriguing calluses on his palms. I’ve laid in my bed so many nights already, imagining how those calluses would feel dragging along my bare stomach; I’ve imagined him grabbing fistfuls of my blouse and tearing the buttons open.

“Grant.”

I sound choked. Way more worked up than he is, with his shadowed eyes and smooth face.

“Is this okay?”

His murmur vibrates down to my bone marrow. My chin jerks in a nod.

He exhales hard, spreads one palm over my hip, ducks his head, and seals his mouth to mine.

The kiss stops the breath in my lungs. It lights up every nerve ending in my body; it sends heat surging through my limbs like wildfire. I sway up on my toes, gripping Grant’s shirt with both hands, and moan into his mouth, my hips pushing against his.

I want him. I want his taste and his heat; I want the crackle of anger still simmering under his forced calm. I want to wring the same desperate noises from him that he coaxes from me, and more than anything, I want his strong body driving into mine.

“Fuck. Sasha.” Grant plunges his hands into my hair, pulling my bun loose. Waves cascade down my back, and his groan curls my toes—but that’s nothing to the desperate want that surges through me when he takes a handful of that hair and tugs my head back.

I blink up at him, lips parted.

He scowls down at me, pale eyes molten.

Our breaths are ragged, mixing in the air between us. Then, as quickly as it started, it’s over. Grant drops his hold on me, stepping back, and his face shutters before he turns to look out of the window.

“I shouldn’t have done that. It was inappropriate.” He glances at me, sprawled over his desk with flushed cheeks, and his voice drops lower. “Forgive me, Sasha.”

My nod is clumsy. But trying to gather my limbs, trying to make my body work again—that’s the real disaster. Picking my way back across his office in my heels, I’m more like a baby deer learning to walk than a real human being.

“It won’t happen again.” Grant’s quiet promise behind me burns in my chest. I don’t turn back to look at him. I can’t.

His door closes with a snap.