Raine - An Office Romance (Gods Of The Fifth Floor Book 2) Read online

  Raine

  Gods Of The Fifth Floor 2

  MV Ellis

  Raine

  Raine

  Gods Of The Fifth Floor 2

  Published by MV Ellis

  Digital Edition

  Raine © 2020 By MV Ellis

  First published June 2020

  ISBN: TBC

  All rights reserved. ©

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  No part of this ebook may be used or reproduced in any written, electronic, recorded, or photocopied format without the express permission from the author as allowed under the terms and conditions with which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law.

  Any unauthorized distribution, circulation or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Thank you for respecting the work of this author

  “You will never be free until you free yourself from the prison of your own false thoughts.”

  ~Philip Arnold

  For Carol.

  You finally got your broken, blond-haired, blue-eyed bad boy.

  I hope you love him as much as I do.

  Follow Me

  Thank you for purchasing Raine - Gods Of the Fifth Floor 2, I hope you enjoy it.

  If you are interested in getting to know me better, as well as accessing sneak peeks of my work, freebies, and giveaways, you can sign up for my newsletter HERE.

  You can also access additional exclusive content via my reader group on Facebook HERE.

  Last but not least, you can poke around my website HERE

  If you can’t be good, be kickass, and if you can’t be kickass, be badass.

  xMV

  Raine Playlist

  Check out my playlists on Spotify search MV ELLIS

  Find the Raine playlist on Spotify

  San Holo - The Future (with James Vincent McMorrow) - Live Session

  Billie Eilish - Ocean Eyes - Astronomyy Remix

  BASECAMP - Ghostown

  Major Myjah - Cry

  JP Cooper - Bits and Pieces

  PVRIS - You And I - Stripped

  Odessa - I Will Be There

  Duvchi - What's Up

  Sheppard - Somebody Like You

  Alaina Castillo - just a boy

  Chelsea Cutler - Deathbed

  Robinson - Watching You

  Sam Smith - To Die For

  Lennon Stella - Golf On TV feat. JP Saxe

  Madison Beer - Selfish

  The Weeknd - After Hours

  Grimes - You'll miss me when I'm not around

  Claud - My Body

  Emalia - 2am Habit

  Emma Jensen - Closer

  Jacob Banks - Chainsmoking

  Ashley DuBose - Intoxicated

  Chord Overstreet - Hold On

  Camila Cabello - Consequences

  A R I Z O N A - I Was Wrong - Acoustic

  * * *

  Find this playlist on Spotify

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Nate - Gods Of The Fifth Floor 3

  More Books By MV Ellis

  Thank You & Follow me

  Acknowledgments

  ABOUT MV ELLIS

  Prologue

  Nate

  * * *

  Now

  * * *

  Blood. There was blood every-motherfucking-where. In fact, I was going to go out on a limb and say I’d never seen so much blood in one place, in my entire life. That was saying something, as, growing up the way I had, I’d seen some shit. However, I’d never been in open surgery, or watched someone bleed out, nor had I been inside an abattoir on slaughter day. Those were really the only places I figured I’d see more blood.

  As it was, one of my best friends in the world had collapsed mid-presentation, and was bleeding from every orifice. It was, without a doubt, the most horrific thing I’d ever seen. Not that shooting and stabbings were fun, nor was getting pulverized in the ring, but in all of those situations, it was at least pretty easy to see what to do to stem the tide—where to apply pressure to make a difference.

  When someone was bleeding profusely from their mouth and nose—maybe even their eyes, for God’s sake—it was impossible to know what to do, except for what we were doing, Beck, Dillon, and me, Raine’s best friends, and that was stay with him and do our best to comfort him while we waited for the first responders.

  We were crouched on the ground, not giving even the slightest fuck that our slick designer suits—tens of thousands of dollars-worth between the three of us—were being ruined. Not giving a fuck that we were in a very public, very professional situation. Not giving a fuck about anyone, or anything, other than our friend. Everything else was less than irrelevant.

  Someone had gotten him into the recovery position. He was breathing—but with great difficulty, as he choked on the gallons of his own blood that were pouring out of him—and conscious, but again, it was hard to tell for how long, if the fucking EMTs didn’t hurry the fuck up and get there.

  Beck and Dillon each had one of his hands in theirs—Dillon from behind him, Beck from in front—while I focused on speaking to him, saying whatever I could think of to reassure him, although I didn’t believe much of it myself. How could I? It was hard to imagine that for someone in his condition, the situation was going to end well. I pushed the thought to the very back of my mind.

  “Well dayuuuuum, dude!” I exaggerated the words, comedy-style. “I’ve heard of falling on our sword for the creative work, when we really believe in it, but this stunt right here is next level. You’ve really gone above and beyond the call of duty this time.”

  I was the last person on the planet who went in for anything even remotely New-Aged—if I couldn’t see it, smell it, feel it, or taste it, as far as I was concerned, it didn’t exist. But, crazy though it was, even to my own mind, something about the gravity of this situation had me believing in the need to think positively, and in the ability of those thoughts to impact the outcome. Like somehow, purely by the power of my mind, I could in some way influence whether Raine made it out of this literal bloodbath okay or not.

  “Seriously, you’ve rea
lly outdone yourself. But why am I not surprised? I mean, it’s so like you to do something extra like this, just trying to enhance your ‘living legend’ status in the industry, and ensure that no other creative director could possibly live up to your level of dedication to the job. Asshole.”

  Dillon and Beck joined in the laughter, but, like mine, their hearts weren’t in it. I guessed we were all too terrified to indulge in the usual banter that was standard between the four of us under normal circumstances. Then again, those were certainly not normal circumstances.

  Maybe what was really at play was guilt, and trailer loads of it. We’d known for months that something was going on with Raine. Fucking months, though we hadn’t been one hundred percent certain what.

  We’d been aware that he’d been drinking heavily, and hitting the nose candy excessively, even by his extremely lax standards. And then there was the hot mess of a situation with the girl he seemed to be into, which wasn’t helping matters.

  We’d been close to staging an intervention a few times, before we’d finally stepped in and said something today, but every time something would get in the way—client meetings, production work on the biggest campaign of any of our careers, and God knew what else.

  That was something we’d forever have to live with—the fact that we’d let our concerns and preoccupation with work shit distract us from what we all knew mattered way more than any client project, or press-worthy ad campaign, or lawsuit, or fucking award at Cannes.

  The stupid thing was that we were well on our way to winning the lawsuit, anyway. It was an open and shut case, and we were going to clean up and come out smelling of roses on the other side.

  The fact was, in reality, we didn’t care if we all ended up penniless and homeless, if it was a trade-off between the health of one of us and whatever business bullshit was the pressing matter of the day. We knew this, but we lost sight of it, and while we did that, our friend had desperately needed our help—even if he didn’t realize it—and we’d failed to give it to him.

  With hindsight, it had been so easy to take his word at face value when he told us that he was okay, that he wasn’t drinking and using as much as we thought he was, but that he was just stressed and strung out trying to get everything done for the Carlisle campaign.

  Partially that was true, but there had been more to it. We’d all known it and ignored the warning signs. It was a fucking rookie error when dealing with someone with Raine’s issues. Denial and working hard to cover up the fact they had a problem were such common behaviors.

  But there were other signs: the UDIs, or Unidentified Drinking Injuries—bruises Raine just couldn’t explain and seemed never to be able to recall inflicting on himself. Then there were the dizziness and near blackouts, as well as nosebleeds. Plus, the dude had been practically living in the office, and that hadn’t even set off real alarm bells.

  Today’s meeting had been a case in point. Raine had stormed into our building after a huge blow up with his girl. He’d been angry with her, and even angrier with us for our part in supposedly ruining his day, or even his life, by apparently caring for him more than he wanted any of us to, and possibly more than he cared for himself.

  We should have cancelled the meeting with Carlisle. After everything that had happened that day, nobody had been in the right frame of mind to do it justice, least of all Raine. As much as we all had a part to play in the process, important creative presentations like that one were really his show.

  The trade-off we’d made was that if we’d cancelled or postponed the meeting it would have halted the production process, and nobody could afford for that to happen, least of all us. It would have been a blow to our reputation in what was turning out to be a very notable project, for all the wrong reasons. There was nothing like a high-profile lawsuit to focus the mind.

  Once the ads were made and the campaign had launched, we knew it was going to kill the game, but we had to get to that stage first. The process up until that point had not been without its challenges, and we’d let those concerns cloud our judgement. It was a call we’d all regret for a long time to come.

  As it was, the fact that Raine’d had to run the meeting without his creative partner on the project—who just so happened to be more integral to the whole thing than Raine himself—was bad enough. We’d lied and told Carlisle that there was a family emergency involving a sick grandmother, and had just about gotten away with it, but as we progressed with the shoot without her, we would have to fess up that something was wrong, or they’d guess themselves anyway. It would be better for us to stage-manage the process than let them come to their own conclusions.

  Raine had presented to the clients with his usual passion and persuasion, but toward the end of the meeting the cracks had begun to show. First it was missed or confused words here and there, then it was a spaced-out look taking over him, and then moments where he seemed woozy as though he might faint. I’d been just about to call a close to the whole thing, to try to save face for us all, when Raine had gone white as a sheet and hit the deck.

  Just before he fell, I noted a speck of blood under his nose, as though he’d had another nosebleed on the way, but by the time we’d all made it around the huge conference table that small spot of blood had been joined by many, many others, and was forming in a pool on the floor. Everything else—the clients, the creative work and the shoot we were prepping for—ceased to exist while the three of us focused on Raine.

  Sadly, our undivided attention had been long past due, and it was more than likely a case of too little, too late. Yes, the signs had been there, and yes, we’d ignored them until the point where the situation had become critical. If it turned out that it was really too late, and we’d have to bury our best friend, then his blood—gallons and gallons of it—would be on our hands, and it would never wash off.

  Chapter 1

  Raine

  * * *

  Four months earlier

  * * *

  As the woman writhed on top of me, I focused on the pleasant jiggle of her high, firm tits. Tits I’d snorted coke from a little while earlier. Tits I’d sucked, licked and bitten. Speaking of which, I took a nipple into my mouth again and sucked down hard. Her body bucked in response, and I wasn’t surprised. Her nipple was hard as a pebble, and I’d realized earlier, extremely sensitive to touch.

  As she swirled her hips, her ultra-wet pussy tightened around my dick. Jesus, that felt good. I sucked harder, and as I predicted, she ground into me more firmly, jamming her knees into the chair on either side of me.

  The Cowgirl had always been a favorite position of mine, and as she rode me, I was reminded why. Apart from the fantastic view of her perky tits, it also had me buried achingly deep inside her. I loved the feeling of her hitting the hilt time and time again.

  I zoned everything out apart from that feeling—not that there was much going on in my head other than that anyway. I was too high and too wasted to think coherently, thank God. Mission accomplished yet again.

  My revolving diet of women, booze, weed and blow kept me right where I wanted to be most of the time—lucid enough to function at work, and still pull out the big guns creatively, but out of it enough not to have to deal with the thoughts racing around my head. In fact, if I played my cards right, like tonight, there were no thoughts, and that was perfect.

  I pushed faster and harder, chasing my climax—easier said than done after as much coke as I’d smashed all night and into the morning. It was great for stamina—I could go for hours if I wanted to—not so great for release. Not that I hadn’t had plenty of practice, I’d pretty much mastered the art of coming on coke, but I had to play it just right, and not lose focus.

  As I hit the tipping point, and felt the telltale tightening in my balls, I smiled to myself. Coming was one of my favorite things in the world. There were no drugs or drinks that gave me quite the same high—short-lived though it invariably was.

  I released the nipple I was sucking on with a sat
isfying pop and tilted my head to rest on the back of my chair, slamming my eyes closed to ride the final waves of the build-up, before the crash down to the big O. It was so close I could practically taste it.

  So... Close... Just... A... Few... More...

  A loud noise pierced my consciousness, and it took a few moments to work out what it was—a sharp rap on the door. I ignored it. I was too close to turn back. Plus, whatever or whoever it was could wait. I wasn’t expecting anyone, so it was likely to be some kind of bullshit, anyway.

  I screwed my eyelids together and gripped the thighs straddling me as tightly as I could, using all my might to lift and lower them, increasing the pace each time. I concentrated hard on coming, and within a few seconds was back to where I had been before the door knocked. A few more seconds, and I was over the edge, and so was my friend. We came noisily and in unison.

  I was still panting through my release when the door knocked again. For the fucking love of God. I had a feeling that whatever, and whoever, was on the other side of the door wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I nudged my “date” off my lap and got to my feet.