Superior - Chapter 1

Okay, guys. Here is my other novel-length commission, currently planned for 100,000 words. I hope you enjoy the first chapter...

Superior

Commissioned by Anonymous

Written by Hiker Angel

Chapter 1: The New Girl

Who was that?!

The most attractive girl I’d ever seen was walking down the hallway at the office directly toward me. Her face looked extremely young. Cute. Almost childlike. And despite its breathtaking beauty, it looked completely natural. Wholesome. Was she even wearing makeup? Her large, green eyes shifted from side to side, somehow looking at once knowing and innocent. It was a strange combination. Something I’d never seen before. Those active eyes gave her prominent cheekbones and full lips a mysterious air. As if this teen stunner might be as intelligent as she was gorgeous.

But that was difficult to imagine. She was that beautiful.

Her visage, framed by a shimmering, ginger mane that glimmered and sparked in the light like a flowing mass of smoldering embers, was almost painfully attractive. Her face was so enthralling that it took me a moment to notice her body, but it was easily a match for her face. Clad in a conservative business suit, she wasn’t particularly tall, probably a good foot shorter than my 6’2”. But even in the unrevealing clothing, I could tell her form was breathtaking. She was a hell of a looker, with proportionately long, perfectly toned legs, a miniscule waist, and breasts so deliciously huge that they forced even her conservative top into revealing a breathtaking amount of cleavage between the lapels of her gray suit jacket. She had to be the most voluptuous woman I’d ever seen. That massive chest looked completely out of place on that fit, slender body. I’d seen slim, modelesque bodies with huge breasts before. My most recent ex-girlfriend’s had been DD-cups. Or maybe they had been DDD’s. I couldn’t remember anymore. They’d been implants, of course. They almost always were when that size. But this girl’s had to be larger, even, than that. Far larger. They looked like soccer balls, dominating her upper body with massive, gravity-defying curves. What were those things? K cups? L? More? I wasn’t sure, but it had to be a letter pretty far down the alphabet. And damn if those monsters didn’t make her body look as womanly as any I’d ever seen, despite the incredibly youthful appearance of her face. I wasn’t sure of her age, but it couldn’t be more than early twenties. As she approached, giving me a better look, I revised my assessment. She couldn’t even be 20. Maybe 19?

She gave me a curt nod of acknowledgement as she passed, her gaze precise and almost cold. At the same time, however, something in her eyes was strangely timid, as if her confidence air were merely a facade. That wasn’t surprising. She’d gotten a boob job to give her a chest that was clearly overcompensating for something. The girl was probably confident in her looks—as she probably should be—but knew that she didn’t have the brains or business acumen to go anywhere, even in a fast-growing company like this. She was probably just hoping to land a cushy admin role under a powerful executive. Maybe she was angling to seduce him or something? Maybe get a sexaul harassment settlement? Those breasts seemed designed for just such a ploy.

I smirked, wondering who had hired her. Whoever had done it, they were asking for trouble. A girl who looked like that was almost certainly destined for trouble of some sort.

She slipped past me, avoiding my gaze, not even so much as offering a hello. Instead, with a twist of her skirt-tightening hips, she walked straight into Carl’s old office. The one he’d left open a few weeks earlier after I’d eviscerated his awful microloan idea in front of the senior executives.

I was unable to completely suppress a laugh. So this was supposed to be my new competition for the Senior VP role? I discarded the thought as soon as it arrived. It was absurd. She couldn’t be. She just had the wrong office. She set down her box of belongings in the previously vacant office and began to look around the room, sizing up the three walls that allowed for pictures to be hung and the front glass wall that offered a clear view of the sea of cubicles between that office and mine.

I walked over to the doorway of the office as she withdrew a framed document from her box, clearing my throat. She looked up at me, brilliant green eyes shimmering, a faint look of surprise on her delicate features.

“Hi there. I think you’ve got the wrong office. The admin pool is over there,” I pointed to the bank of cubicles where several women were typing away at their desks, not bothering to hide the amused smile on my face. Women liked confident men. And I had no shortage of it. If I came across as cocky, so much the better.

Her eyes flashed darkly as she replied coldly. “I’m not an admin.”

“Really?” I said, honestly surprised. “What’s your title?”

“I’m the new VP of Loan Origination and Marketing.”

I gaped at her in disbelief. So she was supposed to be my competition!

I let my gaze descend her sexy curves once more, swallowing hard at just how perfect her body was. Staring at her breasts, I felt my tongue, unbidden, tracing around my lips. God, she was beautiful.

“And you are...?”

My eyes found hers once more, their stern directness shaking me out of my trance. Shit. I’d been ogling her body right in front of her, hadn’t I?

Whatever.

It wasn’t really my fault so much as that of whoever had hired her. I mean, that’s what whoever-it-was got for bringing in some kind of huge-breasted supermodel in place of someone competent.

“I’m John, the VP of Lending.”

She simply stared at me, unblinking, seeming to take my measure. It was actually a little unnerving.

Her strangely intense gaze reminded me that the girl was my competition, not simply eye candy. At least not for me. Sexy as hell or not, I needed to think of this girl as my enemy.

I was ruthless when it came to business. No rival stood a chance when I set my sights on a promotion. And I’d set my sights on this one long ago. Senior Vice President of Lending. I’d been at the mid-tier VP level for several years now, and I had destroyed every other competitor for the position with ease. I was in the home stretch now, with the promotion to be decided in the next few months, and no girl was going to stand in my way. No matter how staggeringly attractive she was.

There had been a rumor that the company had hired some kind of wunderkind only a couple of years out of school. I had actually been a little worried about some geeky twenty-something ivy leaguer with grand ambitions. But I hadn’t had a clue that they had hired a girl—certainly not one who looked like that. There was no way that this sexy young thing had graduated college at all. It was probably a story that the guy who hired her had cooked up to justify himself.

She turned away from me and began pulling more items out of her box, seeming to have completed her assessment of me and decided to completely ignore me now. What was that all about? She just stops talking right after I introduce myself and acts like I’m not even here? So she was amazingly attractive. That didn’t give her the right to be a cold bitch to me. Did she know the lay of the land already? Did she even know I was her competition for the SVP job? She couldn’t. Not unless her sugar daddy or uncle or whoever had orchestrated her sham hiring had told her.

I mean, a girl that looked like that couldn’t possibly have been brought in for her competence. No, this was clearly nepotism. Or one of the higher-ups just wanted to sleep with her. I couldn’t really blame them if they did. She was my competition, and I certainly wouldn’t mind a roll in the sack with someone who looked like she did.

I continued to stare at her as she unpacked her box of belongings, decorating her office. I was angling to get some insight that I could use to take her down a few notches—not that I expected that to be very difficult. I wondered if she would say anything more or simply keep decorating as I watched.

To this point, it seemed to be the latter.

So I waited. And watched. Again, I marveled at just how young she looked. She couldn’t even be twenty years old. She probably couldn’t even drink yet! The thought caused me to laugh out loud, drawing her attention once more. She shot me a dark-eyed scowl as she watched me laughing, her delicate features somehow still looking stunning even when contorted into a disdainful expression than when they had been icily indifferent.

Then, she turned and bent over, drawing another framed document from the cardboard box. Her skirt pulled tight against the dramatic hemispheres of a perfectly rounded ass. I’d seen plenty of photoshopped Instagram asses, their owners striking poses and using lighting to make them look better than they were in real life. But this girl’s, unassisted by any such ploys, was the sexiest I’d ever seen. Lush but firm, athletic yet voluptuous, the girl’s backside was heartbreakingly magnificent. I felt my pulse rise from the sight of it alone. God, the girl’s body was absolutely succulent, and combined with that face…

I shook my head, as if to shake away the unwanted thoughts. I really didn’t need to be attracted to the young woman that I was about to destroy.

But it was next to impossible not to be. I was a man, after all, and this was the most achingly perfect woman I’d ever seen in my life!

When she rose once more, several items in hand, still facing away from me, I noticed just how broad her shoulders were relative to her tiny waist and curvaceous hips. Jesus! Talk about an hourglass figure! This girl’s entire body was an absolute work of sensual art!

She mounted a framed Harvard PhD certificate on her wall, as if to show me that there was more to her than her looks. But Harvard? PhD? Pfft. It was laughable. She wasn’t old enough to have had that much schooling. Even geniuses—which she clearly wasn’t—couldn’t manage the feat at a school like that quite that quickly. It was a nice touch, though. Maybe that’s how she had sold herself for the job, using a fake resume or something. Too bad they would probably discover her lies in short order when they finished the background checks.

I would give her credit for sheer gutsiness, though. Feeding the higher-ups the lie that she had earned a PhD at Harvard was audacious, to say the least. When she cooked up fiction, she certainly went all out! I just couldn’t believe they’d actually bought it. Of course, it was always easier to buy into bullshit when you wanted an excuse to do something. And it wasn’t hard to see why they’d wanted her around.

As she continued to extract her belongings, it became clear that she wasn’t going to say anything more to me, so I needed to find a more hidden location to observe her from. She had already caught me looking, and I didn’t want her to think I was a creepy stalker-type or anything. The last thing I needed was to give the girl any sort of leverage over me with an HR complaint. So I walked behind the row of admin cubicles, peeking just over the wall of the nearest one.

The woman had mounted her diplomas and certifications, all from ivy league institutions, in record time. She was in the process of laying out a number of traditional office accoutrements. I saw her extract a small makeup bag and place it in a drawer, but that seemed to be everything. Oddly, the girl hadn’t put any photos of friends or family on her walls or desk, though she did hang a large, impressionist painting on the wall behind her.

Barely pausing after she had unpacked, the beautiful young woman sat down at her desk, opened her laptop, and began to type. Not wasting any time, was she? After a moment of watching the woman’s laser-like focus, I went back to my own office, on the opposite side of the building, overhearing conversation as I went.

“...you see that new VP? She’s hot as hell! I would like to be on her team, if you know what I mean....”

“....that new executive’s hiring brings this company to a new low. They’re not even pretending to find qualified people these days, just hiring models to sleep around with…”

“...somebody’s daughter or something? But who around here could have a kid that good-looking. She looks like…”

I grinned. Pretty much everyone was having the same reaction as I had. I couldn’t wait for our first executive meeting together. Whomever had brought her on board hadn’t done her any favors. I would lay waste to her fragile little ego when I destroyed her in front of the team, kicking her pretty little ass to the sideline where it belonged. She’d probably be left in tears after I tore her apart in our first public setting. And I actually felt a little bad about that. But it couldn’t be helped. That promotion was going to be mine. She was in my way. It was that simple. That was just how the business world worked. Survival of the fittest. Not the prettiest.

***

As we arrived in the conference room the next day for our weekly executive meeting, I brushed past her, feeling the insane firmness of that pert little ass with the outer part of my hip. The girl definitely worked out, that much was certain.

She felt me push past her and spun, her expressive eyes cold as they ascended to mine. Towering over her, I smirked, noticing her cavernous cleavage as I looked down from the close angle.

My brush with her sexy form wasn’t unintentional. Nor was it sexual, though the feel of her shapely backside was a nice little bonus to the maneuver. But my purpose had been twofold. I wanted her to feel my superiority. To look up into my looming eyes as I looked down my nose at her. I was a tall man, and I wanted to give her a visceral sense of just how much of an uphill battle she faced going against me. I wanted her to know just how small she was compared to me. How insignificant. She was an insect, and I was walking into this room to crush her.

Psychological warfare at its finest.

Giving the shapely redhead a condescending smirk, I stepped away, circling around the table to take my usual seat, slapping down my folder of papers with a definitive clap on the mahogany table. I cast a sidelong glance at the new girl, expecting the sound to startle the unprepared bimbo. But it didn’t. Instead, she simply gave me a frigid stare accompanied by an icy, thin-lipped expression. I frowned, but didn’t think much of it. So she wasn’t easily startled. Big deal. It was a little irritating that she hadn’t reacted as I’d expected, but it’s not like that would help her in any way that really mattered.

A few minutes later, the meeting began, with the CFO Carl, a doddering old fool whose job I would target next after getting the SVP role, calling it to order.

As soon as the man put forth the question about our rebranding, I leapt on the opportunity. I had been expecting it and had prepared well.

“We are reinventing ourselves as a fintech. A clean, simple look to our web and social media presence will help people intuitively connect with the idea that we’re approachable and easy to use. We are looking to make a subconscious impact that emphasizes simplicity and resonates with people, and there’s no better way to do that than to keep things simple for prospective customers.”

I looked around the room, pleased at the nods and smiles I was receiving from everyone. Well, almost everyone. The girl simply gave me a cool look of calculating precision. Again, her eyes unnerved me a bit. But I ignored them and continued on, knowing that I would bury her if she tried to challenge me on this.

“A classic white background, clean, well-defined lines. Blue and black text. Colorful and comfortable images. Those are what we need.”

The CFO nodded his approval. “I agree. Great work, John! Does anyone else have anything to add? If not, I think John here should take point on—”

“I do, sir,” came a soft, velvety voice from across the table.

My head swiveled to look at the girl, who had leaned forward over the table until the perfectly sheared ends of her hair brushed its mahogany surface. My God, she was going to jump into this. On her second day! This was even better than I could have hoped for!

I looked around the room, seeing the lascivious looks on the faces of every man in the room as they took in the new girl’s stunning appearance, amused at the looks I saw in their eyes. Clearly, they all knew as well as I did that the girl was eye candy. Nothing more. I leaned forward in my chair, eager to hear her stupid ideas, so that I could jump all over them. I couldn’t wait to needle her, exposing her for the incompetent fraud that she was.

“Y-you do?” came the CFO’s surprised voice.

She nodded, then rose to her feet, her slender fingers curling around the remote control to the television in the conference room. She pointed it at the large screen behind Carl, and every eye in the room turned to the presentation that appeared at the far end of the room.

“John’s idea is a good one—if we were aiming for young, professional men as a target audience.”

She flashed me a cold look, its intensity piercing me just as surely as if it had been a silver dagger. My mouth clapped shut. It was an intriguing opening. I hadn’t been expecting this sort of approach. I had always considered our target clientele as a united whole. This mention of demographics wasn’t something I’d really thought about before. Financial lending institutions didn’t typically cater to specific audiences in their overall approach to branding. Typically, they were interested in presenting an image of conservative stability.

“But that’s what banks—and even fintechs—have a tendency to do, isn’t it. Focus on those who are like them. Who have similar tastes to theirs,” she continued, her expression softening only slightly as she moved her gaze from me to each other man in the room.

I looked around the table as well. She held everyone’s rapt attention. Part of it was her looks, but most of them were also looking at the screen, nodding as they perused the charts of her well-organized presentation.

“But market saturation is at all time highs for that demographic,” she continued. “96.1% of young men already have funding secured for the next 3-5 year period. We would be appealing to an addressable market that represents just 3.9% of that group. On the other hand, young, professional women represent a rapidly growing market for products like this. One that has yet to be properly addressed by financial products like ours.”

Shit! The bimbo was actually onto something here! Why hadn’t I thought to dig into the market from a gender perspective? I’d never really seen that kind of thing done in banking, but advertisers lived and died by those sorts of gender and age-categorized metrics.

“While the market for male professionals is growing at a 0.9% clip every year, the market for females with similar income and job titles is growing more than twice as fast, at 2.2% per year. And just look at the web sites and advertising of our competitors. They are all exactly as John would have ours look. Plain. Traditional. Black, white, and blue. Boring.”

I swallowed hard, stung by her comment. I’d been so sure of my thoughts on this. And everyone had agreed with me, hadn’t they?

“But I ask you: why are we trying to be just like everyone else, appealing to a saturated market, when there is a new and growing demographic that’s ripe for the taking?”

As she looked at each face in the room, I did too. Now they were nodding in agreement with her. It was obvious that the group was actually leaning toward her way of thinking, their minds changing within just minutes of the start of the beautiful girls presentation. I needed to do something. And fast. But what did I have to counter her? Even I was beginning to be swayed by her arguments.

She brought up a new slide, showing a version of our site and social media presence with floral patterns and pictures of pretty young women rather than sharply dressed young men. “Giving our web presence a more feminine appeal distinguishes us in the marketplace. It gives our company a fresh look that’s different from those of our competitors. It addresses the people most likely to give us the growth we’re looking for over the coming years in an intuitive, approachable way.”

I scowled as I heard her use my own words against me, her eyes finding me even as she said them.

“But what about men? They are still the most powerful group in the marketplace, don’t you think?” I challenged, knowing that I needed to do something to interrupt her presentation before she persuaded the rest of the room to her way of thinking. I certainly couldn’t have little miss pretty showing me up in her very first meeting!

She smiled, the expression making her already beautiful visage brighten the room, like the sun emerging from behind the clouds. “I think we’ll continue our market presence with men well enough. Having a more feminine style to our media will also give us the opportunity to decorate it with beautiful young women. And current market research tells us that such images are 51.7% more likely to attract the attention of young males than the tired designs that John is proposing. If you doubt the numbers, just look at the magazine aisle in the grocery store. Young women make up more than 90% of magazine covers featuring human faces for good reason.”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the assembled men in the boardroom as the girl eviscerated my argument with mathematical precision, an innocent smile on her perfect lips as her luminous eyes settled on me once again, this time, reflected within their swirling depths was a hint of superiority.

Frustration bubbled in the pit of my stomach, but I remained silent. Attempting to counter her with an ill-rehearsed argument had only afforded the girl an opportunity to drive home another strong point.

“Wonderful work, Jane,” said the CFO, his eyes glowing as his lips mirrored her brilliant smile. “So, everyone. Who’s marketing strategy do you think we go with—John’s or Jane’s?”

The assembled executives looked at each other, then answered as one. “Jane’s.”

I was mortified. Not a single person in the room had voted for me. I couldn’t remember a time when that had ever happened. Sure, I’d lost some battles here and there, but it had never been unanimous. And most of the time, I’d proven vindicated when the alternative strategy failed. Something told me that this time, however, that was unlikely to happen. Jane’s go-to-market strategy was sound.

More than sound, actually. It was brilliant.

Why hadn’t I thought of it? Attracting women while at the same time targeting men with a fresh, original approach. It was simple. Elegant. Stylish. The graphics incorporated the clean, professional appeal that I had championed, while at the same time giving it an all-important twist that would take it from solid to staggeringly successful.

I, just like everyone else in the room, instinctively knew her idea was superior to mine. This girl—whose name I hadn’t even bothered to ask yesterday when I’d met her—-had just given me the most sound beating I’d ever received in my business career.

On her second day.