After the kind of workday that made me question every life choice since birth, I dragged my defeated ass to the café around the corner.
Amber and Bryson, my only friends masochistic enough to also work for my father, were waiting with overpriced coffee and wedding spreadsheets.
"So the caterer wants an extra three grand just to add a salmon option, which is complete highway robbery because— Dakota, are you even listening?"
Amber's voice sliced through my Sullivan-induced brain fog like a hot knife through my last shred of dignity.
"Sorry, what?" I blinked, realizing how obviously distracted I was.
I'd been contemplating whether Raphael's hands would feel as commanding as they looked or if that was just wishful thinking from my three-year dry spell.
"Jesus, you're worse than Bryson when the game's on." Amber waved a color-coded spreadsheet in my face. "I'm having a crisis about fish pricing and you're off in Dakota-land."
"Sorry, work stuff," I mumbled into my coffee, which had gone cold sometime between arriving and my fifteenth fantasy about Stephen's forearms.
Bryson looked up from his laptop where he'd been pretending to work while actually browsing gaming forums. "Work stuff or...?"
"What?"
"You've been weird lately," Amber said.
She abandoned her wedding binder to fix me with the laser focus of someone who'd known me since I thought butterfly clips were peak fashion.
"More uptight than usual, and that's saying something considering you alphabetize your spice rack."
"I like organization—"
"When's the last time you went on a date?" she interrupted, leaning forward with the intensity of a detective who'd just found a crucial clue. "And I mean a real date, not that disaster with accounting Brad who talked about spreadsheets through dessert."
"That was—" I did the mental math and winced. "Almost three years ago."
"Three years!" Bryson's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "Damn, Dakota. Your dating life is basically the Sahara at this point. Tumbleweeds and abandoned hope."
"Thanks for that visual." I tried deflecting with sarcasm. "I've been busy with work all this time. And The Meridian Tower project—"
"The what now?" Amber's wedding planning mode deactivated faster than my will to live during budget meetings.
"Big project. Freeman Industries is partnering with Sullivan Stone Company for the year to survive. I'm managing our side of things."
The words 'Sullivan Stone Company' hung in the air for approximately 0.3 seconds before my friends' brains caught up.
"Hold up," Bryson said, fingers already flying across his phone. "Sullivan Stone as in the Sullivan Brothers? The ones who were in Forbes last month?"
"Wait, the Sullivan Brothers?" Amber's voice pitched up three octaves. "The ridiculously hot billionaire architects? The ones who look like they stepped out of a CEO romance novel? Holy shit, Dakota, you didn't mention they were gorgeous!"
"It's a professional relationship—"
"Oh my god, look at them!" Bryson turned his phone screen toward us.
It was displaying what was essentially architectural porn. Three men in perfectly tailored suits standing in front of some building they'd probably designed with their bare hands while curing cancer on the side.
"That's some serious eye candy to be working with every day."
"I hadn't noticed," I lied through my teeth.
Amber's expression shifted from excited to predatory in seconds. "You're full of shit. Look at you! You're blushing. You're crushing on them!"
"I am not—"
"All of them," she continued, ignoring my weak protest. "Oh my god, you're attracted to all three of them! This is amazing. You're practically glowing. Have you been using that new moisturizer I recommended?"
"Amber—"
"No, wait, this isn't skincare glow. This is 'I'm having dirty thoughts about my father’s business partners' glow. You've been more energetic lately too. Less doom and gloom about saving the firm."
She leaned back with the satisfied expression of someone who'd just solved world hunger.
"Girl, you're totally hot for the Sullivan Brothers."
"Can we please—"
"Which one do you like best?" Bryson asked, still scrolling through what appeared to be their entire Google Images catalogue. "The tall broody one? The charming one? Oh wait, this one looks like he could calculate your taxes and your orgasms with equal precision."
"I hate both of you," I announced to my coffee cup.
"Girl, you haven't gotten laid in three years," Amber said with the subtlety of a freight train. "Of course you're attracted to three gorgeous older men who probably know exactly what they're doing. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing! Because I'm a professional who needs to prove herself worthy of inheriting Freeman Industries, not some horny disaster who can't keep it in her pants around attractive men."
"But you admit they're attractive," Bryson pointed out helpfully.
"I have eyes," I snapped. "Yes, they're attractive. They're also my father's business partners and way older than me. Plus, they probably see me as some incompetent child who can't even get floor numbers right."
"Floor numbers?" Amber's investigative instincts activated. "What happened with the floor numbers?"
I spent the next ten minutes explaining my spectacular fuck-up while they alternated between sympathy and more questions about which Sullivan brother had the best ass.
By the time I finished, my coffee was completely cold and my dignity was somewhere in the parking lot, probably getting run over by a truck.
"So let me get this straight," Amber summarized as we started packing up. "You're working daily with three men who look like they walked out of your wet dreams, you haven't had sex since the Obama administration, and you're surprised that you're distracted? You need to either bang one of them or bang someone else before you spontaneously combust during a PowerPoint."
"Your advice is always so elegant," I said, standing to leave.
"I'm just saying, sexual frustration is real and it's clearly affecting your work. Maybe if you got some—"
"Okay, we're done here," I announced, grabbing my jacket.
We headed toward the parking lot, Amber still listing the benefits of ending my "self-imposed celibacy" while Bryson nodded along like this was a TED talk on the dangers of extended dry spells.
"Oh, speaking of your situation," Bryson said casually as we reached our cars. "I saw this hilarious viral Reddit post yesterday about someone wanting to sleep with three older business partners. Reminds me of your predicament."
My blood turned to liquid nitrogen. "What?"
"Yeah, it's been all over the place. Got picked up by those TikTok accounts that share wild Reddit stories with soap cutting videos."
He scrolled through his phone with the casual indifference of someone who hadn't just detonated a nuclear bomb in my life.
"The username was something like a fairy name. Pretty specific scenario—three older bosses, daddy issues and other kinky shit. Ring any bells?"
The parking lot tilted sideways. My lungs forgot how to process oxygen.
My fucking anonymous account with the username I'd thought was so clever—Tinkerbell444. The nickname my grandmother gave me, plus the angel number I saw everywhere.
"That's... that's crazy," I managed, my voice sounding like it was coming from outer space. "What are the odds?"
"Right?" Bryson laughed, pocketing his phone. "Imagine being that thirsty.”
"The internet is wild," Amber added, completely oblivious to my internal meltdown. "That poor girl's secret fantasy is now entertainment for millions."
Millions.
My anonymous cry for help, my desperate 3 AM "am I a slut for wanting to fuck three DILFs" post had gone viral.
Millions of people were reading about my sexual frustration, my complete professional and personal disaster.
I made noncommittal noises.
If Bryson and Amber had seen it, who else had?