Manwhore +1 (Manwhore, #2)
Katy Evans
To the biggest leap you will ever take.
PLAYLIST
GRAND PIANO by Nicki Minaj OUT OF MIND by Tove Lo THOUSAND MILES by Tove Lo SURRENDER by Cash Cash DO I WANT TO KNOW by Arctic Monkeys BEGIN AGAIN by Purity Ring TALKING BODY by Tove Lo SKY FULL OF STARS by Coldplay SUGAR by Maroon 5
I LIVED by OneRepublic GOLD DUST by Galantis THINKING OUT LOUD by Ed Sheeran MY HEART IS OPEN by Maroon 5 and Gwen Stefani PEACE by O.A.R.
EXPOSING MALCOLM SAINT
By R. Livingston
I’m going to tell you a story. A story that managed to pull me apart completely. A story that brought me back to life. A story that has made me cry, laugh, scream, smile, and then cry again. A story I keep telling to myself over and over and over until I have memorized every smile, every word, every thought. A story that I hope to keep with me forever.
The story begins with this very article. It was a regular morning at Edge. A morning that would bring me a big opportunity: to write an exposé on Malcolm Kyle Preston Logan Saint. He’s a man who needs no introduction. Billionaire playboy, beloved womanizer, a source of many speculations. This article would open doors for me, gain a young hungry reporter a voice.
I dove in, managing to get an interview with Malcolm Saint to discuss Interface (his incredible new Facebook-killer) and its immediate rise to popularity. As obsessed as the city has been with his persona for years, I considered myself lucky to be in this position.
I was so focused on revealing Malcolm Saint that I let my guard down, unaware that every time he opened up, he was actually revealing me to me. Things I had never wanted were suddenly all I wanted. I was determined to find out more about this man. This mystery. Why was he so closed off? Why was nothing ever enough for him? I soon discovered he was not a man of many words, but rather a man of the right words. A man of action. I told myself that every inch of information I hunted was for this article, but the knowledge I craved was actually about myself.
I wanted to know everything. I wanted to breathe him. Live him.
But most unexpectedly of all, Saint began to pursue me. Genuinely. Wholeheartedly. And relentlessly. I could not believe that he would be truly interested in me. I had never been pursued like this, intrigued like this. I had never felt so connected to something—someone.
I never expected my story to change, but it did. Stories tend to do that; you go out searching for something and come back with something different. I wasn’t looking to fall in love, I wasn’t looking to lose my mind and common sense over the most beautiful green eyes I have ever seen, I wasn’t looking to drive myself crazy with lust. But I ended up finding a little piece of my soul, a little piece that isn’t really that small at all: it’s over six feet tall, with shoulders about a yard wide, hands more than twice the size of mine, green eyes, dark hair, and it is smart, ambitious, kind, generous, powerful, sexy, and has consumed me completely.
I regret lying, both to myself and to him; I regret not having the experience to recognize what I was feeling the moment I felt it. I regret not savoring each second I had with him more, because I value those seconds more than anything.
However, I don’t regret this story. His story. My story. Our story.
I’d do it all again for another moment with him. I’d do it all again with him. I’d leap blindly into the air if only there were even a 0.01 percent chance that he’d still be there, waiting to catch me.
FOUR WEEKS
I’ve never been so hopeful as when I board the pristine glass elevator at the M4 corporate building. A handful of employees ride along with me, murmuring perfunctory greetings to each other and to me. I think my mouth must be on vacation because I can’t seem to force it to speak. But I smile in reply—my smile nervous, nervous but hopeful, definitely hopeful. My riding companions step out on their floors one by one until I’m alone, riding up to the executive floor on my own.
Toward him.
Toward the man I love.
My body is raging. My blood is pumping—my blood is storming—my thighs are shaking. My stomach feels filled with little earthquakes that just won’t quit, then they turn into a full-fledged roil when I hear the elevator ting at his floor.
Stepping out, I’m in corporate nirvana, surrounded by sleek chrome and pristine glass, marble and limestone floors. But I hardly have eyes for anything except the tall and imposing frosted glass doors at the far end of the room.
Framing those doors to each side is a pair of sleek designer desks, for a total of four.
Behind these desks are four women in identical black-and-white suits, sitting behind their gleaming dark-oak desks, working quietly behind their flat-screen computers.
One of them, the forty-year-old Catherine H. Ulysses—right hand of the man who owns every inch of this building—stops what she’s doing when she sees me. She arches her brow, then seems both tense and relieved as she lifts the receiver on her desk and murmurs my name into it.
I. Am. Not. Breathing.
But Catherine doesn’t miss a beat as she motions me toward the huge frosted doors—those intimidating doors—that lead into the lair of the most powerful man in Chicago.
The human being with the most powerful effect on me.
This is what I’ve been waiting for, for four weeks. This is what I wanted when I left a thousand messages on his phones and what I wanted when I wrote a thousand others that I left unsent. To see him.