Daddy Issues, Incorporated
MM Age-Gap Boss Romance
by Jace Wilder
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Age Gap, Boss/Employee, Silver Fox, Praise Kink, Grumpy/Sunshine, Forced Proximity, One Bed, Touch Starved, Billionaire
His new boss has a company worth billions, a reputation for ice-cold control, and exactly one weakness: being called sir by the assistant he absolutely should not want.
Theo Alvarez is excellent at fixing messes. He has fixed celebrity disasters, startup disasters, and his own finances with a mix of color-coded spreadsheets and sheer panic. What he has never fixed is a job interview with Lucian Vale: the fifty-year-old founder of a luxury hospitality empire, and the most intimidatingly handsome man Theo has ever seen.
Lucian needs an executive assistant who can manage his impossible schedule, contain a spiraling scandal, and stop his company from hemorrhaging goodwill before a make-or-break resort launch. Theo needs health insurance, rent money, and approximately zero thoughts about the way Lucian says his name.
Their professional rules are simple: no flirting, no blurred boundaries, and absolutely no touching. Too bad Lucian keeps praising him for being good at his job. Too bad Theo is starting to crave it. And too bad the company’s biggest crisis traps them in the same luxury suite with only one bed—and no believable way to pretend either of them is sleeping.
You’ll love this book if you enjoy:
✅ Silver-fox CEO x broke brilliant assistant
✅ Age gap with real emotional depth (26/50)
✅ Boss/employee tension that COMBUSTS
✅ Praise kink that could power a small city
✅ One bed, one suite, zero self-control
✅ Forced proximity at a luxury resort
✅ A grumpy hero who melts for one person only
✅ Explicit, graphic, emotional (🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno heat)
✅ HEA guaranteed
⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic MM scenes), strong language, workplace power dynamics, financial anxiety, and depictions of emotional vulnerability. Intended for readers 18+.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.
Chapter One: The Interview from Hell
The elevator smelled like someone’s existential crisis and Chanel No. 5.
I was seventeen minutes late, my shirt was damp under the arms, and there was a smear of concealer on my collar that did not belong to me. All of this was because a twenty-two-year-old intern named Priya had been hyperventilating in the lobby bathroom of Vale & Co.’s Midtown headquarters, mascara running in twin black rivers down her face, convinced she’d just accidentally sent an email calling the VP of Brand Strategy a “tone-deaf hemorrhoid” to the entire marketing distribution list.
She had, in fact, sent that email. But only to herself. A drafts mishap. I showed her the sent folder, talked her breathing down from hummingbird to human, and helped her fix the mascara with a travel kit I keep in my bag because I am the kind of person who carries a travel makeup kit to job interviews, and I refuse to apologize for it.
What I could not fix was the seventeen minutes.
Lucian Vale was standing at the far end of a glass conference table with his back to me, phone pressed to his ear, and the Manhattan skyline framed behind him like the city had been arranged for his personal backdrop. He was taller than the website suggested—six-two at least, broad through the shoulders, his suit cut so precisely that it looked less like clothing and more like a second, more expensive skin. Silver hair swept back from his face, the kind of silver that didn’t say aging; it said don’t waste my time, I’ve been alive longer than you and I’ve used every minute.
He turned.
Dark eyes. A jaw that could have been designed by an architect with a grudge against soft lines. Olive skin, elegant hands, an expression that communicated controlled displeasure the way a closed fist communicates I’m choosing not to hit you.
My brain produced the following sequence of thoughts, in order: Oh no. Oh, he’s beautiful. Oh, he’s furious. Oh no.
“Sit down, Mr. Alvarez.” His voice was low, precise, and completely devoid of warmth. He ended his call without saying goodbye—just pulled the phone from his ear and set it on the table like it had personally offended him. “You are seventeen minutes late.”
“I am.” I sat. Did not grovel. Groveling was for people who didn’t have reasons. “I apologize for the delay. I can explain—”
“I’m sure you can. People who are late always have explanations. What they rarely have is respect for other people’s time.”
That landed. I let it land, because he wasn’t wrong, and I wasn’t going to insult his intelligence by pretending the lateness didn’t matter.
“You’re right,” I said. “Your time is valuable, and I wasted seventeen minutes of it. The reason is that I found one of your interns having a panic attack in the lobby bathroom. She believed she’d sent an insulting email to the entire marketing department. She hadn’t, but she didn’t know that, and she was alone. I stayed until she could breathe and verify her sent folder.”
He studied me. The irritation didn’t vanish, but it shifted—rearranged itself behind his eyes like furniture being moved in a room I couldn’t see into.
“Which intern?”
“I didn’t catch a last name. Priya. Dark hair, green lanyard, marketing badge.”
“Priya Kapoor. She started three weeks ago.”
“She’s doing fine. The email was in her drafts. No harm done, except to my punctuality.”
A pause. He sat down across from me, and the full weight of his attention settled on my face like a searchlight.
“You could have left her,” he said. “You could have been on time.”
“I could have. But I don’t leave people on bathroom floors when I can help, and I don’t think you’d want an assistant who does.”
Something moved in his expression. Not warmth—Lucian Vale did not appear to traffic in warmth—but a recalibration. As though I’d answered a question he hadn’t asked out loud.
Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.
🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?
The Forty-Second Floor — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon
It’s a Saturday afternoon. Lucian’s penthouse. Theo finds the folder of Post-it notes in the desk drawer—every single one he’s ever written—and decides to write a new one. On Lucian. With his mouth. Praise kink at maximum voltage, a desk that will never be the same, and the filthiest, most tender scene in the series.
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