Chapter 7 7

In my mind’s eye, I see a flash of her as she was this morning. Not her usual put-together self, but another version entirely. Nervous, flustered, unkempt. I keep seeing the shoulder of her bra strap, the way her breast peeked out of the cup just enough to give me an eyeful of cleavage.

It was unprofessional. Lazy. Annoying. Distracting.

And tempting.

Way too fucking tempting.

“She’s been dropping the ball recently.”

“Enough said. Just give her a good tongue lashing and she’ll pick that ball right back up.”

I wince. The mention of tongues has me wondering just how much damage I could do to her with mine.

I imagine myself throwing her onto my desk just so that I can push her skirt up and see what those pencil skirts are hiding. It’d be so easy. She’d gasp and moan so fucking deliciously, I can already tell. I’m hard at the mere thought. Although some of that is just pent-up tension. I’ve piled a hell of a workload on myself, so it’s been a long time since I’ve been with a woman.

“If she’s called to give me some bullshit excuse about why she can’t come in tomorrow, I’m kicking her to the curb.”

“Your choice,” says Kirill with a shrugged shoulder.

I walk over to my SUV while Kirill texts some last-minute instructions to my vors carrying out Bratva business across the five boroughs. The chauffeur opens the door and I climb into the backseat. Reluctantly, I start listening to Emma’s voicemail, which I’m sure is going to be an unnecessary harangue of half-baked excuses and furtive apologies.

I stop short when a series of muffled sounds hits my ear. No coherent words seem to be forthcoming. Is this some sort of prank? A joke? No—what it is is a waste of my time. I’m just about to cut off the message and text my HR manager to open up a new job posting…

When I hear a single breathy moan.

Is this what I think it is?

Her voice comes through a second later. Heated, aroused, filled with a desperate urgency. It takes me a moment to realize what she’s saying.

She moans a name—my name. And just like that, I’m hooked. 5

RUSLAN

“Are you going to punish me, Ruslan?”

Never have I wanted something so bad. My knuckles are white with tension as I grip the phone to my ear, hungry for every last moan and sigh and gasp that pops out of that dirty little mouth of hers.

My cock strains against the fabric of my pants, desperate to be freed. But I have a dozen men spread out across the upper floors of the chem facility and Kirill is walking towards the car, curiosity etched across his brow.

“Yes, sir. You’re right, sir. What did you have in mind?”

Jolts of electricity race through my core hearing her play out this little fantasy. I can only imagine what watching her would do to me.

In the eighteen months Ms. Carson has been working for me, I haven’t gotten so much as a hint of impropriety. Maybe this is my fault. Maybe that dig about her half-assed attempt at seducing me this morning unleashed the siren.

Or maybe this was a mistake. There’s a chance she’s unaware that she even sent me the voicemail. It is an unforgivable seven-and-a-half minutes long. And maybe thoughts of what I could do to her are just that distracting.

She groans deeply. Sounds of skin meeting skin. I can actually hear how wet she is.

“What’s going on?”

I rearrange my expression and pause the voicemail. “Nothing. I’ll have Boris drop you off first.”

Kirill arches a brow but he doesn’t push me as he clambers into the backseat. The surging possessiveness racing through me is not unfamiliar. I’m a possessive man and I don’t like sharing my things. But that rule has never really applied to women.

Placing ownership on any woman just gives her a claim over me. That’s been an inconvenience I’ve managed to avoid so far in my life. I’m not in any hurry to change things.

The whole way to Kirill’s place, my knee keeps bouncing impatiently.

“You sure you’re okay, brother?” he asks.

“Just preoccupied with the launch,” I lie easily.

The moment we drop Kirill off at the entrance to his apartment building, I have my phone back in my hand and I’m reopening Emma’s voice mail. I press play.

“Fuck me,” I mutter.

The woman puts on a show tailor-made for me. Every time she refers to me as “sir” in that soft whimper, my cock jumps needily. The little hitches in her breathing mirror my own.

By the time we get to my downtown penthouse, I’m wondering if my dick will ever go down. Not that I’ve made much of an attempt to help.

“Thanks, Boris. See you tomorrow at six.”

“Got it, boss.”

I take the elevator up to the thirty-fifth floor after punching in my private access code. The doors open directly into my penthouse.

I’m a busy man, so it helps me to compartmentalize my life. That goes for my properties, too. Some are for business, others for pleasure—and this one on Madison Avenue, the grandest of my skyrise real estate, is just for me.

I come here when I’m craving peace and quiet, when I want to be completely alone with my thoughts.

Or with my assistant’s filthy fucking fantasies.

There’s no peace and quiet to be found here tonight. The only thing swimming around in my head is Ms. Carson. Her pert little mouth. Those innocent almond eyes. The way her ass moves when it’s sheathed in a silk dress.

I’m not blind—I noticed her the moment she stepped into my office for the final interview. Her attractiveness wasn’t the reason I hired her, though. In fact, I’d hired her despite her looks. No man needs to have constant temptation walking around in high heels and a red lip.

But her credentials and experience were all above board and I was sick of the revolving door of morons that darkened my doorstep with their ineptitude and emotional baggage. The assistant who preceded Emma quit, right before she burst into tears and called me a “psychopath in Hermes.” I had Kirill get that printed on my business cards.

So when Emma stepped into the role, despite a few freshman kinks, it was like a breath of fresh air. She was smart, competent, and she didn’t complain.

Not that I didn’t know exactly when she was pissed off or frustrated with me. Her blue eyes have this way of darkening and there is a vein in her forehead that twitches anytime I order her around or give her a task she considers beneath her.

It’s been my way of keeping her busy and far away—so that she didn’t end up beneath me.