You don’t like seeing her afraid, the wolf observed.Interesting.
I ignored him.I didn’t like anyone else making her afraid.There was a difference.She was mine to control, mine to break, mine to rebuild however I saw fit.Not some stranger’s plaything.
That was all.
I turned to the stack of reports waiting on my desk, forcing my attention to numbers and projections.
The conference call was supposed to be a distraction.
A property acquisition in the Midwest.Numbers to review, projections to approve, the familiar machinery of empire-building that had occupied my mind for years.I sat at my desk while my team presented slides on the video screen, their voices blending into white noise as my thoughts drifted where they shouldn’t.Sunday calls weren’t unusual in my world.Deals didn’t pause for weekends.
Her scent was in my memory.Apples and cream, soft and sweet, clinging to the collar of my robe.The robe she was probably still wearing.In my house.In my bed.Surrounded by my things, breathing my air, existing in my space like she belonged there.
Our house.Our bed.Our mate.
I shifted in my chair, uncomfortably aware of the way my body was responding to the mere thought of her.The way my cock stirred at the memory of her nipples tightening under my mouth, the soft sounds she’d made when I’d sucked and teased and denied her what she wanted.
“Mr.Antonov?”
I blinked.The call had gone quiet.Six faces stared at me from the screen, and my VP of acquisitions was watching me with barely concealed concern.Diana had been with me for eight years.She’d never seen me lose focus in a meeting.
“The offer,” she prompted carefully.“Do you want to proceed at the current valuation or counter?”
I hadn’t heard a word of the presentation.Didn’t know what property we were discussing, what the numbers looked like, what the strategic value might be.This never happened.I built my reputation on focus, on the ability to hold every detail of a deal in my mind while my competitors struggled to keep up.Now I couldn’t remember if we were buying a hotel or a hospital or a parking garage.
“Counter,” I said, because it was usually the right answer.“Ten percent below their ask.They’ll take it.”
Diana nodded and made a note, but I caught the look she exchanged with the man beside her.Concern.Curiosity.Speculation about what could possibly distract Raphael Antonov from the business he’d spent two decades building.
If they only knew.
The meeting continued.I watched the clock on the wall and counted the hours until evening.Until I could return to the manor.Until I could see her again.
Three hours and forty-seven minutes.An eternity.
My grandfather’s scandal was nearly ready.Months of careful preparation, the final pieces falling into place.Soon the world would know what kind of man Senator Prescott really was, and the legacy he’d built on blackmail and betrayal would crumble around him.Richard Hughes had been useful to my grandfather once, providing leverage against rivals, but now the old man lay comatose and his daughter was mine.A convenient bonus in a much larger game.
My revenge.The thing I’d been working toward since I was eighteen years old and cast out with nothing but the scars on my back and the rage in my chest.
I waited for the familiar surge of satisfaction.The dark pleasure of anticipation, of knowing my enemies would soon face the reckoning they deserved.
It came, but muted.Distant.Like hearing music through a closed door.
You’re distracted, the wolf said.She’s in your head.
He wasn’t wrong.But distraction wasn’t the same as caring.I could want her body and still want my revenge.The two weren’t mutually exclusive.
“We’re done for today.”I reached for the keyboard to end the call.
My team exchanged glances on the screen but didn’t argue.They knew better than to question me when I used that tone.
The monitor went dark.Standing, I crossed to the window of my office, watching the city spread out below me.The sun was already beginning its descent toward the mountains, painting the sky in shades of gold and rose.Beautiful.I barely noticed.
She was at the manor.Waiting.I’d promised her tonight.
I shouldn’t want to go back.Shouldn’t feel this pull, this need, this desperate hunger to be in the same room with a woman who was supposed to be nothing more than a means to an end.I’d had beautiful women before.I’d had willing women, eager women, women who would have done anything I asked.None of them had made me watch clocks.None of them had made me forget my own business dealings.
None of them had played piano in the dark and seen straight through me.
