I nod once. “It’s late.”
“Very well.”
As I reach for the door, I feel a shift behind me. And then he’s on me, spinning me so my back hits the door just before he pins me to it in a vicious kiss. I wrap my leg around his and grind against him, unable to stop myself. He’s hard again—I feel it. His hand coasts over my body until it settles at my throat, and he breaks the kiss, forehead resting on mine.
“See you in the morning.” Then he pulls back, turns me around, swats my ass, and guides me out the door.
“But you’re… I mean…” I motion downward with my eyes.
He smirks ever so slightly. “Do you think I’m ever not hard when you’re around, pet?”
My breath catches in my throat at the thought. “I… that sounds like a problem for the staff meetings.”
He throws his head back and laughs once, real and shocked. Maybe because he almost never laughs. “Go on, pet. Get sleep. Eat something good. You’ll need your strength tomorrow.” He turns for his office.
So, I head out. I’m not naive about what Pavel is. I have never been naive—not since the day I was hired and understood with quiet clarity that the legitimate business was only one layer of what I was walking into. I stayed because the work was good and the pay was better, and I told myself that what happened on the other side of that line had nothing to do with me. I was an employee. It was not my world.
The lie held, and I was safe on my side of it, and everything was clean and simple.
That was a reasonable position when I was simply his office manager. It feels less reasonable now that his hands know exactly where to find me in the dark.
He’s a pakhan, Molly. His world isn’t yours. Proximity to him is not without?—
I know. I know exactly what he is. I have always known. Knowing a thing and acting on it are two entirely different problems, and right now I only have the energy for one of them.
I know exactly what he is. I just can’t seem to make myself care the way I should. The sex is too good.
8
PAVEL
Stupid,Pavel. Very, very stupid.
I know it’s reckless.
I have known it since the second time, when recklessness became a choice rather than a lapse, and I made that choice with full lucidity. The first night could be attributed to a year of managed tension finally exceeding its limits. Everything after that is simply want, which is foolish of me.
Yet, here I am. Fully intending to take that woman in every way she will let me.
Molly makes me feel human every time I touch her. I’m aware of how that sounds. That is exactly the kind of sentiment that gets men like me killed, or worse, gets the people around them killed. I hold that knowledge in one hand and her in the other, and I keep choosing her, and I’ve stopped pretending I will stop.
When she’s bent over my lap, squirming between her orgasm and her pink-cheeked spanking, I appreciate the moment, but there’s more to it than that. I know I can’t stop. I’ve come too far with her. I dig my fingers into her pussy and find her soakedonce more, and she moans from my touch sweeter than anything I have ever heard… There is no stopping this.
The smacks echo across my office, just like the sound of her begging. “Please, sir!”
“Please what, pet?”
“Please fuck me!”
“What makes you think you have earned my cock?”
She whines without words, and I spank her once more. The way she groans settles into my balls. She’s right. She’s not the only one who needs this. “Please?—”
I throw her onto the couch, and I’m inside of her in seconds. Each time, it feels as if I’ve come home, found God, seen the face of the heavens, whatever metaphorical thing that comes to mind, it is never enough. There is nothing else that compares to this.
She grinds up to meet me every time, like her body is helpless to do anything but seek mine out. When she comes, I feel her flutter against me, and I let her take me there too. We kiss once more, and I hold her close until we both calm down. Our heartbeats sync. For the first time, she begins to doze in my arms.
I hold as still as possible. I will not wake her for anything.
