Once I was in the house, I slumped against the door and slid down it with my back braced on the surface. Seated on the floor, I closed my eyes tight.
I couldn’t believe I’d done that. I struggled to comprehend how I’d not only let him kiss me but also kissed him back. My boss. The man who bought me as a payment for sin.
And the way he’d looked at me afterward? Now, I got it. Now, I understood. He hadn’t been looking at me with barely controlled lust. He’d viewed me with a scowl of regret. His action of foisting me onto his cousin’s watch proved it.
All night, I wore myself ragged with second thoughts and cringing whimpers. I replayed how perfectly hot it was. Then I remembered the annoyance on his face afterward. I relived the suspense of him leaning down toward me. And then I recalled the aching need for more.
In the morning, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about the dark circles under my eyes or the general fatigue that blanketed me. I’d tossed and turned all night, having the worst night of “sleep” since I’d arrived. From erotic dreams he starred in to nightmares where I was kicked out of this residence, I couldn’t relax enough to truly rest at all.
But when I walked over to the large house where I could work in the office he’d set up for me and the other visiting bookkeepers, I realized with a heavy heart that it didn’t matter.
That one kiss with Adrik Volkov had left me curious and desperate for more. On the tail of that admission and piece of self-reflection was confusion.
How could I possibly want him? Sure, he was attractive, so fine it wasn’t fair at all. But he was a Mafia boss. He represented a criminal organization. Just before he’d kissed me, he’d put me on the spot with a reminder of it. He’d asked if I realized the accounts I oversaw pertained to illegal matters. Of course, I knew that. I stood by my plea that he spare me the details. I didn’t want to or need to know if one payment for thousands of dollars was the cost of an arranged murder of someone. I didn’t wish to know if another invoice that was sent to a shell company stood for the payment of trafficked women.
Oh, God.
I cringed again. I didn’t approve of any illegal business matters, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think anything was on the up and up here. With the large amounts of money we were talking about, it had to be something bad. Money made the world go round, and not always according to the confines of the legal system.
Keeping myself in the dark was the only way I could stomach it. But when I’d told him that I didn’t want to “damage” anything or screw up, I meant that in the simplest way. I wanted to do as I was told so they wouldn’t kill me. After that kiss, though, it seemed odd to still harbor that thought in the back of my mind.
He can’t want to kill me if he wants to kiss me, right?
Wait. Scratch that. He wanted to kiss me. He no longer does.
It set the mood for my entering the office. He came in and out of the room, busy on his phone and not directly paying attention to me as I logged onto my computer to begin my “job”.
Any time he came through the room, I couldn’t help but revert into this shyness. I was wholly unsure about how to react around him after that kiss.
Don’t even think about it.
Don’t think about him.
Focus on the books and just do what you have to do.
Oddly, there were more and more issues with the spreadsheets and files this morning. As it happened every other day that I worked here, I was bogged down with the curiosity of what my father was doing. Orwhowas doing all this accounting work in my absence.
Throughout the day, I caught glimpses of Adrik in the house. I overheard his loud and gruff voice as he took one call after another.
My confusion stayed constant, but as I pegged where he was and how much he tried to multitask all the burdens only a leader of an organization would face, I loathed the complication in my heart. It was much more difficult to uphold this hatred for him when I was reluctantly empathetic with how stressed he was.
That man would always be a high-strung, overworked leader. Being gruff and cold just went with the job description, I supposed. But each time I tried to make up excuses for his personality, I chased away the yearning I wasn’t supposed to feel for him.
“Elena.”
I jolted at his voice as he paused at the doorway.
I turned, facing him. “Yes, sir?”
He opened his mouth but furrowed his brow before speaking. “You went from Adrik to Mr. Volkov tosir?”
My stomach tensed. Oh, dammit. Why did I keep screwing this up?
“I’m not sure what you want me to call you,” I admitted.
And I’m even less sure how to act around you after the kiss that we’re clearly going to pretend didn’t happen.
“You can call me your dinner companion. Come on.”
