Chapter 24
ELLIE
The knock is already halfway formed when I stop myself.
My knuckles are an inch from the door, and I’m standing in the corridor outside Rolan’s office, thinking about the last time I walked in and what happened afterward.
I knock anyway.
“Come in.”
He looks up when I enter.
“You said to come this afternoon.”
“I did.” He opens the second drawer from the top on the right side of the desk and produces a leather wallet, slim and dark. He extracts a card from it and holds it out.
The card is matte black and has no visible numbers on the front. He extends it toward me, and I take a step forward, reaching for it.
He doesn’t let go.
I look at his hand. Then at his face.
The corner of his mouth moves. “You thought this was going to be for free?”
“I — yes, actually, you said?— ”
“I said I’d give you the card.” He leans back in the chair. The card is still in his hand, held loosely. “I didn’t specify the terms.”
I look at him. At the card. At him again.
“What terms?”
He doesn’t answer. He tips his head toward the desk. Warmth starts in my stomach and radiates outward without asking permission.
I walk around the desk.
I stand in front of his chair, and he looks up at me. The reversal of our usual positioning, him looking up at me, rouses butterflies in my stomach.
“Take them off,” he orders.
I stare at him. “That was not in the contract.”
“It is now.”
“You can’t add clauses to a?—”
“The top first.” He settles back further, watching my face. “Unless you’d like to start somewhere else.”
My hands are already at the hem of my sweater before I’ve finished the internal argument.
I pull it over my head.
He watches.
The attention is worse than being touched. More deliberate. His eyes move over me as if he is taking inventory of his belongings, which should make me angrier than it does.
I reach behind me for my bra clasp.
“Slowly,” he says.
I unfasten it, but his eyes stay on my face.
The rest follows. My jeans. My underwear. I’m left standing in front of him, completely bare, while he sits in his chair. His gaze feels primal.
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” he says.
“There’s nothing left.”
“Mm.” He stands.
He doesn’t go around the desk. He comes directly forward, reaching me in two steps. Now close enough that I have to tip my chin up to maintain eye contact, his hand closes around the back of my thigh.
“Up,” he commands.
I sit on the desk.
The wood is cool against the backs of my thighs. He drops to his knees. His hands wrap around my thighs and pull me forward. My legs rise over his shoulders, and then his mouth — oh God .
His hands hold me in place.
“How can you taste so good, Elizabeth?”
The pressure builds and soon tips over the edge. I collapse forward, one hand finding his shoulder, my moans lost somewhere in the office air as I come hard over his mouth.
When I can breathe again, I ask, “Does that… No. Is that sufficient?”
He looks up at me from his knees.
“Not even remotely,” he says.
He stands. His hands go to his belt.
Still half-seated on the desk, I watch him, my weight resting on my palms. The unhurried movement steals my ability to think.
He positions himself at my entrance and looks at my face.
He enters slowly, eyes still fixed on my expression. I feel every inch, and he watches through all of it. The intimacy is almost unbearable.
When he’s fully in, I exhale the breath I’ve been holding since the belt.
He moves in long, slow strokes that map the full length of him. I grip the edge of the desk so hard my knuckles go white.
Then it changes.
The pace shifts to more demanding, deeper, his hands tightening on my hips. His control comes loose, incrementally and then all at once.
He says against my throat, low and rough, “It feels so good inside you.” He takes another breath, delivering another thrust. “I could do this all day.”
“Rolan—”
His name comes out at a volume that barely qualifies as a word.
He goes still for half a second.
Then his arm sweeps the desk.
The crash of materials hitting the floor is enormous. I barely have time to register it before his hand meets the center of my chest, pressing me down. I’m left flat on the desk, him above me, the angle that much deeper.
I stop being capable of language. I stop being capable of forming thoughts. The orgasm builds from deeper than previous ones.
We shatter together. I feel him, the shudder that moves through his body, the low growl he buries against my shoulder at the exact moment my own release crashes through me.
My fingers dig into his back, my spine arches, and the only coherent thing left in my mind is his name repeating itself like a pulse.
The office is quiet afterward.
My legs are still shaking. He withdraws, and I stay on the desk, too spent to move.
He picks up the card from the floor and holds it out. I take it with a hand that is not entirely steady.
“Pleasure doing business,” he says.
I look at the card.
“You are,” I sigh, “genuinely unbelievable.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. Almost there.
Anya has opinions.
This turns out to be the most significant discovery of the room project.
She wants blue. Not baby blue, not navy. But the blue of the sky twenty minutes after sunset, she explains, which she shows me by pulling up an image on the tablet. It’s a photograph of a coastline at dusk, the water dark and the sky above it the exact shade she means.
“That’s a grown-up color,” I say.
She looks at me with a face that says, I know, and?
We order the paint, bedding, and a few other bedroom staples from the laptop in the sunroom. The total that appears on the screen is a number I would previously have needed six months to earn.
The painting takes most of the following day.
I tape the trim. Anya mixes the paint with a seriousness that suggests she’s been watching renovation content somewhere. We put on the first coat and stand back.
“It needs another,” Anya says.
“It does,” I agree.
After rolling the second coat, we start the details with the brush: flowers, clouds, and butterflies.
Anya’s section is, arguably, better than mine — steadier, more even.
She seems to have a natural understanding of the way the brush wants to move.
I make a note to ask Mikhail whether there are art supplies somewhere in the house already, and if not, to add them to the next order.
Rolan appears twice.
The first time he stands in the doorway for a moment, looking at the walls, says nothing, and leaves. The second time he comes further in, surveys the progress, studies Anya’s section, and then mine with an expression that strongly implies he can tell the difference, and says, “It looks good.”
Anya beams at her wall .
I look at mine and feel approximately the way I felt in second grade when my art project came back with a C-plus.
“It’s a process,” I say.
“Evidently,” he says, and leaves.
We’re nearly finished with the project when my phone illuminates on the floor beside me, the screen cutting through the comfortable mess of paint-stained newspapers and scattered brushes.
I wipe my hands on the nearest cloth to avoid smudging the screen and pick it up.
Unknown number
The warmth drains from my body. My gaze lifts from the screen and sweeps the room before I’ve consciously decided to check. Anya is across from me, gathering paintbrushes into a jar, entirely absorbed in the task.
I open the message.
Tell your friend to stop calling the police about her ‘stalker.’ I’m not her problem. You are. Either you come talk to me, or I expand my social circle. She’s easy to find, Baby. You know I mean it.
My stomach drops.
No. No. No.
Landon’s found Maren.
Shit.
She doesn’t know what’s happening. She’s probably genuinely filing police reports because a strange man is following her, and she’s a sensible person who believes in systems working the way they’re supposed to work.
I close the notification, glancing across the room. Anya is still absorbed in her brushes. She won’t notice my absence for a few minutes .
I slip out quietly, padding down the hallway to my room. The door clicks shut behind me, and I lean against it for a second, steadying myself, before pulling up Maren’s contact and pressing call.
It rings once. Twice. Three times. My fingers tighten around the phone with each unanswered tone. Four. Five. She’s not going to pick up. Something happened. He got to her already and?—
“Hey, stranger.”
The relief that leaves my lungs is so sudden it’s almost a laugh. I press my free hand against my chest and close my eyes.
“Hi. Are you okay?”
“So, funny you ask.” Her voice is muffled by background noises.
“Some weird stuff has been happening. I think someone’s been following me, but I can’t figure out who.
It’s not the usual crowd — different vibe, way more intense.
I called the police, they came to my apartment, found absolutely nothing. Treated me like I was losing it.”
My stomach drops. “Mare, I’m so sorry. It’s Landon. This is payback. Some things went down, and he’s angry. I think he’s watching you to get to me. To scare me.”
“Oh, El.” Her tone shifts instantly, concern flooding her voice. “Are you okay? What happened?”
I bite my lip. How exactly do I explain that my employer stabbed my ex-boyfriend after said ex-boyfriend held a knife to my throat? And, considerably, disastrously worse, that I slept with said employer afterward?
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just—” I pause. Swallow. “Look, I’m going to fix this, okay? Landon won’t bother you anymore.”
“El.” Her voice sharpens. “What about you ? Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“It’s complicated. I promise I’ll tell you everything when we see each other, okay? I have to go, but please, if anything else happens, call me. Immediately. Day or night. ”
“Okay, El. You too.” A beat of silence, softer now. “I miss you.”
“Miss you too, Mare.”
I end the call and stand in the middle of my room holding a very heavy phone. My vision blurs before I can stop it.
I’m a mess. A complete, absolute disaster. I managed to drag my best friend into a situation she doesn’t deserve and can’t possibly understand. Maren is out there alone and in danger, all because of me.
I need to do something.
Do I tell Rolan?
I sit with the question for twenty minutes and make my choice.
I go to his office and don’t knock.
His gaze finds me the moment I enter, and a flicker moves across his face.
“I need your help.” I hold out my phone, and he takes it.
His face doesn’t change as he reads the message.
“When did this come in?”
“About an hour ago.”
He sets the phone on his desk and leans back. “Don’t worry about it.”
I stare at him. “Maren doesn’t know everything that?—”
“I know.”
“She’s filing police reports, which isn’t going to?—”
“I know.”
“Rolan.” My voice comes out ragged. “That’s my best friend. She’s been my best friend since I was eighteen years old, and she’s being threatened because of me. Because of my situation. And you’re telling me not to?—”
“I will take care of it.”
“What does that mean ?”
He reaches me, his pale eyes steady. His hand raises to hold my chin .
“It means,” he says, “that Landon Webb is not going to touch your friend.” He pauses. “It means you don’t have to fix this.”
You don’t have to fix this.
I’ve been fixing things since I was nineteen.
Since my father called from a casino in Atlantic City, and I wired him money from my student loan, starting the sequence that ended in a five-hundred-thousand-dollar debt.
I have been fixing, absorbing, and standing in front of damage so it doesn’t reach the people behind me, and I’m tired. His eyes are asking me to put the shield down and let him step in.
“Okay,” I mutter.
He stares at me for a moment longer.
“Go to bed,” he softly commands. “I’ll be there soon.”
I nod and walk back into his room — his room , which has quietly become our room — and sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the dark window.
The danger doesn’t leave. I chose to trust him, and I believe what he said, but the feeling remains — the cold of knowing someone you love is in proximity to sharp edges and not being the one to rush in and save them.
I lie back on the bed and wait.