46. Lourdes
Lourdes
The next morning, I return to the office at Zervas & Company. And it feels good to be back. That’s until I’m summoned to see Daria before I can sit at my desk for two minutes and dare to feel normal.
If part of the bargain to get better care for Sandrine is being married to Ares Zervas, who makes love to me until I forget my name, I can’t complain.
Now I get to find out what being Mrs. Zervas entails outside the bedroom.
Feeling self-conscious in front of Daria as I have from the start, I smooth my skirt and square my shoulders before entering her office.
Ares runs this company, but Daria is in charge of intel and security. Since she’s not afraid of him, she will not hesitate to chew me out for all my HR violations as an appetizer.
“Welcome back,” she says, offering pleasantries I wasn’t expecting. “Ares tells me you have officially agreed to be his wife. As such, you’ll be assigned a series of duties to serve and represent him as well as Zervas & Company.”
“Duties?” I sit up straighter.
Princess Diana and her role in service to the ‘crown’ come to mind. Both honor and terror compete in my brain. The latter won out because the poor woman’s life was never her own again once she agreed to marry a future king.
Ares is already a king. I’m screwed.
“You will sit on the board of several corporations strategically aligned with Zervas & Company,” Daria continues.
“Are these ornamental positions?” I ask, tightening my fist around the hem of my skirt.
“Ares doesn’t do ornamental.” She cracks a rare grin. “You’ll be a fully authorized representative.”
“Okay. What else?”
“You’ll be added to the committee that judges candidates for multiple Zervas scholarship programs.” She gathers several folders. “And you and Ares will attend the Winter Olympics in the French Alps this winter.”
That lifts my head from the folder of scholarship applications. “The Olympics?”
“We are a major sponsor,” she says proudly like she inked that deal herself.
Having only been with the company for a couple of months, I’m not aware of Ares’s full reach in the business world. Now it seems like he’s an octopus curling his tentacles around industries in every direction.
It was his responsibility to build up this company while Alexander fought a war to keep their position in the mafia world on solid ground.
“This sounds like a full-time job,” I say carefully.
“It is,” Daria replies.
Without her saying so, I realize that as of this moment, I’m no longer Ares Zervas’s personal assistant.
She explains I will still get a salary, a new one, and when the numbers leave her lips, my eyes nearly pop out of my head.
Feeling uneasy about who will be giving Ares my meticulous personal assistant attention, I ask, “And who will replace me?”
“Ares doesn’t want a personal assistant at the moment.” She leans in. “Ares kept you close to him for his own reasons.”
I wanted you the minute I saw you…
Cringing to realize I was hired because he wanted me in his bed all along, I fight to maintain my dignity. “Okay.”
“Then there are other meetings, charity galas, and business dinners,” Daria adds and slides a black credit card across the desk to me. “This is your executive corporate card. And I will text you the number of an approved stylist to purchase gowns.”
“Great.”
Only one hesitation rises to the edge of my thoughts.
“I still need to manage my sister’s care when she’s transferred here to New York,” I say, eyes on Daria. “Meetings with her therapists come first. That’s non-negotiable.”
Daria quirks a brow. “Ares said we are to accommodate whatever conflicts arise in regard to your sister.”
“Thank you.” I accept this for what it is right now and will take everything one day at a time.
Daria stands. “Now, let me show you your new office.”
Tingles race up my spine. I figured I’d be performing my new duties, like reading students’ resumes for the scholarship committee, from my desk outside Ares’s corner office.
We take the circular metal and wood staircase back up to the executive level, and she leads me to Atlas and Ambrose’s offices. They are each busy behind closed doors. Atlas dealing with finances, and Ambrose handling the legal side.
I wasn’t gone for very long, but there appears to be a brand-new empty office between the brothers.
“Right here.” Daria opens the door to that office with a code. “This is yours.”
I blink at the size and style of it. Dark, clean woods and a view of the city that usually comes with a very high salary for a mere mortal. I step inside slowly, trailing my fingers along the back of the chair behind the desk. My touch melts into the soft leather.
“Who was this office built for?” I can’t imagine Ares would rip out sheetrock for…
Before I finish that thought, Ares is there, filling the doorframe.
“I had this section renovated while you were gone,” he says evenly. “I built it for you.”
The air tightens, and Daria, reading the shift, excuses herself without another word.
His brothers now have smaller offices because of me. Ares could have given me any number of empty offices on the several floors we occupy in this building. I’ve been put into the inner circle of Zervas & Company.
As an equal.
Alone now, Ares steps inside and closes the door behind him. “Are you happy with your new role in the company?” he asks.
“I am,” I answer honestly. “I don’t want to be a kept wife. I never did.”
But without a real degree and limited office experience, my options for a career were narrow. I pictured I’d be waiting tables to pay for Sandrine’s care.
Nothing could be further from the reality I’m living now.
With rare amusement in his eyes, he says, “You are now, truly my face.”
Before I can respond, he closes the blinds and takes off his jacket. “Now, I want you to sit on my face.”
Heat flares across my skin in an instant. “Right here, right now?”
“Right here. Right now.” He runs a finger down my jaw. “I want to taste your cream on my lips the rest of the day.”
My nipples tighten, and a reward is in order for what he’s given me. He wants me as his wife, but he won’t keep me locked in his penthouse to serve as his personal sex slave. Ares is strong enough and man enough to elevate me. And compassionate enough to help my sister.
“Get on that sofa,” I say, and tilt my head toward the modest couch to the left of my desk. I’ll make him my sex slave because he’s awoken something in me. I have never felt this ravenous for sex.
After taking a seat and loosening his tie, he reaches for me. “Get over here, little storm. Rain down on me.”
I strut toward him, and hitch up my skirt to my waist, and take what I want. I climb my future husband, resting one knee on the back cushion.
Ares moves my panties to the side. “Fucking wet for me as usual.”
“Always,” I gasp a moan, feeling his hot breath on my center.
I arch my hips, notching my pussy against his mouth at the right pressure. He slowly runs his tongue along my slit, once, twice, then suckles my clit.
“God…” I draw in a rough breath and spread my legs wider.
“That’s right, my dirty wife-to-be, move those hips and fuck my mouth.”
I obey by curling my hips to ride his tongue. I can’t believe we’re doing this in the office, where, on the other side of the wall, Atlas and Ambrose work unsuspecting.
Or maybe they do suspect something.
My clit thumps at that thought. What is happening to me?
Ares eats me at a rhythm that drives me crazy. It’s slow, forcing me to rock against his mouth to get more friction. Tears well up behind my eyes, it’s so good. I tip my head back, biting back a moan.
Ares doesn’t keep quiet. He’s unapologetic. He answers to no one here. I look down and see the long length of him bulging in his trousers.
“Ares,” I whisper as my orgasm builds at the base of my spine.
It’s so good. Too good.
“Shhh, let this happen. Take it, take what you deserve.” His intoxicating voice is so deep and hums with power and masculinity.
I lose control, and my raging heartbeat cripples my breath. “I’m coming.”
I surrender to his mouth as he devours the space between my thighs.
“Fuck, you taste so good,” he growls. “Drench me with this gushing pussy. I can survive just drinking from your sweet fountain.”
“Wait, I can…”
“Fuck…” Ares takes a savage bite of my clit, pushing me to another climactic level.
I dig my nails into his shoulders to take more. Take it all. Wrung out, I collapse, and he catches me. But he moves me to the side and shifts his hips.
He moans, hips jerking slightly. “Mother of God. That was a first.”
“What…” Getting my breath back, I look at his pants and see a sizable wet spot. “Did you—”
“Come in my pants?” He stands and blushes. “I did. That’s how fucking crazy you make me, little storm.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“No.” He pulls me close. “Do not be sorry for making me come without even touching my dick. Just the taste of you and the sound of your pleasure and coming all over my mouth gets me off. I’m proud of that.”
I let him kiss me without wiping his mouth. It’s hot and erotic. I feel like I’m becoming who I’m supposed to be.
Like the butterfly.
“But we need to get you on some kind of birth control.” He kisses me again and then walks into the bathroom attached to my new office.
Did he come in his pants on purpose, so he didn’t come inside me?
I give Ares the time he needs to clean up while I right myself on the sofa and think about what he said.
Ares wants me on birth control. He also said he didn’t want my choices taken away. Since we’re getting married and he’s already forty-two, shouldn’t we be talking about having children, not securing the methods to prevent them?
I asked him about kids once. He didn’t answer. What if Ares doesn’t want children at all?
My throat goes dry. I already lost one baby. Maybe I can’t have another. Would that matter to him?
Or would it make me…easier to walk away from?
He returns to the office, one hand smoothing his hair. His perfection hardened back into place.
“Ares… I need to tell you something.” My heart pounds at what I’m about to say.
Gray-violet eyes widen. Perhaps the sound of my voice caused him to go on high alert. Or given all the things he already knows about me, something I haven’t told him yet could be earth-shattering to him.
“You can tell me anything.” He stands with his arms crossed, a pose that’s a complete contradiction to what he just said. “Talk to me.”
“I was pregnant a few years ago.” I close my eyes briefly and open them to find him staring at me.
Seeing the strange look on his face and hearing no immediate response, I stand up from the sofa.
“I… I had a miscarriage. The pregnancy is why David and I got married. The only reason, really. When he told me he had a job here in New York, I had to come with him because of the pregnancy. I couldn’t do it on my own in Chicago.
I had no family. Sandrine was in Lakeshore.
But then I lost the baby… And David changed.
I don’t think he really wanted to marry me. He was just doing the right thing.”
Ares keeps staring at me. After an exhale, he approaches me slowly.
“Lourdes… I’m sorry you went through that.
I didn’t want to judge how you could have married such a…
I commend any man who will do the right thing by a woman.
But even if I had known this all along, he lost my respect just the way he spoke to you at Winterhall.
Never mind the physical abuse. We both know where that got him. ”
“I know.”
Boy, do I know.
Clearing my throat, I add, “That’s why I’m not on birth control. After the miscarriage, I had to wait, and by then, David stopped wanting sex with me. There was no reason to be on it.”
“Are you telling me that you and he hadn’t been intimate…”
“In years,” I whisper.
He pulls me into his arms, and I melt against his chest.
“My little storm. My butterfly. You’re not that woman anymore. The way you handle me. The way you take me.” He brushes a final kiss on my lips. “No, you were never that woman. You were always meant for me.”
“I worried the miscarriage might have meant I couldn’t… You know.”
Ares straightens, his chin pointed. “Go on.”
“If I couldn’t have children, would that change anything for you?”
His expression shifts, something tightening in his jaw. “It would change nothing. I want you, Lourdes. You.”