Chapter 7 Theo
At six o'clock, Viktor unlocks the door. He walks in, stands by the door, and says, "You're done for the day. Turn off the laptop."
I look up from the screen. I've been in the dealer rotation schedules for three hours and I'm close to something. "I'm in the middle of—"
"Turn it off."
I turn it off. He holds the door. I walk through it. He leads me to the elevator and presses the button and stands with his hands clasped behind his back, staring straight ahead.
The doors open. We step in. He presses a button and I glance at the panel.
Twenty-three.
"That's not my floor," I say.
"It wasn’t."
We start moving. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two passes without stopping and my stomach tightens.
"Where are we going?"
Viktor's expression doesn't flicker. "Mr. Novikov is moving you to his suite."
"I'm fine where I am."
"It's not an offer. Mr. Novikov's orders. Your things have been brought from the motel."
I stare at him. He stares back. This is a man who suggested putting my body in a ditch with the emotional range of someone ordering lunch. I am not going to win this one.
The doors open on twenty-three. A short corridor. One door at the end. Viktor swipes a keycard and pushes it open and steps back.
"Settle in," he says. "Someone will bring dinner."
He doesn't come in. The door closes behind me. The lock engages.
The penthouse is huge. That's the first thing.
It's three or four times the size of the suite I've been in.
The living area has floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, the city laid out below in the early evening light.
There's a kitchen, open-plan, with a marble island and fancy appliances.
A long leather sofa. A dining table. Bookshelves.
The whole place smells like him.
His scent is soaked into the furniture, the curtains, the carpets. Whiskey and cedar, warm and deep, and my body responds to it the way it has responded every time since that first night. Heat pools low in my stomach. My skin prickles. Between my legs, the first betrayal of slick.
I breathe through my mouth and walk through the space quickly. There’s a second bedroom at the end of a short hallway but there’s no bed. It’s filled with a large conference table and a wall of monitors showing feeds from all over the casino. I guess this is my new office.
His bedroom door is at the other end of the hallway. I don't open it. There is no second bed. I don’t want to think about where he is intending me to sleep.
I go back to the office and sit at the desk and watch the feeds because it’s the only thing that keeps my brain in charge of my body.
Ten minutes later, someone arrives with the laptop from downstairs.
I open it and start working. Better than thinking about what happens when Dominic Novikov turns up.
Two hours pass. The city darkens beyond the windows. I identify two players and I'm closing in on the third when I hear the front door open.
His scent arrives before he does. It rolls through the room, fresh and strong, layered with the cold air of outside. He's been somewhere. I don't know and I don't ask because I don't look up from the screen.
"You're settled in," he says.
I have no idea what to say to that. Thanks? I don’t feel particularly thankful, so I say nothing.
“You belong in here with me,” he says.
At least he's honest about what he’s thinking. I keep my eyes on the monitor. My fingers are still on the keyboard but I've stopped typing because my hands aren't steady enough and I won't let him see that.
I hear him move through the space. The kitchen. A cupboard opens and closes. The clink of a glass. The sound of liquid pouring.
"Have you eaten?" he asks.
"Someone brought something."
"Did you eat it?"
I didn't. It's still on the kitchen counter, covered in plastic wrap. I was working.
"I'll eat later."
He doesn't push it. I hear him move again, closer. He's behind me now. I can feel the warmth of him at my back, the way the air shifts when he's nearby. My spine straightens.
"You found anything yet?" he says. He's looking at the screen over my shoulder.
"Yes."
"Who?"
"Not going to tell you that yet. I want the full picture and I want to make sure you’re going to hold to your word."
He's quiet. I can hear him breathing. His breath stirs the hair at the back of my neck and every nerve in my body lights up. My fingers press hard against the keyboard.
"You're good at this," he says.
"I know."
"You're also not eating, not sleeping, and you've been staring at a screen for fourteen hours. You need sleep."
I shiver. He’s been watching me. The thought sends warmth flooding through my core. The thought is both enticing and terrifying.
"I'll sleep when I'm done."
"You'll sleep when I tell you to."
The words land and my whole body goes still. Not the content. It’s the tone, low and certain.
It’s the voice of a man who is used to being obeyed and who expects it from me specifically and the worst part, the very worst part, is what it does to the space between my legs. The slick comes fast and hot and I clench against it and I know he can smell it because his breathing changes behind me.
I turn in the chair. It's a mistake. He's closer than I thought. Close enough that my knee brushes his thigh when I turn and the contact sends a jolt up my leg that makes me gasp.
He's looking down at me. His eyes are dark and the pupils are blown wide and his scent has shifted into deep honeyed whiskey. He's hard. I can see it, the press of him against his pants, and I should look away and I don't.
"Don't," I say. But my voice is wrong. It comes out low and rough instead of sharp and the word doesn't sound like a warning. It sounds like the start of something.
"But your body says something else." His voice is quiet.
"My body doesn't get a vote."
"Your body is the only honest thing in this room."
He doesn't touch me. His hands are at his sides. He stands there and he looks at me and he waits. The waiting is worse than if he'd grabbed me because it puts the decision in my lap and I don't trust myself to make it.
I stand up. The chair rolls back and hits the desk. We're close now, inches, and his scent wraps around me and my pulse is hammering in my throat and I can feel the slick soaking through my underwear.
I’m planning to walk away. Somehow, sidle past him and into the living area where there is a lot more space between us.
Instead, I kiss him.
I don't decide to. My hands are on his chest and my mouth is on his and I'm kissing him hard, angry, my teeth catching his lower lip. He makes a sound, deep in his chest, and his hands come up to my waist and his grip is firm and sure and his thumbs press into the hollows above my hip bones.
He kisses me back. He tastes like scotch.
His hands tighten on my waist. He pulls me closer, up out of the chair, and the full length of his body presses against mine and I can feel him, hard and thick against my stomach, and my hips roll forward without permission. The friction makes both of us groan.
His mouth moves to my jaw, my neck. His lips find the place below my ear and his tongue presses against my pulse point and I shudder so hard my knees buckle. His arm locks around my back, holding me up.
"Theo." My name in his mouth, against my skin. His teeth graze my throat and I make a sound I will never forgive myself for, high and desperate and needy, and my hands fist in his shirt and pull.
His hand slides down my back to the base of my spine.
Lower. His fingers brush the curve of my ass and the touch sends a bolt of heat through me that whites out my vision for a second.
I'm soaked. I can feel it on my thighs. He can smell it.
His whole body tenses against mine and the sound he makes is barely human.
I need to tell him stop because this alpha is everything I have spent my entire life running from. If I let this happen I will never get free.
I pull back. It takes everything I have. My hands shake as I push against his chest and step away and the distance between us feels like tearing something.
"Stop," I say.
He stops. His hands drop. He stands there breathing hard, his shirt pulled loose where I grabbed it, his pupils so wide his eyes look black. The scent rolling off him is thick enough to taste, dark whiskey and want. My body is screaming at me to close the distance again.
I don't.
"I'm going to take a shower," I say. My voice comes out thin. "Don't follow me."
I’m expecting him to ignore me and follow me as I leave, but he doesn’t.
I make it to the bathroom and turn the shower on and strip off my clothes and step under the water.
It's cold. I make it cold on purpose. The shock of it hits my overheated skin and I press my hands against the tile and stand there and breathe.
I can still taste him. I can still feel the press of his body against mine, the grip of his hands on my waist, the heat of his mouth on my throat. My cock is hard and the slick is still coming and the cold water isn't doing a thing to stop it.
I press my forehead against the tile and close my eyes.
My heat is coming. I can feel it in the background, the low hum that usually starts a week or so out.
My suppressants weren’t in the toiletry bag with the rest of my things. He hasn't given them back. I absolutely cannot do this.
I stay in the shower until the water goes from cold to painful and then I get out and dry off and put on the cleanest clothes I have and sit on the edge of the bath and listen to the silence of the penthouse.
My lips are swollen. There's a mark on my neck where his teeth grazed me. I press my fingers to it and the sting brings back the feel of his mouth.
Finally, I open the bathroom door. The hallway is dim. The living area glows at the end of it, soft lamplight and the blue flicker of the monitors I left running.
Novikov is on the sofa. He's changed out of his suit into a t-shirt and sweatpants and he's reading something on his phone. He looks up when I come in. His gaze drops to my neck, to the mark his teeth left, and something shifts in his face. Satisfaction. He doesn't try to hide it.
"I'm sleeping on the sofa."
He looks at me. The smirk is slow, barely there, just a lift at one corner of his mouth. He doesn't argue. He doesn't offer to take the sofa himself. He just looks at me and I know exactly what he’s thinking. He doesn’t think I have the willpower to stay on the sofa.
"There are blankets in the hall cupboard," he says. He stands, sets his phone on the coffee table, and walks past me toward the bedroom. He's close enough that his scent brushes over me, warm and deliberate. He doesn't touch me. He doesn't need to.
"Goodnight, Theo," he says.
The bedroom door stays open.
The blankets are where he said they'd be. I make up a bed that is perfectly adequate and lie down and stare at the ceiling. His scent is everywhere and the bedroom door is fifteen feet away.
I don't go to it. I lie on the sofa and I pull the blanket up and I close my eyes. I don’t go to him, but I want to. The moment my heat hits, I’m going to give in. It's only a matter of time.