7. Arsen
7
ARSEN
“Where are we going?” Laila has kept herself chained to one corner of the car, as far from me as she can possibly get. She won’t meet my eyes, instead focusing on the city rolling past the window of my Mercedes.
You’d think the sex would have broken the ice a bit, but you’d be wrong. She’s just as nervous as when she first walked in my office.
Before I can answer her question, Dominik pulls along the curb. “Here we are, Mr. Adamov. Welcome home.”
Laila leaps from the car like it’s on fire and stares up at the luxury apartment building. “This is where you live?”
I reach over and touch her chin, ignoring the way she flinches, and tilt her eyes to the topmost floor. “ That is where I live.”
She’s still blinking up at the penthouse when I hear the window roll down. Dom tips his head towards Laila. “She’s pretty.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” I mutter.
Dominik just arches his brow at me.
I lean through the window and snarl, “I am this close to punching you in the face, my friend.”
He couldn’t be less concerned. “You’ve never brought a woman here before,” he remarks, as if I wasn’t painfully aware of that. Then he starts singing in a terribly off-pitch tenor. “ ‘Times, they are a-changin’…’”
He doesn’t even know about what we just did in my office. Though Laila’s lack of bra and tousled hair might be a bit of a giveaway.
My scowl is deep and violent. “The scouts said that the Calcagnos will be at Midnight Divas tonight. I’m not sure Alessandro will show up, but Enzo most definitely will. I want eyes on him.”
He snaps to attention, suddenly all business. “I’m on it.” Then his eyes flick towards Laila. “Though I take it I’ll be going alone, since you’ll be… otherwise engaged this fine evening.”
“Take the car back to the house and be back here tomorrow morning at eight,” I order, indirectly answering his question. “Preferably without that smug look on your face.”
“This?” He points to his grin. “This is just me, enjoying my role as second to a pakhan who—oh, how to phrase it?—is so quick to take matters into his own hands. ”
I dismiss him with an irritated, one-fingered wave. Dominik cruises away, still grinning.
Laila is now staring at the doorman where he’s stationed by the entrance. “You’re gonna think this is pathetic, but I’ve never been in a building with a doorman before.”
“It’s been a day of firsts,” I drawl under my breath. “Add that to the list.”
She stiffens when my hand finds the small of her back, but she doesn’t pull away as I lead her inside.
Laila gapes and gasps at the meaningless frill that has become the background to my life—the fresh flowers filling every vase, the private elevator gleaming in polished brass, the thick Persian rug in the foyer.
Once the elevator deposits us upstairs, she tiptoes across the blood red carpet of my entryway. “Should I take off my shoes first? This looks nice.”
“It is nice.” I nudge her deeper into the house. “But you might as well take off your shoes in the bedroom.”
It’s where she’ll take off everything else.
She seems to hear the unspoken part of that sentence and stiffens, but then she steps down into the sunken living room and gets too busy fawning over the deep, plush couch. Part of me is tempted to take her over the arm of the sofa. Maybe we’ll double back and hit the bearskin rug, too. Perhaps the kitchen counters…
Fucking hell. It hasn’t even been an hour since I was last inside of her, and I’m aching for more.
At the risk of losing all semblance of control, I stick with the initial plan and lead her to the master bedroom.
Laila steps through the door and inhales sharply. “I know I sound like a broken record, but… this is where you sleep?”
“Among other activities.”
God, I love the way her cheeks flush. It’s like a game, seeing how easily I can make her blood pump. Roza, this innocent little rose, blooming anew again and again, every time I push her outside of her comfort zone.
“Would you like something to drink?” I help myself to a shot of whiskey from the bar cart.
She takes one step deeper into the room. “Should I be drinking at all?”
“It was a good fuck, but even I can’t get you pregnant that fast.”
The blush rushes down her neck. Another petal on her pale skin. Another point for me.
She swallows. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
Instead of pouring another glass, I just hand her mine. She eyes the auburn liquid before giving it a tentative sniff. “This is exactly what you smell like! You smell like whiskey.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she flushes an even deeper shade of pink.
I find myself reaching for her face, grazing the backs of my fingers over her cheek. “‘ Roza’ has never been more appropriate.”
“What?”
I ignore her. “Whiskey is for drinking. Give it a taste.”
“At the risk of once again repeating myself… I’ve never actually tried whiskey before,” she admits suddenly, glancing at me through her eyelashes. “I must seem pretty uncultured.”
“My wife is practically a whiskey sommelier. She plays three instruments, speaks four languages, and has traveled half the world.” I drop my chin, meeting her eyes. “None of that stops me from wanting to fling her off the top of the Empire State Building.”
Laila’s mouth turns down at the corners as she tries to fight back a laugh. “Where does she live?”
“Far away from me,” I answer with a grateful shudder. “She sticks to her side of the city, and I stick to mine—apart from those unfortunate instances when we’re forced to parade around as husband and wife.”
She lifts the glass towards her lips, but still doesn’t drink. “Sounds awful.”
“It is what it is. Freedom, more or less.”
“But not really,” she argues. “You’ll always be bound to each other. Unable to pursue anything real with anyone else.”
“Ah, but that’s my secret, roza ,” I whisper. “I don’t want anything real with anyone.”
Her eyes meet mine for a fleeting second. Then she raises the whiskey and takes a long drink. I know what’s coming before she’s even swallowed.
“Oh, God,” she gasps, coughing until her eyes water.
“Whiskey is meant to be savored,” I chuckle. I remove the glass from her hands and run my hand down her spine. “You’re meant to sip it, not chug it like a pint of beer.”
“Well, it’s clear I’m no whiskey—” She coughs. “—sommelier. Can I get some water, please?”
After she’s finished a glass of water, she backs away from the row of liquor bottles like they might force their way down her throat again if she lingers too close. “I’m not sure whiskey and I are gonna be good friends.”
I laugh again and step toward the bed, shedding my jacket and tie as I go. As always, it feels like sloughing off a mask I never wanted to wear. There are no chains of behavioral expectations in here.
We’re in my kingdom now.
I can do whatever the fuck I want.
Laila’s eyes follow me every step of the way. Her throat bobs. Her hands flutter together and apart, like a bird, twittering around, unsure where to land or where it is safe to fly.
She sees me watching and clamps her fingers together. “I fidget when I’m nervous.”
“What’s left to be nervous about?”
She flings her arms around to gesture at the general situation. “You. Me. The contract. All of it.”
“Are you having second thoughts?”
The contract allows me to keep her in this room and do every single thing I can’t stop thinking about. But if she didn’t want it… I could let her leave.
Well, I could try to let her leave.
The devil only knows if I’m man enough to watch her walk away.
“I’m… No, I’m fine.” She takes a deep breath and straightens her posture. “I know why I’m doing this.”
I watch her for a moment. Her body stills. She stills.
Only then do I open the top drawer of my bedside table and pull out a roll of condoms.
“Then we can get rid of these.”
Laila blinks, and blinks, and blinks some more. Suddenly, she’s not so defiant and certain. She chews at the inside of her lip again. I wonder if she notices that I can see that.
“Well, we wouldn’t wanna—I mean, that seems… wasteful, you know? Like, you paid good money for those. You might want them again. Later. With someone else.”
I turn to start a fire in the fireplace—and also to keep her from seeing the twist of disgust rippling across my face. So I don’t have to explain just how foul I suddenly find the idea of touching anyone else.
She’s just a woman.
An innocent woman who wandered into the wrong office at the wrong time.
But now that I’ve tasted her, there’s an animal lurking somewhere deep in my chest that gets violent at the thought of her laying a hand on another living soul.
I feel Laila’s eyes on me as I kindle the flames. Heat rises in waves until it’s crackling. When it’s hot enough, I turn back and her skin is ethereal in the firelight.
“There’ll be no going back after this, roza . Are you prepared?”
Another pause. Breath withheld. The fire bakes my back, but the heat has nothing on the inferno raging in my chest.
Laila fidgets again, nervous flickers in the firelight.
Then she takes me by surprise.
She charges forward, rips the condoms out of my hand, and nudges me aside so she can take my place in front of the roaring fire.
She tears off the first packet, looks me dead in the eyes, and chucks it into the heart of the flames.
She does it again with the second. And the third. The flames dance in her purple-blue eyes. On the last one, she hesitates. Then she steels herself. “There’s no going back.”
She doesn’t wait for me to respond before she tosses it in.
Her hands finally empty, she pirouettes slowly until she’s facing me. “Now what?” she whispers.
“I think you know.”
She nods and then nods once more, like she needs the double confirmation. I keep my hands tucked at my sides, even though I want to put them to use rightfuckingnow.
Carefully, she undoes the buttons of her blouse and peels it off her shoulders. She folds it neatly and drapes it on the mantle. I wish I knew why I find the attention to detail, the care , so fucking attractive.
Maybe it’s because it’s so different from how I operate.
Laila folds.
I shred.
I burn.
I destroy.
But this innocent creature is tender, even when the situation is so far beyond decorum as to be laughable.
She follows with her skirt, unzipping, folding, and placing it on top of the blouse. I watch each careful movement. Every ounce of blood in my body is concentrated below my belt. It’s agony not to touch her.
The whole thing is beyond ridiculous. I met her a week ago, and now, her bra is in a tattered heap in my office trash can, and I’ve been inside of her with nothing at all between us.
She looks good like this. Red as a rose, not with nervousness but with fire dancing over the pale skin of her bare breasts. For one perfect moment, she’s tall and beautiful.
And then, for some reason I can’t explain, I see the confidence start to leak out of her like a punctured balloon. She twists to one side as if to hide half of herself from me.
That’s y cue.
Finally, finally, I allow myself to touch her.
I reach out, taking her by the hips, and force her square to me. I relish the softness of her beneath my touch. I drink in the sight of her—her sharp collarbones, her beautiful full breasts, the flat tautness of her stomach. And then?—
A scar.
It starts at her hip and ends in the middle of her left thigh. Thick, knotted tissue meanders here and there like a flatland river. I touch a fingertip to it and frown.
She sees all the wrong things in that frown, though. “I know it’s ugly,” she mumbles, putting a hand on my wrist to try and keep me from it, to hide it from me in the shadows.
“No.” A growl rumbles through my chest. “It’s fucking glorious.”
“Yeah, right.” Her eyes are suddenly misty. “If you had a scar like this, you wouldn’t be proud.”
In answer, I pull my shirt over my head.
Laila claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh, God… Arsen.”
Her eyes travel up and down the length of my chest, taking in the tangle of scars across my torso. The product of years’ worth of hard-won lessons.
She raises a hand as if to touch me the way I touched her, but she stops halfway there, her fingers dangling helplessly in the air between us.
“It’s like someone wanted to split you in half.”
“He certainly tried.”
Worried eyes flash to mine. Finally, she presses her hand flat against my chest like she’s trying to hold me together. “What is your life like that this can— Someone tried to kill you? How can you be so cavalier about that?”
“Because they didn’t succeed.” I cup my hand over hers. “My heart still beats, stronger than before. These scars aren’t ugly; they’re proof that I was strong enough to heal. To survive.”
A single tear runs down her cheek.
“Don’t cry for me, roza ,” I tell her. “Each of these scars are lessons.”
“Some lessons can be learned without scars, Arsen. Things don’t always have to hurt to be important.”
I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or to herself.
But either way, that old, familiar feeling comes surging up my throat. Bury it all deep. Keep that shit in the shadows. Don’t think about the past or the future, about Grandfather or about that cold, concrete cell that stole the best years of your life.
Think about this.
Think about her.
Think about business.
I grab her without warning and we go tumbling into the bed, a tangle of limbs. I swallow her cry with my mouth because if she says another fucking word, I might rebel against that prison warden voice in my head and do things I’ve never done before.
I can’t afford that. No matter how tempting it is, the right thing to do is to dive into her and wipe my mind blank.
So I do exactly that. Her silky blonde locks fan out across my sheets. I drag her to the edge of the bed and sink into her with one brutal thrust.
I groan and remember something: This is why we’re here. Not to memorize each other’s bodies or dive into our pasts.
We’re here to make a baby.
Business.
If anything, though, it’s even harder to remember that purpose as I fuck into her again and again. I’m a blur of sensation, losing myself in her—the one unforgivable sin for a man like me.
The moment I’ve come inside her, I pull out and stumble away from the bed.
Laila’s eyes are half-lidded. Her hair is tossed around her like a crown, her chest heaving as sweat shimmers across her breasts.
“Where are you going?” she whispers as I make for the door.
“The room down the hall,” I answer, allowing myself one last glance at the scar on her hip before I stride away from her. “You can have this one to yourself.”