Chapter 2
ELENA
He asks me what I do.
It’s such a normal question that people ask each other at parties without thinking, and I have exactly one second to decide how to answer before the pause becomes its own answer.
“Finance,” I say. “Mostly numbers.”
Again, not a lie. I manage the financial correspondence of one of the most powerful men in New York. Numbers are absolutely involved.
Roman turns his champagne glass slowly. “You don’t look like someone who finds numbers boring.”
“I never said boring.”
“You said mostly numbers like it was an apology.”
I look at him. He’s watching me with the particular quality of attention that has made two years of sitting outside his office genuinely difficult.
“What do you do?” I ask, because I need him to talk so I can stop.
“Acquisitions,” he says.
I almost smile. That is one word for it.
“Do you enjoy it?”
“I’m good at it,” he says, which is a very Roman answer. Enjoyment has never struck me as the point for him. Control is the point.
“That’s not the same thing.”
He tilts his head slightly. “No,” he agrees. “It isn’t.”
The city spreads out below the terrace railing, all that stacked light and distance, and I am acutely aware that I’m standing on the terrace of his own estate, having a conversation he has no idea is as strange as it is.
I know his coffee order. I know which council members he finds tolerable and which ones he doesn’t. I know the exact quality of silence that means he has made a decision versus the one that means he is still turning something over.
He knows my name is Lena and that I work in finance.
The imbalance of it is worrying.
“You keep going quiet,” he says.
“I’m listening.”
“I wasn’t saying anything.”
“I know.”
Another almost-smile. I’m collecting them without meaning to, filing them away with everything else I have no business keeping.
“You’re not from money,” he says.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You look at this room like you’re reminding yourself not to be impressed by it.”
That lands closer than I would like. “Maybe I’ve just seen a lot of rooms.”
“Maybe,” he says, in a tone that means he doesn’t believe me at all.
I look away. The night air is cool, and the party noise is muffled behind the glass doors, and out here it’s almost possible to forget that in five hours I will be back in this building with a completely different reason to be in it.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Go ahead.”
“Do you know everyone here tonight?”
He considers the question. “I know who they are.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
He looks at me. “No,” he says again. “It isn’t.”
There’s a beat of quiet between us that feels different from the others. He’s still watching me with that focused attention, and I’m trying very hard to hold myself at a normal level of composure and doing a mediocre job of it.
“You,” he says, “I don’t know.”
“No,” I agree. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “You don’t.”
He reaches out and moves a strand of hair from my shoulder, his fingers grazing my collarbone, and it is not accidental, and we both know it, and I feel it from my collarbone to the soles of my feet.
“Lena,” he says. Just my name. Turning it over.
“Roman,” I say back.
His eyes drop to my mouth for a moment.
“Come inside,” he says.
I know what he’s asking. I know exactly what I’m agreeing to and what it will cost me, and I agree anyway, because I am twenty-three years old and I have been in love with this man since approximately the third week of my employment and tonight, behind this mask, I am just a woman he wants, and I cannot make myself walk away from that.
Not tonight.
I follow him inside.
He leads me into the bedroom and closes the door behind us without a word. The room is dark except for the bedside lamp he clicks on. Its soft golden glow spills across the wide bed and leaves the rest of the space in warm shadow. My pulse is so loud I swear the lamp is flickering in time with it.
Roman steps in front of me. His hands settle on my waist first. He does not rush. He slides the zipper down my spine one slow inch at a time, letting the cool air kiss my skin as the dress loosens and finally drops to my feet in a whisper of silk. I step out of it.
My heels stay on because he has not told me to take them off, and honestly, right now I need the extra three inches just to feel like I belong in this moment.
He hooks two fingers under the lace edge of my bra next.
The clasp releases with a quiet snap. The straps slide down my arms and the bra joins the dress on the floor.
Then his thumbs slip into the sides of my panties, and he drags them down my legs, kneeling as he does it so his breath brushes the inside of my thigh.
I stare down at the top of his silver head and think, Two years of watching this man from behind a desk, and now he’s on his knees for me. Life is weird and unfair and apparently very horny tonight.
Only after I’m completely naked does he rise again. His eyes drag over me in the lamplight, dark and unhurried. My mask is still in place. His is too.
He reaches behind my head and unties the ribbon. The silk falls away. Cool air touches my cheeks, and I hold my breath, waiting for any flicker of recognition. Nothing.
His gaze stays hot, focused, the same way it does when he studies a contract across his desk. Relief floods me so sharply my knees almost buckle. The sting follows right behind it. He still has no idea who I really am. Great. Fantastic. The hottest night of my life, and I’m still invisible.
He pulls his own mask off next and sets both on the nightstand. Then he looks at me again, mouth curving the smallest amount.
“Lena,” he says, low and sure, like he’s been saying it all night in his head too.
My stomach does that inconvenient flip again. I used to lie in bed and imagine exactly this: his hands on me, his strength pinning me without effort, his body hot and hard against mine. Now it’s happening.
“Tell me what you want,” he says.
I swallow. My voice comes out breathier than I planned. “Your hands everywhere. And… take your time. Please.”
He nods as if the answer satisfies him. His palms slide up my bare arms, then back down, mapping every inch. When he cups my breasts, his thumbs circle the peaks until they tighten and I gasp. The sound makes his eyes darken.
“Good,” he murmurs against my ear. “I like hearing that from you.”
He walks me backward until my thighs hit the bed.
I sit. He stays standing long enough to strip off his own shirt.
The lamplight catches every line of muscle across his chest and shoulders.
Broad, sculpted, the kind of body that makes you wonder how he finds time to look like that between running empires and ignoring junior staff.
He is even more beautiful than I fantasized. Strong enough to lift me one-handed if he wanted, yet when he kneels between my spread thighs, he’s careful.
His shoulders are wide enough that my knees have to open wider to make room, and the heat of his skin radiates against the inside of my legs like a promise.
He leans in and presses his mouth to me. He licks once, slowly and exploratory, then again, learning what makes my hips lift off the mattress.
My fingers thread into his silver hair before I can stop myself. He groans against me, the vibration rolling straight through my body, and I think, Oh god, this is better than any late-night fantasy.
In my head, he’s always commanding, possessive, but here he is gentle in a way that undoes me more than roughness ever could.
His hands grip my thighs with just enough strength to hold me open, but his tongue is patient, teasing, circling until I’m trembling and whispering his name like a plea.
“Roman,” I breathe. “Please.”
He pulls back enough to look up at me, eyes dark. “Tell me when it’s too much.”
It is never going to be too much. I have waited two years for this. He rises, sheds the rest of his clothes, and the sight of him makes my thighs clench. He notices and smiles that almost-smile.
He reaches for the nightstand, rolls on the condom with efficient movements, then settles over me. His weight is perfect, heavy but braced, so I feel protected, not crushed. He kisses me deep, slow, letting me taste myself on his tongue. His hand slides between us, fingers parting me.
He stills.
Two fingers press inside—just the tips—and meet resistance. His eyes snap to mine.
“You’re a virgin.”
It is not a question. His voice is rougher now, edged with something raw.
I nod, cheeks burning. “Yes.”
He doesn’t move. Just watches me, jaw tight.
“We can stop,” he says, quite seriously. “Right now. No questions.”
My heart twists. This is the man who closes deals without blinking, who never hesitates. And he’s giving me an out, like it costs him nothing when I know it does.
I reach up, touch his face. “I don’t want to stop. I want this.”
He exhales through his nose.
“Then we go slow,” he says. “And you tell me if anything changes.”
He kisses me again, deeper and more possessive this time, and sinks in inch by careful inch, pausing every time I gasp, kissing the corner of my mouth, my jaw, whispering things that make me melt: “Breathe… that’s it… you’re doing so good…”
When he’s fully inside, he stills again and lets me feel the fullness, the burn easing into something else.
Then he moves.
Slow rolls at first, and watching my face for every flicker. When my nails dig into his shoulders, he picks up the rhythm, harder, but never rushed. His hand slips between us, thumb finding my clit, circling in time with his thrusts until I’m trembling, arching, pleading without words.
He flips us so I am on top. Hands on my hips, guiding but not forcing. “Ride me,” he says. “Show me.”
I do—tentative at first, then bolder, grinding down until sparks shoot behind my eyes.
He groans—low, wrecked—and his control frays. One hand slides up my waist, thumb brushing over the curve of my left hip. It lingers on the small, comma-shaped birthmark there—deep brown against pale skin. He traces it absently, then grips harder and thrusts up to meet me.
The angle changes. Hits deeper. I shatter—clenching around him, crying out his name—and he follows seconds later, hips snapping, burying himself as far as he can with a guttural sound that vibrates through both of us.
We stay like that until he rolls us again and pulls me against his chest. His arms band around my waist. His breathing evens out fast. Mine does not.
I lie there in the dark, his heartbeat steady under my cheek, the smell of sex and him everywhere, and feel the weight of everything settle.
I count his breaths until they go deep and even.
Twenty minutes. That’s all I give myself. Lying in the dark with his arm heavy across my waist and the smell of him everywhere and the full weight of what I have just done settling slowly over me like a second blanket.
It was worth it. I know it was worth it. I also know it was the single most reckless thing I have ever done in my adult life, and that tomorrow morning is going to be its own specific kind of terrible, and that I am going to have to be very, very good at pretending.
I am, as it happens, very good at pretending. Two years of practice.
I ease out from under his arm by degrees. Find my dress in the dark. My mask. My heels. I do all of it slowly and without sound, and I am very deliberate about not looking at him until I’m fully dressed and at the door.
Then I look.
He’s asleep on his back, one arm still curved in the shape of me, silver-haired and still, and he has no idea.