Chapter 8
ELENA
Mara is painting her nails and sitting cross-legged on the couch with a towel under her feet when I get home. She looks up when I come in and looks back down and says nothing, which means she is waiting to see what version of me walked through the door tonight.
I drop my bag by the door, take my shoes off, go to the kitchen, and stand in front of the open fridge for a long moment, looking at nothing useful.
“There’s pasta on the stove,” she says.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I didn’t ask if you were hungry. I said there’s pasta on the stove.”
I take the pasta.
I eat it standing at the counter, and Mara finishes her left hand and starts on her right.
“You look terrible,” she says pleasantly.
“Thank you.”
Mara blows on her nails. “You have the face of someone who lies awake at two in the morning having conversations in their head.”
“Everyone does that.”
“Not everyone looks like they’re losing the conversations.” She tilts her head and looks at me. “Is it the guy?”
I put my fork down. “It’s not the guy.”
“Is it your dad?”
“It’s everything,” I say to the pasta bowl. “It’s just everything right now, and I’m managing it.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “You know you don’t have to manage everything alone.”
“I know.”
“But you’re going to anyway.”
“I know that too.”
She goes back to her nails, and I finish the pasta. Then we watch half an episode of something neither of us is really watching. By ten o’clock, I am in bed, staring at the ceiling, doing exactly what Mara said I would do.
The office the next morning runs the way it always runs.
Emails, calls, the machinery of Roman Petrov’s professional life moving through my hands the way it has moved for two years.
I am good at this. I have always been good at this, and right now I am holding on to that with both hands because it is the one thing in my life that is not currently complicated.
Roman is in his office by eight. I set the folder on his desk, he looks up and says good morning, I say good morning, I turn and walk back out, and the distance between the door and my desk has never felt longer.
This is what the last two weeks have looked like.
Good morning. Here are your documents. The Harmon account called. Your two o’clock is confirmed.
Each exchange lasts exactly as long as it needs to last and not one second more, and underneath all of it, the thing does not go away, no matter how many times I tell it to.
At eleven, he calls me in to go over the afternoon schedule, and I sit across from his desk with my tablet, and he sits behind it.
We go through everything item by item, and at some point, he asks me something, and I answer, and he looks at me for just a half second longer than the answer requires, and I look back at my screen and keep talking.
He still doesn’t know.
I have turned this over so many times that I have worn grooves in it. He doesn’t know. He cannot know.
He hosted a party for three hundred people, and a woman in a mask told him her name was Lena, and he had no reason to connect that woman to the person who has been sitting outside his office for two years. People do not look for what they are not looking for.
He doesn’t know, and I am safe, and I need to stop waiting for the moment he figures it out because it is making me jump at shadows.
I go back to my desk, answer three emails, and do not think about it for at least twenty minutes.
Aleksei picks a wine bar on 54th Street, which is designed to feel like a conversation rather than a meeting. Low lighting, small tables, and a wine list that takes itself very seriously.
He is standing near the bar when I arrive, and he smiles when he sees me.
He looks good. He has always looked good—dark hair, broad shoulders, the kind of man who fills a room without trying. I spent eight months with him two years ago before I understood that the things filling the room were not always things I wanted to be in a room with.
“Elena.” He kisses my cheek. “You look beautiful.”
“Aleksei.” I sit down. “I can’t stay long.”
He sits across from me and does not react to that. He orders wine without asking what I want, which I remember now is something he has always done, and leans back in his chair.
“Your mother tells me your father is not improving,” he says.
“She’s not my mother.”
“Carla. She tells me your father is not improving.”
I look at him. “What exactly did Carla tell you?”
“Enough to be concerned.” He turns his wineglass slowly. “I am not here to pressure you, Elena. I want you to know that. I am here because I care about what happens to you and to your father, and I have the means to make a very difficult situation significantly less difficult.”
“By marrying me.”
“By taking care of you. Both of you.” He says it simply, like it is the most reasonable thing in the world, and maybe to him it is.
“I know things did not end well between us. I take responsibility for my part in that. But I am not the same man I was two years ago, and I think if you gave this a real conversation, you would see that.”
I look at my wineglass and I think about a list I made when I was nineteen of places I wanted to go before I turned thirty.
Spain was first. It has always been first. Somewhere on the southern coast where the light is different from any light I have seen and the water is that specific blue that does not exist in photographs the way it exists in real life.
I have never been. I have never had the money or the time or anyone worth going with.
I look back at Aleksei and at my wineglass. The thing about Aleksei is that he is very good at this. He is very good at making the cage sound like a choice.
“I appreciate you saying that,” I say. “I do. But my answer hasn’t changed.”
“Your circumstances have.”
“My answer hasn’t.”
He looks at me for a long moment. The warmth in his expression doesn’t go anywhere. That is somehow worse than if it did. “I’m not going anywhere, Elena. When you’re ready to have a real conversation, I’ll be here.”
I stand up. “I have to get back.”
He stands too, and walks me out of the wine bar and onto 54th Street and falls into step beside me.
The evening air is cold, the building is forty meters ahead, and he is still talking, still easy, still warm, still saying nothing that could be called pressure if you wrote it down, but adding up to something that presses from every side regardless.
I am looking at the building entrance and calculating how many steps it will take before I can reasonably say goodbye when I hear my name.
“Elena.”
I turn.
Roman is coming out of the building entrance ahead of us, jacket over one arm, keys in his hand, and he sees me, and he sees Aleksei beside me, and he stops walking, and everything about the way he stops communicates that he has already assessed the situation and drawn his conclusions.
“Mr. Petrov.” I hear my own voice come out steady. “I was just heading back up. I forgot my—”
“I’ll walk with you,” he says.
It is not a suggestion.
Aleksei looks at Roman, and Roman looks back at him with no expression at all, which is considerably more effective.
“We were in the middle of a conversation,” Aleksei says. Pleasantly.
“Were you.” Roman looks at me. “Were you in the middle of a conversation?”
I look at Aleksei. “I’ll call you,” I say, which means I will not call him, and we both know it.
Aleksei holds it for one more second. Then he smiles, the full, warm smile, and says, “Of course,” and turns and walks away. I watch him go and breathe for the first time in a while.
Roman is still standing next to me.
“Who is he?” he says.
“No one important.”
He looks at me in a way that means he does not believe that and has decided not to press it tonight.
We walk back into the building side by side, and neither of us speaks. The lobby is quiet at this hour, the evening staff, a security guard who nods at Roman without making eye contact with me. Roman presses the button for his floor, and the elevator arrives, and we get in, and the doors close.
The silence in that elevator is the loudest thing I have experienced in recent memory.
He is not looking at me. He’s looking at the numbers above the door, his jacket still over his arm, his jaw set. I’m aware of every inch of space between us and of the specific effort it is taking to maintain it.
Then he looks at me, and the air catches fire. One second, we are still pretending this is professional. Next, my back hits the mirrored wall, and his mouth crashes down on mine.
I kiss him back like I’m trying to crawl inside his skin. My fists yank at his jacket so hard that the fabric tears. He doesn’t care. He slams his hips forward, pinning me, and swallows the broken moan that rips out of me. His name tears from my throat, rough and pleading and already wrecked.
“Roman.”
That is all it takes.
His hands grip my thighs and haul me up. My legs lock around his hips as if they belong there, ankles digging into the small of his back.
He carries me out of the elevator the moment the doors open, mouth still devouring mine, tongue stroking deep while I bite his lower lip hard enough to sting.
The corridor is empty and dim at this hour. We stumble the short distance to his office, my fingers twisted in his silver hair, his grip bruising my ass through my skirt.
He kicks the door shut behind us. The lock clicks, and the ordinary office—glass desk, leather chair, and city lights glittering beyond the windows—becomes something dangerous. Something ours.
Clothes come off like they have personally offended us. My jacket hits the floor. His tie is yanked loose. I rip at the buttons of his shirt while he shoves my skirt up around my waist and tears my panties down my legs in one rough motion.
The lace snags on my heel. I do not care. My blouse hangs open, bra shoved aside. His belt clatters near the chair. Shoes are kicked away.
He lifts me onto the edge of his desk. Papers scatter under my thighs. The wood is cool against my bare skin.
Roman drops to his knees between my spread legs without hesitation, silver hair catching the low light from the city. He looks up at me once, eyes dark and hungry and completely focused, then drags his mouth over me.
It’s not gentle or patient like the first time.
He licks me like a man who has been starving for three weeks, broad strokes of his tongue followed by deep, filthy sucks on my clit until my hips buck off the desk and my hands fist in his hair.
I’m already soaked, aching from weeks of lying awake replaying that masked night while pretending I was fine. Now his tongue is inside me, and I cannot pretend anymore.
“Roman. Oh god.” I gasp, thighs shaking around his shoulders.
He groans against me, the vibration shooting straight through my core. Two thick fingers push inside, curling hard, stroking that spot that makes stars explode behind my eyes.
He doesn’t let up. He works me harder, faster, sucking and licking until my back arches off the desk and I come with a sharp cry, pulsing around his fingers, flooding his tongue. The orgasm rips through me so hard my vision whites out.
He rises before I can catch my breath, shirt hanging open, chest heaving. The sight of him, strong shoulders, cut muscle across his abdomen, cock thick and straining hard against his open pants, makes fresh heat flood between my legs. He is even more devastating than I remembered.
He grips my hips and pulls me to the very edge of the desk. The head of his cock notches at my entrance, hot and thick.
“Look at me,” he says, voice low and rough.
Our eyes lock, and the imbalance hits me hard. I know exactly how he feels inside me. He still thinks this is new.
He pushes in with one long, relentless thrust.
I cry out at the stretch, the perfect burn, the way he fills me so completely. He stills for half a second, letting me feel every thick inch, then pulls back slow and slams home again.
The desk creaks under us. Papers flutter to the floor. He sets a brutal rhythm, deep, punishing strokes that hit that spot inside me every single time. My heels dig into his ass, urging him deeper. My nails rake down his back, leaving fire in their wake.
“Fuck, Elena,” he growls against my throat. He bites the frantic pulse there and sucks a dark mark into my collarbone like he wants everyone to see it tomorrow. “You feel so fucking good. So tight. So wet for me.”
I can’t answer with words. Only broken moans and his name.
He angles his hips and drives harder, one hand sliding between us to rub tight circles over my clit.
The pleasure coils tighter, sharper, until it snaps.
I come again, clenching around his cock so hard he groans like it hurts, hips stuttering before he pounds through it.
He flips me suddenly, bending me over the desk so my breasts press against the cool wood and my cheek turns against scattered files.
He kicks my legs wider and thrusts back in from behind, one hand fisted in my hair, the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise.
The new angle is devastating. Deeper. Rougher.
Every slam of his hips sends shock waves through me.
I push back to meet him, greedy and desperate after three weeks of pretending I didn’t need this. He leans over me, chest to my back, mouth at my ear.
“Come on my cock again,” he demands, voice gravel-rough. “Let me feel it.”
I shatter a third time, sobbing his name into the desk as pleasure crashes over me in waves.
He follows right after, burying himself to the hilt with a guttural sound that vibrates through both of us. His hips jerk and spill inside me, body pressed tight to mine like he never wants to pull out.
We stay locked together for a few moments, our breathing ragged, skin slick with sweat.
The office is quiet again except for the distant hum of the city far below.
Everything looks exactly the same: the leather chair, the glowing monitor, the half-empty coffee mug from earlier, yet nothing feels the same.
He eases out of me slowly. I stay bent over the desk for another second, legs trembling, trying to pull myself back together while the weight of everything I am not saying presses down on my chest.
He still doesn’t know.
I straighten my skirt. Find my jacket on the back of the chair where it landed. Put it on.
Roman is leaning against the edge of his desk, watching me with his shirt untucked and his arms folded and an expression I cannot read, which is not unusual for him and is somehow worse right now than it has ever been before.
“This can’t happen again,” I say.
He says nothing.
“I mean it.” I pick up my bag. “This was a mistake, and it cannot happen again.”
He looks at me for a long moment. His eyes are very dark.
“Goodnight, Elena,” he says.
It is not an agreement, nor a disagreement.