Chapter 13
GAVAN
I was right: she was a virgin.
Was being the operative word there. Because after fucking Eilish that night in my playroom, and then in the shower, I’ve spent the last week and a half making sure her pussy doesn’t go five goddamn minutes without remembering me filling her until she screams.
I’ve spent the last ten days making Eilish’s pussy completely, unequivocally mine .
It started the morning after that first night at my place.
She was in my office promptly at eight a.m. as instructed, and if it was a whole thirty seconds before I had her panties pulled to the side and my cock buried balls-deep in her greedy little cunt, her back pressed up against my office door with my hand over her mouth, I’d be shocked.
No foreplay needed. That girl walked in dripping wet for me.
She left later that afternoon even wetter, with my cum soaking her panties.
This has since turned into a daily occurrence. The only break in the schedule was on Saturday, when obviously she wasn’t at the office. It was a day I spent drumming my fingers on the edge of my couch back at home, glaring out over the city and telling myself I didn’t “need” Eilish at all.
That lasted about twelve and a half hours, until I called her Sunday morning and demanded she come over, where I promptly fucked her four times in a row before sending her home.
I didn’t ask her to spend the night again.
That was an error in judgment that won’t be repeated.
Just the same, this girl has become a fucking addiction. An obsession, even more than she was before. And as much as I’m reluctant to admit it—because I never, ever wanted to be anyone’s first—the notion that I was that for her is…intoxicating.
Way, way too intoxicating.
It’s also insane that I didn’t know that before, given the time and effort I’ve spent learning her every secret. I know everything about Eilish, at least from the age of nineteen on.
Since the night I saw her picking up the spent cartridges on the ground of that fateful meeting between Declan Kildare and Vasilis Drakos—furtively looking around. Wincing when she burned her fingers on a still-hot casing.
Standing over her own father’s dead body and spitting on it.
That was the moment I realized there was more to Eilish Kildare than I thought. The moment she caught my eye as anything more than revenge.
It was also the moment that dictated the way in which I followed her every move for the next year and a half. I wasn’t just learning about her and uncovering her every secret after that. I wasn’t simply looking for leverage, or ways to break her.
I became obsessed with her.
I didn’t just stalk her. I deep dived into her. I hacked into her email and laptop, allowing me to see her every web search. To see every dirty video she watched involving submission and free use kinks.
It was the intimacy of that violence I saw in her, that I doubt anyone else ever had, that made me make damn sure no other man ever would see that part of her, or any other part of her for that matter.
It’s why I—even when I wasn’t sure why, and even when I wanted to stop—spent a year and a half sabotaging her every attempt at a relationship before they could even be called that.
Men who got her number never called. I made sure of that. Men who managed to take her out for lunch or a drink once never asked again.
Also me.
I’ve spent a year and a half flipping between vengeance and desire whenever Eilish Kildare comes into my head, which is very, very frequently.
But somehow, through all of that, until I met her and finally had her in my clutches, I never knew she was a virgin.
I’d just assumed she’d crossed that bridge years before I made her my obsession.
I mean for fuck’s sake, look at her. She’s beautiful.
Smart. Driven. Ambitious. Friendly and nice to a fault.
It’s insane that no man got his hands on her.
It’s also a good thing. Because if any man had, I’d have taken those hands from him.
“Mr. Tsarenko?”
I frown, shaking the thoughts of Eilish from my head at the voice coming from the intercom on my desk. It’s Thursday, and I’m especially broody and grouchy. For one, because devil-cunt herself, aka Svetlana, decided today was a good day to start blowing up my phone.
I’ve ignored every call. I know she’s calling to whine about why I haven’t finalized the deal we agreed upon—the one where she gets the Imperial Shield egg, and I get her off my fucking back concerning my company and its shares in Koikov bank.
Obviously, that deal is no longer on the table. But I’ve been too preoccupied with taking on the full empire myself to deal with it.
Well, that’s not quite true. It’s more that I’ve been preoccupied positively losing myself in my new addiction named Eilish Kildare to give a shit about the deal with Svet.
That’s the other reason I’m in an especially vile, asshole mood: Eilish skipped coming to the office today.
Apparently, she occasionally does need to actually attend class or meet with her advisors.
I agreed to let her miss today, but I plan on taking out my aggression on her ass later.
I grin, imagining all the ways I’ll have her on her knees, or bent over the arm of my sofa back home, when Rachel interrupts my thoughts yet again.
“Sir?”
I scowl at the intercom. “Yes?” I mutter.
“Sorry, but you have a phone call.”
My brow furrows. “Who is it?”
“It’s Ms. Crown’s office.”
Shit. Ms. Crown as in Taylor Crown, the partner at Crown and Black who’s my personal attorney. She’s also helping with the deal with Svetlana and the whole situation of me having, you know, stolen her inheritance from Vadim.
Because—and I can’t stress this enough— fuck Svetlana.
“I’ll take it.”
I pick up, waiting for the click as Rachel transfers the call before I sigh.
“I know, I’ve owed you a call for like a week.”
“Longer than that.”
I stiffen, my eyes drawing to slits and my lips curling at the sound of the voice on the other end.
Mother. Fuck .
“You know, your secretary really ought to not take what people tell her at face value.”
It’s not Taylor. It’s fucking her .
Svetlana laughs coldly. “Don’t you dare even think about hanging up on me.”
My jaw grinds.
“What the fuck do you want, you miserable bitch,” I snarl.
Svet makes a tsk-tsk sound.
“I want to know why our deal has stalled. Unless, of course, you’re having second thoughts. In which case, my attorney and I are happy to move forward with taking you to court for everything— ”
“You’ll get your fucking egg,” I hiss. “It needs to be authenticated and appraised before—”
“I’m well aware of that,” she fires back. “But I also don’t trust you, Gavan,” she purrs in a silky voice that makes my skin crawl. “Not after you tried to cheat me before.”
“Die in a fire that could have been prevented, you hag.”
“ Careful , you little shit,” she hisses. “As I was saying, I don’t trust you . Which is why I’ve hired my own independent appraiser to come see the egg and verify everything. Then we can move forward.”
My stomach lurches.
“He’s very good, Gavan,” she drawls on, as if we’re suddenly talking tennis instructors over white wine spritzers at her fucking country club. “Simply the best in his field. And he specializes in Russian Imperialist—”
“Is there anything else , Svet,” I snap coldly.
She’s silent for a moment.
“Seeing anyone?”
My eyes close. A wave of dizziness and nausea spins through my head.
No one except me. No one will ever love you. Not like I do. No one will understand you, my baby boy.
I don’t realize how hard I’m squeezing the phone until I hear the plastic almost crack.
I slam down the phone and then glare at it, my pulse roaring in my ears and a cold, clammy sensation settling over my skin.
Fuck you.
Still throbbing with hatred, I snatch up my cell to text Eilish. When I do, I notice the time, and I groan.
Shit. I’m going to be late.
* * *
The mood is decidedly somber when I walk into the High Council meeting this time. Ilya and Lukas shake my hand firmly but grimly. Yuri and Viktor do the same, the former shaking his head.
“Dark times, my friend,” Yuri mutters. “Dark fucking times.”
He’s not wrong.
Marko Kalishnik is in hospital, still in a medically-induced coma in the wake of the car-bombing outside Crudo. This is an unprecedented attack on a head of High Council family. A founding family, no less. Vlad, his number two, is dead.
“Have you seen him?”
Yuri nods. “I went yesterday. No change in his prognosis. But, he’s alive. Technically.”
Lukas folds his arms over his chest. “So, what exactly is the protocol here? I mean, if a council member is unexpectedly unable to sit at the table. It must have come up before…”
Yuri and Viktor glance at each other uneasily before Viktor clears his throat.
“The last time we had anything like this was years ago, when…” His face darkens as he glances at me.
“When Semyon was killed?” I finish for him.
The man who raped my mother and sired me in the process. The man who also fathered my half-sisters Lizbet and Mara.
May he burn in hell.
Viktor nods. “After that, there were simply fewer chairs at the table. Until we voted in Ozerov, and then Anastasia.”
“This vote is going to be impossible,” Ilya mutters. “It’s deadlocked without Marko.”
“Or an opportunity,” Lukas murmurs, looking over at the door to the conference room just as Anastasia Javanovi? walks in. “She might be able to be swayed.”
“I’ve had some of our people working on what we spoke about before,” Ilya mutters quietly. “So far, nothing.”
“Are we starting this party or not?”
The five of us turn together to glare at Abram, sprawled in his chair tapping his fingers on the armrest impatiently.
“In a minute,” Yuri growls at him before turning to me. “Can I speak to you privately for a second?”
I nod, following him to a corner of the room, where he leans close.
“I heard that Marko spoke to you about…well, you know…right before the attack.”