Chapter 6 Anton
Anton
The Monday after Christmas. The city snaps back to its grinding, relentless rhythm, and I’m supposed to snap back with it.
I’ve been in my office since five, the skyline still pitch-black when I walked in, yet I haven’t accomplished a damn thing.
Every spreadsheet I opened blurred into static.
Every email I tried to answer ended up half-written, abandoned.
My brain stayed in the wrong place—in my bedroom, on my sheets, where I left her tangled like she belonged there.
She’d been curled on her side, her dark curls unraveled across my pillow like a storm refusing to be tamed.
Her skin still warm from sleep and from everything I took from her the night before.
The morning sun caught across her shoulders, turning every inch of her into something I didn’t have the power to walk away from.
I stood there far longer than I should have, ten full minutes burned on watching the slow rise and fall of her breath.
Ten minutes I didn’t regret. Ten minutes I needed like oxygen.
Whatever this is—this pressure behind my ribs, this wrongness in my habits—it’s a fault line running straight through me.
A glitch I can’t override. I’ve already rescheduled two meetings, snapped at Dimitri over nothing, and thrown a quarterly report against the wall hard enough the binding cracked.
I don’t lose control. I don’t drift. I don’t wait.
All of this is foreign and unwelcome and unavoidable.
By 9:03 a.m., I’m done pretending to focus. I’m done pacing the same ten feet. I grab my coat, already halfway out the door to a meeting I no longer remember caring about, when the wrong elevator dings.
Not the private one. The public one.
The doors slide open. She steps out.
My first thought: Dammit.
She’s still in the clothes she wore on Friday. The gray pencil skirt, the white silk blouse. They’re rumpled with the evidence of three days spent in my bed. A walk of shame through the center of my operation. Something ugly twists in my gut at the sight—not at her, but at the fact I let it happen.
I forgot. Fucking forgot.
The man who manages logistics for an international empire, who anticipates everything, didn’t even think to have clothing waiting for her.
Too consumed with her warm body in my bed.
Too focused on the fact that she stayed.
Too wrapped up in having her to plan beyond it.
It’s an amateur mistake, and I feel the heat of it crawl up the back of my neck.
She looks tired, but still so goddamn gorgeous it makes something tighten in my spine.
Her curls are pulled back, but several coils have escaped, softening the severity she tries to put up between us.
Even flustered, she’s impossible to look away from.
She sees me standing there, a mountain in her path, and her eyes widen with that startled, guilty flicker—like she wishes she could disappear back into the elevator’s steel walls.
Not happening.
I’m in the dead center of the floor, a blockade she can’t slip past unless I let her.
Daniil stands to one side, arms crossed, watching everything with that bland, deadly calm of his.
A clerk from accounting is dropping off files at Elena’s desk, glancing between us far too often.
One of my junior associates is hovering near the exit, portfolio clutched to his chest, trying to pretend he’s not witnessing the most interesting thing that’s happened on this floor all quarter.
Talia ducks her head, curls falling forward like a flimsy shield, and tries to skirt past me. As she slips by, she mutters it—soft, polite, fucking formal. “Good morning, Mr. Ismailov.”
No. Absolutely not.
It hits wrong like cold water in the face. Like distance, I refuse to accept. She’s trying to reset us, tuck the last three days into a box she can shove under the bed and ignore. She wants to file me back under “employer.” She wants to put herself back under “temporary.”
And underneath all that? Shame.
The idea burns through me, sharp and instantaneous.
“Stop,” I say, and the command drops into the room like a grenade. Everything stops with it. She freezes, spine straight, her back still half-turned to me.
“Come here.”
She doesn’t move. Her gaze stays pinned to the floor. So I move instead. Two steps, and I have her arm in my hand, pulling her toward me. She collides with my chest, a breathless sound escaping her.
“Anton…” Her warning comes out in a whisper that trembles more than she wants it to.
“Too late.”
My fingers slide into her curls—the same hold I used when she pulled every last ounce of control out of me—and I kiss her.
Hard. Deep. Absolute. No space for doubt or shame or retreat.
Her hands push at my chest for half a heartbeat, but then her breath catches and she softens, folding into me like she doesn’t know how not to.
I kiss her like she’s oxygen. I kiss her like I dare anyone in this room to speak. I kiss her until her weight sags against me and the sound she makes melts down my spine.
I only stop when her knees threaten to give.
When the air shifts from silent shock to something else entirely.
I step back just enough to see her face—her lips swollen, her eyes dazed, her hair coming undone.
The clerk looks like she’s seen an execution.
The associate looks like he forgot how to blink.
Daniil is smirking like Christmas came twice.
“Good morning, Ms. Brooks,” I say, and turn my back on every last one of them.
One minute. Two.
The door slams open behind me and slams shut again. Good.
She storms in like a small, furious storm, chest heaving, eyes blazing. “How. Dare. You,” she hisses, shaking with indignation.
“I dare.” I lean back in my chair, letting the words land exactly where they need to land. “Close the blinds.”
“I will not—”
“Close the blinds, Talia. Now.”
She glares as if she could incinerate me without lifting a finger. Then she spins, all angry lines and stiff shoulders, and slaps the button. The privacy shutters descend, sealing off the outer office.
“You had no right,” she says, whipping back toward me.
“I have every right.”
“You kissed me in front of everyone. You practically branded me.”
“Da. I did.”
“They’ll be whispering. Staring. I might as well walk around with a giant scarlet letter.”
“A scarlet I,” I say. “For Ismailov. It suits you.”
“This isn’t funny, Anton. You can’t just claim me in front of your entire staff like I… like I’m something you own.”
I’m out of my chair before she finishes the sentence. Her back hits the wall, and she gasps, but she doesn’t flinch away. Doesn’t break eye contact. The sheer defiance in her expression nearly drags a groan out of me.
“I can,” I say quietly, the words slipping between us like a lock clicking shut. “I did. You are mine, malen'kaya. And I am not a man who hides his possessions.”
Her jaw tightens. “And what does that make me? The boss’s new whore?”
The word detonates inside me.
I take her jaw, carefully—firm enough to hold her attention, gentle enough not to hurt. “Don’t ever use that word about yourself. Not in my presence. Not in your own head. You are moya. My future. And that kiss? It saved a life.”
She stares at me like she can’t figure out if I’ve lost my mind. “That’s ridiculous.”
“No. It’s practical.” My voice drops, dark and even.
“Now every man on this floor knows what touching you costs. What looking at you wrong costs. What breathing in your direction without respect costs. I don’t need to drag some idiot to the roof by his neck later because he brushed your elbow in the hallway. ”
Her anger falters. Her fear shows again—soft, vulnerable, unguarded—and I hate it. I’d burn this whole damn building down before I let her be afraid of me.
“This is too much,” she whispers. “I’m not ready for this.”
“Too late.” I kiss her again, taking the words out of her mouth. “I told you. There is no going back.”
I step away, letting her breathe again. She shakes, but she doesn’t run.
“Come here,” I say, shifting back into command. “We have other matters to discuss.”
She hesitates, arms crossed, but she moves anyway. She always moves toward me, even when she doesn’t want to admit it.
When she reaches my desk, I sit on its edge and draw her between my legs. Her warmth sinks into me instantly, loosening something tight in my chest.
“I lost it,” I murmur, my forehead touching hers. “You looked down. Looked away. I thought you were ashamed.”
Her head snaps up, outrage and confusion flaring at once. “Ashamed? Of you? Of what we did? God, Anton, no. Never.”
“Then what?”
“Scared.” Her voice trembles, small and painfully honest. “I didn’t want to look like the temp who slept with the boss.”
“You are my girl,” I growl, kissing her soft, then deeper. “That’s all that matters.”
Her resistance melts like heat licking through ice. “I can’t do this with you,” she whispers against my mouth.
“Yes, you can.”
“You’re a possessive, arrogant—”
I kiss the rest away before she can finish.
She pulls back just enough to complete the thought with her breath ghosting my lips. “Bastard.”
“Da.”
Her fight loosens. Mine sharpens. I grip her waist, lift her, set her on my desk.
"This isn't a joke, Anton. You can't just... claim me like... like a piece of property in front of your entire staff."
I'm out of my chair in a second, crowding her against the wall. She gasps, but she doesn't back down. "I can. I did. You are mine, malen'kaya. And I am not a man who hides his possessions. Everyone in this building, from the janitor to the board, will know what you are. Who you are to me."
"And what am I? The boss's new whore?" she spits, and the word makes me see red.
I grab her jaw, my grip tight, but not painful. "You will never use that word. Not about you. You are moya. You are my future. And that kiss? That kiss just saved a life."
"That's... insane..."