5. Nina
NINA
For a long moment after Luka leaves, I don’t move.
I stay exactly where he left me, half sitting, half collapsed on the edge of the conference table, my dress pulled back down over my thighs, my notebook lying open beside my hip, my phone glowing uselessly near my hand, and my entire body still humming from his mouth as if he’s left something electric under my skin.
The door clicks shut behind him.
He wipes his mouth before he goes.
That’s the part my mind chooses to replay, because apparently humiliation is not enough for me unless it comes with cinematic detail.
Luka Kazan, standing over me in that immaculate black suit, expression unreadable, mouth wet from me, taking out his handkerchief with those steady, elegant hands and wiping himself clean like he’s just finished an expensive glass of wine rather than dragging an orgasm out of me on a conference table.
Then he says that line.
I simply gave you a taste of your own fantasy.
And then he leaves.
As if I’m not still shaking.
As if my pussy is not still throbbing so hard I can feel every aftershock of what he did every time I shift my hips.
As if my thighs are not trembling around empty air, as if my body has not become one enormous betrayal, as if I’m not sitting on a table where twelve board members were discussing acquisition risk twenty minutes ago with Luka Kazan’s fingerprints metaphorically all over my dignity.
I press both palms flat to the table and try to breathe like a woman who has not just been eaten out by her boss during office hours.
My heart’s pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, my wrists, my lower stomach.
My skin feels too hot beneath my dress. My mouth is dry.
My hair has slipped loose from the clip at the back of my head, strands falling around my face in a way that probably makes me look exactly like what I am: a woman who has been thoroughly, expertly ruined in a room with glass walls and a security lock.
I glance toward the wall of darkened glass opposite the table.
The room is designed to give privacy when the panels are dimmed, but they still catch reflections faintly, especially under the overhead lights.
I see myself there in pieces. A beige dress smoothed down too hastily.
Bare knees pressed together. One heel hanging from my foot.
My hair loosened around my cheeks, dark and messy against skin that is still flushed.
My lips are parted. My eyes look too large in my face, almost startled, as if I have just met a version of myself I don’t recognize.
I’m not beautiful the way Luka’s women are beautiful.
I’m not Alina Karelin with her cream silk and impossible cheekbones. I’m not Yelena with her perfect nails and glossy hair. I’m not one of those women who enters a restaurant as if someone has already arranged the lighting for her benefit.
I press both hands over my eyes and make a sound that’s not a scream but definitely related to one.
This cannot be my life.
This cannot be how my Tuesday is going.
I’m Nina Hale. I’m organized. I’m competent.
I color-code Luka Kazan’s impossible world so thoroughly that his legal team once asked if I would consider running their department.
I know which board members are lying by the way they ask for coffee.
I have prevented three public scandals, two private disasters, and one mistress-on-mistress violence incident in a hotel lobby in Vienna.
I don’t get eaten out on conference tables by my boss.
Except apparently, I do.
And apparently, I enjoy it so much my knees still don’t trust me.
I slide carefully off the table.
Bad idea.
My legs wobble. I grab the edge of the table again and glare at the room like it personally did it to me.
“Pathetic,” I whisper to myself.
My phone rings. I almost die.
My entire soul jolts out of my body, smacks against the glass wall, and comes back upside down.
I scramble for my phone, which has somehow ended up beside my notebook. For one insane second, I think it’s Luka.
It’s worse.
Misha. My brother.
My overprotective, dramatic, suspicious, six-foot-four older brother who once threatened to break a man’s wrist because he held an umbrella over me “too possessively.”
I stare at his name flashing on the screen.
No. Absolutely not.
I cannot answer this call. My voice is still not normal. My body is still not normal. There’s a high possibility that if I open my mouth, the only thing that comes out will be Luka’s name followed by a legal disclaimer.
The phone keeps ringing.
Misha will keep calling.
Then he will text. Then he will call Luka. Then he will call security. Then he will come here himself.
Because that is who Misha Hale is.
He’s my brother, my emergency contact, my second father when he’s being unbearable, and Luka Kazan’s oldest friend.
Which makes everything much, much worse.
I pick up. “Hi,” I say.
It comes out breathless. Horribly breathless.
There is a pause on the other end.
Then Misha says, “Why do you sound like that?”
I close my eyes. Fantastic start.
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like you’ve been running.”
I look down at myself. Dress wrinkled. Hair loose. Thighs still shaking. Pulse still reckless. “Yes,” I say quickly. “Exactly. Running.”
“You were running?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means movement happened.”
Another pause. “Nina.”
I straighten immediately, even though he cannot see me. Misha has had that effect on me since I was a child. One ‘Nina’ in that voice and suddenly I’m eight years old again, hiding a broken vase behind the curtains.
“What?” I ask too brightly.
“Why were you running at work?”
Because your best friend put his mouth between my legs on a conference table and I’ve not yet rejoined society.
“Printer emergency,” I say.
The lie arrives from nowhere.
It’s not a good lie. It’s not even a medium lie.
It’s the kind of lie a person tells when half her brain has melted, and the other half is still thinking about Luka Kazan’s tongue.
Misha says, “Printer emergency?”
“Yes.”
“At Kazan Tower?”
“Yes.”
“You personally ran because of a printer?”
“It was urgent.”
“How urgent can paper be?”
“You would be surprised.”
“I would not.”
I press two fingers to my temple. “Misha, why are you calling?”
“To check on you.”
“Why?”
“Because I had a feeling.”
I look toward the closed boardroom door.
Great. Wonderful. My brother has developed slutty-event radar.
“What kind of feeling?” I ask.
“The kind that says Luka’s making you do strange things again.”
I almost choke. I actually have to turn away from the door and press a hand over my mouth. “Define strange,” I manage.
“I hope he’s not making you do any funny errands.”
Funny errands. Oh God. Funny errands.
Is that what we’ re calling it now?
I stare at the conference table where, five minutes ago, Luka Kazan had been on his knees between my thighs with the same focus he uses to dismantle hostile takeovers.
“No,” I say weakly. “No funny errands.”
“Good.”
“Very standard errands.”
“Such as?”
“Notes. Scheduling. Documents. The usual.”
“And running from printers.”
“Yes. The printer was aggressive.”
Misha sighs. “Nina.”
“What? You weren’t there. It had toner rage.”
My brother laughs, and despite myself, I end up smiling too. I love my brother, he’s my favorite person in this world.
“Are you all right?” he asks. The question softens, and that makes it worse.
Because Misha is not only my brother. He’s the closest thing I have to a second parent, a bodyguard, a co-conspirator, and a one-man emergency response system.
He was sixteen when I was born, already tall and sharp-jawed and too serious for his age, and from the moment our mother put me in his arms, he apparently decided I was both a miracle and a security breach.
So, when my brother asks if I’m all right, what he means is: tell me whose bones need rearranging.
And right now, the honest answer would be Luka Kazan’s, except I’m fairly certain Luka would rearrange back.
“I’m fine, really,” I say.
“You know I work for him too,” my brother says, his voice laced with a warning. “I can ask him.”
Ah, there it is. The bridge between my brother and the man who just walked out of this room with my underwear in his pocket.
Luka Kazan and Misha Hale go back so far that sometimes I think they knew each other before they had faces.
They met as boys, or near enough to boys, two hungry young men from families that understood power differently but respected the same rules: loyalty first, weakness never, blood always remembered.
Misha chose discipline. Luka chose empire.
Somewhere along the way, discipline and empire became useful to each other.
Officially, Luka is a billionaire businessman.
He owns shipping routes, luxury properties, energy holdings, security companies, and enough restaurants to make every private dinner in Moscow technically his own dining room.
His photograph appears in financial magazines where journalists describe him as elusive, brilliant, ruthless, and unmarried, as if those four words explain anything.
Unofficially, everyone knows there is a darker crown beneath the corporate one.
He’s the boss of the Kazan Bratva, Pakhan, they call him.
The word is never said in Kazan Tower unless someone wants to test the acoustics of their own funeral, but it follows him anyway, silent and heavy as a shadow.
Luka Kazan does not simply run companies.
He runs men. He runs debts. He runs loyalty, fear, favors, punishments, borders, names whispered into phones after midnight.
The Kazan Bratva is not a rumor, not exactly.
It is more like weather. You don’t have to see the storm to know when the air pressure has changed.
And me?
I work on the legitimate side.
That is what I tell myself.