5. Viktor
VIKTOR
Perhaps I unleashed too much of my personality too soon. I stared at the door closing behind Peyton.
Leo stood, one hand outstretched. “Why did she leave?”
He almost sounded petulant, and one look at his face proved my assessment correct.
The outstretched hand closed, and he reached for his pants. “I’ll go talk to her.”
“No.” I kept my voice low but firm. “She might need a minute, Leo.”
Then again, she might regret tonight and be desperate for an escape. I could still smell her on me.
Could still feel the weight of her in my arms and hear the sounds she made as she came.
Her body flushed the most intriguing shade of pink. I’d never look at a flower without thinking of Peyton. Our flower. Our beautiful, blooming rose.
Just like Natasha.
I caught the thought and snapped it off at its root. I knew what it meant when a woman took up that kind of space in my head.
I’d been down that road once, and the end was a grave I had never been able to visit because the date carved in her stone should have been mine. I was not giving anyone that kind of power ever again.
“We shouldn’t let her run away.” Like Leo, Misha stood and pulled on his pants.
I worked my way into my clothing piece by piece, taking my time and using every minute to don the calculating coldness that made me the most calculated of our triad.
“Have you forgotten who we are dealing with? Remember the woman who was in our office only this morning? The one who could barely look at any of us?” We’d ruined that image for good.
Peyton’s meekness was genuine, but so was the woman who’d been in our bed. She had given us her body and taken her pleasure. She had done all the things I commanded of her and enjoyed it.
My cock twitched as I buttoned and zipped my slacks. She’d been magnificent.
“We know where she lives, Viktor.” Misha gave me a look. Dressed and raring to go, he paced the room where Peyton’s scent lingered.
“Yes, we do.” I conceded that fact. Thanks to her employee record, and our ability to search anyone we wished on the dark web, we knew more than our fair share about sweet Peyton. “And how do you think she will feel if we show up on her doorstep unannounced?"
“She’s scared.” Leo said it with all the conviction in the world. As the charismatic head of our group, Leo wielded humor and charm like weapons and had an emotional intelligence I sometimes envied.
I would never admit that to him, but he likely knew it already. It was his superpower, this ability to walk into a room and navigate it with the complex dynamics of his personality.
He understood people, saw through their shields, and helped them lower their guard by meeting them in their insecurities.
“Scared of what?” Misha snorted and ran both hands through his hair.
“This was what worried me.” I pointed at each of them.
“We agreed to tonight to assuage our curiosity about this woman we’ve been texting.
Knowing it’s been Peyton this whole time is a bonus, but that does not give us the excuse to chase after her.
We are Bratva. We do not chase women who run from us. ”
“Speak for yourself.” Misha bared his teeth. “Do you have any idea how much I want to go after her?” He gripped his hair in both hands and took a breath. “What the fuck is wrong with me? I don’t want to hurt her. I just…”
“You want to pin her to the wall and hear her pant in your ear as you drive into her.” Leo smirked from his spot beside the door.
“Give her a chance to recover. As Viktor said, remember who we are dealing with. Peyton did things tonight she has only dreamed of performing. We did so many things.” He ran his tongue along his teeth and faced the bed.
“What is normal to us is a fantasy to her, something she thought impossible.”
I let him talk because his words calmed Misha, which was the goal.
“We are not done with her,” I reassured Misha when he continued to pace.
“We are not letting her go for good. Only for now.” We did not chase women, but we also did not give up what was ours.
And Peyton belonged to us now. She might not understand what that meant, but she would.
I poured a flute of champagne and drank it in one gulp. We hadn’t ordered anything stronger, and the champagne did nothing to soothe the raw edges stirring along my mind. “We can talk to her at work tomorrow.”
Leo started to shake his head but stopped when I gave him a look. He waited as though weighing his words. “What if we treat this like any other date? We can message her through the app. Tomorrow. After she’s had a chance to catch her breath. It might not be wise to approach her at work.”
I considered his words. “What is it you mentioned a few weeks ago when I caught you ogling her? You mentioned a power imbalance.”
Leo ate the last of the chocolate covered cherries one by one. “We are her bosses, as she stated tonight. If we approach her at work before we’ve had a conversation about tonight, she might worry that she’ll lose her job if she turns us down. There is a power imbalance here.”
“We own her.” I could not help, and did not try to stop, the growl in my voice. “Peyton is ours.”
“Peyton thinks we are honorable business moguls.” Leo pointed at me, a cherry between his thumb and forefinger. “She does not know we are Bratva, and if she did, she would not understand what that meant.”
Then we would teach her.
I trapped those words behind my teeth. Uttering them out loud would put Misha on the hunt, and we did not need my enforcer stalking the best executive assistant we’d ever hired.
“We are in agreement?” Leo raised his eyebrows. “We do not talk to Peyton about tonight until we’ve reached out on the app to gauge her emotions. It would be unprofessional and might make her quit if she’s decided she does not wish to continue with us.”
Misha’s jaw jutted out in a mutinous scowl. “I don’t like this plan.”
“But you will follow it.” I gave him a look. “As much as it pains me to admit, Leo is right. We cannot force Peyton to continue this situation. It needs to be her choice, made in a moment of clear-headedness and not one clouded by you pinning your arm across her throat.”
Misha licked his lips, his eyes going glassy. No doubt, he was imagining that very thing.
“Misha.” I cracked out his name, years together giving me insight into how to break him free of his fantasy. While I had been allowed to show some of my darker side tonight, he had not, and it ate at the edges of his fraying control.
His head snapped around. “I will do what is best.”
It was all I could ask for from all of us. We were not often denied anything, and Peyton had presented us with the most intriguing denial.