11. Adrik
ADRIK
F or the second night in a row, I didn’t walk Elena home.
There was no need to. It had become a habit, a routine, borne of my desire to spend as much time with her as I could.
She hogged my thoughts, and I had assumed that being near her would help faze out the newness of having this good girl in my life.
I now realized that being close to her was more like feeding the beast. The beast of need. Every chance I had to watch her and be close, the more I wanted her.
I’d asked her to dinner on an impulse tonight. My mind hadn’t been in a good place all day, what with some leaders in the city talking crap about a deal Lev was trying to get going. And then more bad news from the doctor had me reconsidering whether it was humane to keep him alive on life support.
“His living will is ironclad,” a lawyer told me and Maksim in the afternoon after we’d talked to the doctor and gotten the update. “His wishes are, in a situation like this, to stay on life support until more criteria are met.”
In other words, if we defied his wishes, it’d be flat-out murder.
Just like what Uncle Gregori had done to our grandparents.
Being in the position to think about the end of my father’s life wore on me, and when I sat down to eat alone, when so often this room had hosted so many lively groups and family dinners, I couldn’t handle the silence.
Asking Elena to sit with me was a bigger mistake, though. Her scent, her presence, hell, her voice. They all got to me, making me want to fall to the temptation of feeling something good for a change.
I had been fine with merely sitting there, enduring the tension.
But then she had to speak up. Sweetly. Sincerely.
She’d been kind—which wasn’t a surprise at all—and she’d sympathized with me when I lightened up enough to admit that I wasn’t in a great mood because of my father nearing the end of his life.
It had been too comforting. She’d made me lower my guard too much.
Like this, patient and never pushy… I felt the allure of her like this. Accepting and loving. Sweet and generous. Willing to give and give and give.
But I knew that if or when I took that step and crossed the line to take, to really take what I wanted from her in the form of a conquest, there would be no going back.
That was why I was so cold with her, why I shut down that line of friendship that seemed to be growing between us.
As I explained this all to Viktor, though, all he did was give me a wide-eyed smirk.
“What?”
“Has it, I don’t know…” He rubbed the back of his head. “Has it maybe occurred to you that you’re overthinking the fuck out of this?”
I glared at him. He seemed the most approachable with this topic.
He was blunt in a dry, sarcastic way, often crude but never shying away from telling it like it was.
I needed that barebone honesty as I struggled with how to compartmentalize why I was, according to him, acting like I had something up my ass.
I wasn’t cranky . I was annoyed. There was a difference. But the sum of it all was one person.
Elena.
“I’m not overthinking anything,” I defended.
“You sound like you’re goddamn obsessed with her and you can’t get her off your mind.” He shrugged before getting off the couch in the lounge.
“Are you accusing me of not being focused on the job of becoming the Pakhan?”
He rolled his eyes. “No one is going to accuse you of that, Brother. You were raised to do that. And if anyone does accuse you of not rising to the occasion, they’ll need to answer to me and Nik and Maksim. Lev and Alexei too.”
I rubbed my jaw, feeling the strain of grinding my teeth from all this stress.
This was precisely why I vowed not to get involved with a woman. The last thing I needed was another fucking distraction on my hands. Instead of giving my all to claiming the throne and preparing for my father’s death, I was obsessing over Elena.
“My advice would be to stop focusing on it.” He ambled toward the door, hands in his pockets. “Let things fall where they may. You know? See where it goes with her. Knowing you, you’ll probably bore of her and tire soon enough. She’s here to be an accountant?—”
“No.” I stood, too, peeved. “She’s here as a token of a payment from Morovov. The only reason I said I’d take her was to punish him.”
He spun to face me, a comically skeptical expression on his face. “Yeah. It’s been such a punishment to have her here and pointing out all the issues with the bookkeeping that could happen.”
“I didn’t realize she’d be such a…”
“Temptation?” he guessed.
“Asset,” I said instead. But he was right. Elena was a temptation I needed to be wary of.
After Viktor left, I revisited what Nikolai had said when he’d gotten his first impression of the gorgeous blonde who was a genius on the computer. To seduce her and get to the bottom of any secrets she might’ve had.
I frowned, convinced he was after the correct concept.
Seduction was at play. But it wasn’t me seducing her.
It had become a case of that force happening the other way around.
Without seeming to realize it or acknowledge it, without acting like she was aware of what she was consciously doing, she had slowly been seducing me .
Getting under my skin.
Causing me to dream about fucking her hard.
Making me wonder how her pussy would hug my dick.
How—
“Goddammit,” I growled, leaving the room and heading for my suite. Another cold shower was due. It was the only feeble method I had to scrub her out of my mind for a little while.
She’d gotten under my skin, slowly but surely, with every little sigh, lick of her lip in concentration, and even her glasses sliding down her nose.
She’d bewitched me through how hard she worked, no matter what, and how sweet she was to always want to make life smoother and more manageable.
Distance had seemed like the answer tonight. I was cold and rude toward her to instill a line of separation between us so she’d get it out of her head that I was befriending her. We had to go back to the original boundaries.
She was sold to me by her father as a payment for his mismanagement of our finances.
I had to maintain a more logical mindset with her.
No more caving to kisses.
No more stalking her and watching her with longing and wonder.
And no more walking her to the guest house out of a last-ditch attempt to be near her for that much more time.
The next morning, I woke up determined to avoid any more complications with her. Sticking to business would be the surest way to pull that off. Focusing on professionalism would avoid feelings and lust.
So when she arrived, ready to stare at the computer for hours, I called her to my office instead.
That alone felt like a risk, but for what I intended to tell her, I wanted the security of privacy.
Adrik: Bring the laptop to my office. Now.
“Fuck,” I whispered after I’d texted her that order. I’d probably freaked her out with that command out of nowhere. But just as quickly, I cringed at the fact that I cared whether she was freaked out.
Three dots appeared and disappeared over and over.
I sighed.
Adrik: Just spit it out.
Adrik: What are you trying to figure out as a reply?
Three dots left and a line of text showed.
Elena: I couldn’t figure out if saying yes, sir would make you madder.
I shook my head and tossed my phone to the desk that still didn’t seem like mine . I had too many memories of my father here, his papers all over it, his scratchy scrawl of a signature never quite the same on any two papers.
Dammit, it’s going to be so hard when you’re really gone.
Now, I could check in and see him sleeping peacefully in his room. But once he was gone…
Elena appeared and cleared her throat. She was there at just the right time to pull me out of thinking about my father’s death. Like a freaking angel I didn’t plan time for.
“Sit.”
She hugged the laptop and timidly entered the office. Another crisp white blouse. Another casual skirt that was so simple that it emphasized her lean legs and slender waist.
And—
Oh, fuck me.
The glasses.
“Where are your contacts?”
She blushed as she sat at the chair across from me. “I didn’t sleep well last night. And since I woke up later than I wanted to, I didn’t have time to put them in this morning.”
Don’t ask.
Don’t fucking ask.
You aren’t supposed to care.
Or wonder.
Don’t. Ask. I steepled my fingers and pressed them in front of my lips. And still I failed.
“Why?”
She glanced up at me as she opened the laptop I’d provided for her that would sync with whatever she did on the PC in the office I’d set up for her. “Why what?”
“Why didn’t you sleep well?”
“I had… dreams.”
Oh, fuck me, sweetheart. Are you dreaming about me like I dream about you?
The mental image of her in bed, twisting and moaning, had my dick getting hard.
“I want to start a conversation with you about something you mentioned.”
She raised her brows. “Okay…?”
“Shell companies. I think it’s about time I have you investigate as far as you can which shell companies might be involved with this new trend of messing with the Bratva’s accounts.”
She opened and closed her mouth, then nodded. “Okay.”