16. Elena
ELENA
I rushed out of the dark-toned office as quickly as I could. My footsteps were silent as I raced away from the behemoth of the antique desk, that massive thing made of hardwood and polished so prettily. The plush white carpet acted like quicksand as I escaped.
Adrik hadn’t needed to order me to go like that.
But I hadn’t jumped when he dismissed me the first time.
Partly because he hadn’t been dismissive of me at all since I’d been here. Even though I wasn’t here as an employee he set out to hire. Even though I was supposed to be here as some discard that my father handed over to him.
Adrik didn’t dismiss me. He—or one of his brothers or cousins—walked me home to the lavish guest house each night.
They walked me home like I mattered and I needed to be seen to the door.
At first, it seemed like a safety precaution, like they wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be the captive on their property who’d try to run away.
Lately, it had seemed like a courtesy. A consideration I never counted on having.
Right now? I was frantic to bolt out of this mansion and put as much distance between me and that furious man.
He was back there in that gorgeous office, pacing and ranting. Ticking like a freaking bomb about to detonate. I’d never seen him that mad. I wasn’t sure I’d ever witnessed any human reaching that volcanic level of pure fury before.
A deep stroke of vulnerability hit me as I reached the stairs. Jogging too fast, no longer slowed down by the thick ply of a carpet but skidding over the smooth wood and marble floors, I gripped the handrail before I’d go too fast and trip and pitch myself down the stairs.
I bet that would be inconvenient.
A death on their hands that they hadn’t caused.
Morbid, intrusive thoughts weren’t helping me. But as I panicked with how mad he’d gotten at my report, and how much it hurt to be dismissed and sent away so violently, I didn’t know how to calm down.
He’d been so attentive, respecting my hard work and noticing my effort. Almost like he was a normal boss and I was just an ordinary accountant and researcher.
That wasn’t the case at all.
Whatever that name meant, whoever this Gregori individual was, it was enough to trigger Adrik Volkov into a fit of raw fury. He looked like a Mafia mobster then, a scary leader of violence and fully capable of it at that moment.
I don’t want to know.
I don’t even want to be involved.
I cringed at a stitch in my side from running and breathing so shallowly.
I don’t want any part in anything that makes you so furious.
As I slid my hand over the handrail, I realized that I was empty-handed as I fled.
I’d left my phone in the office. Not my phone, the piece of junk model I’d had before my father gave me to Adrik, but the one he’d given me.
The one he’d ordered me to always have with me.
It was an order. A requirement. Probably issued so he could track me.
But it was an order, and with how mad he was now, I feared that if he tried to contact me—not that he was likely to now—he’d be more furious that I’d disobeyed an expectation he’d given me.
Dammit!
I did not want to go back up there. The very last thing I wanted to do was return to him when he was still fuming and raging at seeing that name on the laptop.
But I had to. I had to go up there and retrieve that stupid phone.
If I hadn’t been so spooked, I wouldn’t have been so scatterbrained to leave it at all. I’d taken off in such a rush, though, not even thinking and only focusing on escaping.
Damn it!
I stopped short. Rocking forward with my momentum, I caught myself from slipping on the edge of the step. Then I spun around, anxious to have to show my face after he’d sent me running away.
I’ll slip in, get the phone, and slip right back out.
It can’t take more than a few seconds.
He doesn’t even have to notice that I will be returning.
In and out.
It didn’t have to be a big deal. His furious mood wasn’t anything I wanted to linger by, anyway.
I reached the upper floor again and hurried some more. Retracing my steps, I tried to calm my nerves. They were frayed, though, from how angry he’d been.
In and out. Really quick.
I gulped as I came to the door. Pausing to hold my breath, I tried to ignore the fear snapping through me. The door was still slightly ajar. All I had to do was nudge it open a little more with my foot.
He was pacing.
Maybe he won’t even see me.
I entered and winced at the sound of the door making a slightly swishy sound against the carpet.
Looking up, I felt like I’d collided into the full-frontal blast of his wrath. He stopped pacing behind that huge desk and glared at me. Pure anger radiated off him.
I tensed.
So much for slipping in and out unnoticed.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he roared. “I told you to go.”
I swallowed hard. “I forgot my phone.” It came out of me as a shaky little whisper. Offering him that excuse seemed like such a weak line to give.
He narrowed his eyes.
“I’m sorry.” I reached forward only far enough to grab it.
“Just fucking go.” He ran his hand through his hair, resembling a tortured soul.
With the phone in my hand, I should’ve turned tail and dashed out of there. But something held me in place.
Maybe it was the wounded look in his eyes, or the tension in his shoulders as he cringed and turned to pace.
It could’ve been the ragged growl of frustration, too.
Whatever it was, or maybe it was all of it combined, I recognized the desperation on his face.
He was furious. He was lashing out at me.
And I knew it was because he, too, was vulnerable.
Something big was hurting him and stressing him out this severely, and like the ridiculous people pleaser I was, I wished I could help him somehow, that I could urge him back into a more stable state of mind.
“Can… can I help you?” I asked. It was a shame my voice shook, but I was proud of myself for offering.
He scoffed, still so mad. “You think you can help me? With this ?”
I furrowed my brow.
“You think you can help me with the fact that he could be messing with the family after all this fucking—” Another growl was ripped from his throat as he scowled at me. “You think you can help me?”
“I could.”
He shook his head, pacing from side to side again and cursing under his breath.
“I am willing to help you. However I can.”
The intensity of his stare stunned me. But it wasn’t fear that lanced up my spine again. It was hope. He glared at me like I was so ridiculous to want to help him that he couldn’t believe it.
I’d do more research. I’d dig a little further. I could try to find out more about that Gregori individual and bring that information to him. Knowledge was power, and I was able to do that little bit. Or maybe he just needed to vent and not be alone. Or?—
He reached for me, yanking me closer to him on his side of the desk. “You want to help me?”
I licked my lips and watched him, startled, but not afraid of how he’d grabbed me.
“You want to help me ?” He snarled it, dipping his face lower.
I nodded, unable to tear my gaze from his.
“Even if all I want from you is this?” He didn’t give me a chance before he smashed his lips to mine.
He covered my mouth with a feral, possessive need.
Pure loathing channeled from him, but it wasn’t hatred toward me.
He was just so full of it, topped up with anger, that it was too much to contain.
Although he was rough, and although he was taking this from a tense argument to a torrid chance to make out, I didn’t want him to stop.
As I clung to him, my arms looped over his shoulders as I pushed my breasts against his chest, I couldn’t bear to think of him pulling back now.
Heat spiked between us as he growled into my mouth. His hands, so big and strong, gripped my sides as he lifted me off the floor.
He set me on the edge of the desk, propping me on the very ledge of the surface. Standing up straight, he allowed some distance between us. But in that gap, he raised his hands to clutch my shirt and yank hard.
Buttons flew. Fabric ripped. The blouse was ripped and hanging open in halves. Like a beast, he was shredding my garments. And it made my blood boil hotter.
My chest heaved as he stared at me. Cupping my breasts, he thumbed the cups of my bra down until he could feast his eyes on my hard nipples. “You want to help me, sweetheart?” he growled.
Oh, God. I trembled, unable to speak quickly enough. His heated stare was a live brand on my flesh, and as he rubbed his thumbs over my nipples again, I jerked at the bolt of pleasure that zinged all the way down to my pussy.
“You can help me by lying back right here. Right now.” He paired his dominant words with a demonstration, pushing me down until I was on my back.
“You can help me,” he mocked, “by letting me fuck my anger out in you.” Standing between my legs, he unzipped his pants and freed his cock. The erection I’d felt the other day hadn’t led me astray. He was big. Long. Thick. So hard and stiff with a drip of pre-cum leaking from the tip.
Stroking his huge cock, he watched me watch him. “You want to help me with this?” he growled.
I jerkily nodded as I parted my legs. My thighs trembled, but I couldn’t back down now.
This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I offered to help him.
But I was too far gone now.
He let go of his dick as he grabbed my legs. Fingers under my knees, he pulled me toward him. One rip of my panties removed that barrier. Cool air kissed my wet pussy.
Then without any preamble, without any more warning, he made good on his words.
He pushed the wide cockhead against my entrance, and I gasped at the stretch. Before I could adjust, before I could comprehend and let my brain catch up to what was happening, he took hold of my hips and yanked me toward him at the same time he thrust into me.
All the way.
Balls deep.
He rammed that massive shaft all the way inside my pussy.
Stretching me. Searing me. Stuffing me so full that for a second, I thought I would split into two.
Oh, fuck!
The twinge of pain at letting him in where no man had ever gone faded quickly. And in its place, as he withdrew and growled, pleasure trickled in.
Back and forth, he forced his penis into me. Slick sounds of my arousal filled the room. So did the slaps of flesh against flesh.
“Hold on to me,” he ordered sinisterly.
I was so overwhelmed with the pressure to come that I could barely think straight. I could scarcely breathe right.
Moving my hands to his arms, I tried to follow his order.
I curled my fingers around his forearms, latching on to ground myself with him as he dug his grip into my side. He held me in place as he seesawed in and out of me, fucking me in one steady mode.
Hard.
Fast.
Needy.
My first time wasn’t supposed to be rough. My first lover wasn’t supposed to be a volatile Mafia boss.
I accepted that this was happening, though, that I’d offered him my help and he was taking it in the form of venting his anger out on me. Fucking my brains out.
The tension built and coiled tighter. The urgency to let go and come monopolized my body. So when I finally gave up and cried out, my orgasm hitting me so brutally that tears leaked from the corners of my eyes, I knew what that saying meant now.
Le petit mort.
The little death.
It was all I could experience as my pussy spasmed around his dick that twitched inside me, filling me with rope after rope of his cum.
He’d surrendered too, flooding me with his seed.
I soared. I floated. I sank and drowned and crashed, only to be splintered into pieces with starbursts exploding behind my closed lids as he heaved harsh breaths and rammed me down against his hips.
Bliss coated me, soothing me with this out-of-the-world sensation of having an orgasm like this, from my first time taking a man like that.
I’d offered to help my boss. The man I’d been given to.
And he’d fucked me with a ruthless need that I already knew no other man could match.