18. Elena
ELENA
I ran out of the house, holding my shirt together and trying to keep my head up. I didn’t want to trip in my hasty escape. Dashing off to the side, I was just in time to avoid Adrik’s brothers and cousins showing up in the front circular drive.
The reason he’d told me to get up and go after he screwed me on his desk might have been just that. He knew his brothers and cousins were on their way, and he didn’t want to expose me to them.
Or he didn’t want to expose that he’d desired me at all.
For that, I could be grateful. That he’d spared me further embarrassment.
Shame and regret filled me as soon as I reached the guest house and got inside.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to catch my breath.
Oh, God.
I shouldn’t have done that.
I really shouldn’t have… caved.
Somewhere along the lines from when I offered to help him, my idea had been twisted into his thinking he could use me. Like that.
Oh, God. What have I done?
What do I do now?
I hurried up to the bathroom to take a shower. That seemed like the first step.
I felt filthy. Contaminated and dirty.
My boss, my owner, my captor—whatever that Mafia man was supposed to be to me—he’d made me feel used up.
Taken advantage of. I was no longer a virgin, and I would forever be marked by him. Adrik Volkov was the first man I’d ever been with. That would be a permanent mark on me.
Under the hot spray of the water, though, as I calmed down in the privacy of the shower stall, rational thought slowly returned to me.
The longer I stood there, the mist and steam soothing me, I could think clearer. Without smelling his cologne on me. Without feeling the touch of his hands on my hips and his dick stretching deep inside me.
All that reached my nose was the clean scent of soap.
All I felt now was the massaging pressure of the water raining down on me.
I wasn’t back there in the office. I was here, in this moment, and I was alone to finally think it through.
He didn’t take advantage of me.
I wiped my face under the water before taking a deeper breath.
He didn’t use me.
While he was very brutal and rough, thrusting into me with a punishing force, he hadn’t raped me. He couldn’t have.
When I stood there to get my phone, with my heart on my sleeve and so worried about how distraught he was, I offered to help him. Help could mean so many different things. I hadn’t gone back for my phone with any specific intention to offer him my body as a form of help .
I had only been able to see him so vulnerable and upset that I wanted to do something—anything—to make him feel more in control and not lashing out with anger.
He perceived my offer of help in a forbidden and wicked way, but it was on me.
I had taken the initiative to reach out to him.
Even though he’d taken it to mean something very sensual and naughty, I stood by it.
I couldn’t be upset about the fact that he had accepted what I’d offered, turning it into an acknowledgment of the simmering chemistry we kept denying and ignoring.
Stalling under the shower, I reflected even more.
I could wrestle with how I'd caved to him. For hours, I could overthink it all.
But I couldn’t deny the truth that I was misinterpreting the aftermath of it.
“He didn’t use me,” I whispered to myself.
And it took one to know. I’d been used and taken advantage of, then dismissed, by my father. For years. He’d taken advantage of me in the form of employment. He chained me to my job at his financial firm without a way out.
I didn’t have a way out of this job, either, on the Volkov estate. There was no open-door policy that meant I could walk away from here.
More than anything, the knowledge I had about those accounts had kept me trapped at my father’s firm and here, too.
But the difference was in assuming the control my father had over me could be the same as the command Adrik had over me here.
Finishing with the shower, I tried not to acknowledge how sore I was between my legs. I tried not to allow a sense of pride that I had taken him so hard, either. I got dressed, willing the ideas and memories out of my mind.
Phantom touches hit me. I could still feel the grip of his fingers on my hips. I could still hear the rough exhales as he rammed into me. I could still taste the heat of his kiss, and I could still smell the scent of sex that had filled the room.
He was so rough with me. But deep in my heart, I suspected that he had tried to be tender, too.
Somehow, he wasn’t a monster. Just a man who had needed me and needed that violent but orgasmic release.
When I lay there on the desk with my eyes closed, I felt him watching me.
Although there could be no truth to what I wanted to claim, it had seemed like he was watching me with compassion. Maybe even gratitude or reverence.
“What are you thinking?” I asked myself with a scoff. I shook my head and headed downstairs.
Compassion? He had been a force of nature to fuck me.
By the time I reached the foyer space of the guest house, knocks sounded on the front door.
I tensed, assuming the worst.
If it was Adrik, I wasn’t sure what I could say or do now.
No, it won’t be him.
He told me to go and made me leave.
He won’t be coming here to check on me or anything like that.
Besides, his brothers and cousins were probably with him, still talking about whatever had made him so mad with that name I’d pointed out.
Still, there was no chance for me to ignore whoever was at the door. After crossing the marble floor, I opened the door. Wild surprise hit me when I saw one of the cooks from the main house standing there.
“Miss Elena,” she greeted warmly. “You rushed out in such a hurry. I couldn’t give you your package.”
I raised both of my brows. “My package?”
“Yes.” She held up a neatly tied bag. “The boss insisted that I double-check on you, that you’re eating.” Pushing the bag toward me, she smiled again.
It resembled something that someone might get from a takeout place or leftovers from a restaurant. The aromatic smells coming from it teased my nose.
“I’m sorry. I’m… I’m not understanding. What do you mean?”
“The boss has been concerned that you are working so much that you forget to take care of yourself and eat,” the grandmotherly woman in the kitchen uniform said with a smile.
I took the bag from her, still confused about what this meant. If it meant anything at all.
Adrik had no reason to single me out. And it wasn’t like he nagged his brothers or cousins about when or if they ate. Nor any of the guards or drivers.
I admittedly had a bad habit of working without paying attention to the time. Yet, I refused to be so gullible as to think that Adrik could care about me, specifically. Before or after he’d fucked me raw.
The older woman tilted her head to the side as I stood there, staring at the bag like it was a foreign object that I didn’t know how to handle.
“Are you feeling all right, Miss Elena?” she asked.
That’s the question of the century.
Because she was older like a grandmother, which was someone I’d never had since mine all died before I was born, and because she looked completely unbiased, watching me with concern and not judgment, I blurted out my reply.
“I have no idea what I’m supposed to feel right now.” I wasn’t going to blurt how confused I was to have slept with Adrik. But I spoke the vague truth.
“No one is supposed to tell you what to feel,” she chided kindly. “That is something you decide, something that comes from here.” She tapped her chest, indicating her heart.
I almost rolled my eyes. From the heart?
How ironic. Having sex with Adrik wasn’t a matter of the heart.
It had nothing to do with love or honest affection between us.
I couldn’t trick myself into seeing it as anything but what it actually was.
A physical release. It was all the details surrounding the action that confused me so much.
“Forgive me if I’m being too forward,” I said, “but sometimes I struggle to know how to respond to Mr. Volkov. How I am supposed to view him and know how to give him what he wants from me.”
That seemed like a lie. I’d given him my body, and we’d both wanted that.
The cook gave me a small smile. “None of those Volkov men are easy to handle. Take my word for it.” She tipped her chin at the bag I held in my hands. “He does want to provide for you.”
It sounded so strange. I wasn’t used to being the object of anyone’s concerns.
It wasn’t as though I was a guest here, in this house. My father had given me to Adrik as part of a payment for his mismanaging the money.
“He provides for all of us in the family,” she stated.
I was grateful for that. But in a darkness in my mind, I couldn’t deny that I was also secretly grateful for what he had done to me. It was rougher than I had imagined it might be, but he'd made me feel so good, too. He made me come in such a glorious way that I hoped I could experience it again.
“Eat, Miss Elena, and know that he will be glad that you are doing as he asked. That you are taking care of yourself so you can continue to contribute to doing your part for the success of the family.”
She nodded once, as if that finalized her statement. Then she turned away, leaving me with the delicious-smelling food.
The success of the family?
I didn’t want to claim success over crimes being done.
And I wasn’t part of their family at all.
I was just Elena.
And I tried not to feel like I was the discarded thing that he’d helped himself to when I had no other way out of whatever this life was supposed to be.
I shut the door and took the food into the kitchen, unsure when I’d have the appetite for it with all the questions swirling in my mind and the conflicted pangs of hurt in my heart.