Chapter 16
Zara
I’ve never been to my husband’s office. In my head, it was something out of a movie: dark wood, cigar smoke, a wall of guns, maybe a tiger in the corner. Very Scarface.
The reality is worse. It’s a legit high-rise in the Financial District.
Glass and steel, thirty floors, a lobby with a receptionist who looks like she moonlights as a Victoria’s Secret model.
The sign on the building says Maksimov Holdings.
Holdings. Like he’s holding mutual funds and not the entire city’s underworld by the throat.
“This is where you work?” I ask, staring up at the building.
Nikolai nods, his hand on my back, guiding me through the lobby. “This is where the suits work. Our lawyers, accountants. The people who make problems disappear on paper.”
“Like an HR department from hell.”
His mouth twitches. “Something like that.”
The elevator requires a keycard for the top floor.
Of course it does. We ride up in silence, his hand still on my back, his thumb drawing circles through the fabric of my blouse.
I’m wearing one of the outfits from a recent shopping trip: black pants, a cream silk top, heels that make my ass look incredible and my feet want to die.
I look like I belong here. But I don’t really feel like I belong here.
I feel like someone’s gonna ask for my ID and escort me back to the diner where I came from.
The doors open on massive windows overlooking the bay. A handful of men in suits turn when we step out, and every one of them straightens like someone shoved a rod up their spine.
“This way, baby,” Nik says, steering me down a hallway.
His office is the corner suite. With floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, a desk the size of my old apartment’s kitchen, a leather couch, and, I’m not making this up, a framed photo of me on his desk.
It’s a candid of me on our couch at home, reading with my legs tucked under me, wearing his shirt.
I’m not even looking at the camera. He took it without me knowing, framed it, and put it on his desk where everyone who walks into this office can see it.
“When did you take this?” I ask, picking it up.
“Couple weeks ago.” He replies casually.
I’m grinning so hard my cheeks hurt. “Nik.”
He shrugs. “You looked beautiful.”
I giggle, shaking my head. “I was wearing your shirt and no pants.”
Another shrug of his broad shoulders. “Like I said. Beautiful.”
Something warm spreads through my chest. He has a picture of me, not some dressed up, made up version, just me, messy and natural, on his desk.
I set the photo down and look around. “So this is where you run your empire.”
His full lips twitch. Then he drops into his chair and pulls me on his lap before I can protest. With an arm wrapped around my waist, his hand resting on my stomach where it always gravitates now.
“Nik, I’m not sitting in your lap at your office.”
He huffs a short laugh into the crook of my neck. “You’re already sitting in my lap at my office.”
I half-heartedly try to wiggle. “What if someone walks in?”
“Then they’ll see the boss with his wife. And they’ll leave.”
His phone rings. He glances at it, then at me. “I have to take this.”
“So let me up.”
“No.” He picks up the phone with one hand, the other tightening on my hip. “Maksimov.”
His tone shifts into the harder, colder voice I heard in the alley that first night. And just like that, I’m sitting in the lap of a Bratva Pakhan while he conducts business.
His hand absently strokes my thigh while he talks, like touching me is as natural as breathing, like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
I’m sitting on the lap of a man discussing things that could send us both to jail, and all I can think is how good he smells and how amazing his hands feel on me.
Zara Maksimov. Formerly broke. Currently insane.
The call only lasts a couple of minutes, and when he hangs up, Nikolai’s eyes come back to me.
He smirks, leaning to nuzzle my neck again. “Where were we?”
I smile, melting into his embrace, hooking an arm around his neck. “You were holding me hostage in your office chair.”
“Right,” he breathes into my skin, making me shiver. His hand slides from my thigh up to my hip, his thumb tracing circles on my skin through the silk. “I like you here.”
“In your office?” I pant.
“In my office. In my lap. In my world.” His stubble deliciously scrapes my skin. His mouth finds the spot below my ear that makes me melt, and I feel his cock hardening under me.
His hand slides under my blouse, his warm palm against my bare stomach, his fingers spread wide over where our baby is growing. He holds me there for a beat. Then his hand moves higher, cupping my breast through my bra, his thumb brushing my nipple until it hardens under the silk.
“Nik, your entire staff is on the other side of the door,” I pant.
He rasps against my skin, “The door is locked.”
“You planned this,” I accuse, unable to stop my hips from rolling up and down his long, hard shaft.
“Baby, I plan everything.” He kisses my neck, open-mouthed and hot, and I feel his teeth graze my skin. “Why do you think I brought you here?”
“Because you’re a control freak who can’t let me out of his sight for eight hours?”
He huffs out a short laugh. “That too.” His fingers find my nipple and roll it. “But mostly because I wanted to fuck my wife in my office, on my desk, while my staff pretends they can’t hear her scream.”
Oh My God.
I try to push up. “Nik, we can’t…” He holds me tighter. “Baby, people will hear.”
Completely ignoring my protests, he pulls my blouse off one shoulder and presses his mouth to my bare skin. My pussy clenches, my face burning, and my thighs part on his lap before my brain gives them permission.
“That’s my girl.”
He lifts me off his lap and sets me on the edge of the desk. Papers scatter. I hear something fall. Nik doesn’t care. He’s between my legs, his hands pushing my thighs apart, his dark eyes locked on mine with that look that makes me feel like prey and treasure at the same time.
“Baby,” I whisper.
“Shh.” He drops to his knees in front of me. “Boss is busy.”
Then his mouth is on me and I forget where I am, who’s outside this room, what my damn name is, anything that isn’t the man between my thighs worshipping my body.
I grab his hair, pulling hard, and he groans against me, the vibration making me shiver all over.
His hands grip my thighs, pulling me closer to his mouth, spreading me wider.
I can hear the wet, filthy sounds he’s making, and I know, I KNOW, that whoever is sitting outside that door can hear them too. Fuck, I should care. But I don’t.
I come hard enough that my hand slams down on the desk and sends his phone clattering to the floor. But Nik doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even slow down. He licks me through my orgasm, then stands, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes feral, his cock straining against his suit pants.
“Turn around,” he growls.
I do. Palms flat on his desk. Looking out at the San Francisco skyline through the floor-to-ceiling windows. And I think: a year ago I was serving pancakes at Rosetti’s. Now I’m bent over a Bratva boss’s desk on the thirtieth floor of a high-rise. Life is fucking wild.
He fucks me hard and fast, one hand gripping my hip, the other pressing between my shoulder blades, holding me down against the polished wood.
Every thrust shoves the desk forward an inch, its legs scraping the floor.
His breath is ragged, his grip bruising, and he’s murmuring filth against my back, what I look like right now, how tight I am, how he’s going to fill me up, how every man in this city knows who this pussy belongs to.
I come again with my face pressed against a report, biting my lip so hard I taste blood.
Nik follows right after, slamming deep and holding, pulsing inside me, his forehead between my shoulder blades, saying my name like it’s the only word he knows.
We stay there for a minute. Breathing raggedly. His weight on my back. His cock still inside me. The city surrounding us through the windows.
“You just fucked me on a report,” I huff out, blowing hair out of my face.
“Numbers were shit,” he replies, and I laugh, which makes him groan because he’s still balls deep inside me.
He pulls out, cleans us with tissues from a box sitting on his desk.
I catch my reflection in a gold-framed mirror on the wall.
My blouse is wrinkled, my hair a mess, my legs shaking.
I look like a woman who just got thoroughly, deliciously, amazingly railed.
My husband smooths my hair, tucks my blouse back in, and kisses my forehead.
When he opens the door and walks me out with his hand on my back, past his employees, they’re all staring very hard at their computer screens. Not one of them looks up.
In the elevator, I bury my face in his chest, laughing.
The elevator doors close and I feel his hand go to my ass, squeezing.
“Nik.”
“Hmm,” he hums against my lips.
I giggle into our kiss. “We’re in an elevator.”
“I know,” he rumbles back, still not breaking the kiss.
I hiss, “We’re not doing it in an elevator.”
“We’ll see.”