Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Genevieve
Lunch with Voss ran longer than expected. It was the final stage of the deal and I figured after days of negotiation and adjustments by the lawyers on both ends, the final stage would take an hour at most, but I was sorely mistaken.
Voss was trying to cut as much as he could and Kazimir was unyielding and very determined to give only what he thought was necessary.
It was only after Nikolai mentioned a detail I was unaware of that I realized Kazimir had driven Voss to the point of wanting to sell.
Eventually, and much to my relief, the deal was signed and we were set to leave.
However, halfway to the car, my phone beeped, reminding me of the next meeting with Karl and Karl.
It was almost four in the evening and I was yet to catch a break. Word had gotten out on the new launch and everyone wanted a share of the cookie.
Kazimir had said he was done meeting the investors who mattered and everyone else was fighting for a piece, which equalled hours of listening to powerful men who made waves in their different industries grovel in the most diplomatic manner while Kazimir wore a mask of boredom.
“This way,” Kazimir said as we crossed the lobby, his hand brushing my elbow to steer me away from the bank of regular elevators and toward the discreet private one tucked behind a wall of frosted glass.
I stopped walking before I’d consciously decided to. “I can take the normal elevator.”
“It’s faster this way.” He didn’t slow down, didn’t look back to see if I’d follow, just kept walking with that effortless certainty that everyone around him would eventually fall in line.
Nikolai, trailing slightly behind us with his phone in hand, gave me a glance that might have been sympathy or might have been amusement. With Nikolai, it was usually difficult to tell the difference.
“You’ll be at least ten minutes late with a line that long.”
I glanced at the queue that had formed around the elevator, and ten minutes would mean I got ahead of some people.
I reluctantly followed because the alternative was standing alone in the lobby looking ridiculous.
The doors slid open with a soft chime, and I stepped inside behind Kazimir, very aware that this was the same elevator, the same panel of buttons, the same mirrored walls that had reflected back a version of myself I barely recognized the night everything started.
I hadn’t been in here since. I’d avoided it deliberately, taking the long way around through the regular bank even when it cost me extra minutes, because some superstitious part of me believed that staying out of this particular box meant staying out of whatever gravitational pull existed between us inside it.
Apparently, that strategy had an expiration date.
Nikolai stepped in last, the doors closing behind him, and for a moment the three of us stood there in silence while the elevator began its climb.
I kept my eyes fixed on the numbers ticking upward, refusing to look at either of the mirrored walls, refusing to let myself catalog the way Kazimir’s shoulder sat barely six inches from mine in a space that suddenly felt smaller than it had any right to be.
All I had to do was hold on for a couple of minutes and possibly not breathe to keep his scent from assaulting my senses, and I’d be just fine.
The universe had other plans because the elevator slowed at the seventh floor. Nikolai checked his phone, frowned slightly, and stepped toward the opening doors.
“I need to handle something,” he said, already halfway into the hallway. “I’ll catch up.”
As I watched the door slide closed in pure mortification, I couldn’t tell if he had done it on purpose or if he did indeed have something to deal with.
I kept my eyes glued to the wall, focusing on the soft hum of the elevator climbing toward the executive floor, and counting the number of floors in between.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Kazimir said, breaking the silence.
“You took the long way to the conference room this morning. Twice. Sat at the far end of every table and barely replied to my texts.”
“I replied to the important ones and I’ve been really busy,” I lied through my teeth. “None of it was intentional.”
“Delivering my coffee through Caroline?”
“I had to use the restroom and I figured you wouldn’t appreciate the delay.”
“I could hear your laughter in the hallway with the others.”
I had no good response to that, mostly because he had caught me in a lie.
“Fine,” I said. “Maybe I have been avoiding you a little. Is that a crime now?”
“No. But I’d like to know why.” He turned slightly, enough that I could feel the weight of his attention even without looking directly at him. “We already spoke about Moscow.”
“That was hardly a conversation.”
“That was the most I could do, except you have something else you’d like to say.”
The undertone of his statement was not missed on me. He was giving me an out.
When I gathered the courage to look at him, I found him staring at me, his jaw tight.
The elevator climbed past the twelfth floor, the fifteenth, and I tried to look anywhere but at him.
“I’m not avoiding you because I’m scared of you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Something shifted in the air between us, the temperature of it changing in a way I felt rather than saw.
His lips curled like I just presented him with a challenge.
“If that’s true,” he said quietly, “then you wouldn’t mind if I kissed you right now.”
My head turned sharply toward him before I could stop it. “That’s not how that works.”
“Isn’t it? You just told me you’re not avoiding me out of fear.
If that’s the case, a kiss shouldn’t be a problem.
” His dark eyes held mine, steady and patient and entirely too confident, like he already knew exactly how this was going to go.
“Unless there’s a different reason you’d rather not give me. ”
“That is reckless. We’re in a building full of cameras and employees who already speculate enough about—”
“This elevator has no cameras.” He took a step closer, closing the distance I hadn’t realized I’d been maintaining until it was gone. “I had them removed years ago. For privacy.”
“Of course you did.” My voice came out breathier than I intended, and I hated how easily he managed to dismantle every argument I tried to construct, hated more how little resistance I actually felt building behind my protests. “That’s not the point, Kazimir, the point is—”
He didn’t let me finish.
His hand came up to cradle the side of my face, his thumb brushing along my cheekbone, and then his mouth was on mine.
It wasn’t hard and fast like our other kisses; this was slow, deliberate and almost as though he was pouring the words he couldn’t say into every stroke of his tongue.
I should have pulled back. Every rational thought I’d been clinging to for the better part of two weeks told me to step away, to remember the gun on the bathroom counter and the blood on his knuckles and how he only gave me answers in bits and fractured pieces.
I didn’t pull back. I kissed him instead, my fingers curling into the lapel of his jacket, and the elevator seemed to tilt slightly off its axis, or maybe that was just me, losing whatever ground I’d been standing on.
His hand slid from my face down to the curve of my waist, pulling me flush against him, and the kiss deepened into something hungrier, something that tasted like the days I’d spent pretending my heart didn’t do the thing any time I got a notification, only to sink when I realized it was not from him.
And the longer days I’d spent convincing myself this thing between us had cooled into something manageable.
And boy was I wrong. It hadn’t cooled by a fraction. If anything, it had built up like lava beneath a rock, boiling and waiting for the slightest bit of pressure to explode.
Kazimir found my boobs, palming the soft mold of flesh through my shirt. “You still owe me that reward.”
He breathed into the kiss, reclaiming my mouth before I could come up with a response.
I moaned into his lips, the last bit of reservation I had falling away when he found my nipple.
The elevator chimed.
We broke apart at the same moment, both of us breathing harder than the situation should have warranted, and I had just enough presence of mind to step back and smooth down the front of my blouse before the doors slid open.
Kazimir’s expression had already rearranged itself into something composed and unreadable while I was fairly certain my own face was doing absolutely nothing to hide what had just happened.
“After you,” he said, gesturing toward the open doors with infuriating calm, like he hadn’t just kissed me senseless thirty seconds earlier.
I walked out without responding, because I genuinely didn’t trust myself to say anything that wouldn’t give away exactly how unsteady my legs felt.
The rest of the day unraveled in a haze of forced professionalism.
I sat through two meetings without absorbing a single word that was said, hyperaware of Kazimir’s presence across whatever room we occupied, the memory of his mouth on mine sitting just beneath my skin like a low current I couldn’t switch off.
Worse, Nikolai had apparently pieced together exactly what had transpired in his absence, and I was now beyond certain the decision to step out of the elevator was entirely intentional.
‘Did you reapply your lipstick?’
Kazimir’s text lit up my phone and I cursed the fluttering in my stomach.
‘Since when are you concerned about lipsticks?’
I should be crowned patron saint of foolishness and inconsistency, seeing as all it took for me to fall back into old patterns was a simple kiss.
‘I preferred it smudged. I like knowing you carried bits of me with you and I ruin your makeup as much as I ruin your underwear.’
I turned down my phone, discreetly glancing around to see if anyone saw the text.
Unlike the meeting with Voss, this one was packed with all the executives and the seats next to me were currently occupied by Rose and Caroline on either side.
Thankfully, they didn’t seem to notice a thing.
Kazimir, however, being the proud culprit he was, wore a discreet smirk, his finger beginning to move on his screen.
‘They’ll only notice if you give it away.’
‘You’re enjoying this.’
‘I enjoy watching you.’
The message caused me to freeze again, and I was adjusting myself on the seat before I could stop it.
I didn’t need to look at his next text to know what it was about.
‘Keep squeezing your thighs like that and I’ll empty this room to give them the long-needed attention.’
I could barely come up with an answer that didn’t escalate the situation or leave me more turned on than I already was.
There was something sinfully erotic about talking dirty in a professional environment whilst being surrounded by coworkers.
It curled my toes in my shoes and sent jolts of pleasure into the depths of my core and, to my dismay, I found myself wishing he would empty the room and take care of the growing ache between my thighs.
Eventually, the messages stopped coming and I was able to catch up on the rest of the meeting in spite of the gentle thrum humming beneath my skin.
I felt Kazimir’s eyes on me the entire time, but I stuck to my journal and a little girl gossip about coworkers with Rose and Caroline for the rest of the day.
By the time the workday finally wound down, well past the hour everyone else had cleared out, I was beyond exhausted from both the stress of the day and pretending there wasn’t a fire licking at my nerves the whole day.
I was gathering my things, ready to escape to the relative safety of my apartment and several hours of not having Kazimir in my view, when he appeared in the doorway of my office, jacket slung over one shoulder, looking entirely too unbothered for someone who’d spent the day creating chaos in my chest.
“Have dinner with me,” he said. Not a question, even though there was enough space left in the sentence for me to refuse if I wanted to.
I didn’t want to refuse. That was the problem.
“Is this a work dinner?”
“Does it need to be?”
I considered lying, considered telling him I had plans with Anna and escaping his presence like I wanted to, but his lips curled into that challenging smirk and I found myself giving in.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m picking the restaurant.”